Freedom - Judy Albietz

Peter got up from his desk and walked over to the window. He hated it when the late summer sun blasted into his basement bedroom. As he pulled down the blind with one hand, he checked his cell phone calendar. It was September 2. Only a few days of freedom were left before school started.

He decided to spend his time designing new computer war game characters. First he would troll the Internet for recent world-wide coverage of wars and battles. He might be able to get some new ideas for soldiers, combat gear and other equipment. He set his hacking parameters to search for the newest data. Then he settled back to watch what popped up.

“Ho ho. Right!” he laughed as he looked at the time-stamps streaming across his screen. He couldn’t make out the identifier-codes for the individual files but he could read their dates. Obviously errors. He leaned forward to freeze the screen as he read one: April 5, 4008. He resumed the scan and stopped it again: May 12, 4009. Started again and stopped: September 2, 4009.

“Now that’s weird. Let’s see what you are,” he said as he pointed his mouse to the file icon flashing in its frozen position. He clicked. Instantly, the screen opened up on a bright sunny scene. In the distance were a bunch of animals—they looked like monkeys. This is no war! What’s this? Where is this?

It felt like a live streaming web-cam. Off to his right some of the creatures were sitting under trees. As he looked at them, the camera lens brought him up close. Those monkeys were wearing some sort of clothing. As he continued to stare, the scene shifted further to the right. Now he could see there were houses past the trees which were now in the middle of the screen. He looked over to his left and the same thing happened. The screen shifted to the left. It was as if he was looking around, right there, on the ground, wherever there was.