(At an office, Friend 2 types frantically while darting glances at the time in the lower right-hand corner of the computer monitor)
Friend 2: There’s still time – (Type-type-type-type) I can make it – (Type-type-type-E-mail Alert – asdfghjkl;) Guess that settles that. (Pulls out a cell phone, selects one of the contacts, and props the phone against an ear while resuming typing)
Friend 1: (On the phone) Yeah, what’s up?
Friend 2: [Disgusted sigh]
Friend 1: That sounds like a work-related disgusted sigh.
Friend 2: You’d be right. I hate doing this to you, but I’m gonna have to cancel for tonight: I’ve been bombarded with requests all day in multiple media, and just now I got a notice for something that has to be done before tomorrow so I’m gonna be here for at least another two hours finishing all this up. It’s as if I did NOTHING ALL DAY LONG! Sorry.
Friend 1: Don’t be – I completely understand and refuse to join the treadmill you’re on. Hope you don’t mind if I go ahead and check out this place tonight anyway? `Cause I’ve been kind of looking forward to it.
Friend 2: No, please, go have a blast. The whole area sounds pretty neat; what’s it called again, a mall town?
Friend 1: The term is “metroburb.” And I’ll really just be going to the pop-up drive-in movie theater, but I also might check out some of the trendy office-stores in the main building and drive through the carbon copy housing developments just to freak out the neighbors.
Friend 2: (Backspacing an entire paragraph) That’s great – I’ll still give you money for the movie ticket, though.
Friend 1: Then you’d be giving me $0; it was a freebie from… something apparently not important enough for my brain to remember.
Friend 2: OK, thanks. And call me later and let me know what it all was like there.
Friend 1: But of course.
SEVERAL DAYS LATER
(In an office breakroom)
Coworker 1: (To Friend 2) You look tired.
Friend 2: (Stares balefully at Coworker 1) When is it ever a good time to tell that to someone?
Coworker 1: Thought it sounded sympathetic.
Friend 2: It would, if you weren’t the cause of all my late nights this week! (Aggressively bites into a bagel)
Coworker 1: Well. Guess that’s the last time I graciously offer you to help me with my overdue projects. (Leaves)
Friend 2: (Stares at the bagel) I was this close to bouncing you off their head. But I love you too much. (Devours the rest)
Coworker 2: (Sits at the table next to Friend 2 and starts eating a salad) Sorry all this stuff lately made you miss out on the movie at the office village the other night.
Friend 2: Thanks. And I think it’s actually called an “urban suburb” – no that’s not right –
Coworker 2: Whatever it is, it seems nifty – you hear from your friend yet on how it all looked?
Friend 2: (Freezes) You know, I never did hear back….
MEANWHILE
(In the blazing sun, Friend 1 drives through winding, endless roads)
Friend 1: (Voiceover) Pilot’s Log: Day 3 of my journey through the metroburb, AKA Circle 10 of Dante’s Inferno. I have long since given up hope of seeing another human being ever again. The steaming paved roads are surrounded by carefully regimented trees and flowering bushes, looping in on themselves in never-ending rows of artificial greenery, the forest they replaced conspicuous in its absence. They mock me with their enforced symmetry, the unnaturalness of their state rivalled only by the unshed tears they weep for their lost brethren cleared en masse to create this hellscape of modern living.
I had passed the main building upon my initial entry into this cursed place, and have long since said my farewells to it – I have not clapped eyes upon it again in two days, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the pop-up drive-in movie theater was installed in the one corner of the mile-wide and mile-long parking lot that I did not drive through. There was a good flick scheduled that night, too.
Several hours after that midnight, I conceded defeat and attempted to navigate my way out of this black hole of a complex – for me, though, the event horizon was long gone: all the roads here are one-way and not one circled back to the direction from whence I came.
This is one of the rare instances in my life where I regret never yielding to popular trends and installing GPS on my phone. Or figuring out how to do that now.
On Day 2, I spotted a family of deer and attempted to follow them home to freedom: however, traitors to their kind that they are, they seemed to have made this monstrosity their new home – which may actually have been the site of their previous home and they’re trying to make the best of things, so never mind – and they merely frolicked into the backyard of some human dwelling-in-progress, so they were no help whatsoever.
I next followed the path of a flock of migrating geese, driving across the horrifically manicured medians when necessary just to keep them in sight – alas, they too seemed to have made this their home and now, typical of the current state of things, migrate nowhere. I last left them amusing themselves in an abomination that is an artificial pond, useless to themselves and to me equally.
I then attempted to create a map of the roads that I already had travelled, drawn on a bunch of take-out napkins that were sitting in the glove compartment, in order to locate the correct road out of here by process of elimination. Having failed both Art and Geography in my younger years, the map I created is nonsensical and offends the senses. I would symbolically burn the multi-napkin wreck, if I had not failed Scouts as well.
This morning I drank the last dregs of sustenance from my water bottle; as the nuclear sun mercilessly beats down upon me, that artificial pond is starting to look better and better....
(Friend 1’s cell phone rings)
Friend 1: (Signals to pull into the empty road’s shoulder, puts on the car’s hazard lights, and answers the phone) Yeah, what’s up?
Friend 2: I see your location’s still listed as being in the metroburb – just follow the signs to Main Street and you should be out of there in five minutes. (Ends the call)
(Friend 1 sets the phone onto the passenger seat, looks to the right of the car, and sees a sign planted into the ground that reads “Main Street ↑”)
Friend 1: (Signals to pull back onto the empty road; voiceover) The journey continues as this intrepid survivor endeavors to decipher the markings that apparently were placed at regular intervals along the monotonous roads and yet, somehow, overlooked. Attempting escape velocity as the event horizon appears in the distance in three, two, one –
(A horn blares as Friend 1 cuts across a car’s path while making a left turn onto Main Street)
Friend 1: (Screaming out the window) At last! I have escaped the demons of suburbia, ahahahahaha!
Driver: Freak.
Friend 1: (Voiceover) My trials at last are over: I have reached journey’s end, and now need a nap. My lone takeaway of this whole ordeal: I really wanted to see that movie.
