A man slowly opens the storm doors, letting the sunlight fill the basement of an abandoned house. As he opens the doors, a horrible smell fills his nose, and he quickly covers his face with the thick scarf hanging around his neck. Walking down the stairs with caution, with each step creaking, he peers over to the side of the basement. There are cabinets. He makes his way over to them hoping to find food, as he’s been running low for the past couple weeks. As he opens the cabinets, a couple of rats hop out and scurry into a small hole in the corner of the room. Crumbs and scraps of food are all over the cabinets, but luckily a few cans of vegetables have been unharmed by the rodents. He clears out the cabinet of the cans and packs them into his backpack and continues looking around the basement to find a ripped-up mattress with a couple tattered sheets laying on top. There must’ve been someone hiding out in here during the war, the man thinks to himself. After more searching, the cans were all he had found that could benefit him. He throws his pack back on and he leaves the basement.
Continuing through the outskirts of what used to be Burlington Vermont, the man searches homes, one after the next finding little to nothing to fill his empty stomach or keep him warm in this oddly cold month of march. He then hears a motor off in the distance and runs to the nearest house and creeps around to the back. He sees a slider door slightly open with a ripped up screen door. He then walks up to the door, shotgun in hand and checks the room, as the noise of the motor continuously becoming louder and louder. He enters through the rusted door and into the kitchen at posts up against the wall, all while listening to this motor as it becomes louder and louder until the noise starts to fade away. He exhales as his hands loosen their grip around the shotgun feeling a sense of relief knowing he didn’t have to deal with any hijackers. He then continues through the dusty kitchen putting his hand up to block the sun as it peeks through the window while it’s starting to set. He searches the kitchen for some food and finds two bottles of water and a can of soup. He sets up for bed with his shotgun cross his lap.
He wakes up to the sun shining in his eyes, looking out the broken window covered in cobwebs he thinks of the blueprint. He pulls this tattered blueprint out of his backpack, reading “Tesla Motors” across the top of it. On the bottom corner there are a few words, but the only legible one is California. Knowing Elon Musk is the founder of the Tesla company, he wants to find him in California. He then takes out a map of the United States and has a circle around California. He drags his finger from around New York City across to California, mapping out the journey he is setting for himself.
A few days have passed, and he is now walking along the Manhattan bridge into New York City, with a haze of fog across his view making a slight silhouette of the buildings in his sight. He’s entering the city because he’s heard from many other travelers that even though it may be very dangerous, there’s a chance to leave with a good haul. As he is entering the outskirts of Brooklyn, he hears a few people ahead of him. He runs into the alley way to his right and peeks around the corner to look for the source of the voices. He peers across the street and sees a couple walking together, covered in ragged clothes not holding much except for the two backpacks on their backs. He soon hears a few motorcycles in the distance, and backs further into the alley way and behind the dumpster. The motorcycles pass by the alley and screech to a stop as, he starts to hear the couple scream, and soon after a gunshot. Screaming continues as the motorcycles start up and then one more gunshot, he peers around the dumpster and sees the hijackers speed by and away. He starts walking into the alley way hoping to not see anything and evade the hijackers. He’s slightly jogging in between these two rubbled buildings, stepping over large breaks in the concrete below him and dodging a few garbage cans and trash scattered around. He makes his way to the end of the alley way and he finds himself looking at a huge opening with an old broken screen on this big building. He knows this used to be Times Square, and he turns back around and runs.
He’s steadily walking along the left side of the road, the sun is starting to shine on his back as it is rising behind him. As the sun continues to rise, a large traffic sign is seen in the distance. He walks to this sign, being held on by one last bolt, dangling and swinging in the wind and reads it aloud with a slight whisper, “I- 80” and slightly smirks. He comes upon a pile of cars smashed together in an accident, shattered glass across the street, rust overcoming the cars with all sorts of things scattered in the cars slightly singed. In the back seat of one car, he sees this white teddy bear with his right paw and ear are burnt and browned. He steps back, and kneels on one knee while holding the side of the car as a memory comes back to him.
