It was raining again. 27th minute in a row. I popped down a side street to feel less visible. I picked up a soggy newscube only to see that the latest smoked chili pepper had been dumped into the municipal drinking water. Tangy. Couldn’t say that for this damn rain though. It makes one wish humanity hadn’t blotted out the sun.
I walked to the end of the block and sought refuge on the covered porch of a craftsman bungalow. Weren’t too many of these left standing. This one was about 132 years old and had been beautifully renovated into a light manufacturing plant. Industrial fasteners to be exact.
I peered through a triple-pane window--it couldn’t have been a month old. I saw the workers diligently operating their laser lathes and cast molds. I envied them and their orange hard hats and protective eyewear. I yearned for such simplicity. The repetitiveness of manual labor seemed meditative and comfortingly straightforward. Plus you had something to show for a day’s work.
What did I have to show? An “honest day’s work” was foreign to me. I dealt in deceit and lies--precious commodities in an age of post-consumerism. But my interior life was one of turbulence and second-guessing. Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped taking my pills. The stooge at the Equanimity Minister’s office all but massaged my throat during my last visit.
The newscube had now degraded into an unreadable lump of pulp in my hands. It struck me as counterintuitive that news media had only become more paper-intensive over the years. This thought slipped away, though, as I noticed the unmistakable magenta glint of a bounty hunter's vest down on the main drag. I had been followed. Time to hit the wet road.
--Jawn Steighmeaus
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