Riverwalk

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. The room was a lower-level hotel suite of the long-abandoned Marriotts in downtown San Antonio Texas. It offered a view of interstate thirty-seven and the fortified areas within a few miles north of her sight. On this day, October 3rd, 2188, it began to rain in the early morning hours but cleared early enough for the sun to rise to a cloudless sky. She woke up alone in her inherited room once belonging to her father. Coffee was scarce these days, but with an almost guaranteed arrival of supplies within the next few days, she allowed herself the freedom to make a more potent brew in her Chemex coffee maker. She used a quarter of her daily water rations for her morning routine. The morning rain brought good fortune upon her and her community within the borders of Riverwalk. The community was appropriately managed and would not allow anything to go to waste, especially rainwater. The rainwater would have to be rigorously tested for safe drinkable levels, but of course, that would be after the multiple filtration steps and de-radiation.

She dragged the desk chair to her window and propped up her feet on the windowsill. She had lived within the community since birth. Throughout her eighteen years, she only knew this fortified place. Traveling tradesmen and scouts often make their way to Riverwalk, but it wasn’t until the overthrow and destruction of NorthStar that more permanent residents made their way to her home. She sat and sipped on her coffee. She stared at the on-ramp of interstate thirty-seven and wondered how traffic was in the nostalgic yesteryears of her movie and television collections. Vehicles still maneuver, but these were not the gas-guzzling monsters from her shows but the battery-operated machines that replaced them. The use of these vehicles was strictly regulated by her communities and her neighbors. They did not want to draw any unwanted attention from the things that mutated into what they are now. Even thru the window, she could hear something screech in the distance. She knew she was safe within her walls, and even though she had never seen many of these creatures with her own eyes, she could catch a glimpse of them from her window and see the pictures and drawings from the scouts.

The view this morning was peaceful. There were no clouds in the sky as the hour turned nine. She laughed at herself as she remembered her father saying that time no longer had any relevance after the last known corporation fell from their own doing. She was still very young as her father was retelling stories of his father having to wake up at a certain time to make it across the city to report to a building and perform tasks for money. She still had a small collection of old money from the year 2022. Relics. It wasn’t that time had no meaning, he would explain; they still had important things to do in a timely manner, but the correlation of the phrase, “time is money,” no longer had a meaning. Thusly, to her, nine in the morning, or what she believed to be nine in the morning, had no significance this day.

She continued to sip on her coffee, but quickly her eyes were fixed on a moving object coming from E Commerce street. It was too far to make out what it was behind the purposely stacked piles of concrete and cars. There were no extended antennae, no obvious exoskeleton, nothing to cause any immediate alarm at the moment until it made its way to a more visible spot. It was a dog. Poor thing. It must have survived like she had to. There was no telling what shape it was in from her advantage point, but it must have been a fighter.

A knock came on her door. More than likely, it was her mother or friends asking for her company as they made their way to breakfast. She glanced one last time out the window in hopes of seeing the wondering dog one last time. Unfortunately, it was gone as quickly as it appeared. Good luck, she whispered to the window. Hope to see you tomorrow, she whispered once more.