Jack had been raised in the city. He grew up not knowing the names of the people who lived just one apartment below his own. He grew up playing games, but never needing to do real labor. He grew up where people took vacations because they worked in grime every day. He grew up with machines giving him entertainment keeping his mind busy. He grew up with only having to see animals when he went to the pet store.
Jack was a city boy, and he was used to it being that way. He woke up no earlier than seven each school day, and might sleep past ten on vacation days. He stayed up very late into the night and ate whatever he felt like. He bathed routinely in the bath at home, and kept himself occupied with an assortment of friends and acquaintances and outings and parties each week. He scraped by in an education system he didn't much care to think about. Cellulars were popular, and everyone was buying one. Everyone somehow had the money to buy one.
Jack was a city boy, and he liked it that way. He liked that his clothes were generally clean. He liked that he didn't have to work so hard every day to get a wide assortment of toys and things, and he liked that everyone else had some so he didn't have to validate his own wants for them, whether they were necessary or not. He liked that his parents worked hard enough that he didn't need to go through the trouble of establishing a close relationship with them, because moments with them were rare. He liked staying up after dark, and sleeping in every chance he had. He liked girls and he liked having a new girlfriend each month and he liked wearing pointless accessories that drew attention to his self. He liked the lifestyle and he liked the things he did every day. He liked having noise to distract him and lots of people to loose himself in and screens everywhere to avert his eyes to so he didn't have to see his own shortcomings. It was easy this way.
But what did he love? Sitting on the grass, a puppy warm in his lap, a creaky old house before him that stood out against the backdrop of an incredibly blue cloudless sky… And all he could feel was the barrenness of his heart. He was young, to be sure. He wasn't expected to be filled with wisdom or courage at his age, especially not in the modern world. But was the modern world wrong? Jack couldn't even feel the pureness and energy associated with youth. In his heart, there was nothing. How could this be? Wasn't he a young man, filled with the child-like will and strength to do anything? To achieve anything? But he didn't even want to achieve anything. He had not one desire, not one that he could hold on to for longer than a moment. He was empty, and yet had no room to find anything he loved. Like a city tomato- plucked when still green and forced to ripen before reaching the stores, he had already been forced into the dryness of adulthood.
But still, somewhere in his barren heart, Jack found a tingle of remorse for the land he now sat on. He remembered playing here as a child, the summer he spent with the children in town and grandfather taking him up and down the mountains, teaching him the names of tools even though he was still hardly more than a toddler, being surrounded by animals and, if he tried hard enough, he remembered falling asleep next to grandpa on a creaky bed, the only sounds being his haggard old way of breathing, and the insects outside. Jack felt regret that he only was able to have one summer living that way as a child, remorse that he didn't keep in contact with his deceased grandfather, and that he hadn't realized how dear that old man and his farm were to him, and guilt that he could not do anything for him in death, that the farm would die along with him, that those cherished, old memories would fade away… And these depressed emotions were all that he had.
The puppy on Jack's lap closed its eyes, bathing in the sweet massage Jack was giving his ears without really paying much attention. Jack had a thought, a dreamer kind of thought, and nice thought that was still a bit too crazy, a thought that couldn't possibly mean anything and certainly wouldn't change anything. But as it began to dance away in his mind, Jack grabbed on to it and refused to let it float away, determined to do something, as the sudden fear came that he might not know the warmth grandpa had when they shared a bed that summer night.
What if Jack did something amazing?
What if Jack did something so amazing, that everything that followed after only served to be so awesome that it filled up his barren heart?
What if Jack took something, that had only been a dream a minute before, and turned it into something new and exciting that no one else but he could do?
He looked out over the fields, smiling. Home-grown tomatoes differed from those in the city. If Jack grew tomatoes on this land, with his own desire, he was sure that they'd taste very rich and sweet.