Further Into The Future!

Chapter 29

When we returned a week later for the American Rock Star contest, the John Hancock building was almost indiscernible against the night sky except for red white and blue skylights wandering around it. As we walked down the street leading to it they lit a giant portrait of Hammer in the center where Cold Steel's was before. It was a new portrait more honest to his actual appearance, although his hair looked a little thicker than I remembered it, and his skin less splotchy.

"That's more like it," Jack mumbled as he took a bite out of the cheeseburger he picked up on the way. He was in costume, wearing a black overcoat over a brown vest, a dress shirt and an old-fashioned bow tie. On his head he wore an exaggerated stovepipe hat tall enough to fit a bowling trophy under. He was a caricature of the late-19th-century scientist like the one in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. The bandage around his head covering the wound given to him by the Chief was not part of the costume.

He pulled a gold watch out of his vest pocket. It was the pride and joy of his costume. I was impressed until I asked him if I could see it; the moment I felt it with my hand I could tell it was made of plastic. I turned it over and it had "Made in the Philippines" written on the back. When I asked Jack about it he confessed it was a popular kids' toy associated with a movie that came out a few years before.

"Right on time," he said before dropping the watch back into his pocket. He took a sip from a Styrofoam cup in his right hand that ruined the outfit, in my opinion.

"Everything's going right tonight. We're going to win this year, I feel it. Hell, we rescued the only judge from his kidnappers."

"Don't get overconfident," Susan said, waving her finger at Jack.

Jack shrugged as he bit off more of his cheeseburger. He rolled the wrapper into a ball and tossed it at a nearby trashcan but it bounced off. He didn't notice and kept walking.

"What do you think happened to Cold Steel?" Susan asked in her sympathetic way.

"No one knows for sure, but I heard..." Jack mimed as if he were slitting his own throat.

Susan gasped and shook her head. "I hope not. I hope Hammer went easy on him and just sent him to exile."

That didn't seem like something the dictator I met would do, but I kept my mouth shut. I was carrying one of Dan's drums with my right arm but I switched it to my left when it got too tired.

"Good riddance. He deserved it," said Dan. "Playing around with our government like it's his toy. He could have destabilized the entire country and sent us back into chaos."

After such a morbid conversation, the rest of our journey toward the John Hancock seemed slower, more somber.

But there was nothing somber about the scene around us. The road was full of families carrying red pendants and streamers, eating cone dogs, buying their children turns at impossible carnival games along the side. Rock music blared through speakers every few yards. Each song was followed by the same obnoxious advertisement for the American Rock Star competition we were at.

" - turn to any government-sponsored news station," the ad went, "to watch this year's American Rock Star competition, and send a wall message to vote for your favorite band! Watch as Hammer consults America's choice and picks the band to play at the 2100 World Heritage Festival in Mexico City!"

We reached the park around the John Hancock building where two Ferris wheels rose above the forest in front, along with a red rollercoaster they somehow set up to weave above the paths. We walked along one of these trails, a train of screaming riders twirling into a corkscrew above us, to an enormous steel building set up for the event right in front of where the marble steps and water fountain were. I looked up at the steel beams, which were still being worked on by robots, with awe.