Hello and welcome to my new author platform! I'm very happy to be here, and I hope you will all enjoy the first chapter of this sci-fi story I have concocted in my all-powerful mind. Can't wait to see what you all think!
Current music: The Battle of Evermore - Led Zeppelin
It was a long, exhausting day at work. Of course, that describes pretty much every day on the job. Even if you weren’t like me, it would be so abysmally awful to work in food service that I wouldn’t blame anyone for quitting after a day.
Then again, there’s a reason people work their ass off for under twenty bucks an hour. And that reason is because they have no other choice.
“Lynch! Stop daydreaming and get to work!”
That was my boss barking at me, and let me tell you something about him: When he gave me a command in such a tone, it was an order. There was no way to refuse such an order without incurring his wrath. But then, you put up with it because you have to.
Letting out the mother of all sighs, I put my head down and kept working. Of all the repetitive jobs that comprised the American economy in 2123, food service was likely the most painful. Especially when you work at the Nintendo Café, a small fast-food eatery in one of the nicer areas of Los Angeles.
I made my way up to the counter. A young woman, probably about my age (twenty) stood before me, smiling from ear to ear. Judging by her Gucci bag slung around her shoulder and the diamond earrings on either side of her head, she likely came from Beverly Hills or some other affluent region.
(Don’t ask me how I knew that, by the way. At a certain point, when you deal with people as much as I did, you started to pick up on the smaller details. Even if you’re someone like me.)
“What would you like today, ma’am?” I enquired, looking down at my customer. (This was solely a product of my height, mind you. The customer was always right at the Nintendo Café.)
“I would like a Mushroom Burger, please,” the young lady replied, positively beaming at what must have been the vision of her near-future self chowing down on the food item.
I forced a smile in return. “Coming right up, ma’am.”
So I returned to the kitchen, where I saw my coworkers flipping those burgers. I’d never gotten to know their names, partly because my colleagues didn’t have to be my friends. The other reason, of course, was because I could do so anytime.
“Hey, dude, did you get that chick’s order yet?”
I frowned, narrowing my eyes at my co-worker. “What?”
“I asked, did you get that chick’s order yet, or are you still working on that?”
“Are you talking to me?”
“Of course I’m fucking talking to you!” this coworker of mine exclaimed. “Who would I be talking to, Buddy Holly?”
I shrugged. “How should I know?”
“It doesn’t matter. Can’t you take a joke, Lynch?”
“We are at work,” I said matter-of-factly. “We shouldn’t be joking, because now isn’t the time to do that.”
“Maybe it’s not time for you, but I need all the levity I can get,” the far burlier man than myself stated. “Quite frankly, Lynch, you’ve always got your head in the clouds. You a furry or something?”
“What? No!” I bellowed, realizing belatedly that the best way to beat such allegations was probably just to laugh at them, not react so aggressively. Oh well.
“You could’ve fooled me. It seems like all you want to do is play in the Animal Antics tourney. And that’s fun and all, but real life doesn’t have to conform to what you’d like it to be.”
“No shit” I muttered.
“So why do you hope, Lynch? It’s pretty clear that you want to go to Boston and become a champion. But I’ve got a secret for you, Lynch!”
Had I been more incentivized to work well that day, I would have ignored this colleague of mine and gotten to work painting the bun with red and white dye. (And yes, it was completely artificial, just like most of the food I ate.)
Instead, I humored my coworker. “Yes?”
“Those games are pay-to-win, Lynch. The sooner you accept that, the better. You’ve gotta realize that you grew up here, not in that swanky seaport district with all the high-rises.”
“Now you’re just rubbing it in,” I muttered, barely resisting the urge to slug my colleague in the face.
“I’m just telling’ it like it is, Lynch. And that’s how it is for me too. We’ve both got to accept our lot in life, because those Silver Tickets don’t come easily. Aren’t there only a few of them left?”
I frowned. “Beantown Games didn’t specify the number of tickets that had already been found. We won’t know until they’re all in someone’s hands.”
