Things will be Better in the Future

i was sitting in my shit-hole of an apartment wondering how it was 2027 already, and how nob hill had ever transformed into a bad neighborhood. it was the teenagers, i think. but it was the scientists first.

there's no point in cleaning graffiti off your bedroom walls when it'll only be back in an hour-- cleaning it just gives the hackers more wall-space for their unruly gang signs and penis drawings. bedroom graffiti is something i've gotten used to over the years and i suppose it's modern decoration in a way.

do you remember when we would take buses and cabs to places we needed to go? do you remember when we would walk? i miss those days. no one ever talks to anyone any more because no one ever sees anyone any more-- it's all just clicks and whizzes and we're buying organic pesto sauce for our rubber noodles.

i was in the front of the protest when they decided to put those damn machines on the tops of mountains. they called it the elevator of the future. but there was nothing charming about it no matter what they named it. i didn't like the idea of these elevators becoming household necessities, but it had its benefits at first. i was able to visit my friends and family more often and it seemed like the new technology was quite possibly invented to strengthen the bonds of humankind.

but that was at first. that was before the mountains, the deserts, and the rain-forests. what was left of nature anyway.

a team of us were in our thirties at the time and protesting what we knew would be the end of everything. in the 1950's, people had complaints about the television. in the early 2000's the complaints turned to the internet and computer. i was sometimes bittersweet about those inventions, but the elevator was the first of them to cross a certain line for me.

we all had an elevator. every store had an elevator. and we would zip and fly to each location in a second's time-- it was the first time i felt like we were in the future and i think most people felt the same way. we were less skeptical than we were amazed and high-fives went world-wide because we were the generation alive to see the days of teleportation. this was better than the internet-- this was real. we could literally talk to our families in other countries because we could take the elevator there in no time and the services were practically free.

but there were problems.

at first there were connection interruptions and we all lost friends and family to whatever the space between elevators was. they would enter their own, headed to mine, and never arrive. people had theories of what the limbo must be like and a few people claimed to have visited that space-- though they were deemed crazy by most.

losing my sister in the elevator changed everything for me. i lost her, i lost my job, and i lost me.

and then came the teenagers; the hackers. they had found a way to unlock coordinates to all elevators, whether or not they were invited. they would show up in our apartments late at night and steal whatever they thought they wanted. if there was nothing to steal, they would tag our walls with their teenage gang signs and smash our furniture.

but no one seemed to care. they said these sorts of things happened when the internet was new, too. they said it would level off and go away eventually. and then they announced the addition of the elevator to major mountain-tops and natural landmarks-- no longer would a hike be necessary to get a glorious view. they tried to amaze us with horrible distractions and offerings of visiting the scattered remains of the amazon.

and we protested. the view is nothing without the journey. but it happened anyway.

the hackers moved toward defacing the earth's natural wonders and had even found a way to scramble their trail so no police could follow them through the elevators. the addition of elevators in nature was possibly the worst move in human history and in some ways i was happy my sister didn't have to live through it.

i was taken to a ward after trying to destroy my elevator. i couldn't stand to see the machine in my house-- it was like staring a murderer in the eye and knowing i was still its slave. but you couldn't destroy your elevator. trying was just a simple way of declaring yourself insane and being transported to a hospital where everything gets worse. the drugs the stick in you, the scans and tests-- no one could understand a human so outwardly against the advancement of technology. but i think my fear was inside everyone, and they couldn't stand to see it.

so they quieted me.

i don't know how long i was kept in that ward. i don't know how it got to be 2027. i had nothing left for the hackers to rob or deface, and i had no dignity left for the doctors to rob or deface.

i had my couch and i had my god forsaken elevator.

and i had one picture of my family.

don't worry, things will be better in the future.