He was an old man who lived in a modest gonfab, and over the last eighty hours his Eyes™ and Ears™ had begun to fail. In the first forty hours, he had ignored the increasingly strident sounds of the city of Vanille and focused on teaching the boy who lived with him. But after another forty hours the old man could no longer stand the Doppler-affected murmur of travelers on the slidewalks outside, and the sight of the boy’s familiar deformities became overwhelming. It made the boy sad to see the old man’s stifled revulsion, so he busied himself by sliding the hanging plastic sheets of the inflatable dwelling into layers that dampened the street noise. The semitransparent veils were stiff with grime and they hung still and useless like furled, ruined sails.
The old man was gnarled and bent, and his tendons were like taut cords beneath the skin of his arms. He wore a soiled white undershirt and his sagging chest bristled with gray hairs. A smooth patch of pink skin occupied a hollow under his left collar bone, marking the place where a rifle slug had passed cleanly through many decades before. He had been a father, an engineer, and a war-fighter, but for many years now he had lived peacefully with the boy.
Everything about the old man was natural and wrinkled except for his Eyes™ and Ears™, thick glasses resting on the creased bridge of his nose and two flesh-colored buds nestled in his ears. They were battered technological artifacts that captured sights and sounds and sanitized every visual and auditory experience. The old man sometimes wondered whether he could bear to live without these artifacts. He did not think so.
“Grandpa,” the boy said as he arranged the yellowed plastic curtains. “Today I will visit Vanille City and buy you new Eyes™ and Ears™.”
The old man had raised the boy and healed him when he was sick and the boy loved him.
“No, no,” replied the old man. “The people there are cruel. I can go myself.”
“Then I will visit the metro fab and bring you some lunch.”
“Very well,” said the old man, and he pulled on his woolen coat.
A faded photo of the boy, blond and smiling and happy, hung next to the door of the gonfab. They passed by the photo, pushed the door flaps aside, and walked together into the brilliant dome light. A refreshing breeze ruffled the boy’s hair. He faced into it as he headed for the slidewalk at the end of the path. A scrolling gallery of pedestrians passed steadily by. Sometimes the fleeting pedestrians made odd faces at the boy, but he was not angry. Other pedestrians, the older ones, looked at him and were afraid or sad, but tried not to show it. Instead, they stepped politely onto faster slidestrips further away from the stained gonfab.
“I will meet you back here in one hour,” said the old man.
“See you,” replied the boy, and the old man winced. His failing Ears™ had let through some of the grating quality of the boy’s true voice, and it unsettled him. But his Ears™ crackled back online and, as the slidestrips pulled them away in separate directions, he chose only to wave goodbye.
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 28, 2009 10:20am EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 28, 2009 10:35am EDT
For an enlarged version of Sam Weber's illustration, click here.
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 28, 2009 11:13am EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 28, 2009 01:44pm EDT
Ethan
Tuesday July 28, 2009 03:03pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Tuesday July 28, 2009 04:42pm EDT
Wednesday July 29, 2009 01:03am EDT
Great story.
VIEW ALL BY · Wednesday July 29, 2009 01:30am EDT
What's really funny now, is that I've been thinking about how people outside a culture deal with the shorthand a culture develops with its' myths/fairytales/legends: like Red Riding Hood or Puss in Boots. If you don't recognize the reference, sometimes story in and of itself seems disjointed.
(For those who are still confused, as far as I can tell, the fable referenced is Pinocchio.)
Wednesday July 29, 2009 11:20am EDT
Thursday July 30, 2009 02:45pm EDT
Thursday July 30, 2009 05:55pm EDT
Thursday July 30, 2009 08:47pm EDT
Thursday July 30, 2009 09:42pm EDT
Friday July 31, 2009 10:52am EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Saturday August 01, 2009 03:11am EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Monday August 03, 2009 03:49am EDT
Seriously - why the change from single to multi page? It just makes the whole thing a pain to read. So much so that I've not bothered reading any stories since the change.
Friday August 07, 2009 12:26am EDT
Saturday August 08, 2009 09:56pm EDT
Sunday August 09, 2009 12:46pm EDT
Amazing story, amazing art!
Saturday October 24, 2009 11:16pm EDT
VIEW ALL BY · Thursday January 21, 2010 02:29pm EST