Sarah Chin
Flash fiction
The window in front of my desk is set to the Garden State Parkway in May 2081.
The Americana setting expansion pack I purchased promised “fully immersive realism calibrated to fuel your creative fire.” I’d hoped it would inspire, maybe even bring something back. I just didn’t know what.
Now, I’m face-to-face with a sprawling trash heap haphazardly concealed beneath a thin veneer of sweetgrass, coded in such a way that the light always hits it just right—sunset-pink, warm gold waving in the artificially randomized breeze. A suggestion of something pastoral.
I hear the faint whir of driverless sedans alongside the groaning of a few retrofitted eighteen-wheelers, clunking on outmoded software. A seagull swoops into the heap and doesn’t reemerge. Smoke follows—gray at first, then black. I don’t know if the expansion pack includes spontaneous combustion features or if this is just a rendering glitch. Either way, it feels like a prompt, like something I’m supposed to chase.
I dip my fountain pen in an inkwell for extra luck and start writing on the blank piece of paper. Smoke suggests change. Maybe consequence?
Then I pause. There’s a tree somewhere by the side of this highway—I’m sure of it. I saw it during the demo. A stunted little oak with rusted dog tags nailed into its bark. The program must’ve archived it. Maybe the developers thought it was too sentimental. Maybe too real?
I try to summon it back. “Retrieve object: oak tree,” I command. Nothing. “Add object: tree. Highway-side.” Nothing. The smoke gets thicker.
I lean closer to the window, wondering if I should just write the smoke. Follow it down, into the heap, into what’s smoldering.
Instead, I type: There was once a tree by the side of this highway. No one remembers it now. But I do.
