The Chemical Sunrise

This world thrives on chemicals.

A chemical to wake you up, a chemical to put you to sleep. Chemicals to clean your hair of the oils that hold it in place and yet more to then hold it where you want it. Genetically modified broccoli grows larger due to chemicals, laden with more to keep off the bugs that eat it. They preserve, protect, destroy, grow, shrink, kill, save, relieve, smell, taste, and change the color of our everyday existence and without them we may not survive.

But with them, we may destroy ourselves.

We have chemicals to control our thoughts, squash our intelligence, grow our tolerance for pain. Others make us faster, stronger even. The chemicals can turn a man into a genius, or into a blubbering fool... and yet, these chemicals keep our world together. Glue holds together our buildings, Gelatin holds together our food, poisonous plants color our caffeine-filled energy drinks and life-saving medicines infect our bread.

Pleasurable chemicals are addictive, helpful chemicals taste foul. Chewable vitamins crumble their chemically-processed body building blocks into our stomachs that are simultaneously pushing bile back into our appendices that are useless today because we've chemically removed the need for the  previously life-saving organs.

But you know, and tell me if I'm wrong about this... You know that we're doing it to ourselves, right?

That this whole chemically-altered world we're living in now was our choice?

In our blindness, we sought to eliminate death, disease, pain, foul flavors, bland scenery, cold nights, cold bodies, bad food, e-coli, mold, mildew, disease-carrying pests, difficult bowel movements, insomnia, night terrors, mental disease, fatigue, drowsiness, laziness, vitamin-deficiencies, poisons, contagions, learning disorders, stress, blindness, dysentery, and depression and instead replaced it with something far more worse for the human condition.

A lack of Hope

As we sit in our chemical cars, looking at the sunset turned blood-orange from the chemicals in the air streaming from the plants to create the chemicals we pump into the tank every day we don't have hope that tomorrow will come. We know it will, and because of that we've lost our hope that tomorrow we come. We've lost appreciation for today because we all know that tomorrow will be more of the same. 

Life is easy now;

Another day after yet another Chemical Sunrise.

The big red light switch part two

   You have no idea how much this bothered me.

My mother took me to a fancy restaurant. We were supposed to meet my cousin here for dinner to "celebrate" her graduation. It wasn't quit a celebration. A bit of a reunion really, but I didn't care. All that was going through my mind was the fact that there, in my room of the hotel, was a bright red light switch, and I didn't know what it did. I felt the sting of pain in my stomach that indicated that I was hungry. Made sense, I hadn't eaten since breakfast when my mother pretty much force-fed me pancakes made on the hotplate we'd been cooking on in every hotel room for the last four months. I looked at the menu nervously, trying to gauge by my mother's reactions to different suggestions exactly what I was allowed to order without expressly asking what I could and could not have. My mother had always taught me that asking what I was allowed to do was rude, and that I should just "know" especially when it came to things having to do with money.

Tonight, she was in rare form. My mother was being subtle, letting my cousin actually decide what she was going to eat. I, on the other hand, seemed ridiculously restricted. We'd gone to Das KrabHause, which wasn't the fanciest restaurant in town, but it was definitely above the Burger Haven we'd eaten at the last time she decided we had enough money to go out. I sat at the table shuddering, taking in her reactions.

"Lobster Minestrone? That sounds pretty good." I said, her expression soured.

"Or maybe Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo?" A smile. There's my dinner!

"Yeah, I'll have that."

There was a lot of boring small talk, revolving mostly around my cousin and her graduation. Mom asked a lot of questions. My cousin was living with her boyfriend after having been pretty much kicked out of her father's house out here. We hadn't met him yet, so my cousin sat shyly answering questions, but you could tell that she was getting more annoyed by the minute at my mother's questioning.

My cousin turned to me, "What about you? Are you excited to graduate someday?"

I hadn't really thought about it, I was still 16, another two years to go. My mother had picked up this idea called "UnSchooling" where I learned about all of my subjects through life experience. It was supposed to be a better way to learn because I picked up real life skills instead of just wandering around learning about history and calculus and geography. Instead I was learning about thing I wanted to know about.

Which was great, until I stumbled upon something as dastardly and mysterious as the red switch. Darn, I was trying not to think about it, and now I can't get it out of my mind again. What could it do?

The red light switch part one

(A multi-part story based around an actual red light switch. Note that the switch definitely wasn't as interesting as this one was, I just decided to use it as a basis for a short story.)

I sat on the bed in the Embassy Suites. The room around me wasn't anything like any of the rooms I've ever stayed in before. This particular room was like a living a "living room" of sorts, with a TV, pull-out couch, chair, desk, and closet. Through the door next to the chair, I can see a slice of the Kitchen, complete with all the appliances, but no dishes, pots, pans, or silver.

I sat, toes tapping on the floor beneath the bed. My legs were too long to swing under this one. Mom was taking a long time to get the two toddlers ready to go to the restaurant downstairs. So I went through my list of the things I do every time I'm in a hotel. Bags in? Check. Soap in the bathroom? Check. Bed arranged? Yep. Lightswitches... Ah! There's something I can do!

I bolted up, getting all of my energy mustered for the one thing my mother lets me get away with in the hotel rooms. We stay in them a little more often than I'd like, usually on the road for months at a time. My mother calls it wandering, but I really know it as "running away from the family." This time, however, we were out for a reason. My cousin, Jennifer, was graduating from high-school. This trip had a little more purpose behind it, so for some reason my enthusiasm for checking out the hotel room had been subdued. I went into the kitchen, flipping on the light switches one-by-one, checking to see what each one did. There were four in this room. Two by the door, and two by the sink. The two by the door controlled the two ceiling-mounted lights that lit the spacious kitchen area. The top switch by the sink, a light mounted below the cabinets, the bottom, the disposal. This process continued throughout the rest of the suite without consequence until I went snooping around in the living room for the switches in there.

I'd gone clockwise around the suite, my routine to make sure I didn't miss any. The lights in the living room were on a boring dimmer switch instead of a regular light switch. Everything was normal until I spotted one last switch, hidden behind the TV. This switch was mounted on the wall at about eye level. It appeared that the switch had once been in a double power box, the kind that could hold two different switches next to each other. This switch didn't have a mate, however. Instead it appears that the maintenance team had fashioned a cover to hide the open switch-slot. It also didn't appear to be your standard, run-of-the-mill light switch. It was red. 


Now at first this didn't stop me. Okay, so they only had a red light switch left in the shop, no big deal, but I wasn't so easily convinced the second time I glanced at it. This light seemed fishy... It was mounted in the wall just like every other switch, but it seemed somehow intentional. My mind was racing, could it have been anything dangerous? What if the light switch was a makeshift replacement for a fire-alarm pull that wasn't labeled? Maybe it was a test switch for some piece of equipment somewhere else in the complex. I looked around and double checked what was in the room.

Everything seemed to be working, the TV turned on, the mini-fridge under the makeshift entertaining sink seemed to be running, all the lights worked, the outlets were all pumping power, there wasn't anything else in the room this switch could operate, but there it was hidden behind the TV, very clearly in the 'off' position.

I reached for the switch again, hesitating slightly, when my mother called out from the other room. "Paul, you ready to go? Let's get this thing over with." she said. Hailing me away from my new obsession.