And the Wind Smells of Petroleum

Once upon a time, looking backward into the past, life seemed brighter and kinder.

I wish that had been true. But I am older now, and I know better. I stare out at the world at night, feeling the warming wind of late spring. And everything looks cold and mechanical. It's a plastic world, where you smell petroleum in the air instead of leaves, rain, or grass. The scents of civilization going the way of 1984. It's a little late here in 2018, but the fingerprints of dystopia found its way into our world and called it home.

We were all so blind.

I wonder why that was?

Closing in on the Millennium, Humanity ran manically toward technology. We were so happy, so sure tech would fix everything, yet all around us, there were signs of corruption in the shiny new things. So many bright sparklies. And we kept giving up more of our time, working more, living less, just to have that large screen TV and all the gadgets and toys.

We kept having kids, but we had no time for them. And so when the internet arrived, everybody began living two lives. The one in the real world where we were always working to pay bills and buy toys, struggling to find time to eat, then falling exhausted into our beds at night. And the internet, where we just wanted to be entertained. A comfortable place where we would sit and forget about a life that was becoming more and more meaningless. We typed to strangers, made fragile ties, and called them more meaningful than anything we had outside the LED boxes. We sat in rooms with our families, not talking, just looking at our cell phones.

We stopped going to places without internet access because the connection with the people living in our gadgets had become like an I.V. It kept us hydrated-human. Take it away, and we dehydrate and die.

I don't know how it happened. I remember the slide. But the new generation knows nothing else. Now, we watch stories about family units on the Tele because we're starving for connection, yet no one knows how to talk to anyone real anymore without checking our texts every few minutes.

Our homes grow smaller because who needs for extra chairs for visitors?

And the wind smells of petroleum.

And sadly, as much as I wish my rose-colored memories of the past were true, if they had truly been better times, we would not have created this plastic, cable and wireless world to escape it.

We live our days working so we can get home and play the newest game online. We work to look at cats on Facebook. We work to spend hours texting our invisible friends.

Initially, I remember thinking that the internet would be a Godsend to house-bound folk. People living in wheelchairs or too sick to leave their homes and go outside to find people. Now? It's trapped us all. We can't go outside without our talking boxes. It's become an addiction. And now we are more comfortable with invisible friends than real people.

Where will it go from here? Sex dolls that walk and talk, with imitation brains that think programmed thoughts to keep us company? Embodied A.I. that provides all we need so that we don't have to go outside to find "companionship people? Comfortable, fake people who won't bug us when we don't get off the computer and who will bring us food and drink and sex so we can get it easy and not waste valuable internet time?

Real People have needs, wants, and feelings. Real people are a bother.

In the future, we won't have to bother with them at all.

And the light fades.  Humanity grows cold and alone but satisfied with its computer dreams, eyes filled with imitation worlds as they sink into an inevitable, eternal sleep.

And the wind smells of petroleum.

May 1st, 2018  -- Teresa Challender