Fading Away

 I'm tired.

What year is it, again? 2016? Wow. Time really does fly. The good old days are long gone, but if I close my eyes, sometimes I can still reach out and almost, almost feel them again.

Me? I'm a member of a small group of folks who live in a quiet place in Las Vegas. Yes, such places exist. A lot of action happens in this city, but we're on the fringe, just like how we're fringe in everything else.

Sometimes, I try to shut out the rest of the world. I immerse myself in my music, and try to force the old days to reappear. The sixties, the seventies, the eighties... even the nineties. Anything but these "New Tens". Not this. Not this world, not this "advanced" technology...

Heard last year about the Alruthines. A race of subterranean creatures who tried to wipe out modern technology because it emitted certain pulses that paralyzed them. Some of the folks here were rooting for them, and I wasn't surprised, but of course the kobbers took care of that. Now the Alruthines are finding their own way in things. Some sticking around, some going into hiding, some moving away...

...We don't have those options. We're running out of time.

I don't feel old. At least, I don't think I do. The descriptions of old age I've read in books don't match up, not quite. But it's close. I mean, I don't have the same kind of body people do. I look like a person on the outside, but anyone that sticks around me for long can figure me out. Most of my friends here can't even manage that.

My energy is ebbing away, though. A little bit at a time. A little bit more every year. Every time someone downloads an MP3, or uses Spotify. My hair's been getting grey streaks in it for a while now, and it can be hard to get up in the morning. I'm not the only one who's had that problem, either. I know we're in danger if we don't do something.

Some of my friends, they suggested we use the kobbers. They think if we interact with them, they could make us strong again... but the kobbers love newer technology. They have crazy robots and machines there, made by brilliant mechanics. I have to admit, even our own mechanic probably couldn't measure up. But... some of us think we have to fight them. Because of that, I mean. We're a proud group... a group of excuses. Surely it's the rest of the world who's wrong, right? It's not that we're inferior. Can't be. Especially because if we are... then maybe we're supposed to go away? Maybe this is just the natural order of things? But we don't want to go. We want to do what we did so long ago... make people happy, entertain them, enrich their lives in ways this new stuff can never manage. That's what we believe. So they say they have to fight the kobbers, because if we win, it would prove we aren't inferior.  I don't want to fight them. They scare me. But what's happening to me is scaring me even more...

I don't know if I'm going to have a choice for much longer.

FORMAT WARS

COMING SUMMER 2016