The buildings were all
alike, the houses distinguishable by their
dirtiness, the businesses marked by
neon signs high high in the air. People moved in
camps, shiny
not-yet-paid-off vehicles loaded with
plastic possessions and vacant eyed children, dirty as the homes they came from. The older children swarmed through the streets,
doing damage and begging for
handouts, ethics removed from any
reality they had known.
I entered a home and maybe it was mine. The litter of quickly abandoned
entertainment lay all around me,
flat screens and
glowing green buttons woven into a dangerous web, wires suspended from the ceiling to make way for a path leading to a
couch piled high with books, their spines breaking from being forgotten, set down opened to a page whose context had left the mind as easily as it entered.
Stock certificates littered the surfaces of
modular pressed wood furniture. A candy dish held a variety of
anti-depressants, to make the guests feel welcome. Though there were, of course,
no guests. Guests came in through the
cable and left the same way. Occasionally they were real and spouting
drivel or soliciting some
flailing attempt at intimacy; more often they were
flawless and engineered, their intimacy warmer than that of other scared humans in other dirty, unlit living rooms.
The refrigerator held all the world's
exotic and novel condiments and flat, unfinished cans of highly
caffeinated soda. The sink and counters of the kitchen were clean and unused, save stacks of
bills ignored, paid with
credit cards over the phone or the net. There was a special
recycling bin for credit cards used up, ready to be sent back and endowed with fresh
smart chips for the next
consumer.
The elderly died frequently of
heart attacks in their sixties, never having learned to
sit and be still.
Housewives were members of the nation's hardest-working profession, having to devote much more effort to finding
something to do, now that most "household chores" were services to be
bought and sold, the people who did the cleaning unfortunate
immigrants not yet accustomed to laziness.
And
patience was the only
mortal sin.