Do we even know where we’re going or are we just driving? I suppose it doesn’t matter, as long as we’re having fun.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Alexei Storm-Daii
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human / Strife
Age: 34, physically about 26
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 779 words
 

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Cars aren’t all that common here. We do live in a scattered enough area that certain distances need to be crossed off but considering how few of us are, some do live further off but, for the most part, unless you’re really under the weather, everything can be reached with a bit of walking.

I know what cars are, I know what motorcycles are. I’ve seen the latter in real life—at least what looked like a modified one—and the former, well, I’ve seen those in the virtual reality room, and I’ve seen things that were cars without being cars in the amusement part. I think they call those carts, not cars. The thing they used to use in certain areas or with certain games so people could get from point A to point B a little easier. I honestly think there are a few electric carts around. I might have seen one or two at this point.

The first time I watched a movie with a car in it, I was confused. I had no idea as to what that thing was and how it worked. Even back then, I had a certain fascination with DNA and how it held everything together if you would. I know that this isn’t really the way one should look at DNA but that’s how I look at it most of the time and it is what it is. It is at the core of everything living.

Now, I know very well that cars aren’t alive. Not in the sense that we are. I know that there have been prototypes of cars with an AI implanted in them but I’m pretty sure that whole thing crashed into absolute nothingness when The End for the world out there happened.

It’s been years, but I still remember the ending of that movie, how the man sitting on the front passenger side was asking the driver—the woman whose life he’d essentially just saved—if they had a destination in mind or not. She didn’t answer, though they did pan towards her with the camera and the little smile she had on her lips. I assume that in the movie universe, he saw that smile, even though he was looking outside of the car. The last few words he spoke before the screen went dark, were about how he supposed it didn’t really matter, so long as they were having fun.

As someone who has never really been in a moving vehicle—I know we also have one medical transport vehicle and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it be used considering there can be doorways used anywhere—it feels like such a strange thing to say. Can it really be relaxing to have to keep an eye on everything that surrounds you, including that big vehicle, and consider it having fun? I know I have very little to base myself on, for this, but it really does feel as though it would be stressful to have to drive a car.

I know that those are my own thoughts, probably not echoed at all by anyone in the older two generations. They’ve had plenty of experience with these things but maybe it’s just my nature that makes me this way. I still don’t think I’d want to know how to drive. Then again, I’m also that one person who doesn’t want to make use of the bumper car things. I know they’re meant to be driven mostly recklessly so that you do ram into others, but it doesn’t feel right for me to even use those.

In a way, I feel as though I might really never know. I don’t think it really matters, though, it’s just one of those things and we don’t need wheels, at least, not with a motor attached to it. We do have a wagon for the days we have to buy bigger items than we can easily carry home because the system is also not meant for these heavy things, but that’s just one thing of so many, in the end.

I don’t know why I still think about that movie; I think I’d moved out not long before when I’d watched it and that goes back a decade and then some. Not a whole lifetime ago but still long enough that I don’t think it should stay with me so long. I think it’s been on my mind because I saw the carcass of a car on the last getaway we went to. I think they left it there on purpose; it had been overgrown with nature and it looked nice in its own strange and abandoned way.

Wow, you weren’t kidding. There really is a dragon in the sky.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Madison McBride
Race: Human – Meta – Weaver
Age: 44, physically about 21
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 780 words
 

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There are times when I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of the people out there. The people from back then. The people whose lives were spent without the knowledge of there being something so much bigger out there. Don’t ask me why I do it. I just sort of do. It’s not a common occurrence and, you know, it happens mostly when I find myself opening up a book.

I’m not an avid reader, though I do like picking up books to read. Though, it feels as though it might be a partial lie to state that I’m picking up a book to read, the books I pick up if you would, are audio versions of the books in question because sitting still and just reading is strange for me. Even while I have a book playing through my earbuds, I’ll be moving around.

If it’s not taking care of the shark in the moat, it’ll be taking care of the house or the yard, or I’m on the treadmill because yeah, wouldn’t you figure, there’s a treadmill in the house. That in itself is a fairly recent addition but I’ve been pretty happy with the exercise room as a whole, it feels as though I have more control over what’s happening with my health. I found myself hitting a bit of a wall about five years ago after going in for my yearly medical and the results, while not bad, weren’t what I wanted so, yeah. Made a small change and yeah, I’m happier with things.

Anyway.

When I get an audiobook going, I try to let myself be swept into the story completely. The one thing I do like about the newer version of audiobooks is that as of the last decade or so, a few people have been adding soundtracks if you would, to audiobooks that already existed. I don’t so much mean music as I mean quiet or not-so-quiet background noises that fit in with the story being told, it’s an option that can be turned on or off as per the person listening to the book.

I feel like it’s just an adventure to be listening to the books this way. I let myself be transported into worlds I might know nothing of, and it seems to add to that desire I find myself having now and again to try and put myself in the shoes of the people out there. It works well when I listen to post-apocalyptic works, or dystopian ones, I feel.

The most recent book in my collection is about how this main character ends up being transported from their world—a modern-day earth where nothing but humans are about—into a high-fantasy one and at one point in the gasp, they gasp, all excitedly, because why yes, would you look at that, there’s a dragon in the sky.

In these situations, I have a hard time getting into the book and it’s why I let myself sort of try and wrap my mind around what it must have been like out there before and what a world with nothing but humans might be like. Discovering all these new things that you’d never known to exist before, it had to be something, right?

The time they spend in that different world is very short, but it certainly does leave a lasting impression on them. There’s a second and third book in the series but I haven’t looked for them yet. The story was interesting, it had its cute moment, but there just was something missing and it’s not just because the author seemed to have issues putting into clear words what this whole, grand, wonderful high-fantasy world was like. Other than a few mentions of dragons in the sky and women—no men—being able to do magic with no real explanation of how or why, it left me wondering if it was honestly worth trying to read the other two.

There are certain authors that just don’t have what it takes to write a fantasy world. I’m aware that if you’ve never been anywhere near anything that might pass for a fantasy world, writing about it might be hard, but there is a difference between having issues writing about something and just not going into details for anything at all.

Anyway. I did listen to the whole book; at least I figure that I did get that much done, so I had that going for me. It still wasn’t a really great book and maybe one day I’ll consider listening to the other two but, for now, it has been put on a back shelf.