The address brings me to the stately definition of a nondescript residence. Tall and flat, like every other skinny lot on the block. Brick siding, walls hiding the lower floors, tinted windows on the upper, and a black metal gate before even approaching the front door. Still, it’s in the middle of the city. I can’t imagine what they must pay for it. I walk up to the gate and look around. The street is quiet - too quiet, like being in a heavy bank of fog, yet everything is clear and bright. I haven’t seen a mail carrier since I got off the inner-city auto-car three blocks away. Is anyone even living in these houses? There’s no buzzer on or near the gate. No eyeball cam either, but only the cheap ones are big enough to be seen. I step closer and keep my voice low. “I’m here.” A voice comes from the gate, “I don’t know anyone by that name, Sir Here.” Cheerful, light, at the verge of laughter. “Would you like to try again?” My throat squeezes shut. The feeling is like wires have
I hold two shirts up, checking for stains. When was the last time I wore them? The wavy line pattern down the first shirt looks workable but boring, while the squares on the other remind me of the club’s dance floor. I throw that one on my chair and hang the first back in the closet. The button-up shirt pairs reasonably well with my dark blue slacks. I consider a tie but decide against looking too serious. Gray clouds cover the sky outside. I pull my umbrella off the hook in the closet. ~-~ When I come downstairs, Dad is in the kitchen making coffee. His still-blank newspaper sits on the counter. What kind of tutorials would they have for people working on the news? I take my bowl to the sink and scrub for a moment at the dried-on crud. No good. Placing the bowl under the hot water dispenser, I start filling to the brim. “Washing too?” Dad rests against the counter, a faint smile forming. The coffee maker beeps. He turns back around and fiddles with the buttons. “You’re early.
The sun blazes. My eyelids sting and close tighter. A more intense pain greets me and I groan under my breath. What happened? My head feels like I’m being crushed in the grip of a vice. Where am I? My room dims again as the sun goes back behind the clouds. The fog of waking lifts but the pain stays. I open my eyes, shading them even under the obscured morning light, and stare at my recliner chair. She said I could do anything. She tilts her head to the side and grins. “Would you rather not go home with your group? That can be arranged.” Her lips don’t move; the voice comes from her like the speakers on a droid. “But first, please, I hope you’ll stay for a quick chat.” The breath stops in my throat. I take a step back, staring at her unmoving eyes. “You’re - that’s a droid body?” But her movements, her hands, her absolute control. “You’re wearing a one-to-one android. But that’s ...” “Would you like to sit down?” Her hand gestures to the couches. “Can I get you a drink? You look
After dinner I change and go back outside. There’s not many street lamps along the way, but every house has a spotlight that comes on as I go by. The headlights of mail cars flash across my legs a few times. When I arrive at the park, one lamp on an old wooden pole illuminates the dozen or so people gathering there. The first thing I spot is a cooler full of sports drinks and soda. I swallow - my mouth has gone dry all of a sudden - and force my eyes away. Almost everyone around seems to have an open bottle in their hands. Why didn’t I bring a water bottle? Sparkling light? A juice pack even. I shove my hands in my pockets, walk away from the cooler and crouch with my back against a slide built for the five-year-olds who never go outside. One of the tallest guys in our group, Vin, does a handstand on the grass while his sister Lin follows him on her cell. When he falls and rolls to sit up, another guy tosses him a drink. He poses, opens the bottle - a brand I haven’t seen before
When did jogging get easy? Okay, not easy, exactly. At some point these sweaty walks got faster, steadier and maybe even routine. The when doesn’t really matter. Now it’s easier than … work, maybe. But work will always be hard. Why else would they pay us. Hustling along the empty sidewalk, the late-morning haze filters the sunlight to a distant warmth. A tiny mail car shoots down the empty street, slowing only when it goes past me. Another streaks through an intersection far ahead. Factory identical houses, one after another. Dirt lots, maybe an unkempt flower bed, empty driveways next to flood floors. Each home has a few visible differences: window curtains, deck furniture and other outdoor garbage mostly. Back when they were built, each of the thousand or so houses in the neighborhood had been painted one of a hundred pastel colors. Are they able to use different colors in other places? I turn at the corner. A few houses down the road, an old lady stands, water can and cutters
Bruno Weber and The Cut Collar by CobraToon, literature
