The Girl from the Future This story was based on a dream I had in 2016. I wrote it then but did not like the first version. The rewrite was in 2019. I'm still not sure I like this version either.
Before I even opened my eyes, I felt the weight of my body as I gained consciousness. My spine and shoulders ached. I tried not to move much, hoping perhaps I could fall back asleep for a blessed "five more minutes" before my alarm. The trick to falling back asleep is not to try. The more you try, the more you put in focus or effort, the more awake you become. One must lie still and relax all their muscles. When I remember to do this, I start at the toes and slowly work my way upward. (This was one of those times when I remembered.) As my focus drifted to my toes, I began to realize these were not my sheets in which I was entangled. The texture was different, smoother, against my bare feet. The mattress didn't feel right either. And, the air smelled different, though I couldn't quite put my finger on how so.
At this point it had come to my attention that this was not my bed. I rolled over and wearily groaned, stretching my arms out until my elbows popped. Finally, I opened my eyes and got a view of the place I'd somehow wound up. It was a small, sunlit room, with whitewashed walls and ceiling, and light hardwood floors. There was a pair of two-pane windows on either side, with framing that matched the floors in color. The door of the same color was across from the bed, shut tight, with an ornate black doorknob. The sheets of the bed were a drab gray, and it sat in a minimalistic black metal frame. Other than the bed, the room was barren, but the sunlight from the windows somehow made it feel full.
As my foggy mind cleared, and began to actually take in my surroundings, at last I began to wonder exactly how I had woken up here. Last night had been fairly ordinary. I got home from work at about 7:30, nuked some leftovers for dinner, and went upstairs to watch Star Trek and fold laundry before crawling into bed at around 10, where I read a book by simulated candlelight until the words ran together in my eyes. I reached further back in my mind, realizing nothing about my work day or my morning the previous day had been peculiar either. In fact, the whole week had been oddly ordinary. Perhaps that was the peculiarity - that an entire week had been completely unremarkable and had gone by as quietly.
I supposed that my questions of why and how I'd ended up here might be answered later, if only I could answer the question of where I actually was now. I peeled the covers off. I was wearing the same gray sweatpants, white ankle socks, and plain yellow t-shirt I had fallen asleep in. I reached for my pocket to find it empty, and wished I hadn't left my smartphone charging on my nightstand, as GPS would have been quite handy. My solar-powered wristwatch was all I had with me. As I glanced at it, I noticed that its battery had depleted and it had powered off. I slid off the bedside and went over to the window, to hold it in the sunlight to recharge.
Holding the watch in a sunbeam, I craned my neck out the window, which had no screen, looking into the yard and down the street. The room I was in was on the second floor out of two, in a house with bright yellow paint. Below the window was a short but wide greenhouse, occupied by more cardboard boxes and plastic crates than plants. Across the street were two more two-story houses painted blue. It was a small side street, with a dead end on one side capped by a river going by, and the other side attaching to what appeared to be a main road, on which I could almost make out a row of shops. There was no noticeable breeze outside, and the river was nearly still. No sound of birds or frogs or insects, and not a single car nor person in sight, which felt highly unusual to me. Something was very off about this place.
I glanced back down at the watch. It had been about ten minutes now, by this time the watch should have started up and tried to set itself using the radio signals from the atomic clocks. This was not the case, as the watch remained still. Well, shit, I thought, maybe it's busted. I walked over to the door with the black knob and turned it. It felt old and creaky, cold to the touch, and squeaked a bit as I turned it. Outside the door was a set of hardwood stairs, leading down to what appeared to be the front door. Must be an apartment, I thought. But when I tried to open the front door, it wouldn't budge. There was no slide latch or deadbolt, it was as if the door had been super-glued shut.
"You've just got to be fucking kidding me," I growled, speaking for the first time since I woke up here. I kicked the door, but it still didn't move. I made my way back upstairs to the bedroom and began fashioning a crude climbing rope from the sheets, like a runaway kid in a movie. I ended up pulling the bedframe toward the window, to use the bed as an anchor for my sheet rope. The whole way down, I was shuddering in fear that the blanket would tear, and I'd fall and break my legs. I managed to fall from roughly five feet and land on my ass.
Soft and cushy was the immaculately green grass beneath me, and the soil beneath it. I had been lucky. When I felt alright enough to stand and stretch, I walked to the end of the road and looked in either direction. On this side of the street, there were more tiny side streets that stopped at the river. The main road itself stretched far in either direction. One end led toward more tightly clustered buildings, getting closer together, taller and taller, until they seemed to breach the cloudless sky. The other way seemed to curve and follow the river, with the buildings getting shorter and fatter, and further apart, but it was too far for me to see the end. In that direction, the stores got smaller and further apart. I looked down at the street to realize there were no markings on it. I hadn't seen any proof of cars, the houses didn't even have driveways. I decided to go the way with more buildings - I thought I was more likely to find people there. I felt odd wearing no shoes as I walked down the middle of the street, but it was the least odd thing I was feeling right now.
As I kept walking down the empty street, with the buildings and houses growing on either side of me, I couldn't help but remember that trip I'd taken to New York. I'd never felt so tiny among all the buildings. It was a greater sense of scale and hustle-bustle than even Boston, the city I was most familiar with. But this city was different. Despite the dizzying scale, the precise planning, and how much more closely everything seemed integrated, this city was unusually quiet, and without any motor vehicles or public transit system.
