The Thrill

How do you know?  When does it become obvious that someone is or isn't right for you?  What does that even mean?  John couldn't tell the difference.  At least that was his experience this far into his 40 years of life on this earth.  These questions bounced around in his head, almost driving him away from women all together.  But he was a red-blooded male would couldn't resist getting caught up in the charm of a beautiful woman.

John usually felt that he could stat answering the first two questions about six months into the relationship.  Which was close to the worst time.  Long enough together that there is some real bonding, but short enough that there is still some of the newness and excitement of the unknown.  It was usually a pivotal time in the relationship, when both parties realize that they are going to have something real invested in it if they stay in.

Occasionally, the decision would be made for him.  Non committal females are more common than you'd think.  At least in John's experience.  Maybe it really was just him?  What was he doing that scared them off?  That sent them in other directions searching for new and different experiences.

The End

There is a terrible moment in your life that you realize that you won't be a rock star.  You'll never be that guy strumming on a guitar and crooning while a cutey wistfully looks up from the crowd.  Bats her lashes, tosses her hair, makes you notice her.  That one.  It won't happen.  Ever.

This moment cannot happen when you are very young.  There's just too much in front you.  It still could happen.  You could be that guy.  But then life happens.  And the moment sneaks up on you.  You don't really have an inkling that its coming and boom.  Boom!

You will be nobody's hero.  Nobody's.  Not even your own.  And then what do you have.  Are we all just to be our hero in five years?  There is no satisfaction there.  None.  And thus we fill our lives with packing peanuts to fill the void.

In Gary's case, the peanuts were varied.  Family, work and video games.  Just a normal guy living in a house he could barely afford, working a job he didn't care about, all the day long wanting to be home to say "Hi" to the family and then disappear into his den of Mitty.  His playground of the unreal.  His refuge.  The place that he could be a hero.  The only place.  Knowing full well, that nobody would really appreciate it.

Thought Life

They say that ideas matter.  Ideas influence behavior.  Ideas have an impact.  It was something that people said to him, but he never really understood.

He was a bright kid growing up.  Advanced math, AP classes, reasonably good SAT scores and a good college.  But his thought life was pretty modest.  He worked hard in school.  He worked hard earning some extra spending money.  He tried to impress girls (but never in the right ways).  None of that really required depth to his thinking about ideas.  Ideas that somehow mattered.  Not to him yet.

While he laid in bed over the last three months, he was pretty sure he knew what people meant now.  He knew many things.  And he knew that the future laid out in his mind was going to carry him through the rest of his life.  Nothing like a long convalescence to clarify one's thinking.  Ideas mattered to him now.  And he knew just how to make his mark on the world.

There is No Try

He wasn't any different from most of the others.  Yes, he put in some effort.  At times, a commendable amount of effort.  But things never worked out for him.  He was convinced that some sort of familial cosmic karma backlash was hitting his life hard.  That's what crappy parents get you, he'd think.

And yet its people like him who really just have little understanding of what it is to work at something.  What it is to get expert or really, really good.  Its not enough to put in some effort.  That get's you nowhere, as it had gotten him.  To succeed at many things, it take an almost unconscionable amount of effort.  Focus.  And determination.  Much of which is laudable, but some of which is downright scary.  Psychotic almost.  But that level of commitment often leads to the desired successful outcomes.

He started seeing things in his own son at an early age that indicated that his boy was different.  He just might be going places.  And he was both thrilled and annoyed.  Not nearly as happy for him as he often should have been.  And always from the pathetic vantage point of self-pity.  Those good things could have come my way.  They didn't and over the years the bitterness and resent grew to the point that he and his son didn't spend much time together anymore.  Despite the lip service to the importance of family, somehow the reality of obviously different life outcomes became unbearable.

It also had put a terrible strain on his marriage. . . .

Suck My . . . Fat!

Obesity was everywhere.  Food was cheap.  Bad food was cheaper.  What is the average person to do but to sit in their climate controlled office and eat that afternoon snack to marginally satisfy a hunger that they should have been more than willing to let hang on until dinner.  But it was distracting.

Yes, there were a few good signs.  Though nobody could explain it, obesity among children under 10 years old briefly dipped in the early teens.  But it was short-lived.  Beltlines and BMIs quickly returned to their long-term pattern of increasing.

And so it was that Matthias was hailed as the savior of the first world.

[I really should stop here, but I will not.  I will instead ruin everything and forge ahead]

The idea came to him as a young man, but to a young man with an engineering and business background, but nothing in biology.  But as these worlds were increasingly dependent on each other, a fortuitous job change to a hot new Maryland biotech start-up and several chance encounters later, he solidified plans to pursue the dream.  And as anyone who has attained their dream knows, it never goes quite how they thought it would.

At first the clinical trials showed "promise".  As their data set grew larger and their sites higher, they became "encouraging".  Ultimately, the results proved too exciting to keep under wraps.  It was no less the surgeon general who wholeheartedly recommended use of the device to 80 percent of the adult population in the US.  That's when he went from bio-nerd to mainstream nerd and when the adult population suddenly found its optimum BMI.

It was almost as simple as InvisAlign.  Just hop in bed, plug in and let the blood processing equipment do the rest.  In the middle of the night (at the optimum portion of your sleep cycle), the machine would start withdrawing a small amount of your blood and reduce the energy flowing in the form of simple sugars.  The body would have to work a little bit harder to remove some from your fat stores, but that was the point.  The machine shuts off at the right time to ensure you have a restful nights sleep.  If you spend extra you can even have a bit of a bonus: hang-overs are a thing of the past.

But just as behavior with no consequences doesn't always lead in the direction you'd hope, so it was here.  At first, we as a society basked in the ability to dial in body fat percentages.  Sure, muscle size was still a thing, but one no longer had to worry about their BMI.  We should have known that it was too good to last . . .

Times Had Changed

Change always seems to creep up on people.  Maybe not as individuals, but certainly as a collective group.  So it was with mobile phones and so it was with transportation.  Yes, doesn't really sound that exciting, and it really wasn't.  Except that it changed everything.  Again.  And again.  This time, though gradually, it would have consequences that nobody thought much about until after the change had already come.

For years better transportation and logistics meant that where you made something mattered less and less.  Assembling those iPhones in China made sense despite the fact that essentially none of the chips or parts going into them were actually made in China.  That's all well and good, we got used to that.  But things went to a whole other level when people just stopped living places.  No, homelessness did not suddenly explode in either popularity or prevalence, but people started taking to the skies in ways that were wholly unlike hopping on an airplane to visit NYC.

But that was how it started.  Large airships of high efficiency and low cost which needed no runways.  Suddenly, Pier 81 on the west side of Manhattan became a bustling port of entry.  Sure they were just flights from Boston and DC at first, but they were super quick, reliable.  A bit too much like the Bolt Bus.  Except there was never any traffic.  And they were faster.  But now, 2,000 people could leave Columbus Circle in DC and arrive in NYC in two hours.  Not just those paying $250 for an Acela ticket (though there were expensive first class tickets if you wanted them), but the humble among us who were fine travelling with others who had only $25 to scrape together to journey onward.  That was mildly exciting (mostly to east coasters), but things didn't really get big until people stopped going "home".

For sure, there is nothing like having your own space to go back to after a long day at the office or whatever space your chosen profession takes you.  But things get quite interesting when everybody's personal space doesn't stay still.  Think mobile homes in the sky.  You can't fly them (all autonomous by law), but you get picked up and spend the evening in the air on whatever pattern of the city you preferred the most.  Though some cities had paid "preferred routes" most people just skirted off into the underpopulated airspace and enjoyed a quiet evening with friends and family.