He’s driving a car, with the Beatles playing in the background and a little girl giggling. He looks to his right and sees his wife, smiling with her huge smile, he admires her dimples and turns to look at his daughter. She stares back at him smiling so big her eyes are practically closed, with the same dimples as her mother, as she smiles she’s hugging a white teddy bear. His wife exclaims, “Malcom!” yelling at her husband as he starts to drift onto the shoulder of the road, and Malcom swerves back into the lane[NS10] .
Malcom comes back, as he gasps for air as if he’s been underwater for a minute.
In a bright, laboratory looking room filled with buzzing, and beeping gadgets, there’s a man with bright white hair and a full beard hunched over his working space. Elon is working on this new weapon to help protect himself on his journeys. It’s a taser kind of gun, but it’s worn on the wrist and forms into a gun when needed. Elon’s constantly trying to make and improve his inventions to help himself and hopefully the world. He had thought of creating a water maker, and once made some sketches and early stages of some blueprints. Elon has consistently tried to recreate that invention, but each time he’s missed a part that he can’t seem to remember. While Elon was tinkering at his desk, he heard a ringing coming from his security camera. A security camera a few miles away picked up a few hijackers driving by on their motorcycles, and recently they have been getting closer and closer to his hideout. Elon knows that these hijackers are looking for him, to use him to make weapons and other gadgets to wreak further havoc on the world. Elon’s located around 20 miles from Los Angeles in an underground hideout connected to his house. He doesn’t use his house much at all, in efforts to prevent anyone from thinking he’s still there. Elon still upsets himself thinking of if he could’ve helped with the war or possibly even prevented the whole thing. He looks at a picture of an artificial intelligence robot, reminding him of what happened about twenty years ago, in 2027, when the world changed. A few scientists from Russia developed artificial intelligence robots, to replace the troops in bomb squads. It did not last long before they were on the front lines, in planes and on ships. It did not work well when the robots became almost human like, speaking and sounding just like any human but there are some physical differences to differentiate humans from the robots. They overturned on the humans, trying to rid them from the world, starting world war three.
Malcom is walking with sand blowing into his face covered in a cloth. The heat rising from the asphalt as Malcom sips on one of the few water bottles he has left. He sees a small hut a few miles away and he hopes to find a well to fill the bottles. As he makes his way over to the house, a few hijackers start driving up the road towards Malcom. Malcom slowly reaches down and grips his hand gun on his waist. The hijackers drive up, get off their bikes and slowly walk towards Malcom and one of them pulls out a knife. Malcom steps back and says, “I don’t want any trouble”. The hijacker steps closer and exclaims, “just give us the bag and there won’t be any trouble”. Malcom refuses to give up the backpack because of the blueprint and the hijackers start to attack him.
Malcom continues walking towards the house, limping because of having a wounded leg from the hijackers. He walks to the house, with a sign out front saying no trespassing. He walks to the door and knocks, the door slowly opens with a creaking noise. The door opening kicked up some dust and he walked into the house looking around, the house looked almost brand new other than dust piling up. Malcom looks throughout the house and makes his way to the bathroom in hopes to find any bandages. He opens the cabinet and find a couple gauze pads and some alcohol, then pours some alcohol on his leg. After wrapping his leg, he sets up to sleep for the night.
In Los Angeles a few hijackers pull up to a building surrounded by motorcycles and head in the front door. They walk into this building, with a bar straight ahead and a staircase to the left of it leading up. The hijackers walk through the crowd of the other hijackers and make their way up the stairs. They knock on a door, and call, “Brayden, we have some blueprints”. He tells them to come in and they open the door to reveal a bunch of papers and blueprints scattered across the room with one big one with “Tesla Motors” written across the top taped up on the wall. Brayden asks if they have any more Tesla blueprints or any more news on Elon. The hijackers empty out their bags and they had no information on Elon. Brayden slowly stands up shuffled through the papers and blueprints they just gave him, not finding any Tesla blueprints, he screams at them to not return until they have Elon or information about him.
