The reflection on the street was green like a darker version of the glowing metal lantern swinging above it. The metal wire strung taut between two concrete towers bobbed back and forth as a strong, cold wind swept down from the north, carrying with it frosted dreams of sledding and wood smoke, mittens and long coats. The wires carrying electricity to the traffic lights hugged the support wire, turning over and over as it connected its consumer to the massive circuit containing the limitless grid of electricity housed in uncounted ten-thousands of miles of insulated wires and circuitry. In offices halfway across the continent, computers faithfully regulate and re-regulate the flow of electricity from one Power Company to another; resulting in a 24-hour commodity exchange between rival and like-minded business tycoons. But because physics cannot be argued with, the invariably abstract flow of energy can't be idly destroyed or allowed to dim. If, in fact, such an occurrence were to happen massive power fluctuations would begin to surge through the larger body feeding from the power through, creating massive damage to the same computers charged with modulating the same system and, of course, swapping power company receipts.
These computers, sentries posted countrywide in a war not of instability but of consistency, are tended by a skeleton crew of technicians and market analysts. Each one arriving and departing at predetermined times, an hour for lunch, maybe a smoke brake. Their sensible compact cars lined up by a waist high chain-link fence surrounding a gravel yard, leading back to a secondary highway supplying a convenient route for suburbanites to patronage convenience stores and strip malls, all living customers to the lines of power connecting and feeding the larger corpus of the city, and that larger populous of the continent as a whole.
It was 11:13 p.m. and John wanted a bite to eat. He had developed an odd feeding schedule, late breakfast around ten, a large lunch at two or three, then a meager supper and then a late snack, around 12:00a.m. When he worked as a temp for a law firm he had very normal hours, usually in bed and asleep by eleven. But now as a freelancer, he could keep his own hours, sleep till twelve, or bed down at sunrise. He was never certain what he would do. He just worked on what ever task he needed to finish until he was finished. Since making the jump he had a couple of rough months, but when he seemed most desperate something would always show up. His main job was art critic for the local paper, but he also wrote for a couple magazines, and just started writing copy for GAMECON, a video game magazine, which usually consisted of idle text oscillating between teen slang and techno-babble. This new wrinkle paid extremely well, even if it was, on the whole, boring and fairly simple. He was emailed all the relevant info, stats and details involving the various secrets and strategies of each game along with a videotaped screen of an advanced player playing the game. Of all the various quirks of this particular job, it was this single issue that bothered him. Was he not trustable enough with an actual game? Was it so secret that he couldn't be trusted, or did they not trust his skill as a game junky? The tapes themselves were fascinating. Each one more advanced than its predecessor, they usually took the form of the newer immersion type of games. You are the character, you are the one being shot at, you are jumping over the chasm of lava below. As John saw more and more tapes he realized they were all based on fairytales. A noble man (You) has a loved one kidnapped or is robbed of something or seeks some fortune, but some obstacle or foe stands in his way. In order to save said person, or recapture the lost goods, or find the fortune you (the noble man) have to kill anything in his path in as gory a manner as possible. At the end, if it can indeed be achieved, goods are (re)claimed, the sun comes out and all is right with the world. It was basically the plot for most of the Blockbuster movies and John had thought long and hard about the interconnectedness of the two. Was it possible that Hollywood would simplify its basic plot structure to appeal to a new generation weaned on video games? Or does it make more sense for video games to simplify the preconceived Hollywood structure? When he thought it may be one he was convinced it was the other suddenly, but knew it had to be a combination of the two. Which was really quite an astonishing realization: that the basic structure of how stories were told in the western world was being altered by predetermined narratives, told in such a unsophisticated method as to undermine the risk of unpredictability.
One time when John brought this idea up to Craig he simply said, "So you mean to say that were any given number of ideas in which stories could be told? I only thought there were happy ones and sad ones. No in-between." Then he changed the subject to something more in tune to what he was thinking about at the time. But the cultural exchange between such converging entertainment forms really bothered John. It wasn't that he was being sucked into it, but rather saw the congealing effect that it was beginning to have on the culture at large. He didn't trust the suburbs. He saw their lifestyle as a form of living death, consumed in a meaningless struggle of empty consumerism, blind consumption, and empty procreation. But this was his childhood in a nutshell. His father was a sales rep to various grocery stores, dealing in diverse commodities from chocolate bars to Ketchup. His mother, a school teacher and church secretary, provided him the most generic and stable of upbringings. R-movies were strictly off-limits as well as cursing, hobbies that John indulged in as often as possible under his parents blind gaze.
He only slipped once. It was at breakfast, when he was about ten, and the family was eating around the table (as they always did) his brother opposite of him, his father to his right, mom to the left. He remembered that his brother asked for more pancakes and when he lifted the dish for him he knocked over his own full juice glass onto his and his father's plates. Juice was everywhere dripping to the floor. They all yelled, but John's wail was foul laced with every obscenity he regularly practiced at school and on the bus. His brother was shocked, but amused, his father was also amused but masking it. His mother on the other hand was not. She marched over, slapped his face, and sent him to his room. Nothing ever happened after that. Later when he was almost out of college, he was talking to his mother and she began to tell the rest of the story. Evidently he left and they heard the door close they all broke out in laughter -- which made him feel a little cheated. Regardless, as he grew his parents grew more open to his inherent teenage rebellion years, and didn't place any responsibilities on him, leaving him to explore his own agenda: Skateboarding.
At one and the same a sport and a general nuisance, skateboarding was his main occupation. He belonged to the loyal order of skate-punks, a voluntary sect as hardcore as firefighters, as ruthless as schoolgirls, and as threatening as mice. He kept his nose clean. Occasionally there would be a party and he would drink a few beers, and maybe someone would have a joint, but the real cause for celebration was punk and rap music, the valor of sliding down handrails, grinding coping, and catching air. Of course there were girls, but they were as equally harmless. For all he knew there was little real sex going around in his circle, but as he found out latter, his was an extraordinarily conservative groups of kids whose parents held more control of them than the normal American teen. There were about twenty of them together, more boys than girls, or "skatebetty's" as they were called. John had dated three of them, and remained friends after the inevitable breakup. He only kissed one, he name was April, she was small, had long blonde hair, was very funny, and lived in a trailer park. The surrounding trailers were scary, junk in the "yards", motorcycles, broken-down cars. But her mother kept the prefab interior spotless, over-doilied, and dust free. April was a good girl, but had tasted freedom and new passion. John was free, but held his passion for his occupation. Once, when they got back from a movie, they drove down a one way road in the country, and settled in to a night of kissing and naked groping. Two days later they would break up and John had no idea why. He had never felt a girls flesh and was wrestling with the emotional implications of it. He had always been over-involved and had been accused more than once of trying to over-think things. Two weeks later she started going with Jeremy, his friend who was a much better skater and they continued to date for about a year. He didn't know why they broke up, and had lost touch with her after that when she moved to another school system. When he was a sophomore at state, he ran into one of her friends of the time, Jana, at a supermarket. She was going there too, and well, was engaged to a fella from Chicago. He eventually asked about April, and after silent for a minute, she shared what she held to believe the sad tale of a young pregnancy, marriage and a proper Christian attitude. She was only now 21 and she was pregnant with her second. John asked about the husband, he was the supervisor of a freight depot near their hometown.
He could see the mutual fear in Jan's eyes and felt the stirrings of that particular strain of commitment-fear in his own gut. They talked about her fiancée and re-lived the time when he broke his arm and she took him in her car - at the time he had only his learners permit- to the hospital. As she walked away he looked at her developed body and wondered what the fuller figured April looked like now. He mused on the differences his own body had made in that same time.