The Multiverse

Chapter 2: Burned Out

Monday, October 31st, 2039, Alamo, Nevada, 8:46 pm PST 

Gary Porter

I sigh as I strolled down the sidewalk on Maple Avenue. Today the moon is full. White moonlight is what is keeping the night bright. It was Halloween day and kids in their costumes are out Trick-or-Treating this evening with their parents stopping at doors and getting candy, or are just hanging out and about. A group of teenagers are all socializing in the middle of the sidewalk, taking pictures together with their new, actual hover boards, blocking my path. I already feel a sense of nervousness creeping down my back as I hear the hoarseness of their laughs, the emptiness of the jokes they utter. I swipe the sweat rolling down my forehead and conceal my clenched fist, as I passed them.

I cannot stand those irritating, voices. They deteriorate my sanity every passing day. My job is what alienates me from them all, like how I have always been different when I was in school. These pass few years of getting this new job was a heavy burden on my life. Sure this job is easy for me the loneliness kills me.

I turn a street corner walking passed a grocery store along the sidewalk that is cluttered with trash. I caught sight of the entrance of a small alley besides the store next to a large dumpster where once an old homeless man, known to everyone as simply "Dale" always sat. The dirty desert digital camouflage military uniform he wore was filled with holes that showed his skin and had begun to fade. He had a long gray beard that hung from his scarred and gritty face. On top of his gray hair donned a black hat that said in bold yellow wording: "World War III Veteran". On some days, I spot children in my age group, but younger than me picking on him and pretending to give him food, only to destroy it in his face or maybe called him names, a fraud, even telling him to kill himself because he was worthless. I cannot bear to imagine how a war veteran will become of this and get ridiculed by the very people he protected, risked his life for. Occasionally I might stop and maybe hand him a few dollars, but now he is gone, found dead last week laying on the street after publicly shooting himself using the last rounds from his secretly kept and smuggled .45 service pistol. The old were neglected greatly throughout the United States, or what is left of it.

I let out another breath after examining the entrance of the alley and continue along the cracked, concrete pavement passing a few restaurants that I had been to before, but did not fit my tastes. I adjust the collar of my dark leather jacket as a cold breeze hits me. I round the last corner nearing my destination until someone stops me.

The little short boy, no older than 5 years, wearing a lab coat and crazy white hair to look like a mad scientist. He looks up at me with wide eyes, laughing. "Have you got candy... for me?" He asks in a little squeaky voice still smiling, holding out his little pumpkin basket. That child reminded me of myself, a scientist working in the nearby Area 51.

Shaking my head I shrug, glancing at his mom, who is beside him wearing a witch costume, through my foggy glasses. She smiles at me, but I don't return it. I swiftly walk away down the sidewalk, ignoring them, hearing a crisp clear "Rude" from behind me above all other conversations. Does she not know what I'm going through? Do all of them know?

This section of town was vastly decorated with streams of orange light, decorated pumpkins lit the entrances of the modern houses, which are heavily decorated having all kinds of creepy ghouls hanging everywhere. Alamo has grown over the years into an urban city. I remembered when I was a toddler that Alamo was one of the non-populous cities in Nevada, but ever since refugees poured in from the Middle Eastern countries from way back since 2015, our population had grown to about 476.6 million nationwide because of the recent World War III and the current skirmishes in the Warzone, spanning all of Africa to major parts of the Middle East. You don't see any place in the US that is untouched by humans. I'm talking about the nature reserves, national parks, "unnecessary" structures such as churches, statues, etc. were all destroyed to make homes or farms to support the growing national population. One day Earth cannot even support us as we are making the problems worse. It is for the best anyways.