There once was a small boy, in a nameless town, who came across two pennies in the dirt. Bending down, he took the shiny pieces into his hands, carefully rubbing them between his soft fingers. He felt the cold metal on his skin. He closed his eyes, and imagined a time far distant when he would live in the remote cities his grandfather had warned him about, the places where this polished power came from. Breaking from his trance, he tucked the pennies away in his pants and quickly turned to run home.
Many years later, the same small boy had become a young man. Advancing in school quickly he travelled to a nearby province to educate himself. He took classes in Economics and Finance. He soon understood the world in numbers and figures. He had felt many more pennies by the time he was handed a diploma and sent away. Soon he feel into the work force, racing to the imaginary finish line of success like his peers.
As his middle age approached, he found that little had changed since his graduation from school. It had been many years since he had seen his true home, and in a fit of desperation he tracked a plan to visit the vast fields of his youth. But deadlines came, children got sick, and the car broke down. The middle-aged plans to visit his home were washed down the sink with the mornings warm milk and soggy cereal. His life was a tape in a player and he was watching the scenes pass in a blurry haze. His brain fell in slow motion, while his body learned to work double time to compete with the artificial intelligence next to him.
Years passed before he could blink, and soon his children were grown. His work soon honored his years of service with a small service, serving watered down punch and cookies with too much frosting. He took his box of brown belongings, practical appliances that made his worthless job easier, and went home to place it in the basement with other old books no longer in use. He filled his days after this in constant battle the new “toys” his kids had gotten him for retirement. They were too small for his liking, too cold, and had too much detail. They cost too much money, and they did him no good besides isolating him from the people he once held firm conversational relationships with. They reminded him of the cold pennies he had found once, as a small boy, in an alien world.
Aging in wisdom, the now elderly man was soon confined to his room. Laying for hours with the blur of people passing him, he retreated into his mind, imagining he was on the trip he had once planned to visit his old home. He was constantly brought back to reality, still as he could hear the eerie sound of electrically generated waves that were supposed to help him sleep, the air conditioning turning off and on, and the hum of the computer as it slept in the corner. He could no longer here the laughing of children, the pitter patter of little feet on the floor, or the soft falling of rain. He lived in a corner of the world devoid of the natural sounds he once enjoyed. The lights around him dimmed out the stars at night, keeping him safe from the self-induced dangers of the modern world. As he sat there, a tear slowly ran down the side of his cheek and onto his shirt. His small grandson, glancing up from the electronic device permanently glued to his hand, seeing the emotion walked to his bed side.
“What is it papi? What’s wrong?”
Slowly, the weathered face donned an expression of great concern. A frail hand extended from the covers holding something he signaled for this youth to see. He opened his mouth to speak to this child, but a sudden burst of wind came through the curtains and the boy turned to look. As he rotated back to face his grandfather, he recognized the cold touch of death upon his face. A shiver passed through the boy as he moved his eyes down to see what his grandfather had been holding. The anticipation he had once held was soon lost when his search was rewarded by a mere two cents. He looked down to see the open hand on the bed, cradling two old pennies. He picked them up, and although it was barely worth the energy spent moving them, put them inside his pocket.
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