The Neon God

I

In the kingdom of the Neon God,

Mindless androids step and plod,

Clutching tech that stops them talking

To the people who they're longing

Because there's no social skill around

And fear abounds

As they suffer through the sound of silence.

In 1899 there were 1.6 billion people on the planet. A hundred years later, when my parents were born, there were 6 billion. When I was born in 2029, there were 8.5 billion. Now, it's 2049, and next year the global population is projected to surpass 10 billion people. To say we're running low on space would be the understatement of the century.

The whole climate change debacle hasn't exactly been helpful either. My parents' generation managed to at least contain it by the time they were old enough to be in political power, but some permanent damage is done. Miami and New Orleans exist only in history books and old movies now, unless you count their ruins rusting away at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. We managed to handle the evacuations without too much discord, but problems arose when we had to figure out where to put everybody. Atlanta, Jacksonville, Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock, and my hometown of St. Louis were swamped with displaced migrants from the flooded cities and coastlines. At first, there wasn't enough housing for all of them, but we like everyone else decided to build taller. Before long even the Arch was dwarfed by the new stratoscraper skyline.

As the cities, buildings, and population got bigger, so too did business, advertising, and technology. Phones kept getting thinner. Artificial intelligence kept getting smarter and more life-like. Holoboards replaced the old billboards. The bright lights of the projections were typically the most reliably available sources of light in the shadow of the sun-blocking stratoscrapers. It was by the holoboards' light that I walked to school, the grocery store, and virtually anywhere else I would go. It was also in their light that I would first encounter Liz.

It was a warm Friday afternoon in the middle of August last year. My first week of college classes at St. Louis University had just ended, and I was more than ready to get back home and do nothing productive until Sunday afternoon. I stepped out the door of the university's main building and into the soft pink light of a holoboard for People magazine. Framed perfectly by that same light was a girl a little over five and a half feet tall with long, soft brown hair resting on her right shoulder and soul-piercing green eyes. I caught myself staring as she walked past me and cursed myself as I realized we were both going the same direction.

Regardless, I stepped into the crowd filing past behind her. My rational mind stopped me from beating myself up over it too much. After all, she and virtually everyone else was absorbed by some webphone or holowatch and probably hadn't noticed me. Normally, I would have lost myself in the screen too, but I was interested to see where she was going. When we came to the first place I had to turn to get home, she turned the same way. The same thing happened at the second, third, fourth, and fifth intersections until at last we came to my apartment complex - our apartment complex, as it turned out. We both boarded the same elevator serving floors 150-200 of the building. She hit the button for my floor an instant before I went to push it myself. I awkwardly pulled my hand back and chuckled a little bit as my face went red. I gathered the courage to speak up and managed to sputter, "Do you live on 167 too?"

She looked surprised that I'd spoken up but smiled sheepishly. "Y-yeah. I'm guessing you do, too?"

"Yeah."

"Which apartment is yours?"

"16719."

"Oh cool. I'm in 16784."

"I guess that's why we haven't run into each other before."

"Yeah."

This was followed by an awkwardly long pause filled with darting glances at each other, our phones, and random parts of the elevator that suddenly were of immense interest and in need of further analysis. This time she broke the silence. "W-what's your name?"

"Peter. W-what's yours?"

"Elizabeth. People call me Liz."

"So should I call you Liz?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Ok."

Even more awkward silence. The floor indicator beeped ever closer to our destination. I wanted to ask for her number or something but I couldn't muster the courage to do it. It looked like she wanted to say something, too, but she couldn't make herself speak up either. We finally got off the elevator together. As we turned to go our separate ways she said, "I guess I'll see you later, Peter."

I was about ready to melt.