Center of Center (28)

a serial novella-in-flash by Chris Wiewiora

Even though these days anybody could be found and everyone could find someone, it seemed like nobody was fully here, everybody was always elsewhere.

I didn’t think that there was a time before the Panoptic, before digi-cuffs, or whatever when the good old days ended. I thought that people always were lonely and lost, whether linked or served. Pop had left his mother for an entire summer and moved as far away as he ever would all so that he could speak the language of a woman he crushed on, without any contact between them, but whose disappearance would leave him crushed.

Would it have been any better if it happened now? What if he knew exactly where she was? What if he could contact her? Wouldn’t their love still be lost? And wouldn’t he still be left lonely?