Finding Idyllium by N Joseph Glass

Author:N Joseph Glass [N Joseph Glass]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monocle Books
Published: 2024-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

28 | Earth:

The Day Before Crossover

When the weather update declared the earlier threat of light rain a false alarm, Saul went for a jog. It wasn’t safe to chance the rain, as it often contained acids or pollutants that wreaked havoc on human skin and were a healthy respiratory system’s worst nightmare. Evenings when he could, Saul absorbed the peace of a twilight run through the little neighborhood on the outskirts of West Hayesville. He’d made a home there once, but it diminished to the place where he happened to live.

It could have been anywhere on Earth.

It would be the last night Saul slept in his own bed, the one in the duplex he occupied. He rented it from a Yugoslavian family that lived in the adjoining unit, a kind older couple that often offered him home-cooked food. The open meat pies looked pretty good and teased his nostrils with the promise of amazing new flavors for his palate to enjoy later. He accepted their offer and left the food on the counter for after his after-jog shower.

A light tap on his wrist signaled the autocounter for his exposure tracker had engaged. His bio-pad would trace his movements and alert him when to head back. He had twenty-seven minutes this evening. Not bad. As always, he started down Bennington Street, then went left onto Jefferson Avenue. He delayed heading down Main Street—a name Saul gave it, though the sign called it The Anglo-American Way—as the traffic hadn’t dissipated. Commuters returning from their city jobs in mundane routine crowded the road.

He came to the smaller of the two remaining parks in town. The municipality pulled funding for such outdoor recreation spots for the little use anyone could make of them. Most of them had devolved into whatever nature made them. Neighborhood groups maintained the two but not well. To Saul, people should have used the exposure time to the full. He called the overuse of virtual reality the ruination of the last few generations. True, he and Bubba couldn’t afford it growing up, but they wouldn’t have used it even if they had the money. At least, that’s what he told himself. He and Timmy had made the most of the outdoor time they had each day.

As he slowed his pace the way he always did in the park, Saul took in the scent of fresh air from the trees. Or the closest thing to fresh air anyone’s nose could intake, as polluted as what he inhaled everywhere. At least the scent of pine needles tickled the hairs in his nostrils like nothing else. Saul paused in contemplation of the role the SCL envisioned for him.

Not every time, but more than he considered healthy—one time being too often—he passed his old house. He had built a life there, where he once reached for an impossible chance with someone who loved him. For one fleeting moment, he had thought he could be happy. It fell apart as he feared, only worse than he ever imagined.

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