gunwithoutmusic | 21. Regrets, I've Had a Few

Monday, September 18th—9:42 a.m.

796 words. Approximate reading time: 3 minutes, 58 seconds.

"This your first time applying?" Rasheeda asked Henry.

"Yeah, can you tell?" Henry replied, before looking down at his shaking leg and chuckling. "Nervous, I guess. Got no idea what to expect in there. How about you?"

"It's my third time," she said. "Really hope I get it this time. I think I'm ready for whatever they throw at me."

"What do they--"

"Now, you know we can't talk about that in the waiting room. They'll kick us both out of here and we'll have to start the whole process again."

"Right. Right, I forgot," Henry said. "But we can still talk, right? That's okay?"

"Yeah, they don't care if we talk," Rasheeda replied. "They know us 'country folk' can't help ourselves when we get around each other." She laughed a bit, and Henry smiled. "So what's your story? Why's this your first time?"

"Well, believe it or not, I had a chance to cross over right after the war."

"No kiddin'!" Rasheeda exclaimed. "What do you do?"

"I'm a trader now," Henry said. "Got a little caravan that goes around."

"That's honest work," she said, and Henry nodded. "What about before?"

"I was a CPA," he said.

Rasheeda chuckled. "Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, they definitely wanted your types, huh? So why didn't you take it?"

"I wish I had. But I had obligations. Family stuff, you know? My mom wasn't doing too good and with Dad already out of the picture and me the only kid, I couldn't just leave her like that. Not there."

"Hey, I get it," she said. "We've all been there. So why now? What's changed?"

"I guess it's still family stuff. Mom died a while back; that's when I packed up my little storefront and went out on the road. I never even gave a thought to trying to cross over. It had been too long since I'd done anything that they were looking for in me. Hell, I don't know if I can even remember how to do that kind of stuff now. But I met someone out on the road, and we got married.

"And now she's pregnant, and... Well this isn't the best place to give birth, you know? And I think, 'Do I want to raise a kid in this place anyway?' and then I think about what life could be like for my kid on the other side of the border. Always safe and comfortable, I want my kid and my wife to have the best possible life."

Rasheeda nodded. "What can I say? That's really cool. I hope you do alright."

Just then, the intercom on the wall buzzed, and a voice came over the speaker. "Applicant 82951-dash-02A, please step through the door."

"That's me," Henry said with a nervous smile.

"Good luck, honey!" Rasheeda said as Henry walked up to the door that read "Sanitization Chamber." The door opened for him. As soon as he stepped inside, the door closed again.

A voice came over a speaker. "Good morning, applicant 82951-dash-02A! For the safety of yourself and others, we require a full sanitization before entering the interview chamber. Please disrobe completely and prepare for sanitization. You may place your personal belongings in the bin provided." A box slid out from the wall next to Henry, startling him.

'I'd better just do as I'm told,' he thought as he removed his clothes and placed them in the bin, which slid back into the wall. Suddenly there was a sound like a water pump running, and Henry found himself being doused in a strange-smelling liquid.

"Thank you!" the speaker voice said. "Please dry off with the provided towel and put on the sanitary clothing items." The box that once held Henry's clothes slid back out of the wall, this time containing a towel, a paper robe, a face mask, and paper booties.

Henry wondered where his clothes went, but was thankful for the towel. He dried himself off and put on the robe, mask, and booties.

"Thank you!" the speaker voice said. "Please proceed into the interview chamber." A door opened for Henry, and he passed through it into a nearly empty room with all white walls, floor, and ceiling. In the center of the room sat a small desk with a portable computer on it.

"Please sit at the desk, open the laptop, and start the camera," the speaker voice said. "The interview will begin in five minutes."

Henry moved toward the desk and sat in the stiff chair. He looked at the laptop. He remembered these. They couldn't have changed so much in ten years. He gently reached out and tried to lift up the top portion to reveal the screen. It didn't budge.

"Please open the laptop and start the camera," the speaker voice said. "The interview will begin in four minutes."

Henry swallowed the lump in his throat and took a deep breath before continuing to fumble with the technology.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

… that’s it? Isn’t there more? This was good I wanna keep reading!

Thank you! Yes, I like to leave some things up to the imagination. :) Everything I've written for this competition (basically all my entries) is part of an overall project that all takes place in the same universe over the course of 45 years or so, if you liked this is encourage you to take a look at the others!

Again, thank you for reading and commenting. :)

Oof. I'm imagining that the technology has changed considerably since Henry last used a laptop rather than him forgetting how to open it. But I'm also feeling like this test is the interview. Fail this part and you're out.

