Today was his first day off he could remember in quite a long time, though his memory may be a bit hazy, as many of the noorotropics he takes have the subsequent side effect of closing off bad memories.

This morning he woke up at four a.m., ready to start his day off in style. After walking ten steps to his kitchen he chugged whatever was left in his Mr. Coffee kraft from the day before and automatically set it for four sequential multi-pot brew cycles. he put the grounds and water in their four compartments and hit the button.

His shower had stopped working weeks ago, but luckily his kitchen sink hose reached over far enough to his four whole square feet of kitchen space. After his shower broke, he had ordered a kiddy pool to sink shower in. yesterday he forgot to empty it and he realized this one will need to be quick. When he was clean enough, he grabbed onto his disinfectant hand scanner and went over to his laundry bin, finding the right set of black clothing that doesn’t have quite the same richness of black as its companion pieces. He scanned them and heard the microscopic popping of his hand laser. It meant it was working.

Slipping on his black cargo shorts, he went back to the kitchen six feet away to find he needed to make another pot of coffee. While on his fifth pot of coffee he decided it would be a good time to take his suppository stimulants. They should probably last him til’ noon, but he put a few in his pocket just in case. He checked the local listings for anything fun going on, scrolling through all the contrived advertisements and self-promotions on his ten different social media accounts. Everything seemed to be those events you go to that you don’t want to be too early for, and when you are early, you experience everything the event has to offer faster than if you had been on time because no one was there, and subsequently you’re finished with the event before it event starts. He decided he might as well walk around town for a bit before getting his heart set on anything anyway. He scanned his coat, heard the pops, popped it on, and headed out the door.

Instead of heading toward the parking garage he went to his apartment elevator. Stretching the legs was good for you and gasoline is costing more Burger Bucks than ever these days, despite all the government subsidies. The elevator door began opening, its speed was like slugs and what should have been a woosh ended up sounding more like a wheeze. Sauntering to the console he entered the ground floor, causing the entire shaft to rumble and shake, upset that it was told to do any sort of work. The doors closed just as quickly as they opened, and he was on the ground floor in a mater of tens of minutes. By the end, the elevator had a total of eleven people, all packed tightly together, one or two from each floor also decided that it would be a fine day to go outside. It was, after all, the one day of the fall season.

After repeatedly popping his collar without success he headed outside into the brisk yet refreshing wind. The skyline rose high above the streets with LED signs imitating neon tubing all turned off. Windows of the buildings could barely be seen behind all the signage, giant screens, and billboards that plastered the sides of the city street. The sidewalks look like a pachinko machine with large round objects bouncing into each other yet with their forward momentum ever so slightly led astray. These people all infatuated with their electronic devices to look up, but their bodies being too round to suffer any major damage when running into each other. He always saw navigating the streets as a game of Tag, or more accurately People Are Lava.

As he dodged and waved down the street he kept an eye open for anything in particular to do, paying brief attention to the men spinning large signs in the middle of the road, dodging speeding cars while attempting to get the attention of even one lowly sphere, to no avail. Understandably, his eyes moved up to the massive billboards to see if anything was new on streaming platforms or if one of those classic “theaters” had anything going on. At this point most entertainment had immigrated into the home or on the go as compared to the big hassle of going in person to somewhere else. Now, for the most part, people’s wanting to go somewhere else was a somewhere else for the pure excitement of watching things on the go. They didn’t have any place in particular to go, but they went so they could experience what they were provided that necessitated the act of going and being on the go.

His eyes moved down to the ground. Bottles and papers and shoes were everywhere. The sidewalk a series of gutted paths from lack of maintenance and the rise in average weight applied per square inch. No amount of advance in concrete production could take the same kind of beating the national heart disease rate had taken.

One piece of paper did catch his eye though. He had stopped walking and caught it with his shoe. Round objects continued to gently bounce on his backside as he bent over to pick it up. The paper read as follows:

Movie Night!

Come to The North Face Park to watch a free movie in the park!

Popcorn and liquor provided!

Movie starts at sunset!

Sponsored by the Persian and Greco-Roman Educational Community Outreach and Rehabilitation Center for the Betterment of Society and Other Subsequent Happenings

“Huh. Neat.” He said to himself, to no one, while trapped in an endless moving sea of everyone.

He went back to his apartment after finding something to do and forgot to find something to do until then, so he decided to call up his friend Malcom. He and Malcom went way back. Almost a whole four weeks. Enough to at least know each other’s favorite pizza toppings when they double stream and chill with girls they met on one of their six hundred installed dating apps.

This week was called BrahmZ. Its app gimmick was that you only could match with people based on whether they liked or disliked the composer Johannes Brahms. Of course, no one that used this app had ever bothered to listen to any of his music, and so it mostly became an app about whether you liked thick, full beards or not.

He hit up Malcom on his device.

“Eyy, Malcom, what up!”

“Nothin’ much broski, what can I do for ya?”

“To be honest, I’m real neck deep in the middle of doin’ nothin’ on my one day off this month. I found a flyer for a movie later tonight, if ya wanna go.”

“Like a date?”

“No… yes, like a bromance.”

“What movie?”

“Well, that’s the thing. It doesn’t actually say. It says there’ll be booze though.”

“Well, then what the fuck DOES the flyer say?”

“Have you ever heard of the… let me find it here… Ah, the ‘Persian and Greco-Roman Educational Community Outreach and Rehabilitation Center for the Betterment of Society and Other Subsequent Happenings’?”

“The… the what now?”

“Y’know, the Persian and Greco-Roman Educational Community Outreach and Rehabilitation Center for the Betterment of Society and Other Subsequent Happenings.”

“It sounds like a front.”

“I know, but for who Malc?”

“Well, obviously it’s too obvious for the Persians, Italians, or the greeks. It’s gotta be one of those Hindi or Buddhist groups trying to rebrand.”

“Y’don’t think it’s just some gurrila marketing tactic by a big dog corp. tryin’ to seem low key? Like, maybe K-Mart came back from the dead.”

“Let’s be real, there’s nothing real about K-Mart.”

“Wallie World, then.”

“Ah, you’re probably right. I just always wanted a shot at reaching inner enlightenment.”

“So then, any guesses on the movie they chose?”

“It’s gotta be something in the public domain, like hell anyone could afford a license to show movies in public these days.”

“So, it’s not Cars 2?”

“Shut the fuck up about Cars 2.”

“But how will I ever find out what kind of car Stalin was? Was he a Gaz? An Uaz? A Lada? Maybe a Volga?

“Shut the fuck up about Cars 2. God damn it. It’s not Cars 2.”

A Zil? Oh my god, what if he was a Mosckvich?”

“Where and when is this thing anyway?”

“The North Face Park at sunset.”

“Alright Cars 2, see you then.”

“Noice.”