This past Sunday, enjoying a casual afternoon jaunt through the countryside in our jalopy, we drove along the Old Post Road until we reached Old Mill Way. There was, predictably, a pond nearby, where indolent visitors could over-feed already obese ducks, or just sit on a decaying wooden bench to gawp at ripples on the water.
In a hundred years time, I remarked to my wife, as we tossed hunks of bread towards an especially greedy grebe, in the dystopian future, people very much like ourselves will be driven along the Old Fed Ex Route in their self-driving car until they reach Old Shopping Plaza Way. They will walk past the quickweed and crabgrass filled jungle that used to be a Best Buy store; toss hunks of cloned chicken meat at the dog-sized rats in the rubble of the food court; then they will go and get a mocha latte from Starbucks because, like the proverbial cockroach after a nuclear holocaust, Starbucks will still be there, brewing coffee in the ruins. Or perhaps people will have stopped drinking coffee by then. Our descendants will be all about the ultra-hydrating, super-fortified water for sale. At restaurants, instead of choosing between bottled water or tap, diners will be offered either stagnant or fresh; the fresh water will obviously cost a small fortune and arrive at your table in a bottle labeled Nestle or Coke or whatever.
I turned to my wife for a response to my depressing prognostications, but she had wisely moved away to the benches and was watching the sun disappear behind a line of trees in the distance. You've got to enjoy the moment while you can, she always says.
