06-11-2003, 16:02
He lived halfway between nowhere and the largest city in the Empire; this was the worst form of torture he could imagine. The city offered jobs, crazy forms of entertainment, and the high crime rate he was used to. The country, the nowhere, offered the agrarian life he was born into, the chance to explore the country side and imagine it was a mystical battlefield.
But he couldn't have either. He was stuck in a town of about twenty-five thousand. In this town there were no jobs and there were no farms. It was a morass of the elderly and dying, the young and diluded, the middle-aged and settled down. He sure didn't like it. For entertainment he had three options: the skating rink, the bowling alley, and hard drugs. He couldn't skate, his right ankle was chronically falling apart. He couldn't bowl either - he was afraid to hurt his guitarist fingers. Drugs... drugs he had done and - thankfully or not - given them up.
So what was there? The phone rang and, his parents gone, he picked up the receiver. "Speak to me."
"There's a transformer going through town." The other voice said.
"So what?" Julius asked.
"It's so big that it takes up an entire semi-truck trailer." the voice said excitedly. "If it fell off, even if it had a little charge, it would be hellaciously cool!"
"Let's chase it!" Julius said, realizing this might be his shining moment of the week to see something beyond the tedium of mediocrity.
"Ya, I'll be over in a minute." The line went dead.
Julius put the receiver down, his heart jumping a bit, and threw his boots over the couch. They were good boots, heavy black leather and pristine buckles. He pulled them up and fastened them good and tight, then waited patiently in front of the CRT he so hated. He heard a honk outside and promptly evacuated his house.
Cladius threw him the keys, and Julius jumped behind the wheel. The next few minutes were interesting to say the least. Cladius stayed on his CB, talking to his grandmother, who was trying to get a fix on the trailer via the police scanner. Finally, after some wrangling, they picked up on the trail just as the sun decided to go to sleep.
Making a B-line down a narrow country road, they found their prize; a transformer as big as a garage and bound for a sub-station. In truth, the transformer was so large that the semi-truck didn't carry it on one trailer, but three. There was a small trailer that actually connected to the hitch, the second that carried the behemoth, and a third which hitched to the second and bore the rear wheels.
Julius and Cladius laughed, hardly hysterically, at the plight of the truck driver. He was forced to navigate a ninety-degree turn on a country road with a trailer that was more than the standard fifty-three feet. To add to that, his load was top heavy and cost hundreds of times as much as any loads of goods. But the pace was slow and became boring quickly. Despite the police escort, which was helping get the trucker unstuck, things weren't as interesting as they thought. Then it started to tip; or did it? They couldn't really tell and the next fifteen minutes were pure nail biters. But, to their great dismay, the skillful driver managed to loose himself and headed on down the road with his police escort.
"We never get a break, do we Cladius?"
"No, never." Cladius replied, disgusted with the whole situation. He flipped around through the bandwidth on his CB and, saddly, found no interesting channels. "At least we saw it. Isn't that worth something?"
"No, not really." Julius replied sharply. He turned the ignition, turned the wheel hard to the left, and did a u-turn on the small country road. Julius began to think. God, what am I supposed to do? There's nothing to do in this damned town! Here I am, nineteen, and with nowhere to go! Are you even listening you... just never mind that. Never mind I said! Oh shove off, I'm tired of talking to you.
'Boredom,' Julius typed later that night, recalling the day's activities. 'Can be lethal in large doses. I don't know if I have suffered lethal doses yet, but it must be getting close. I am trapped and there is no means of esape. No one leaves this town forever; they always come back, at least to die. But in the end, no one gets out. No one ever gets out and stays out. And I'm no shitting exception. And the boredom, I guess, will never go away. There is nothing for people like me to do! The damned music stores only sell that pop shit, the damn movie galleries only rent idiotic shit. And to make matters worse, my one friend is so far into communications that I think he views his CBs and HAM radios as people. And the only side effect of boredom is stupidity. Darwin Awards,' Julius typed with some sense of finallity, 'Here I come.'
But he couldn't have either. He was stuck in a town of about twenty-five thousand. In this town there were no jobs and there were no farms. It was a morass of the elderly and dying, the young and diluded, the middle-aged and settled down. He sure didn't like it. For entertainment he had three options: the skating rink, the bowling alley, and hard drugs. He couldn't skate, his right ankle was chronically falling apart. He couldn't bowl either - he was afraid to hurt his guitarist fingers. Drugs... drugs he had done and - thankfully or not - given them up.
So what was there? The phone rang and, his parents gone, he picked up the receiver. "Speak to me."
"There's a transformer going through town." The other voice said.
"So what?" Julius asked.
"It's so big that it takes up an entire semi-truck trailer." the voice said excitedly. "If it fell off, even if it had a little charge, it would be hellaciously cool!"
"Let's chase it!" Julius said, realizing this might be his shining moment of the week to see something beyond the tedium of mediocrity.
"Ya, I'll be over in a minute." The line went dead.
Julius put the receiver down, his heart jumping a bit, and threw his boots over the couch. They were good boots, heavy black leather and pristine buckles. He pulled them up and fastened them good and tight, then waited patiently in front of the CRT he so hated. He heard a honk outside and promptly evacuated his house.
Cladius threw him the keys, and Julius jumped behind the wheel. The next few minutes were interesting to say the least. Cladius stayed on his CB, talking to his grandmother, who was trying to get a fix on the trailer via the police scanner. Finally, after some wrangling, they picked up on the trail just as the sun decided to go to sleep.
Making a B-line down a narrow country road, they found their prize; a transformer as big as a garage and bound for a sub-station. In truth, the transformer was so large that the semi-truck didn't carry it on one trailer, but three. There was a small trailer that actually connected to the hitch, the second that carried the behemoth, and a third which hitched to the second and bore the rear wheels.
Julius and Cladius laughed, hardly hysterically, at the plight of the truck driver. He was forced to navigate a ninety-degree turn on a country road with a trailer that was more than the standard fifty-three feet. To add to that, his load was top heavy and cost hundreds of times as much as any loads of goods. But the pace was slow and became boring quickly. Despite the police escort, which was helping get the trucker unstuck, things weren't as interesting as they thought. Then it started to tip; or did it? They couldn't really tell and the next fifteen minutes were pure nail biters. But, to their great dismay, the skillful driver managed to loose himself and headed on down the road with his police escort.
"We never get a break, do we Cladius?"
"No, never." Cladius replied, disgusted with the whole situation. He flipped around through the bandwidth on his CB and, saddly, found no interesting channels. "At least we saw it. Isn't that worth something?"
"No, not really." Julius replied sharply. He turned the ignition, turned the wheel hard to the left, and did a u-turn on the small country road. Julius began to think. God, what am I supposed to do? There's nothing to do in this damned town! Here I am, nineteen, and with nowhere to go! Are you even listening you... just never mind that. Never mind I said! Oh shove off, I'm tired of talking to you.
'Boredom,' Julius typed later that night, recalling the day's activities. 'Can be lethal in large doses. I don't know if I have suffered lethal doses yet, but it must be getting close. I am trapped and there is no means of esape. No one leaves this town forever; they always come back, at least to die. But in the end, no one gets out. No one ever gets out and stays out. And I'm no shitting exception. And the boredom, I guess, will never go away. There is nothing for people like me to do! The damned music stores only sell that pop shit, the damn movie galleries only rent idiotic shit. And to make matters worse, my one friend is so far into communications that I think he views his CBs and HAM radios as people. And the only side effect of boredom is stupidity. Darwin Awards,' Julius typed with some sense of finallity, 'Here I come.'