The Future Story

*Inspired by One of the Best Short Story Tellers, Ray Bradbury*

The young boy sat in a circle with his classmates—as was custom at the end of Writing Hour—notebook in hand. He cleared his throat and began to read his short story aloud…

“The train was eager and grew impatient as it huffed and puffed, shooting storm-colored clouds through its exhaust. The conductor couldn't be seen, only felt. The young woman's things were placed on overhead racks and she sat aboard the train, waiting. She panicked, for her lover was nowhere to be seen. She bellowed into the body of the train—and to the conductor—to please, please, please wait for her lover.

Her lover would be arriving late because he’d been in search of her missing laptop, which held all of her stories, poems, and true loves. She desperately needed them, and she’d misplaced them during their trip. She’d found China to be too cruel a place for a writer such as herself; she worked in secret, somewhere between the stars and the sun’s rising. In the daytime, she hid her laptop and all of her daring characters, then somehow forgot where she’d put them.

Her lover remembered where he’d seen it, so he left her at the station to retrieve it.

But the train wouldn’t wait.

Bouncing her knee and biting on her stub of a thumbnail, she decided to grab her things and leave, hoping to meet her lover in passing so they could catch another train together.

But they missed one another in the rush of absolutely nothing. Though the station had felt crowded and chaotic, there was no one. Not a soul. The rush and feel of New York City was present—minus people. It was the wake of a desolate storm.

She dragged her belongings through a bare crowd and stood, waiting for her lover.

She suddenly found herself on another train, alone, no luggage, and with a female conductor. She called her lover from a small cell phone.

“Hi! Did you find it?”

“Yes. I’m on the train—I don’t see you,” he said.

“I left that train to come and find you!”

“Well, you need to come back because the train is leaving in a few minutes!”

“Okay!”

She pressed END, and asked the train conductor to take her back to the station. The conductor smiled and nodded.

On the empty train, the young woman paced back and forth, hoping to make it to the station to catch the right train. Once the conductor stopped, she stepped down a few stairs into a control room and while leaning over a great window overlooking a row of terminals, said to the young woman, “There. Go that way. C5. C5!” She pointed to a small depot beyond a small food court, serving Japanese sweets.

I thought I was in China? the young woman thought.

She ran through the sweet smell of rice cakes, wagashi, and bean buns. She looked for C5 but couldn’t find it. All the terminals looked the same—confusing.

A tall Japanese man in a white suit grabbed her hand and said, “There’s a shortcut to C5 through the movie studio. No one knows about it. Come!”

She ran alongside him, her hand in his. In the rush, she looked and noticed he was very handsome and capable—sure of himself. They passed actors doing scenes, cameras rolling this way and that to catch unnatural angles, and she thought to herself, “This looks like a porn studio.”

He yanked her toward a large movie screen, hanging from ceiling to floor. It showed the opening credits to Johnny Dangerously. Pointing to the screen, barely grazing the floor, he said, “There! Slide under the screen, and behind it is Terminal C5! Go!”

She moved closer to the movie screen, hoping to fall right into her lover’s arms where he’d be waiting with her beloved stories in tow. She shut her eyes and slid under the screen.

Then everything went black.”

He stopped reading. A tear fell from his cheek; he felt a pang in his chest for the young woman in search of her two great loves.

His teacher cleared her throat, looked around the room, and asked, “Any questions for Howie?”

The class was silent. Their stares, deafening.

One child raised his hand and said, “What’s a laptop?”

Another spoke out of turn. “What’s a cell phone?”

Another. “What’s a porn studio?”

Another. "Who's Johnny Dangerously?"

He accepted their questions and judgmental stares. He looked around the circle, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know.”

The bell rang. Class ended.

His teacher said, “Can I speak to you a moment, Howie?”

Howie's classmates shot knowing glances to one another, gathered their things, then stuffed themselves through the door all at once, heckling in whispers.

Howie sat cross-legged and confident on the floor opposite his teacher, an all-knowing look prancing on his face.

His teacher smiled. “Uh, it’s 1954, Howie. Just what did you write about?”

With a faraway sparkle in his eye, Howie looked past his teacher to the sun shining on the green grass of the playground and shrugged.

“The future.”