Solid State by Tim Knight

Author:Tim Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, terrorism, social media, San Francisco, politics
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Brenda walked across Laguna Street toward Lafayette Park. Even though it had been just three days since the world seemed to stop, everyone had become completely accustomed to walking the streets without any fear of getting hit by a vehicle. Every square inch of asphalt in the city might as well have been sidewalk, because people roamed wherever, and whenever, they wanted.

It was early in the afternoon, and the park had been empty for hours, ever since Sledge had rallied his ragged troops into their home invasion missions. Although the park was empty, there was plenty of noise from the surrounding buildings, as dozens of people shouted, screamed, laughed, and got themselves drunk or high with whatever they had managed to score. The party-like atmosphere from the night before had now expanded like a gas to fill all the surrounding buildings, leaving the park devoid of any revelry.

As Brenda came to the crest of the small hill that the sidewalk ascended, she saw Sledge slowly twirling in a swing within the fenced-in children’s playground. To her, he was both a sad and comic sight, as he stared mindlessly at the ground and continued to twirl himself clockwise, counterclockwise, and then back again. She and Sledge had been romantically involved off and on over the past few months, and she was all too acquainted with how moody he could be. He was clearly feeling down, and she was surprised to see him in the park at all.

Tugging the gates’s latch up, she pushed it open and walked into the children’s area. “Do you wanna be alone?” she asked.

He glanced up at her and then dejectedly cast his eyes back toward the ground, resuming his twirling. She decided the best thing to do would be to just sit in the swing next to him and try to rescue Sledge from his emotional doldrums as she had so many times before. Looking across the park, Brenda saw the Grand Opening sign the mob had pilfered blowing across the lawn, covered with muddy footprints, since no one had bothered to even hang it up.

The two of them sat in silence for a full minute. He stopped his twirling, because he was starting to feel ill, but he kept his gaze fixated on the rubber chips carpeting the area under the swing set. One man’s triumphant howl caught their attention, and they both instinctively honed in on the source of the noise. The howling man stood on a balcony about seven stories up, and he was about to hurl some kind of large object, which resembled a globe, toward the ground. The howling man gave the sphere enough of a thrust to propel it away from the building, and it smashed onto the asphalt below, adding to the general flotsam and jetsam of Laguna Street.

“I think I’ve made a big mistake,” said Sledge, forlornly.

“What do ya mean, hon?” asked Brenda, relieved that he was finally speaking.

“All that stuff I say in my rallies, all that stuff about the working man, the class divide.

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