-Are you sure you shouldn't stay the night? my mother
asks anxiously.
-Lorna, leave the boy alone, he's a man now so he
makes his own decisions, my father injects.
-Don't fuss, I say and grab my car keys.
I thank them for the nice meal and tell them
that I'll call in a week.
In my mind I'm already in my car and on the
way home, but in reality I'm walking out
the door waving goodbye and getting in my car.
I place my phone in the cradle, turn on the ignition
and start the long drive home.
Not far down the road a sort of melancholy comes
over me. I can't really pinpoint exactly where it
comes from only that recently it seems to show up
every time I leave my folks.
Perhaps it has something to do with that I am becoming
more aware of that they are getting older, more forgetful
and somehow more fragile.
I know that my father wants me to take over the place,
spruce it up a bit and make it into a money-earning business
again but ...... just the sheer thought of doing so makes me want to
hop on the next flight to the other side of the planet.
A deep sigh from the depth of my subconscious escapes
and suddenly I'm overcome by tiredness.
To prevent myself from falling asleep at the wheel
I flick through my lists of music on my mobile
and turn up the volume.
While driving through dark and ominous looking
woods with music blaring and me thumping
the steering wheel along with the beat,
suddenly the mobile dies.
-Hmm, that's odd, I think, but just put it down
to bad reception.
Knowing that I still have another four hours of
driving to do, the phone not working gradually starts
to concern me.
I tap on the screen but it stays dark.
-I probably forgot to charge it, I tell myself
but the phone not working makes me feel
uncomfortable.
Suddenly a horrible thought pushes its way into my
anxious mind.
-What if the car decides to go dark too?
I mean, when was the time when I last charged the car?
I quickly check all the gages on the dashboard and
discover that I am down to my last bit of battery
power.
Ok, this is not good.
What's also not very good, is that I haven't seen any
lights or even some kind of indication of human activity for
quite some time.
How deep is this forest??
I tap the screen on the phone hoping it will
come back alive by some miracle, but to no
avail.
And then, almost soundlessly, the engine in my car and
all the lights on the dashboard turn off.
Slowly I roll on to the shoulder of the road.
I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way
of getting any assistance.
It's so quiet around me that I feel as if I'm the
only human in the world.
Now what?
I close my eyes, lean the seat back, and tell myself:
-Think! Come on, think!!!
My mind is spinning and a million thoughts
flood my consciousness but none of them
useful.
The reality is that I'm sitting in a little cocoon in the middle
of a dark forest with no way of contacting the rest of
the world.
All I can do is to hope that somebody else will show
up and offer me some help, or, wait for the morning
light and then start to walk.
The irony of it all.
Here I am, armed with the latest technology and yet....
I'm totally unable to contact anybody to come and
help me because my mobile doesn't work and there
are no public phones along this stretch of road.
Mind you, even if there was a public phone I could not
use it because I no longer use cash money. I only
use my phone to pay stuff with.
And, even if there was a gas station open at this time
of night, unless it was equipped with an electric car
battery charge station, I still could not pay for the
charge since my phone is dead.
Hmm.
Hope it is.
Might as well try to sleep.
I zip up my jacket, close my eyes and
get as comfortable as I can.
As I am dozing off my last thought is:
''Change your car to a hybrid, always carry a bit of
cash, always keep a fully charged spare phone in
your glovebox.''
''I wish we would scrutinize our fascination with
technology just a little bit harder sometimes so that we
don't end up creating problems which we already solved a
long time ago.''
(Citizen Z)
about the image: acrylic on canvas
