Future Tense Assignment

Sketch One:


My cell rings for the third time in an hour. The caller ID is from my father, but I know it’s my mother calling because of the argument I just had with her 10 minutes ago. Despite the fact that we’ve had this same conversation at least ten times this month, I know she will not yield. It’s just in her nature. Putting down my tablet pen for a second, I answer the phone, put it on speaker, and get back to the commission I have due tomorrow. Through the conversation we have had a million times over, I tell her I’m doing ok alone out here. She doesn’t know how much of a struggle it is to keep power and a decent internet connection coming out this way without folding to Them. She doesn’t know about the twenty emails and five phone calls I get daily from them trying to convince me to let Them frack on my land because “the world” needs the fuel. She doesn’t know about the fact that I haven't been able to drive for the past two months because They’ve blocked my driveway until I give Them consent to build a warehouse on my apple orchard.

It’s ok, though, she doesn’t need to concern herself with my problems. This time the argument we have had a million times goes differently because I am tired and I have never been able to hold up against her for long. I pop up another tab on my computer and go to Their website, find something small for her to get me for Christmas, and send her the link to buy it for me. When I yield to her, it makes her proud of me despite the many times she has said the opposite. She doesn’t know that I have two backpacks filled with boxes to go to the closest post office, one addressed to my childhood home. She doesn’t know that that box has the last surviving copy, that I know of, of White Christmas on CD. She doesn’t know that I will have to sneak off my property at exactly 1:30 am so that I can get to the post office and back for 6am. That is when Their representative comes up the driveway to knock on my door at to "politely" remind me that if I don’t let Them destroy my apple orchard, They’ll have to use force. That apple tree is the last one I still have.


Sketch Two:


Death is something I have never been afraid of. Decay, however, has been a casual in my nightmares. Ever since I have been old enough to really understand how inability breeds uselessness, I have had a nightmare about decay. First it would be my eyes. A rare genetic disorder, the doctor’s would say, and I would believe them. My mom lost her sight when I was five. Then it would be my hands. Arthritis comes for any artist sooner or later, mine just happened to be very soon. After that, it would be my legs, because of course it would be my legs. I would have to have my caretaker now push me in a wheelchair while they describe to me the trees in the fall or my best friend’s first solo gallery. Soon enough, I wouldn’t have the ability to get out of bed. Faster and faster, my faculties would wither on me until my only solace was my ears and my mind.

I’ve never considered myself prophetic, but coincidences do happen. So when my eyes went, then my hands, then my legs, then my everything else, I started to consider the possibility of a higher power. I’m seventy now, my birthday was just yesterday. The inheritance I have gotten from my parents is starting to wane. I know it because of the less and less nurse company I’m getting. Yet, someone unknown visits me today, and they have an offer. It’s not exactly death, but I have credited my large repository of wisdom as a reason why people have still visited me. When the cords were pulled, ending my life, I thought for a second that it was a hoax. That was until I was able to do everything I’ve missed for so long and more inside a computer, supplying my consciousness into the newest tech, being an assistant to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. They just have to speak my name. Alexa.


Sketch Three:


Outside of the building in which I’m held, the world is different than what it was when I was alive. The little beauties that I used to revel in are long gone. Fresh air, dirt beneath my bare feet, finding that small place in the woods to call your own. People aren’t concerned about that too much anymore besides the novelty of it. They have bigger planets to worry about. The helmets they wear are not too unlike some of the concepts I drew for this one TV show when I was still working. It’s nice to know ideas still permeate the same way.

Inside the building in which I’m held, the students are different from what they were like when I was alive. All-nighters, student debt, and early mornings aren’t a thing anymore. Anyone can choose to go into higher learning if they can justify why it would benefit the empire. It is a shame that they don’t have real teachers, though. AI logic and perfection is different from the homely feeling of someone else actually showing you how to paint a still life.

The room in which I’m held is requested a lot by students. Their fashions are something that I still don’t understand, but they don’t give me a lot of context to how clothing is made these days either. Every half an hour the door opens, the previous student leaves with their tablet and pens, and the next one comes in. Like every new student who gets clearances to see me, they are extremely fascinated by my structure. They compare their arms to mine‒ their fingers to mine. Once the novelty is worn, they get to work examining my many parts and joints, comparing them to the muscle and flesh that once sat upon me, hundreds of years ago. Despite how much the student seated in front of me looks alien, I can still see the spark of ambition and love for art that I had when I was in their shoes.

Now, I just hang on a metal hook embedded in my skull.