I suppose it was 1946 or so...I was sitting down to lunch when I was overcome by the smell of burnt toast. I remember trying to tell Moe how weird it was, but my mouth wouldn't move right. Moe looked alarmed, and everything faded to black.
I woke up in the hospital. I was told I'd had a major stroke, and that I had lost the use of my left leg and the right side of my face. There followed a series of strokes and hospitalizations.
In 1952, I grew tired of all that, and left my sick bed. It was kind of odd, because everyone was running around and hollering. My brother Moe came running in a few minutes later, crying about something. I'd never seen him cry before. I asked him what was wrong, but he gave me the cold shoulder. Didn't even acknowledge my existence. Boy, was I cheesed off. I stormed out of the hospital and never looked back.
Some time later, I read about my death in the paper. I was pretty pissed off, because I wasn't dead, I was just fine. I called the editor, and he called me a crank and hung up. I got really angry then, but decided to take it easy on account of my health. Why be so upset? It was actually kind of funny when you thought about it. I had a glass of milk and went to bed.
Things were kind of strange when I woke up. My alarm clock had changed. Instead of having hands, it read numbers in red light, which is weird...If you want to be upset when you wake up, look at a red light. I can see why they didn't use white, but green would have worked just as well.
I went into the bathroom to wash up, and got another shock. My apartment had its own toilet, bath tub, and even a shower. I didn't even have to walk down the hall. Pondering what it all meant, I took a nice hot shower, got dressed, and went to make some toast for breakfast.
Bad idea. My kitchen was full of weird machines that I didn't understand. The fridge I understood, so I had a glass of milk and an apple. Then I went outside.
Pandemonium.
The streets were jammed with sleek-looking automobiles, and the crowds were unreal. The women were dressed in a manner in which I strongly approve of (though I doubt my mother would), and most of the men were wearing tee shirts with no dress shirt over them.
Now, I'm nobody's fool, and I was a big fan of Hugo Gernsback, so I sort of twigged onto what was happening. Either I was dreaming in the hospital, or I'd somehow gone forward in time. I stopped in at a drugstore, and looked at the date on a newspaper...Jesus Christ...60 YEARS had gone by.
I bought the paper with some odd looking money in my wallet ($2.00 for a NEWSPAPER? I want a blowjob with that!), and walked down to a diner. I read the paper, and watched the other diners, and noticed something: Nobody was happy. There weren't any particular disasters that anyone was talking about...No, mostly they just played with their smartphones, and ignored each other. All the time.
Don't ask me how I knew what a smartphone was. I knew all kinds of things that I'd never dreamt of...The internet, the fact that my brothers Shemp and Moe had died, the 911 attacks, all kinds of things. Mostly I knew that the entire world was miserable. Some places were terrifying and poverty-stricken miserable, and some places were rich and miserable. I also knew that this had been deliberately orchestrated, in a manner that reminded me of the Nazis...More subtle, but just as corrupt and evil.
I decided that perhaps I should do something about that.
To be continued.
A cliffhanger? How dare you! :wink:
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on November 12, 2012, 04:41:03 PM
A cliffhanger? How dare you! :wink:
It's a long story. More to follow today and/or tomorrow.
nooooooooooooo poor Curly.
Yeah... I get that. One day Pong is pretty damn cool, the next thing you know, you can't eat dinner without somebody at the table answering a text. Momma would have slapped me into the middle of next week if I'd gone to answer the phone during dinner, once.
I'm enjoying this series.
Oh man.
Looking forward to part two.
Anticipating the next piece. Great work, Roger.
That. IS not what I was expecting. But I highly approve.
^^^ That. I'm looking forward to seeing where you take this.
Ya. More plz.