MARK JOSEPH KEVLOCK - TIME CAPSULE

Mark Joseph Kevlock has been a published author for nearly three decades. In 2018 his fiction has appeared in more than two dozen magazines, including 365 Tomorrows, Into The Void, The First Line, Toasted Cheese, Literally Stories, The Sea Letter, Fiction on the Web, Bewildering Stories, Ellipsis Zine, and Flash Fiction Magazine. He has also written for DC Comics.

Time Capsule
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            The time capsules were buried in the earth for 100 years. That made this 2117. Only one member of each family was selected for this journey to the future. I was the member selected from mine. 
            We weren't all dug up and unsealed on the same day. Each traveler's story was different. I can only tell you mine. 
            I had been buried in a small coal-mining town in Pennsylvania. The place hadn't changed much in the first fifty years of my life. Today, however, when they pulled me out of the ground and lit the fires within me once again... I didn't recognize a thing. 
            All around me stood a megalopolis filled with wonder. The fulfillment of every science fiction writer's dream. 
            "Of course it is," Star-Sky said. "Dreamers are the ones who built it." 
            I hadn't spoken, but she heard me just the same. And I knew her name without ever asking. 
            "Are we related?" I asked. I did remember that each of us travelers was scheduled to be awakened by members of our own families in the future. 
            "Sadly, no," Star-Sky informed me. "Your family self-destructed, and didn't survive the change." 
            I slipped out of my oxygen suit and felt the sun on my skin again for the first time in a century. 
            "What changed?" I asked. 
            "Nearly everything," Star-Sky replied. 
            She looked young. Maybe 22. 
            I heard laughter in my mind. 
            "I'm the same age as you were when they put you in the capsule," Star-Sky explained. "It was thought to make the transition easier that way, having you greeted by a contemporary." 
            People in the future took way better care of themselves. 
            "Oh," I said. "I forgot my opening line." 
            "It's not too late," Star-Sky allowed. 
            I spoke the phrase we travelers had agreed upon. 
            "I am here to meet the challenge." 
            "Excellent," she said. "Let's begin." 
            The sidewalks moved beneath my feet. But they weren't made of concrete or stone. Whatever the substance was, it looked like soil, but definitely wasn't organic. My feet got stuck as if I had stepped into Jell-O, only two inches thick. When I lifted my shoe, it was perfectly clean. When I lowered it, I got stuck again. Something held me upright, in perfect balance. And I felt strangely comforted, as well. 
            "What do you call these?" I asked. 
            "We call them sidewalks," Star-Sky said. 
            Now I was laughing in her mind. 
            The structures were built in rings, about the length of a city block, then interconnected like the Olympic symbol, touching at several points. 
            "That's so the reflectors can keep all of the heat and light inside, rebounding back and forth for maximum efficient usage," Star-Sky said. 
            "Where are the reflectors?" I asked. 
            "Everything is reflective," she said. "Even our clothes. Even my skin." 
            "I don't see any reflections," I said. "I don't see any light." 
            "The light is invisible," Star-Sky said. "All light is invisible, now. We find it easier on the eyes." 
            "But the sun is still shining," I said, confused. 
            "The entire Earth is surrounded by filters," Star-Sky said, "that convert the light into what we need it to be: energy, texture, food." 
            "Food?" 
            "Like plants," Star-Sky explained. "Our bodies convert sunlight into nutrients that supply all our needs." 
            I almost fell off the Jell-O sidewalk. 
            "You don't eat?" I said, flabbergasted. "No one eats?" 
            "We eat the sun," Star-Sky affirmed as if any other suggestion was madness. 
            Once inside a ring of structures, I witnessed a lot of people doing a lot of activities I didn't at all understand. 
            "Some are living. Some are existing," Star-Sky said. "Some are happying. Some are sadding." 
            At least I recognized a park when I saw one, there in the center of the ring. 
            "My god, this is the old town square," I said. 
            "Correct," she said. 
            A man walked up to me and asked what made me happy. Somehow, his openness impelled a sincere response from inside of me. 
            "Toast and Christmas lights and pajamas and raccoons," I said. 
            As he passed on by, I realized that the question had been merely polite. 
            The next one asked me what made me sad. 
            "Pollution and guns and torn stockings and being late," I replied. 
            Star-Sky sat down on a bench that looked just like a bench should. But it was so much more. 
            "This bench can do anything," she said. 
            "Such as?" 
            "Name it," she challenged. 
            "Tell time. Make breakfast. Transport me across the world. Deliver a baby." 
            "Those are easy," Star-Sky said, 
            "This is just an ordinary bench," I scoffed. 
            "How do you know that?" she said. 
            "Because I imagined all the rest," I said. 
            "And how do you know that someone else didn't? How do you know that they didn't invent a means to accomplish all of those things, and then shape it to look like an ordinary bench? Maybe one day we just got tired of the way technology looked, so we decided to disguise it all." 
            "Is that the case?" I said. 
            Star-Sky gestured toward the space alongside her. "Try it," she said. 
            I sat down. "Tokyo," I said. 
            Without preamble, we were there. 
            "Matter is energy, like drawings in a coloring book are crayon. You can make any shape you like." 
            I said the name of my hometown. Then we were back. 
            I got up. That was enough of the bench. 
            "What is my role," I said, "to function in this society?" 
            Star-Sky smiled. "Whatever you choose it to be." 
            "Will I need money?" 
            "No." 
            "What about war?" 
            "You won't need that, either." 
            "Disease?" 
            "We stopped believing in that." 
            "Then what is the challenge?" 
            Star-Sky took some crystals out of her pocket -- a palmful of glistening sand. 
            "These will do whatever I tell them to," she explained. "Fix. Feed. Build. Become. It isn't the magic of science we employ; it's the magic of understanding. All of this universe has been created for us, by us, between us. All that we have to do is live in it right." 
            I thought of my childhood, of my seeming uselessness in the old town. 
            "What if I'm just a dreamer?" 
            Star-Sky had lots more to show me. "It's as I told you when you arrived... dreamers built the world."