In the Click of a Mouse

By: Jera Jones

May 11, 2008

(a what-if senario)
A shot of a southern California hillside from a distance. The brush is dry but in the middle is a green area. Zooming in on the green area reveals a number of small, primitive-looking huts made of plant fibers. Someone is playing a reed flute, someone is accompanying the flute with 2 sticks being struck together rhythmically. Then a digerie doo joins and the trio is revealed sitting on a crude bench, all nude, various races. Before them are a few more people gathered around a boulder with a grinding depression working in turns with stone pestles. Near them seated on another rock is a girl writing on a diary book with a pencil. Her voice narrates:

My name is Hidden Rainbow. My uncles explored an old house and brought me back this writing book. It has 200 pages, all blank. I must use them very carefully. Clean paper is hard to find. What are all those gadgets I have seen in old houses? There are things with viewing screens. Some of them have been broken. Did these screens really display people from far away as the older people have told me? That is hard to believe. I have never seen anything like that except for the mirrors that show you your own face. And those old rusty contraptions with seats inside, it takes four men to move one of them. How can they have ever moved on their own? And yet the adults say the roads were full of them, all moving very fast, before the big change.

My uncles like to tell stories about how they have driven their vehicles, and about the adventures and mishaps they had. Sometimes I think they miss the old days. They will sit in an old car half buried in sand, run their hands along the wheel, fiddle with the knobs, and make funny noises with their lips.

Still they tell me I am lucky to have been born after the calamity as they call it. It is quiet and peaceful now, the air is cleaner, life is simpler, and you don't have to work as hard. We just have to make sure we gather enough acorns in the fall before the rains rot them or the squirrels get them all. Then there are seeds to be gathered at various times of year, mostly summer and fall, we dig various roots, and gather various herbs, greens, and berries. We make baskets for storage and leeching, and we make gourd bowls. We pound acorns and seeds into meal and soak the acorn meal in the river, then rinse it in the spring that runs through the village. Sometimes we find cloth in the old houses, but bags made of cloth don't last as long as a carefully made basket. The rest of the time we make musical instruments, tell stories, sing and dance. Once a year we remake our huts. They are only big enough for the family to recline inside. When it is cold, I just stay in the hut with my parents and my little brother. The other families' huts are nearby so we can converse.

"Come with me," my Uncle Martin says to me, "I have something to show you." I stand ready to follow him. "Put on your dress," he says. Each of us keeps one dress for times when we must or may have to deal with outsiders. So I put on my dress. Kara is standing with him holding their baby. She is dressed as well with a basket sling around the baby. She hands me a gathering basket. Martin is wearing a pair of shorts. "Come on," he says, and Kara and I follow down the trail to the river. The trail winds back and forth down a steep hillside. My community is very grateful for the little spring that sustained us during the difficult years following the big change. Now the river is clean enough to drink and bathe in, but before it wasn't. Now the cannibals have disappeared -- some speculate they may have all eaten each other. Now we can wander the environs of the former town without fear, but it wasn't always so tranquil. Still Martin is holding a sharpened stick in one hand -- just in case.

We wade across the river and walk along a wider trail or road. Often the road has eroded away and we take a trail to bypass the eroded area. After several miles we turn perpendicular to the river and soon are walking steeply uphill. The hillside appears to have been cut into, and paved at one time, however weeds are growing freely through the old crumbling pavement. Many parts of the road have been washed away. I follow Martin and Kara as they push their way through the brush taking care not to follow too closely lest I get hit with a branch of sage or sumac as it rebounds. We pass the old box-like structures that apparently people used to live in. Many of them have burnt down, others have had the windows broken or the roofs caved in. Finally after walking for about 3 hours we approach a house that appears to be intact. There are even oranges on the tree next to it. I pick some and put them in the basket.

With a squealing sound Martin pushes open a big door. Inside the structure is a gleaming black car! Kara and I giggle with delight. "Will it run?" she asks.

"I think so," answers Martin, "I started it once before. Get in!" Martin opens two doors. Taking the baby from Kara he hands him to me. Kara sits in front; the baby and I sit behind. Martin gets in the other side in front. He makes a loud noise happen and my seat shakes. Martin and Kara laugh and slap each other's hands. The baby and I hold each other very tightly.

The inside of the building starts to move and then the orange tree passes me. The experience is frightening, but I have read about it in books. The baby laughs. and I do too. I lean toward one side and then the other holding him on my lap until he signals his desire to return to his mother.

"The roads just aren't what they used to be," mumbles Martin, "Full of ruts and overgrown with plants and trees."

The car stops near a large pepper tree. We get out and look down on the river valley below.

"In the click of a mouse," Martin says, "Everything changed."

I'm thinking of mice and the sounds they make. "Click?" I ask, "That's not something I've heard a mouse do."

Kara is having a moment. She is slowly shaking her head side to side and her eyes are teary. "Everything... forever," she says, and pauses, "But I wouldn't trade my life now for my life then."

Martin is also shaking his head, "No, none of us would."

"Yeah, one time I was working on a project for my boss involving an online vendor, and I agreed to a more expensive package on her credit card without her permission. With the click of the mouse it was done and I couldn't undo it. She wasn't too happy with me, and I wondered, how could I have done that? I know better. Something about computers, you click and it's done. It happens so quickly that you hardly realize what you're doing."

"Yeah I know. The same thing happened to me. I was mad at my boss and I wrote him a seething email. Of course now I know better. Don't send an email when you're mad. But with a click of the mouse, off it went, and you can't call it back once it's gone. He did not take it well, and soon I was out looking for another job."

We stand for awhile in silence, then Martin asks, "So who clicked the big mouse button and put us all over the edge?"

"I think we all did," Tara responds, "We all drove too much, ate too much, had too many pairs of shoes, too many clo-"

"No," Interrupted Martin, "That's true, but there was something besides that. They said we were running low on oil, gas prices skyrocketed, and then one day you couldn't buy a gallon of gas, nor anything else, for love or money. We were really out! Everything stopped! Everything just stopped, there was no more fuel to run the economy."

"It might have helped if we had driven a little less, bought more of our food from local growers, and didn't consume way more of everything than we needed." "Yes, but it would have only delayed the inevitable a few days, maybe only a few seconds. We were running low on oil and they never told us how low we were until we were completely out. Like driving a car with no gas gage. It sputters, stops and dies, and there just ain't no more no way."

We eat some oranges then get back in the car. At last we are back in the garage and when I get out I still feel as if I am bouncing along and swaying back and forth. My equilibrium gradually returns during the long walk back home.