Literature
Bruno Weber and The Cut Collar
SCENE 1 – INT – Inner City Animal Hospital Lobby, Midday in summer Directly ahead from the front entrance, a reception desk (currently unattended) takes up one wall with large sign letters above that spell out '2nd Ave Animal Hospital' while a row of portraits to one side show the current doctors on staff. On the other side is a wide door that opens into the hospital's back rooms. Various fliers and pamphlets sit atop the reception desk along with a box of personal tissues and several bowls of animal treats like dog biscuits and bird seed crackers. Near the front entrance is a dozen waiting room chairs of solid make with cushioned seats. A young KID sits there, on their own and looking kind of nervous, holding a shark tooth tightly gripped in one fist. Others sit waiting as well, including an older woman with a cat in its pet carrier. BRUNO WEBER and ANNE WEBER enter the lobby and find a place to sit among the others. Bruno is a man in his 60s (though he looks older) with large,
Long ago, one garden covered the entire known world. A great many people lived and worked in that garden, tending to the plants which provided all of their food. The people slept below the trees, danced around the bushes and loved one another just as we do today. Among the ways they differentiated themselves was the tool each person preferred to carry with them when gardening. Roughly half used buckets, which had many benefits including the transport of water or dirt, and especially gathering food. The rest kept pitchforks, useful in turning over the soil, moving dead leaves and fallen grains, or even fighting off wild animals. If you asked people of this time, they would say that almost no one carried both a bucket and a pitchfork. Gardeners preferred to work alongside someone with the other tool instead of carrying both themselves. Many even claimed that pitchfork or bucket preference was inherent in a person from birth and influenced their personality. Bucket people were thought
Bright sand, blue ocean, and doing absolutely nothing under the hot sun – This is what a vacation is supposed to be! If vacations went on vacations, this beach is where they would go. And somehow there's no one here except me. So why ... Why does laying here under an umbrella with water near at hand and some sand in my shorts feel like a gigantic waste of time? When will I begin to feel relaxed and unwound, released from the stress of life, having fun in an endless moment of vacation bliss? It's honestly starting to feel like all those commercials of happy people on vacation lied. The longer I sit here, the more time will be gone from my three day unpaid “sick leave” getaway. I should be doing something, exploring somewhere, sightseeing someplace. Yet all of those options from the vacation planning app would have cost more ... If I had chosen them, would I be enjoying myself right now? Getting led from one destination to the next, crowded into a rented van with a bunch of other
Once there was an ordinary man. He enjoyed relaxing in the sunshine, time spent alone with his thoughts, watching television and hanging out with friends once a week to play cards. That was his life and he loved every moment. Hoping nothing would ever change, he only desired a life where he could someday look back at those good times. One warm and sunny day, he spent the afternoon at his parents' house. They were visiting relatives and wanted someone to check their home. He would relax in a lounge chair on their tall backyard deck. A light breeze perfectly balanced the heat. Some time later, the man heard strange noises from within the house. Voices, footsteps, heavy bags being set down. A burglar would be more quiet, he assumed. Yet his parents shouldn't be back. Had they called for cleaners? A mechanic? He stood from the lounge chair, not noticing at the time how the chair disappeared behind him. Walking through the door from the deck, he stopped and stared at the people
When construction stopped on the half-finished office building near my apartment, they must have thought no one would care to go in. I found a gap in the plastic slat fence surrounding the lot plenty big enough to slip through and after that – no doors or windows or security at all. Just me and the empty shell of twenty all-concrete floors. All I wanted was the stairs. I'd recently heard about some incredible benefits of regular stair-climbing exercise. But I didn't want to climb a floor or two over and over, I wanted ten floors or more. Also somewhere open and empty at midnight, my favorite time for hard cardio. After starting to visit every other night, a small penlight in one hand and my water bottle in the other, I could only do maybe three or four floors before needing to stop and sit down. The rule I'd set for myself was that if I stopped climbing, I had to go all the way back down, do a set of pushups, and try again. Spending about half an hour a night on that routine, I was