Road Weary, a novella
Chapter 1
Today was not the day for this to happen. Chris was already 10 minutes late to work and
he knew they would be waiting for him as soon as he got out of the
complex. He had unwittingly used up his
monthly allotment of Victory SMRs a few days earlier on a high-speed run to
Walgreens for batteries and Milk of Magnesia.
And today was shaping up to be one of those awful days he hated the
most.
They seemed to come out of nowhere. Every single time. He had tried everything to evade them, or at
least to stay ahead of them, but to no avail.
Even on the rare occasion that he could get out of the gates with a
clear left-side view, they would inevitable be there as soon as he reached the next entrance. Their behavior was both shocking and
vexing. But most of all it threatened
his very sanity. And it was for this
reason that he had signed up for the SMR program.
The problem he was facing, and he had been warned of this,
was that he was constantly tempted to use an SMR on a sometimes less than
eligible target. He knew from the start
that this would be a problem, though, as he was an impulsive person by nature…a
FM in truth and action…and it was widely known that SMs and FMs are natural and
mortal enemies. They simply cannot
coexist. “Dammit,” he muttered as he
feverishly scanned the road ahead for movement, “buggers are out there in force
today…I just know it.” The big V-8
rumbled along, quickly gaining speed as he approached the first neighborhood
entrance just 400 meters down the road from his own entrance. He hated the fact that he was gaining
speed. Hated it because he knew that the
faster he went and the more time he gained would attract them even more. SMs feed on efficiency. They eat
it. They eat freedom and shit
impedance. “Miserable nits” he thought
as he continued to scan the road ahead.
He had made it past the first entrance but that act, in itself, was
progress and he knew…he could feel
that they were somewhere up there waiting to roll out.
Both he and the SMs were intensely selfish. He knew this full-well. The war erupted because both he and they were
convinced that their selfishness was warranted and was, according to each party,
better for mankind in the long-run. He
thought of the whole concept as a sort of Time Marxism. After all, wouldn’t a society which was
faster and more efficient, by law, be more free to pursue more creative and
enriching endeavors instead of wasting away life driving around slowly and
creating congestion in general? Of
course he had created his philosophy in a purely subjective frame of mind. He was practically incapable of empathy or
tolerance. And he could no more
understand the mind and motivation of a SM than they could him. And in a nut, that is the reason why he was
out of SMRs on this day.
