TWENTY YEARS AHEAD
I, Wintrypoet, woke up this morning with a backache that felt like a herd of rogue water buffalo had tap-danced on my spine. More alarming than the backache, though, was the sheer, unadulterated wrongness of my surroundings. Looking outside my window, my entire life just took a detour through a freakin’ wormhole fueled by Vernor’s ginger ale. The world outside looked completely different. I mean everything was futuristic. The digital screen on the wall read, July 18th, 2055. I looked in the mirror, and I hadn’t changed. I hadn’t aged. Still looked the same. Panic, naturally, set in. My first instinct, after confirming I wasn’t dreaming, was to find the boys. The Dearborn Crew. They were the only constant in my otherwise chaotic life, a band of brothers who’d seen me through thick and thin.
Twenty years vanished? No problem. I knew exactly where to start. Eido.
Finding Eido was easy. He was exactly where I expected him to be: at the Qawah House glued to a screen, jaw clenched, brow furrowed in that way he only gets when confronted with life’s truly monumental decisions. He was on a video call arguing with someone that iPhone cameras will never compare to Samsung. “One day, Inshallah, I’ll have a Samsung. Yallah bye. God bless you.” He hung up.
“Eido! My man!” I bellowed, startling him so badly that he nearly launched his coffee in the air.
He blinked, squinting at me like I was a particularly offensive mirage. “Wintry? Is that you? God bless you. You look younger.”
“That’s because I am, Eido! Sort of. Long story. Bottom line, I woke up twenty years in the future. I see you’re rocking a new hairpiece. Looks cool, brother.” I gestured, recalling how shiny his bald head used to glare back at me.
He ignored the barb. “Twenty years? You’re messing with me, say Wallah? And you’re still calling me ‘Eido.’ It’s ‘Aidan’ now. More professional.” He gestured vaguely at the array of glowing screens surrounding him. “And what do you mean, ‘hair piece’? This baby is the real deal! They have actual hair seeds now that grow within weeks.”
“Cool? Eido, I mean, Aidan! You’re still agonizing over the same thing you were twenty years ago! Tell me you haven’t spent the last two decades deciding between Apple and Samsung phones.”
He sighed a dramatic sigh that belonged in a Shakespearean tragedy. “It’s not that simple, Wallah! It’s about ecosystem integration! Global market share! The ethics of cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo!” He trailed off, lost in a torrent of tech jargon.
Yep, Eido was still Eido. Or Aidan. Whatever. Next up: Hassan.
I found Hassan jogging, as expected. Only, he was doing it racing cars on a track.
“Hassan! You’re looking bionic!” I shouted with excitement.
He stopped, the dirt dissolving beneath his feet. He looked at me, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Wintry? Ya habibi! Twenty years, huh? You look like you haven’t aged a day. And yeah, these bionic legs are a marvel of modern engineering. Titanium alloy, baby! Two new hips, also! What do you think?” He did a little jig. It was unsettling.
“Impressed. Though, I’m wondering why? Did you have an accident or something? Lost both your legs?” I asked.
Hassan just shrugged. “Oh, hell no! I just wanted to go faster and longer. Doctor says I’m good till I’m a hundred and twenty.” He winked, then started jogging again, zipping past speeding cars.
Next on the hit list: is Norman. This wouldn’t be easy. Norman was always on the fringes.
It took me a while, but I finally found him, not in his old real estate office, but napping away in a classic 1987 Grand National on the side of a road. The car was filled with his belongings as if it were his humble abode.
“Norman! What in the name of Baba Ghanoush are you doing?”
He jumped up, his eyes darting around nervously. “Wintry? Shhh! Keep it down! You wanna get me arrested?”
“Arrested? For what, sleeping on the road?” I laughed.
“Bro,” he said, “I finally found a vintage ’87 Grand National. This baby has only 100 miles, and they were asking for three million dollars. So, I took it on a test drive, and never went back.”
“Oh?” I said, “So you stoled it? Are you still selling homes, Norman? Or is this now you’re home?”
He just winked. “Let’s just say, real estate wasn’t cutting it anymore. The zoning laws got too complicated. This is what I always wanted, and nobody is taking it from me.”
Okay, Norman was officially off the rails. Time for Hamzeh. At least I knew what to expect there.
Finding Hamzeh was a breeze. His “Zen Gardens” empire was impossible to miss. Every other storefront seemed to be a Zen Gardens Relaxation Center, complete with neon signs featuring vaguely Asian-looking women and promises of “Total Satisfaction.”
I walked into the glitziest one, the air thick with jasmine and something vaguely medicinal. Hamzeh, looking surprisingly dapper in a silk robe, greeted me with a booming laugh.
“Wintry! My brother! What took you so long? I was wondering when you’d show up for your complimentary deep probe massage!” He clapped me on the back, nearly dislocating my shoulder.
“Hamzeh, you haven’t changed a bit. Still running your enterprises?”
He winked. “Better than ever! The future is all about relaxation, Wintry. People need to unwind from all the stress of hovercars and holographic meetings. And I’m here to provide that service. Plus, the profit sharing is crazy. The women are beautiful. And the secret rooms, well, they’re still a secret.”
After a quick, awkward, and heavily suggestive tour of his shady establishment, I decided to move on. Hamzeh was still Hamzeh, just richer and slightly more morally ambiguous if that was possible.
