It was an average day for Dennis; after a boring day at school, he rode his bike through the dusty and unkempt streets of his hometown. The old buildings lined the roads like worn out soldiers, once young and full of energy but now faded and bland, struggling to stay standing up. Various logos of forgotten small businesses dotted their walls like reminders of what used to be an exciting downtown; now most buildings sat abandoned, no one interested in going outside to appreciate the town they lived in.
As his bike sailed out of the downtown area and approached his neighborhood, Dennis took out the essay he wrote for language arts class, the ink of his teacher's writing scribbled onto the top, still wet and fresh. "C-", "unrealistic", "impossible" were just a few of the words that caught Dennis's eye as he scanned the document. The assignment was simple: research what the future may possibly bring and write a one page essay on it. Unlike most projects in language arts, Dennis thought this one was intriguing, and spent hours laying on his bed thinking about it, looking up predictions about the future of technology and space travel and the environment. The pattern he saw was clear: as technology became smaller and more portable, the population grew and food became harder to grow as a result of rising temperatures, humanity would find the key to utopia in space. He envisioned humongous space stations full of crops, moon bases containing millions of people, a vast network of shuttles carrying people, resources and information between planets.
Dennis parked his bike in his garage and walked into the mud room, where his dad was putting his shoes on. "Hey Denny, how was school today?"
"Fine I guess. I got a bad grade on a language arts thing."
"Oh, sorry about that. Mrs. Daniels can never give you a good grade, can she?"
"Dad, Mrs. Daniels was my teacher in fifth grade."
"Oh yes, your a big seventh grader now! How could I forget. Well, I have to go to the office. Tell your mom I'll be back by dinner."
"Okay," Dennis said, and watched his dad get in his beat up car and drive away, and wondered if he had already forgotten about the language arts assignment. He ran to his room and started his homework.
Dennis heard his mom come home, turn on the TV. Around six o-clock, she called him down for dinner.
They ate in silence for a while, both staring blankly at an old rerun of a game show that was long off the air. But Dennis couldn't stop thinking about his assignment. "Hey mom, what do you think the future's gonna be like?"
"Well, the future is whatever you make it honey."
"Yeah, but what do you think it will be?"
"I can't say. We used to think there would be thousands of people in space by 2000 and there would be a giant glacier covering North America. I guess you can't predict the future, you've just gotta wait and see what it brings."
Dennis's mom continued to watch the old game show while Dennis went to his room to read. Seven o-clock, seven thirty, eight, eight thirty, nine o-clock. His dad still wasn't home. Dennis turned off his bedside lamp and laid in bed, Thinking about the future and space and his assignment.
The future is what ever you make it.
Dennis fell asleep, ideas bigger then the world bouncing around in his tiny head.
