The Real 420

Eric Mason was a young adult without a care in the world. He performed his daily civic duties without complaint. When given time away from his job, Eric still didn't have a care in the world. It didn't matter whether or not Eric was there at his job—his station in life, working or not, was not what granted him happiness.

During his relatively short lifetime in his home nation of the United States of North America, many laws had drastically changed. The world which Eric would inherit, if he cared to, was legally unlike the world which his parents had inherited.

All drugs had become legal, prescribed by doctors who had earned degrees from certified universities. Those who sold illegal drugs became the scourge of mankind, to be eliminated by anyone who cared to collect the ever-increasing bounties placed upon them, payable upon their capture, dead or alive.

Eric was a person far removed from the legal troubles concerning drugs and the politics involved with keeping them legal. He was merely contented to smoke boatloads of quality cannabis, day-in and day-out, never questioning how those rights of his came to be. He purchased his cannabis directly from doctors, who often ran their own storefronts. They would enjoy sampling the products they sold alongside their patients before a purchase, as was customary. He had tried other drugs with those doctors in similar settings once or twice, but cannabis was the only substance he had found that would treat his body kindly.

Although he tended to question very little, sometimes Eric might think to question the quality of the cannabis he received. Without much further thought, he would question it no more of it. All he had to do was quit seeing the doctor in question, opting to forget about the matter entirely. It was much easier that way, instead of making a fuss, to just go and buy from someone else. Eric rarely chose to make a fuss in a world with infinite options, many no greater or less in value than the rest.

It was with this lilting, drifting attitude that Eric decided to notice a colorful wad of trash on the sidewalk that one day found its way lying in his path.

He was walking home that day from a job-well-done, choosing to fulfill the role of pedestrian. Bullet cabs be damned, Eric always thought to himself. People tended to forget how pretty even the city can be, when they spend all day cooped-up in little bubbles, Eric thought. Walking was not a punishment for the poor, but a luxury for the young to Eric, thinking much unlike those his age.

He was the type of person to enjoy such mild things as a breath of fresh air. This amusement at decidedly minor things was beheld much to the confusion of his logically-oriented colleagues at the Drone Engineering Academy. When the work-bell tolled, indicating to the droves of engineers that their day's work had concluded, many of his coworkers left the place looking haggard and defeated. They would drag their feet, slumping into their bullet cabs, neglecting to spend a single extra calorie that was not distributed with some kind of game-theory usefulness.

Not Eric. He was the kind of person to whistle a jaunty tune during a casual stroll, inspecting the little bits of colorful trash which people discarded along the way. Eric was one of the few people he knew of who gave a care about the potential purposes of long-forgotten artifacts. He loved to imagine what a person used to do with a seemingly-useless, discarded piece of trash, or perhaps why they threw it away. His imagination played-out these daydreams with a level of excitement that he could not feel when watching programs on holo-displays, which he felt were way too predictable.

With curious gusto, Eric bent down to inspect that particularly-colorful wad of trash. Squatting on the balls of his feet, he pinched the moist, papery wad between thumb and forefinger.

With the new object safely in his grasp, Eric returned to his forward pace, walking down the sidewalk on his way home to his apartment ten blocks away. He placed the soggy white, blue, and red wad of paper into his pocket, so that he could give it a proper inspection later.