On the other hand, I also get a sense that this is kind of like growing up with video games in the early 90s, not playing them for decades, and then trying to get back into them now. Things have advanced quite a bit since then. ;)

*taps nose* That's the question here - when exactly did the test start? Was it the laptop, the sanitization chamber (which seems unnecessary since he's going into a completely empty room), or was it even the conversation with Rasheeda?

But there is also a bit of that unique experience that our generation had with technology - ten years isn't a long time for people, but think about how much things changed between 1997 and 2007 technology wise!

Ten years away from technology? I worry for Henry's chances here! I also wondered about the requirement for the completely unnecessary sanitization chamber - and whether he will get his old clothes back.

I don't know how much truth there is to it, but have you ever heard about police academies flunking out people who score too high on logic and reasoning because they don't want people who are going to think for themselves? I think this whole thing is sort of like that.

I imagine that Henry will regret not crossing from the jump more after the whole process is over, but I'm still hopeful he'll come out on the other side of it ok.

Hmm, I've not heard of that, but it makes a certain amount of sense. And can certainly see how it would play out in your world. Here's hoping Henry does make it through everything okay.

AAARGH!!! The creepiness of this 'Verse is really subtle and then it suddenly becomes overwhelming. What a perfect twist, S! I have a running list of tech angst that I or friends/family have experienced and sometimes it's funny and other times it's a tragedy. You really captured that here.

I'm definitely trying to temper the creepiness throughout all of the pieces - I don't want this collection to come across as highly cynical or defeatist. But I also think it's fun to amp it up a little bit sometimes. :) I've always been a huge techie, but as I get older I feel myself losing touch with newest stuff and not caring so much about getting the latest and greatest gadget. I can't imagine going 10 years without any sort of technology and then coming back into it and trying to know anything!

(I'm also a few weeks away from leaving the company I've worked for for fifteen years and starting something brand new, and... well, I'm terrified that I'm going to find myself like Henry here!)

Oh, wow. I kept expecting this to be a death sentence, and at least it wasn't that (yet), but the ability to keep up with new technology after all these years - that could be a total bust. Great vision.

- Erulisse (one L)

It certainly feels very foreboding and like a process that I very much wouldn't want to go through. But I'll admit that I've had those thoughts before with things that I used to be very proficient with - 'It's only been fifteen years since I've seriously played the clarinet; surely it will be like riding a bike!' - only to find myself highly overestimating my own abilities. I feel for Henry here a lot.

Thank you for reading! :)

I want to know what happens to Henry!!!

It's amazing that you can make me care about your characters and want to know more with so few words.

I LOLed at Henry and the laptop, because when my husband was preparing a speech recently and practicing for some friends, one of our friends had never seen a laptop that had a screen that detaches to be a tablet. He told me he thought, "OH NO!!! He's so nervous he broke his laptop!" ;)

lol Maybe ten years ago, I would have seen a commercial for the newest gadget and said, "I need to have that immediately!" But my pile of old FitBits, Surfaces, iPads, iPods, what have you finally alerted me to the fact that maybe I don't really need to keep up with the cutting edge of tech. I'm satisfied with the ability to call or text people and play games on my phone that is five years old (the horror) and I'm perplexed now by tech commercials. I really can put myself in Henry's shoes in this story and I kind of feel bad for even putting him in that place!

Thank you so much for your kind words :)

I too want more! I get the tech issues; I can relate - I’m accustomed to Apple products, but got a hand me down MacBook and am trying to get used to how it works. Argh! I hope Henry figured it out.

Oof, switching to the Apple ecosystem when I went to school (graphic design, so of course we had to use Mac for it) was not a fun experience after growing up and spending most of my time on PCs. The older I get, the less I find myself gravitating toward tech and the more I find myself longing for the days when we weren't all so connected.

Don't get me wrong; there are so many good things to come out of all of the tech we've created, but there was also something really nice about not having it.

Personally, I hope that Henry gets what he wants and is happy, but I also hope that maybe he could learn to live with less and maybe settle down somewhere safer instead of being on the road.

Oh sly one! YOu and your cliffhangers! You are cultivating a captured audience for your book about that 'verse once it comes out, ehhh ;)?

You are cultivating a captured audience for your book about that 'verse once it comes out, ehhh ;)? haha you beat me to this! :D

Ooh one can only hope! Do I have the wherewithal to turn this little project into something bigger? I have lots of thoughts and never enough time. :)

Thank you for reading!

This was awesome - so engrossing from the start and that ending! I need more of this!

Thank you so much! :D

21. Regrets, I've Had a Few

Monday, September 18th—9:42 a.m.

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