The people were different, too. It was like I had stepped into an episode of Star Trek. All the people were human - or close enough to it that I couldn't tell. They wore strange but simple outfits of a futuristic design and only a few plain colors. All of them looked well-groomed, and there didn't appear to be any distinct social classes besides the occasional security guard in white, wearing a simple helmet and shoulder pads, and carrying what appeared to be a nightstick made of a clear resin. All the guards were male, and all the males were unusually tall and toned. I felt that I, a scrawny nerd of barely five-foot-ten, in his pajamas no less, was sticking out like a sore thumb. When I reached a more crowded area, people began to stare.
I sat in what resembled a mall food court, only it didn't have any branded restaurants that I knew of. From what I could gather in the chatter of the people, they at least spoke English, or something close to it. When the people went to get the food they ordered, none of them exchanged any money. I thought maybe they were presenting another sort of payment method, perhaps a card or facial recognition, but I didn't want to get that close. Anyone who glanced my way knew that I wasn't one of them. I hadn't felt this uneasy since I moved in highschool. I stood up and tried to leave the food court, walking off to my left, when a man holding a backpack stopped me.
"Check this out, check this out," he said excitedly, almost breathlessly. I was speechless and a bit surprised he spoke to me at all. He gestured to his backpack, specifically to the foam pads on the strap side. It was all black and reminded me of my Swiss Army backpack from when I was younger.
"You've never seen comfort like that before. Look at that. The foam cushions your back and shoulders!" He was nearly shouting. He seemed to think this was an original idea.
"Cool beans, man," I said, avoiding eye contact as I walked away. He tried to persuade me to try it on, saying, "c'mon, c'mon".
"I can't pay for it, dude," I snapped. He didn't seem to understand what I'd just said, he gave me a funny look.
"I just want you to wear it. People all over will want them too." He began to eye me up and down now, he was surely realizing I wasn't like him or the others.
"What's in it for you?" I asked. He made that face again.
"You confuse me, kid," he said. Due to my stature he must have just assumed I'm younger? I was clearly not understanding something about this society. I really needed to just go with the flow and not cause trouble while I figured out where the hell I was.
"If you're really just giving them away, I'll take one," I said to the man. He didn't stop making the face of confusion, but he did offer me the bag anyways, holding it at arms' length, as if now he was having second thoughts about standing so close to me. I took it from him and slid it onto my shoulders. The backpack was comfortable and lightweight, it probably would have gone for fifty dollars at least.
"Yeah, it's nice," I said, "But is there a padded pocket for my computer?" He gave me that bizarre stare again, as if I had asked if it would attract magical green hippopotamuses.
"You're out there man," he sighed, waving me off. "Enjoy it."
Here I was, walking down these glistening pathways, wearing an empty backpack, with these strange people and tall white columns everywhere around me.
I walked by a small sitting area made up of benches along a balcony edge, past which tall, thin trees grew upward through the many layers and catwalks of the city. There were a few people there quietly chatting, eating, or reading books. I glanced at the covers of the books, but didn't recognize any titles. There was a couple sharing some donuts. I thanked whatever powers may be for the fact that there were still chocolate-covered donuts in the future. (That's where I thought I was, at least - at this point I thought I had traveled to the future.)
"Excuse me, where did you get those?" I asked the couple, pointing at their donuts. They both pointed at a storefront a short walk from the sitting area. I was getting hungry, and I wasn't going to last if I didn't figure out how and where people get food.
The sign over the doorway simply said "DONUTS" in a cartoonish font, rendered in chocolate brown with tan outlines, and covered in sprinkles of rainbow colors. I practically floated through the door, on the heavenly smell coming from within. The girl at the counter was heavenly as well. Self-conscious in her presence, I stood up straighter, and tried to pretend I wasn't in my pajamas. They sort of look like they're in pajamas, I thought, trying to calm myself.
"Excuse me, miss," I barely managed to say, "Could I get a chocolate donut?" She looked up at me and smiled, reaching behind her and grabbing one into a small paper bag.
"So, here's the thing, I can't pay for it..." I took a quiet but deep breath, and switched on the smooth, leaning against the counter. "...but, I could take you out on a date, and we could call it even." She laughed, in a genuine way. That was so corny and juvenile, that I couldn't believe it worked.
"Yeah, sure, why not." Her smile was warm and inviting.
"When do you get off work?" I asked.
"Not for awhile..." She sounded disappointed.
"Maybe you could play hooky," I slyly suggested, the devil sitting upon my shoulder having a cackle.
"Mmmaybe," she said, seemingly glancing around to see if anyone might notice if she left. She leaned under the counter and pressed some buttons out of sight, and the monitor on the wall changed to display something else. I wasn't really paying attention to what, I think it had changed to a graph of some kind. She only glanced at it for half a second before jumping over the counter.
The next thing I knew, I was racing her on foot, down the long immaculate corridors, towards a place she described as "the star fountain". I still felt strange among all the people (not to mention running in my socks), but I felt like if I only focused on her, and the way she was looking at me, I would somehow be alright.