Chapter 28: Harbor East Subdivision

Look at my new razor-hydro-silence-power goggles.
With'em, I can see for miles and miles.
It is late and long ago in the summer and the sky is red, orange and purple.
The crickets remind me that life is going on.
I remember that cars have not yet been invented.
My eyes water against the dry wind.
What is that?
Who is this?
I begin to walk.
I enjoy walking through space, because the shapes move and change.
Cars have been invented by now, and the roads are here and paved black and hot.
I saw a dead terrier on the side of the road here. It had curly white hair and a pudgy little face. His head lay in a small pool of his own blood. I had to stare at him in disbelief for several minutes. Not sure what to make of it yet. Something can be so disgusting and heartbreaking at the same time. Sadness is an ugly little man with hurt in his feelings. After a minute, all the sounds returned.
In the future, where I live, you can never have silence. There is always the sound of machines humming nearby. Or you can hear the mechanical drone of the highway not too far away. Nature is a luxury, a tourist attraction. It is kept to a minumum, for safety reasons. The ordered set.
Most terriers have owners, or at least former owners. I did not expect to meet these people, but the little dog linked our lives together now, in the general scheme of things.
In the distance, some big yellow tractors were digging a large hole.
In the future, much of the Earth has been paved for automobiles. Cars are living extensions of the human organism. Today, it seemed pathetic and horrible.
They sped past me like wild yelps. Avoiding unecessary human interaction at 70 MPH.
I saw a neighborhood with houses, but no people. The silence was uncomfortable, as I walked down the empty street. All the lawns were perfectly manicured.
A sign beyond the highway overpass insisted: "Welcome To Harbor East Subdivision."
Walking, I am the pedestrian. The huge sign indicates that I am entering Harbor East Subdivision.
The name does not have a “certain ring” to it. No.
It sounds like some kind of US military operation, perhaps a CIA mind control experiment gone horribly wrong in the late 1950s. There is no one in the front yard of any house, and the only sounds come from the highway in the distance. It all begins to look like a twisted epilogue to some movie about the dangers of nuclear testing. Presently, I step in the remains of another dead animal.
The cat's head is crushed on one side, and blood has poured out of his mouth. He has beautiful shades of coffee, chocolate and vanilla colors in his fur.
As I walked up to the body, a group of flies swirled up off the carcass, visibly annoyed that I had interrupted their feast.
The cat's eyes had been blown out of his skull, and they hung violently out of the sockets.