Paul lugs the air fryer to his apartment. While there he whips together and eats a simple sandwich for lunch chasing it down with a beer. Why not? He thought to himself, he didn’t have to be back at work. After half an hour standing in his apartment trying to skip the stream of ads his TV was feeding him, he grabs his jacket and wonders onto the streets.
He walks up one street and down another with no destination in mind. He continues aimlessly for another half an hour making his way to a hilltop park. He sees a commotion as he gets closer several cars and people and yellow tape spanning the gap between two trees. He sees many of the people hanging around this crime scene are police.
“Get off the sidewalk. Everybody GET BACK!” shouts one of the cops waving a hand in the air. “Everybody get out of the park! Get off the grass get off the sidewalk or your all going to get arrested.”
He was still well away from the scene and the other onlookers so he paused and watched for a moment. The police bushed back a few bystanders with a few quickly scampering off. The police pushed the remaining few onlooker back across the street and continued to yell and wave their hands about. He decided this was not the place to be and headed down the street back towards the center of the city and its shopping streets.
He didn’t walk for long before a shabby looking store front caught his eye. The sun bleached sigh read ‘Bragin Media’ There were signs hung in the window advertising ‘buy 3 books get the 4th free’ and ‘15% off all videos Wed.’ It wasn’t too impressive looking of a store but these shops selling old books, records, CDs and DVDs were a true rarity now days. He was especially amused at how antiquated the forms were. Records… did anyone even own a record player in this day and age? After standing in the cold a moment he stepped into the store, finding the interior crammed full of shelves and bins. The owner, an older man quickly smothered a cigarette in an ash tray.
“We got a sale going on.”
He paused to listen. The man said nothing. “What sale is that,” he asked?”
“You wanna buy it, I’ll sell it.” The old man chuckled.
“You hear that thing in the news about the rapist in a robot get up? The world is not the same way it was when I was coming up.”
He didn’t know how to respond to that comment.
“If you like robots, and by Like mean want to shoot’em, you should get a DVD of the Terminator. We got a couple floating around… somewhere.”
He smiled and nodded his head. He searched the CDs and DVDs to see if he can find something from his childhood. He is amazed that many of the CDs and DVD’s are older than he is and he has heard of few of them. Somewhat dejected by the fact he cannot find an old movie he remembered watching as a child he wonders into the back of the shop where books dominate the room. A small box catches his eye labeled “trade a trinket.” He remembers the tiny plastic duck from this morning and plucks it from his pocket and drips it into the box. His curiosity gets the better of him and he peeks inside only to see the duck, a dragon sticker and a small packet of paper. He pulls out the paper to discover it is in fact a small stack of papers stapled at the corner like a multi-page brochure, but rather than being filled with ad copy, glossy product photos and a development road map he sees a few drawings and chaotic handwritten text. Curious he pockets it hoping to study it later. He leaves the store, deciding to get a caffeine fix at a café he knows nearby.
He entered the café, he had been coming here about 2 or 3 times a month since he discovered it about 5 years ago. The place was pretty average as far as food and drink went so were the prices. The atmosphere was what brought him back. The walls were lined with leather couches, the lights were the old-style incandescent bulbs with a warm glow. The walls were lined with every imaginable kind of decorative flourish, old photos, framed illustrations pulled from the pages of old reference books and a few shadow boxes containing collections of small toys, old writing pens, lose keys, small hand tools and more.
His Favorite was a small glass fish tank with a single blue fish and a plants roots dipped into the water, several tendrils of vines cascaded onto the counter. He watched the fish slowly swim around the roots as light glistened off the tank. He leaned back in the chair yes, that little tank was definitely his favorite thing in the whole place. someday he wanted to have a plant tank like that in his apartment. They never played music here and there was only one TV screen in the back that was generally muted. He liked to sit and look around, his eyes often wondered the store from fixture to picture frame to a customer sitting across the room.
It was always intruding to see a stranger sitting across the room sipping on a latte. He always knew they had a few things in common, coffee for one, a love for the novel for a second. Even if he didn’t know their names and never saw them again, he suspected they would have had a few things to talk about. Yet conversations rarely arose naturally.
As he sat at the table waiting for his drink he started to reflexively reach for his phone to check for a message or look at the price of the mini urban fishing set he had been eyeing for a few weeks now. As he reached into his pocket his finger brushed against some feathery item. He pulled it out and looked face to face with a mouse. It was the small booklet he had taken from the media store earlier. He stared back at the image of a mouse that seemed to be hand drawn on to the cover along with the words “New Lean Zine Vol. 3.” He opened it to the first page. “There is no more flight we need to stand and fight.” Along side another drawing of the mouse standing on two legs looking up at an airplane. He flipped to the second page read “Convert consumers to citizens, let them know they have rights.” Next to another drawing of the mouse standing next to a shopping bag. He looked around the café no one was looking at him or all that close to him. He felt a bit self-conscious reading this strange thing. “Sleep all day but stay awake at nights” The waitress came and he stuffed the booklet into his pocket somewhat embarrassed to be reading a thing that was most likely made by some high school kid who thought is was some edgy piece of art. He slipped it into a pocket and headed home.
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