Elon is in his laboratory, packing his bag and preparing for his trip into Los Angeles. He puts on two taser cuffs, one on each hand as his protection along with his infrared glasses to help track and locate hijackers. He takes his water and heads out the secret entrance that exits out through the drainage system. Elon then walks to the closest manhole ladder and climbs up it and exits the manhole under this underpass. He continues onto his usual path to Los Angeles through back roads and alleys until he hears a few motorcycles. He taps his glasses to turn them on and starts to scan for the hijackers. While he’s looking he slowly enters the building he’s next to for extra safety. The hijackers loop around a couple times then drive away. Elon realizes that they seem to be doing their checks more often than they used to in recent times.
Malcom approaches this small shanty town with houses built out of scrap metal and cloth barely standing. A bit past these homes are larger buildings and shops scattered around. A few people are walking around and speaking to one another, and as Malcom walks through the streets and people are turning their heads at this newcomer. Malcom approaches a group of men gathered around just having a laugh and asks them if they have heard of Elon. They shook their heads and turned away from Malcom as if he were a lunatic. He walks by other people asking them the same question and one man leaned up against a porch hollers at Malcom, “Do you know who you’re askin’ for?”. Malcom walks over to this man and talks about Elon and if he’s still around and Malcom finds out that Elon sometimes goes into the heart of Los Angeles occasionally. This man offers to help walk Malcom into LA because it’s a very dangerous area. He shows Malcom a map of where he’s recently seen hijackers and their usual routes to keep his distance while looking for goods. They decide to walk into LA in hopes that they can see this illusive man.
With the sun beaming down on Malcom and this man, they decide to stop for a second and take a few sips of water. They stop in a few run down shops and debris filled buildings looking for anything they can scavenge. As they start walking out of the last shop on the street Malcom hears a whistle. He looks back to his left to see if the man is still there, and he’s not. Malcom turns back around and looks into the eyes of a hijacker about twenty feet from him and as Malcom keeps looking further and further to his right more and more hijackers pop up. Malcom’s palms start sweating and he clenches his hands into fists breathes in deep and looks one of the hijackers in his eyes. Without any words the hijacker swings at Malcom and Malcom starts fending off countless hijackers. While putting some down in the process Malcom gets tossed onto the ground and the hijackers take his backpack. They rip his backpack open and look through all the belongings, throwing out almost everything until they find the blueprint and slowly open it. Malcom sighs as he feels defeated while the hijacker holds up the blueprint.
While looking through a few aisles in a side shop, Elon hears some yelling and screaming coming from a block away. He makes his way towards the noise and watches from a safe distance. He sees a man being thrown to the ground and a few hijackers going through his bag. Elon then notices what this hijacker pulls out of the backpack and he decides to intervene. He takes this shiny ball with a few buttons on it out of his chest pocket, presses a button and then throws it towards the group of men. This ball stuns the men and Elon runs up and shoots them with this futuristic looking stun gun while taking the blueprint and getting Malcom to safety.
Elon and Malcom are in Elons lab filled with monitors, computers, gadgets, lights and almost anything imaginable speaking about why Malcom is here and how he had possession of the blueprint. They speak for hours and Elon offers Malcom to stay a few days or so to recover and rest from his journey. Malcom walks through the hall and turns right and waits for the door to open to Elons office. The door opens and Elon laughs and asks Malcom, “Want to take a ride?”. They hop into Elons hovercraft and take off, rising up out of the parking pod, Malcom and Elon gaze upon Los Angeles, covered in lights and huge buildings surrounded by hovercrafts zooming around. Malcom turns to Elon and says, “How about we make some AI robots” and they both start chuckling as they continue hovering towards Los Angeles.
Works Cited
Hughes, Albert and Allen Hughes, directors. The Book of Eli .
Miller, George, director. Mad Max. Armstrong, Paul. “AI Humanoid ‘Sophia’ Is Granted First Ever Robot Visa, Speaks With President.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 27 Oct. 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/paularmstrongtech/2018/10/27/ai-humanoid-sophia-is-granted-first-ever-robot-visa-speaks-with-president/#1468b3fc1f39.