Rejected

Heading Out

Another week later and Milo was ready. All of his old stuff was gone. All of his new things, his tools, were loaded into his car (parked semi-legally a block from what was soon to be not his apartment). The last vestiges of his on-line identity were gone: email accounts closed, utilities canceled, credit cards paid off (with the proceeds from selling his old things). Milo locked his apartment, walked down stairs and slipped the keys through the super's mail slot.

Before driving north, he needed to return the laptop, his last tie to the connected world. He walked down to his old office and sat on the curb just outside. While holding down one of the function keys, Milo powered it up to the BIOS settings and core utilities. First, he formatted the hard drive which took ten minutes. He watched the pigeons. Then, he partitioned the drive just to be safe. Finally, Milo added a boot password. It would not stop anyone with even basic IT skills, but it would annoy them and only cost him thirty seconds. Then and only then did he walk into the building, take the elevator up to his old company's floor and drop the laptop (and his old security badge) off with the receptionist, telling her that he had found the computer under his couch and was sorry for not returning it earlier. He did not wait for a receipt or let her call anyone but turned on his heel and left.

Back on the street, Milo walked to his parked car. The sun shone down between the buildings, a light breeze erased the city smell and all of the ever-present emergency sirens were currently several blocks away. When he reached his car, there were three parking tickets tucked under the windshield wiper. He pulled them out and tossed them into the air before unlocking the car and slipping inside.

Getting out of the city was the most nerve wracking part of the drive. Dealing with the narrow streets, aggressive taxis and constant gridlock tested his rusty skills. He found himself muttering to himself, "Just two more bridges. Just two more bridges. Now just one more bridge. And a tunnel. One more bridge and a tunnel." Once he cleared the last choke point and got going on the interstate, he relaxed. It was just before eleven o'clock on a beautiful mid-summer morning. He had decided not to listen to music or an audio book but to let his mind become accustomed to decreasing amounts of noise. Agreeably, the traffic thinned out the further he got from his old life, reducing the sound of other vehicles passing him. Soon, he was listening to the engine and tires humming. Everything was moving as he had hoped.

It took him seven hours to get to the border with Quebec. The sun moved from one side of his car to the other, he refilled his gas tank once. His mind started focusing beyond his driving. He ran through his lists of tasks, the things he would need to do once he arrived: set up the tent, dig a latrine, figure out a fire pit, find water and so many other things. Milo kept reordering all of them. Should he find water before starting a fire? From a safety perspective that seemed the better way to go and he could look for wood while searching for his water supply. He drove automatically as he thought and re-thought about what made sense. Looking back, he had no recollection of having driven through whole states.

Eventually, somewhere close to the Canadian border when he was the only car on the road, the silence drew him back. Not just the lack of city noise. It was more than that. It was the lack of notifications, of things chirping at him, alerting him, warning him, enticing him. He had been living without a smart phone for two weeks, yet only now was this missing element something he noticed. No one was texting or emailing or messaging him. Or, no doubt they were, but he had no way of receiving their attempts. There was a whole world of interaction going on to which he was oblivious. It was wonderful.

Milo imagined that Kendal was launching some discussion or requesting input on his replacement. That his office was emailing madly trying to keep the projects he had managed in order. That ads for bars and restaurants and toilet paper were whizzing around him but could find no way in. All these annoyances he had dealt with by swiping them away, deleting them with a finger. All he had needed to do was turn It. All. Off.