Oh.
A sad case indeed.
...
In 2019,
Clayton's life was just as boring as it had been since 1999,
when he was born.
What? Did you think your life would be exciting?
You haven't worked hard enough
and you missed your chances.
So what's your plan, Clayton?
The days slid by.
Just another man
who would not change the world.
...
But later,
he would get lucky,
and his days would change,
and his nights would change
into something so exciting
that it would feel like a dream.
But we are not there yet.
It's still 2019.
...
A man leans back in a dark chair in a bright room.
The room was full of laptops and people talking
softly.
Clayton wore his headset like the rest of them as he helped an old lady set up her iPad.
And then he would end the call
and then another call would come in
and then he would work for another hour
and then another hour.
And every night he would
yawn
as he put his head down on his pillow
and the sun would rise
and he would drive back to that quiet room filled with headsets.
Boring, right?
Okay,
I'll stop.
...
Well,
at least I won't go completely insane
because I have a few online friends from countless years back
and I play Minecraft with them every once in a while
and that's just... fun.
Is it anything more than fun, Clayton?
No, narrator.
In the end, they're just distant online people
and it's... just not likely that-
Yawn.
Okay, Clayton.
...
Well,
at least he had done a couple of things to be proud of.
Every once in a while he would gaze into the mirror and stare at the skin around his eyes.
The skin was saggy.
I've lost a lot of weight since high school,
he would think.
And then he would look away from the mirror
because,
for some reason,
he did not feel all that proud of himself.
...
A shrug.
He remembered high school sometimes.
Sometimes
he would wonder about the few people he knew back then.
They're probably in college now.
He hated the idea that maybe,
somewhere out there,
they were living a better life than he was,
filling up their backpacks and giving high-fives to friends.
He kept typing on his keyboard.
...
Yeah,
he hated the past.
And he didn't really want to think about the future.
So now what?
Maybe next year will be different,
thought a part of his brain.
And the other parts of his brain told him to just
laugh it off
because that sort of wish would never come true.
Yawn.