*

I’m writing to you today from a room full of the detritus of my teenage years. A die-cast model of a red Ferrari, a picture of smiling friends in rented tuxedoes, a poster titled “What I Really Learned in School,” with cans of beer over the names of different subjects, like Olde English for Literature 101, and St. Pauli Girl for International Relations.
And on the bed, the bed that was mine, my father lies propped up against the headboard. He is dying. He is very sick, and he is dying. Cancer. I sit next to him. Both of us have our laptops in our laps. He’s dozing, head pitched forward onto his chest. His laptop’s cooling fan is failing, just like his health, and it spins up and then cuts out, over and over, like it’s gasping. Like it knows. Like it wants to die a sympathetic death.
I am twenty eight. He is sixty eight. The year is 2010, a year men used to write about as though it would never come.
You can still be sad in the future. No one will tell you not to be. No one will dust your food with happiness or hide joy in your toothpaste.

*

Acorns. Would it be better or worse if acorns dreamed of oaks? I know we’re digging for the soul. Digging everywhere, fast as we can. Robots that cry, robots that moan, dolls that shit themselves and dolls that know they’d die if you shook them hard enough.
We dig, burrow, into outer space, the bottom of the ocean, we dig in the living room, between the cushions, for the remote. That show’s on and we’re going to watch it together.
The flying car is real! It drives, it flies, and you, yes you, can buy one! Useless, though, without a pilot’s license and a runway. Do you really think they’d let you take off from the 101 during rush-hour, in heavy traffic? Skies of death, that’s what you’re asking for.
“Fuck, honey, we’re late and look at this fucking traffic! Bumper to motherfucking bumper.”
“Good thing our goddamn car can fly!”
Our affluent driver pulls a lever, the door panels vibrate as the wings unfold, a compact jet engine whines, screams, and the car rises with the shimmering heat-haze from the miles of idling traffic.
“Holy Jesus Christ, that’s another flying car right in our flight path! Who’d have thought that more than one flying car would take off at once from this stretch of road full of people waiting to get home? Though I