Yesterday’s installment brought us deeper into Adam Harkin’s world: environment pollution; extreme economic inequality; and volatile storms that erupt with only a moment’s warning. Today we continue our journey with Adam on the train. We're immersing ourselves ever-deeper into the society in which he exists. Those in power have figured out that time, indeed, is life’s most precious commodity and to monopolize the time of their consumers is to control them absolutely.
A Personal Note: I have something in common with Adam, I’m a vintage watch collector. The one in the photo below is my favorite, a 1918 Blackjack Pershing Elgin trench watch from World War 1. If you look closely there are forty-eight small stars around the outside of the porcelain dial, one for each of the U.S. States in 1918…Hawaii and Alaska weren’t yet part of the United States.
Thanks for joining me today, let’s get on with today's adventure!
Did you miss Part 6 of Alarm Clock Dawn? If so Click Here to read it.
Part 7
Adam’s anxiety was always worse in confined places. Even though this was meant to be a relaxing experience he could feel the desperate energy of the frazzled businesspeople in expensive suits. They were hurried and hollow, every day rushing frantically through the doors to grab their seats. Most would turn on their tablets to squeeze in another hour of work before they got home to their families or just enjoy a precious few hours of solitude before their own individual soul-killing routine was repeated.
“I just don’t understand why I can’t lose weight,” Adam overheard a woman say as she sucked melted chocolate off her fingers while the other hand reached for a small box of complimentary truffles. A man with a blank stare twisted the top off of an energy shot, tipped back his head, and drank it in one gulp. It seemed everyone had their own means of coping—something to numb them from the pain of their miserable existence.
As much as Adam tried to view it otherwise, he was starting to feel as though his future was inescapable. Each day he was beginning to identify more with these people he crossed paths with. It seemed as though they were mere zombies stumbling about in a vast wasteland of materialism. The routines of life slowly became their blinders as day after day rushed by. They had been conditioned their whole lives to believe that all there was to life was work and an endless pursuit of possessions.
Under the soft glow of the lights of the subway car Adam could see the weariness in their faces from worry and lack of restful sleep. Insomnia was epidemic. It wasn’t just their physical appearance that bothered him, though. Even more disturbing was a certain emptiness about them, as though their very spirit had evaporated.
Wake up, go to work, come home, repeat.
It was the kind of vacuum that could only be created by the absence of hope that things could change. Even though they thought they forgot, their souls hadn't, and this was the nagging whisper that told them there was something more to life than this.
They were all obedient consumers, millions of tiny pistons in a massive economic engine that kept this very flawed system moving forward. Most of these people only maintained their lifestyles with the assistance of credit. Once the credit was a sign of wealth; now it was merely a crutch that propped up for the façade of the dwindling middle class.
Adam feared his was a glimpse of his life in ten years, and the images sickened him. He felt a panic attack coming on and did what he had learned to do in his meditation classes. He began taking very deep, deliberate, measured breaths, counting to five as he inhaled and again as he exhaled.
He then looked at the face of his vintage watch, nearly a hundred years old. The tick of the movement, like a heartbeat, was soothing to him. It gave him solace to wear something from a place in time that existed long before life had become so empty and fast.
With each day that passed he felt the horror grow stronger. The unrelenting fear that quelled inside him was that he might one day end up like these people on the train, his hopes and dreams, almost everything that made him human, fully extinguished. God, please don’t let me end up like them, Adam whispered under his breath.
As the train cleared the edge of downtown, the car’s subtle sway soothed Adam’s anxieties. He again opened his eyes and through the soot-smudged windows saw what he imagined the end of civilization might look like. Countless cooking fires were flickering within sight of the train tracks. These fires were tended to by the small but growing groups of homeless who lived in communes on the outskirts of the cities.
As odd as it may sound, Adam felt a strange affinity towards them because in their own way they gave him hope for humanity. The middle class dream that was sold to this society was clearly a sham, and these people not only realized that but either by choice or not they were no longer part of it. For them there was no more working long hours for little pay, no more surviving with the crutch of credit. In his eyes, these were the world’s only truly honest souls left.
Adam hated how jaded and bipolar his thoughts were becoming. He noticed his mood made wide pendulum swings from gratitude for the blessings in his life to the fear that his life was passing him by and he was frittering away the best of his years. If there isn’t more to this life, then all of this physical creation was just a cruel joke, he thought as he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER 3
Johann glanced up at the gold mantle clock. It read 8:55. Seth Busby would be here to give him is morning briefing in a matter of seconds. He reclined in his high-back leather chair and smoothed the front off his crisp navy blue suit, his manicured fingers interlacing behind a mane of silvery hair. Johann exuded the pure confidence and power of an emperor. He was the epicenter of XenTek, the most powerful company the world had ever known. His vast empire was born by his father’s shrewdness and vision. Johann remembered how everyone thought his father was a fool to pay the government so much for a few truckloads of what most people thought was experimental aircraft wreckage.
Two faint knocks on the door interrupted the memories of his father.
“Come in,” Johann commanded.
To be continued. The next installment of Alarm Clock Dawn will appear at the same time tomorrow when, antagonist, Johann Pfizer returns and we learn more about him and XenTek.
Alarm Clock Dawn is the first novel of a trilogy. The sequel entitled, Truth Is Stranger, will be published in the Spring of 2017.
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