We had noticed that our small, sad little world appeared to be winding
down. Though we were too tired to quarrel, we did so anyway, in the
skies, on crumbling street corners, on the few remaining fields. The
sky rarely made it past a sickly shade of angry yellow on most days,
which had an amplifying effect on the industrial stacks on the horizon
in every direction. The sound of a distant train's air-horn no longer
seemed distant, mysterious, haunting, but, rather, close and
exasperating in the chemically charged air.

There was little left worth consuming in our world, though plenty of
souls remained to consume. In fifty-seven short years we had reached
new heights of production, matched them and mined, killed and
processed anything that got in the way of creating ever newer heights.

I was walking home one yellow afternoon via a different section of
town to avoid a reported patch of street fighting when I noticed a
pawn shop on my alternate route. I retained enough of my past self to
allow me to be sucked inside its doors.

My future is not as strictly regimented as those depicted in many of
the old dystopias, but my modest clothes combined with an appearance
nearly free from starvation, earned me looks of suspicion or worse
from the other pawn shop customers.

I was able to ignore these looks.

In better days, I would have enjoyed the store much more thoroughly.
Bits of games and electronics, obsolete and broken, littered the
store's shelves, but still appealed to me as methods for distracting a
tortured soul. Today, however, they simply made me feel a greater
fatigue, overall, until Ithe contents of the third shelf from the
floor in front of the fly-specked front window caught my eye.

I was compelled to look closer and moved across the room to do so, and
my impression had been correct. It was a toy parachute-man, the sort
you throw in the air; when he reaches his peak, his parachute deploys
and he comes down, slowly, beneath a canopy of red, white, blue.

To explain my fascination, as a boy, my sister and I often went with
my father to a lunch counter which specialized in hot dogs. None of
the glamor nor the guilt associated with the modern chains, simply
kililng yourself and feeling good about it. A stranger there gave me
a strikingly similar (to my recollection) parachute man, for being a
"good boy." This gift was enjoyed for countless hours in a nearby
field to our house, me throwing him above my head, my baby sister
sitting on the ground and laughing at the "flying man."

I paid a mere twelve Euros for my new "friend" and left the store,
earning only a few more strange looks for my effort.

I was able to ignore these looks.

On the way home, I stopped to eat at one of countless manifestations
of the national burger conglomerate. I sat across the aisle from a
pudgy and dejected-looking little girl. However, she had the good
sense to eat her meal, a five pound BeefSoy Kids' Meal, before playing
with her laptop.

I wondered if my parachute-man would bring the little girl a small
measure of of the delight I had once experienced. The thrill of
seeing the army man outlined in red, white, blue.

I was not able to ignore the suspicious, beady-eyed stare of the
girl's mother and decided it was not for me to know.