Tevun-Krus #75 - International 4: SolarPunk

Because of You - An English Short Story by @MadMikeMarsbergen

1

I was wide awake when the time-shift occurred, though at the time I hadn't the faintest idea such a thing had happened. Normally I sleep like a baby on planes—something about the constant droning of the engines puts me out like a lullaby—but I didn't then.

Not on that flight.

It'd been a spur-of-the-moment thing, getting that ticket back home to San Francisco. Had to leave my girlfriend behind in Tokyo, which was tough, as I wanted—needed—her love and support to strengthen me for what I was about to face at home. My mom had cancer, a particularly vicious kind, and it had gotten into her bones. It sounded bad from the phone call my dad had made to me. Mom was down to a weight she hadn't been since she was a teenager, and losing more and more by the day.

I needed to get home fast, Dad said. "Your mother is calling your name at night," Dad said.

Fearful I wouldn't see my mom again, paralyzed by the idea drilling away at my mind that she'd never see me get married and have kids, I maxed a couple credit cards and booked the last seat on the next flight out. ANA Flight 008. Seat 14C.

My first time flying business and I couldn't even enjoy it.

I remember it well.

The movies and shows weren't grabbing me, but my mind was running on autopilot, haunting me with visions of my mother looking skeletal, her hair falling out in brittle clumps, crying out in pain with every shaky, perilous step she took. It was close to five in the morning and my eyes felt as though they had sand in them. But I still couldn't sleep. And I couldn't think, either—those visions, you see.

So I tried to distract myself by playing my Nintendo Switch. The guy in the seat across the aisle glanced at the device in my hands, smirked, then went back to resting his head against the window shade, watching something on the screen in front of him.

At exactly 4:58 AM, as I killed Bokoblins in Zelda, the plane lurched ever so slightly, all the in-flight entertainment screens flashed pink for a fraction of a second, and my Switch restarted itself.

I hadn't the faintest idea my life—all our lives—had just changed.

2

We knew once we started descending from the clouds that the world we were in wasn't the one we remembered. Something had happened, though at the time nobody knew what. I'd been away longer than some, but even I could see this wasn't the same San Francisco I'd left behind. All of us stared out our windows at the changed city below, and those who didn't have the privilege of a window seat crowded around those who did.

Solar panel–covered buildings glinted under the rising Sun. On others, windmills lazily turned on the rooftops, each of them shrouded by some type of firm mesh screen to keep the birds from being mangled by the rotating blades. Growing below, various grasses and trees and shrubs brought new meaning to the concept of a "living roof," as birds made nests of the plants. Cars driving the streets looked sleeker, more modern and uniform than any I'd seen before—in Japan or otherwise.

"This must be a joke," someone said. I looked over to see a man tapping on the window beside, as if doing that would break the spell and he'd see the normal San Francisco again.

I saw the Golden Gate Bridge—given a new, shinier coat of red paint—draped in fog yet to be dissolved by sunlight. It made me hopeful about my mom, seeing that eighty-year-old bridge looking brand-spanking-new, as if all the wears and tears of time could be forgotten with only the right treatment.