The image on the television screen distorted, the sound crackling as static infiltrated the once clear picture. The perfect, made-up face of the newsman became ugly and grotesque, and then nonexistent. Futile clicks on the remote achieved nothing, and after several seconds of frustrated button pushing, the television shut off abruptly. The man sitting on the cheap, upholstered couch threw the remote away, annoyed. It flew across the room and smashed against the wall opposite of him. Patrick, for that was the man’s name, sighed in disappointment. There had a been a news report on; a fairly important one that he had wanted to hear. And it wasn’t just pure propaganda, either. It was an un-censored report about oil. Oil and water. It was the water crisis that intrigued Patrick most of all. The oil crisis was old news, and despite the government’s many attempts to stifle information about the shortage, every citizen in the United States was able to dis-cern that there was something wrong, based simply on the fact that gas prices had soared to a record seventeen dollars a gallon. But no, this was the first Patrick had heard about a water crisis. And the sound of it was much more ominous than a lack of oil, because humans could learn to adjust without oil, but water was necessary for survival.
He could always watch the report at Charlie’s house, but that would involve mak-ing the effort to get there. Patrick could either bike, which he felt too tired to do, or drive, which would waste his gas. Once he got there, there was the problem of Charlie. Charlie Backin was his best friend, probably his only real friend, but he was also deci-sively ignorant. It was the type of ignorance that was accompanied by a fierce belief that one was actually enlightened by his ignorance. “Ignorance was bliss,” and by shutting out the world, by shutting out the failed hopes and dreams of men and corporations, one could achieve true happiness. The idea was intrinsically flawed, of course, as Patrick had often pointed out, but Charlie would merely shrug in his egocentric manner. Still, Char-lie’s television was not only working, it was large and the picture was always clear. His house was even nicer, making Patrick’s small, dirty apartment look like a run down shack in comparison.
Patrick liked his apartment, though. He liked the consistency of it, the fact that no matter how many people were starving every day, no matter how much corruption faced modern politics, the shelves on the wall and the sheets on his bed remained the same. A simple look out the window revealed that change was imminent; present in the streets of San Francisco. Change was inevitable, and it presented itself in many forms. Good men and women drilled into friends’ cars for oil, destroyed unattended cars and salvaged the leftover parts. Patrick felt as if it were all collapsing, as if a snowball had been set in mo-tion down a giant mountain, and the laws of inertia kept it moving. Except now, it was mankind, a product of greed and paranoia, which continued to run itself into the ground, despite the many efforts of humanitarians. Meanwhile, nothing changed inside the apartment of Patrick Burton.
Except the television set.
And who knows what else will fail?
With a sigh of resignation, Patrick crossed the room, hit the television set on its side, hoping this would cure whatever ailment inflicted the machine. Unfortunately, this did nothing besides hurt his hand, and so he reluctantly carried it to his door, laying it down gently like a dying child. There was undoubtedly something wrong with its inter-nal wiring. Nothing a repairman couldn’t charge to look it and tell him to buy a new one. For a moment, Patrick contemplated throwing the T.V. into the street, just to watch the cars swerve to avoid it, the drivers gazing up at this rebel, this delinquent, asking them-selves what they were doing with their lives. But that was a fineable crime, and money was low enough as it was. Patrick knew he would continue following the rules, question-ing only in his mind, because this was the optimum way; dissenters were wasting their time. This he truly believed.
And he knew that tomorrow morning he would bring his television into wherever he got it, and they would take it and charge him for the recycle price. For everything was being “recycled” now, even televisions. Even, as the recent rumors suggested, bodies. What they did with these recycled parts no one knew, perhaps not even the recyclers themselves. But there was a general rule against asking too many questions, and Patrick knew he wouldn’t when the time came. Again, he gazed out the small, screen window on his door, and had an almost overwhelming desire to break the T.V., to break the cars that littered the street below him. He wanted to fly high above this mess of a city, watch the people caress the street like ants, their writhing bodies of no importance to him. He wanted to crash and burn, delving into the concrete hell and burying himself underneath the plastic walls.
Patrick wanted to do many things. But he knew he never would.
Here’s to following authority.
The sky was a beacon to him, the ground a magnetic force, the law a binding wire. And he was trapped in between the Bermuda Triangle of desire.
Here’s to cowardice.
The walls around him pulsated as his neighbors blasted their cheap stereos, the sound waves pushing against each other in a desperate attempt to escape this world. All he could discern of their noise music was the driving bass, the faint treble of robotic voices, altered twenty times in a studio. Patrick felt it suffocating him, and he breathed deeply, feeling trapped. Things were breaking down. Things were falling apart already, and that massive Bermuda Triangle just kept pulling, pushing, giving, taking. Perhaps it was just his incessant loneliness, perhaps it was the thought that in two days, he would have to go to work once more. Perhaps it was the fact that his television had just broken.
But things were certainly falling apart, and his life had not even begun.