“Well, I’m too broke to play that lottery,” my colleague muttered. “And that’s pretty depressing. When you’re too poor to pay a regressive tax, you know you’re in financial trouble.”
“It’s still worth it” I said. “If I could have even a one-in-a-million shot at getting out of this hellhole, I’m going to go for the gold.”
“Be my guest, Lynch. But those games on the EShop get shittier every year, and the only game worth a salt is Animal Antics.”
I winked at my coworker. “You just proved my point. Anyway, I’ve got to get to work on the Mushroom Burger and Bowser’s Hot Fries. So please, excuse me while I paint the bun.”
“What does it matter, Lynch? Those machines are going to do it way faster than you can.”
I cast a glance at the adjacent room, which had a glass window through which I could see a one-armed machine building a burger about every five seconds. No matter what, a human could not hope to keep up with that pace, and part of me suspected that was the point. Just to rub it in our faces.
It doesn’t matter how rapidly I stack those burgers. It doesn’t matter if I focus on nothing but this. The machines will always, always, always beat us in the end. It’s a wonder the human race has survived as long as it has.
Nonetheless, I worked as fast as I could. Sooner or later, I’d put together the Mushroom Burger, practically drowned the Bowser Fries in hot sauce, and handed it to the smiling female customer.
The same pattern continued for an indeterminate length of time. Of course, I could have checked the clock whenever I wanted, but I knew from experience that this was the worst possible way to make time fly. More likely, it would crawl, limping along at a snail’s pace until the shift was over.
“Hey Lynch, can I talk to you?” my boss asked me after a while. He was a man named John McGann, and let me tell you something: You cannot say that you’ve met an obnoxious person until you’ve gotten to know Mr. McGann for yourself.
“Uh…I’m kind of in the middle of something,” I mumbled.
“Bullshit, Lynch! Your shift is over!”
“Oh, it is?” I wondered aloud. I’d almost grown convinced that I would never be done with the shift. Quite frankly, today had felt positively interminable.
“Yes, of course it is!”
“Then I want to go home,” I stated simply. “You don’t have any power over me when I’m not at work!”
“Well, about that…”.
My heart sank. Perhaps Mr. McGann was about to inform me that I’d need to work a double shift that day. While it wasn’t too often that this occurred, it seemed to have become more common in the last few weeks…or was it a few weeks? Every day here was just like the others.
“The news is not good, I assume?” I enquired.
Mr. McGann shrugged. “I mean, I suppose it is what you make of it. Judging by how upset you seem every day at work, you might as well consider it a blessing in disguise.”
I took off my hairnet and gloves, throwing both into the nearby trash can. When I was done with this, I glared at my boss.
“What are you talking about?”
My boss sighed. “Lynch, would you like to hear the news delicately, like a small child would prefer? Or would you rather I didn’t beat around the bush?”
I barely resisted the urge to lash out at Mr. McGann. As it was, my next words came out in a growl.
“You can tell me everything, boss. I am not a child anymore!”
“Fair enough” Mr. McGann muttered. “Mr. Austin Lynch, I’m afraid I have to lay you off.”
My heart skipped a beat. On some level, I’d known this was coming. I just hadn’t expected it so soon.
“Why, though?” I asked. “Why are you laying me off?”
“Well, the machines can do the work so much more efficiently than humans can. That’s nothing to be ashamed of - it’s just a sign of the times. That, combined with your abysmal performance on multiple occasions, meant that the hammer had to fall on you. I’m sorry.”
“But I don’t…I don’t get it,” I mumbled. “What about my benefits? What about my pension?”
“What pension, Lynch? You haven’t worked here long enough for it to come into play, I’m afraid.”
“And my income? How am I supposed to live off of my savings? You know where I’m from, right? It’s not a well-to-do neighborhood!”
My boss simply shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe you should have thought of that before you elected to slack off on the job? It doesn’t matter that you’re a charity case, Austin.”
I can name nothing more disagreeable than being referred to as a charity case. Like you’re just someone else’s problem, perhaps a ward of the state. That’s certainly not what I wanted to be.
