Alone

Alone

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Kenny A. Chaffin

We built the dishes and listened. We scanned the skies seeking others, not knowing if we were alone or if we could even know. We launched probes, built silver orbiting machines to watch, to seek, to search from above an atmosphere growing more deadly with each passing day.

We studied fossils, physics, and chemistry to learn how life came to our lonely watery planet. We studied the universe for clues, for answers. We created computers, robots, and AIs and upon realizing our fate set them free. Others were yet to be. We would never meet. We had arrived too soon.

Dreaming of New York City

Dreaming of New York City

by

Kenny A. Chaffin

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Kenny A. Chaffin

We wore masks, filters, respirators on the streets. It was all so normal. Crowds rushing along the sidewalks, hailing taxis, tourists craning their necks looking up at the buildings and in Times Square. The hotdog vendors also wore respirators, prepared hotdogs to order inside transparent hoods atop their carts and served them in sealed plastic bags. My friends took me to their tenement. I went along. Inside the double-sealed door it was just long open identical connected ‘living spaces.’ There were raised squares, perhaps beds. Many had cats or dogs lounging on them. I recognized a couple of the cats. Each space had square depressions with bench-like seats surrounding a television that was recessed into something like a darkened underground cave. People watched, enthralled. The cats slept. I needed to pee as always and someone showed me the facilities. It was a utility room or janitor closet. A sink hung on the wall with a pipe and funnel draining into a hole in the cement floor. A loose rubber hose with a showerhead hung on the wall. I peed in the hole doing my best to avoid peeing on the floor or on the funnel/drain from the sink. When I emerged my friends had disappeared, I wandered through the connected domiciles looking for them but seeing only strangers sitting, watching TV. The cats slept.