Occupation Superhero

The mid-February morning felt thick and empty. A steadfast sun streamed through earthen, bare forest. Patchy areas of frosted soil let off an opaque mist and the faint rustling of leaves was quiet against Ell’s valor. Peaceful, yet crammed and empty. Her patterned breath left a trail of hot air, long brown hair frayed out from a messy knot while her skin steamed and glistened, muscles shaped, firmly petite under her sweater. Buzzing audio commenced, keeping time to ten more reps.

“16 in a set, Scraps,” she huffed, arms arched wide behind her head.

The terrier mutt rested on a patch of frost, panting. Ell concentrated on numbers, though she couldn’t help counting them as seconds to impact--16 seconds in the air, 16 seconds when you know survival is impossible, in a small plane island-bound over the Atlantic. Maybe that was how long he had before he hit the water. What did he think about? Was that moment also this thick and empty?

“Not now.” The words left her mouth out loud, volume notched up, but it was hard not to. The day was February the 13th, 2029; three years earlier she was 16 and told her father wasn’t coming back.

A large bag of rice swayed from a massive veteran oak: her punching bag. Looking at it alone satisfied Ell. “Frog lifts first,” he used to say. Since jumping jacks were boring, why not do frog lifts? And then he would demonstrate. Her father did an assortment of ridiculous, strange things that made perfect sense. Ell didn’t feel her mind was shaped quite that way. She enjoyed the challenge in calculation, puzzle solving, where there was an answer on the other side. Things could be explained; first break it down and then put it back together. When you know how to build, especially as a team, you can change systems. He said that, too. VisionCorp was a team, a large one, an extension of the 2028 buyout, but he felt his work in the realm of alternative sciences could be of value, especially if it could change the way humanity traveled. That had been her father's biggest dream of all.

She smashed the bag at a run. It lifted up and around the tether in a solid oval, snapping at its side briefly. It didn’t weigh too much. That wasn’t the point... the point was to make it fly and possibly attempt to fill in the empty gaping hole she seemed to be swimming in. It made her sick thinking about her father, yet, it satisfied her like the puzzle when you’re halfway there. She met it again with a kick, followed by a spin into a lower power lunge punch. She jabbed it side to side with her elbows, all while moving the feet.

“Keep moving your feet!” she commanded out loud. Sometimes it seemed she herself could just fly away, like she was almost there. The bag whipped to her direction and she kicked it back in a fell swoop, to utter satisfaction, the burlap exploded, and brown basmati rice rippled into the emptiness, thrashing the thickness, raging into the peace and momentarily, filling the gap.

“That should feed the birds a while” she spoke again outload, but did birds even eat rice? She thought of the time her father explained why chipmunks buried their nuts, “it’s not to hide them” he would say, “it’s because they know that the soil will germinate the nut, making it more digestible and nutritious”. He knew everything. But he was gone now.

“Time to climb, Scraps.”

Ell swung up the first limb of the oak that had been steady and tall ever since she could remember with sprawling branches that arched with great will. Their humble six acres boasted a wooden homestead and a sea of New England forest. She knew the path to the top like the very tree knew itself. She could maneuver to its heights in under a minute. The vantage point of the rolling hills, all so bare from winter seemed to fill in the emptiness, with the green peeking out, little ribbons of matter to fill the space. Her skin was cracking like ice. Her father used to say a worn hand is a wise one. But Ell was only 19, what did she know about being wise.

She stared up at the altruistic sun, which was still very much the sun, despite the adverse times. Flares and disturbances were more common, but still, above all things, you could rely on the sun and the world needed to look to it as an energy source more than ever.

For America, however, that was still only for the few.

The struggle for water, food and power lengthened. Overall global temperature continued to fluctuate, but only in part to stricter regulations on freedom due to an endless series of pandemics. Her father also said these conditions were the perfect economic trap to present a new world model, one he warned would eventually make us all prisoners. That always had sounded crass and ambiguous, now she wasn’t so sure. Resources to continue the current model of transportation and energy remained inconsistent and unresolved, but there was always a Tesla to make you feel better about yourself, not to mention virtually stay connected at all times. Heaven forbid anyone exist without your Pod. Things were upside down after the buyout. It turned out corporations were actually people, and Walmart was king. Whoever made decisions behind closed doors was the president apparently, but following the 2024 “no-elect election,” that person was a stark mystery.

The country was being protected and sealed from other parts of the “dangerous” world. Borders were both mutually broken and built-up to suit consumption models, and of course, “keep out viruses.” Some countries had completely self-contained governments, free from resource and human rights manipulation, but that was not America. While Norway had put gardens up on just about every bus stop (for buses powered by the sun, no less), had a thriving bee population and a group of 40-something women running the country, America had Shark Tank for those ambitious enough to challenge global warming with a product.

Private sectors made up some of the law and energy, transportation even, but ultimately it was funded by the largest corporate power in the 51 states under one cozy umbrella: VisionCorp. It was One World headquarters for the United States. They bought out the national debt and began building in their vision. The latest cry for movement towards singularity was Single Station Broadcast. Most were already subscribers as every Smart Pod, the world’s new take on the cellular device, was a subsidiary of VisionCorp. SSB would tune in at the same binary frequency so the population could be more unified not only in their thinking but consumption.

Ad agencies then got to purchase air space and broadcast Single Station across the entire nation during allotted times. Needless to say, this upset a lot of citizens, but as days passed, it turned out that most caved to the benefits, and to the feeling of living under an ever-present loaded gun because it seemed safer than independence. Single Station Broadcast and VisionCorp were the new democracy and it was far from free. And as for data mining and surveillance, that was an acceptable form of the times, too “they’ll give you the illusion of freedom til the cows come home” she could hear her fathers voice. Ell could hear the bells somewhere in the distance, and suddenly, it wasn’t so empty anymore.

Scraps was desperately taking in as much of the chilled sunlight as he could, contracting and expanding his torso like a breathing balloon.

“Right,” she whispered quietly to herself, reining in her contempt. “Take a moment.”

Ell sat in silence, remembering something else her father had always reminded her: “When you can’t quite get something, or if you’ve worked yourself too hard to see the forest for the trees, sit, close your eyes, and breath, preferably in sunlight.”

She did, and it helped, though he may have always known the answer, to her it was all relative; his words, his energy, his life, one that was taken away. All her father’s words and memories were locked safely in coveted corners of her mind, it was where she went when the world couldn’t possibly understand, or alternatively, when the world couldn’t possibly understand her place in it. As if she could even understand that.

Ell juggled some grapefruit and picked one to spoon out with honey. Scanning environmental and world headlines on her pod, she quietly chuckled in amusement to herself.

“‘Can trash be the answer to the pending energy crisis?’ Yes,” she nodded, knowing only a fraction of the country could actually employ such a feat on their own.

“‘SSB says more solar flares to come, can they be used as weapon technology?’, ‘another false claim of deadly virus warfare from China in effort to increase tariffs, so many already perished, how could anyone use such horror as a bargaining chip?’” She closed her Pod’s screen protector that shuttered around the round devise which was designed to slide perfectly onto your middle finger. It was weird, that fact that it was shaped a bit like an apple, but it worked.

“Don’t believe everything you read,” she said to Scraps. “Fake news is still real.” Ell smiled at the dog. Lucky for him no impending doom could supersede being left home alone.

“Make yourself useful,” she ordered as she locked up, pushed her bike out of the screened sundeck and screamed into the morning air.

It felt good against her skin. Today she would tell Miss Johnson the truth, and Miss Johnson would understand.