“But I worked as hard as I could!” I protested. “I flipped burgers, painted patties, doused fries in hot sauce, made those Pokémon bowls, and all sorts of other dishes that you assigned me with! If you’re going to fire me after that…”.
Mr. McGann gave me a smile that reeked of manufactured sadness. The next thing he said would be burned into my mind for the rest of my life. Hell, if there’s an afterlife, it will never leave my brain for all of eternity.
“I know you tried hard, Mr. Lynch. It just wasn’t enough.”
I did not know how to respond to that; fortunately, I didn’t have to. Mr. McGann spoke first.
“Gather your bags and whatnot, Mr. Lynch. And don’t come back here unless you want to eat. I’m sorry to say that today was your last day at the Nintendo Café.”
I grumbled a bit, but eventually I let out a slight sigh.
“Okay, Mr. McGann. Thank you.”
My boss frowned. “Why are you thanking me? You didn’t seem happy to get fired just now.”
“Thank you for employing me as long as you did,” I muttered. Whether this was sarcasm or not, even I wasn’t sure. Quite frankly, I didn’t care either - it had yet to sink in that I would never be returning to work at the restaurant. In a way, it was liberating.
“If you say so,” Mr. McGann replied.
As soon as I had retrieved my belongings from the locker room, I left the restaurant and never looked back. Of course, what lay beyond was a sight for sore eyes, and that’s putting it mildly.
Kudzu vines worked their way up half the buildings. Some of them appeared so flimsy that they might topple over with a strong enough gust of wind. Considering how earthquake-prone California was, this wasn’t a hypothetical.
Holding my backpack in front of me to ward off potential pickpockets, I made my way down the avenue. Although my former workplace was situated in one of the better parts of the city, that wasn’t saying much. Not a single part of the seemingly endless sprawl was safe - there were parts that were safer than others, though.
During my two-mile trek across the city, I had ample time to wonder what would happen next. Now that the joy at finally being free from food service work had worn off, I found myself mired in an endless cycle of doubt.
I would return to my apartment, of course. And my roommate and I had saved up a modicum of money, but it wouldn’t be enough to last forever. Indeed, we wouldn’t be able to live off of it for very long at all.
If we couldn’t pay our rent, we’d get evicted, and if there’s one thing worse than living in a bad area of Los Angeles, it’s living in a sketchy part of town without an apartment. Our flat was already one of the cheapest in town, and the saying “you get what you pay for” applied here to no small degree.
Finally, my shoulders aching from carrying the bag this way, I arrived at the apartment complex. Because Congress had relaxed the building codes for high-rise structures on a bipartisan basis some decades ago, this tower seemed just as liable to topple over as any other. Needless to say, very few people outside of DC had actually wanted this to happen - the legislation had been written by lobbyists, for lobbyists. Yet another symbol of societal decay.
As I climbed the stairs (since nobody trusted the elevator anymore), I gulped. As soon as my roommate learned that I’d lost my job, he was going to be furious, and rightly so. It would take a minor miracle to get back on our feet - indeed, the “minor” qualifier likely wasn’t needed.
Maybe I should treat Michael to a nice dinner. “Butter him up”, as they say, so that he’ll take the news a little better.
No. That’ll only make him angrier, and why shouldn’t it? Better to deliver the truth as it is. Besides, I can’t afford shit in terms of nice food. It’ll be instant ramen for both of us tonight.
Along the corridor, I spotted a map hung on the wall, showing a vast nation spreading from sea to shining sea. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, spanning thousands of miles, the country mapped was the mighty United States of America.
Of course, it wasn’t “mighty” anymore. It hadn’t been “mighty” for quite some time. There was one exception, though.
Near the northeastern corner of the country lay a golden dot, situated on the Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean. Some called it Beantown, some the First City in the New World. Officially, it was the City of Boston, and it was the city on a hill, the last beacon of hope that the country had.
Just like my former colleague had remarked, though, I could not allow myself to be enamored by it. It was a dream that could not be attained, and waiting for my lottery ticket to come through might as well be akin to Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin.
Just like the Great Pumpkin, it would never come.
