alternative futures: slide
23 Jun 2017note: this is part 1 of a draft for a piece i’ll eventually submit to the alternative futures project.
as padraig sat down, he felt himself slipping, sliding into yesterday. the bus was hot and loud; it was summertime and the air conditioning only worked on 50% of the city buses. the oppressive heat coaxed his eyes closed and the slide began.
he felt his legs scratch a bit as he remembered removing the top sheet from his body as he woke up. his heart raced as he remembered the sensation of oversleeping. he felt his feet hit the smooth tile floor of his bathroom as he stood staring in the mirror and loathing himself for oversleeping.
his eyes snapped open as the bus jerked to a stop. his slide stopped, too. he grabbed his two recyclable grocery bags, stood up and stepped off the bus.
“hey paddy o! how’s it?”
padraig nodded to his teenage neighbor as he passed him on the sidewalk.
“not handling this heat so well, eh?”
“i am not,” padraig replied sullenly.
since the planet had arrived at 400 ppm CO2, two things had happened: summer heat waves soared in new york into the 120s regularly and some people’s latent abilities had become much more present.
padraig’s ability to vividly relive previous days had always been a part of his life (especially his daydreams). but now that the atmosphere was so changed he found himself unable to balance staying in the present with sliding into days past. his mother thought it was because his body was wishing to move backwards to better days. sometimes he agreed, but other times, he thought there might be some other reason he was so good at reliving the past…
| writing | spell-check, research, link-finding, & formatting |
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| 11:48tt | 5:02 |