Tarek was the next stop. I figured I’d find him in his mom’s basement, probably shredding on a guitar but the search proved to be a lot harder than I expected. After talking to his sister, I found out that he had moved to Los Angeles to “make it big”.
“He is still trying to start a band,” his sister said, “but who knows when that boy will get a real job, or get married.”
Next stop: Shadi. He owned a tiny clothing store in Plymouth, “Milano’s Threads,” specializing in knock-off designer jeans and t-shirts that proclaimed, “I’m with Stupid.”
I punched “Milano’s Threads, Plymouth” into the glowing rectangle on the wall – apparently, they don’t call them “phones” anymore, how quaint – and was greeted with a picture of a vegan bakery. “Shadi’s Sourdough Sanctuary?”
My jaw dropped. Shadi, the man who once tried to convince me that cloth was a sustainable material, was now baking gluten-free, ethically sourced sourdough bread? This had to be some kind of bizarre fever dream brought on by the aforementioned water buffalo backache.
I ventured into the bakery, my heart doing a nervous jitterbug. The aroma of freshly baked something-or-other assaulted my nostrils, but not in a bad way. Behind the counter stood a man with a meticulously trimmed beard, wearing an apron that said, “In Crust We Trust.”
“Shadi?” I asked tentatively, my voice still rough around the edges.
He looked up, his eyes widening behind designer glasses. “Wintrypoet? Is that you? Wow! You’re…uh…young.”
“You’re selling organic bread, Shadi! What happened to selling ‘designer’ jeans that were made in someone’s basement?”
Shadi sighed, running a hand through his perfectly coiffed hair. “Let’s just say that the clothing business wasn’t for me. And my ‘investments’… well, let’s just say the ponies weren’t feeling lucky. This sourdough thing is working out. People pay good money for artisanal carbs, you know?”
Artisanal carbs? This timeline was officially insane.
Next on my list was Jamal. Jamal, is the most loyal, dedicated, and eternally optimistic Buffalo Bills fan I knew. For twenty years, he’d been waiting, praying, sacrificing burnt offerings of squirrels to the football gods, all for the Bills to finally win a Super Bowl. I tracked him down to a sports bar called “The End Zone,” which was, naturally, a virtual reality experience. I found Jamal immersed in a VR headset, flailing his arms wildly.
“Jamal!” I shouted over the simulated roar of the crowd. He ripped off the headset, a look of pure, unadulterated joy plastered on his face.
“Wintrypoet! You’re alive! And…quite young! But alive! You won’t believe what just happened!”
“Let me guess, the Bills finally won the Super Bowl?” I asked, barely daring to breathe.
Jamal’s face fell. “Nah. But they almost made the playoffs! Progress, man, progress!”
He then launched into a detailed explanation of the revolutionary new VR technology that allowed him to virtually quarterback for the Bills, reliving every agonizing near-miss of the past two decades. Some things, it seemed, never changed.
Richie was a bigger challenge. Richie was always a bit…shady. He sold “life insurance” that was less about protecting your loved ones and more about padding his wallet. Turns out, selling fictional policies is frowned upon by the legal system.
After some digging (and a slightly awkward conversation with a holographic librarian), I discovered that Richie had, shall we say, “relocated” after a particularly enthusiastic investigation by the authorities. He was now rumored to be running a large Llama farm in rural Argentina under the alias “Ricardo Rodriguez.” I decided maybe Richie was better left undisturbed. Some bridges are best left burned, especially when they’re constructed from fake insurance policies.
Finally, I sought out Hussein. Hussein was the calm, grounded one of our group. He owned oil companies that, against all odds, managed to stay afloat. He was the successful one, the one we all secretly envied and openly admired.
I found his former business, a sleek, minimalist building that now housed an Adeni Chai. The receptionist, a young woman with a nose ring and rainbow-colored hair, informed me that Hussein had sold the company years ago.
“He’s…busy,” she said with a cryptic smile. “He’s found enlightenment.”
“Enlightenment? What, did he discover the secret to unlimited wealth?”
She just chuckled and handed me a pamphlet for a meditation retreat in Tibet.
Tibet. Hussein, the devout, perpetually stressed businessman, had become a monk in Tibet. This was the most unbelievable twist of all.
I managed to get in contact with a monastery nestled high in the Himalayas. After navigating a confusing series of video calls and translation mishaps, I finally saw him – Hussein, bald, robed, and looking peaceful.
“Wintrypoet?” he said, his voice serene. “Is that you? You look unchanged.”
“Hussein, you’re a monk in Tibet! You sold your company and became a guru!”
He chuckled a low, resonant sound. “The material world holds no lasting satisfaction, my friend. I sought solace in the mountains, in meditation, in the pursuit of inner peace.”
“Inner peace? But what about your company? The profits? The stock options?”
Hussein just smiled serenely. “All illusions, my friend. All illusions.”
Sitting there, virtually face-to-face with my newly enlightened friend, I realized something. Twenty years had changed us all.
Eido was still undecided between Samsung and Apple phones, Hassan, with two new legs and hips, is still jogging, Norman, who now lives in a stolen vintage Grand National, is happy, but a wanted man, Tarek, is still trying to form a heavy metal band, Hamzeh, who now owns a chain of Asian massage parlors, will always be Hamzeh, Shadi was no longer selling suits, but baking bread, Jamal was reliving virtual football glory, Richie was probably shearing alpacas while dodging the law, and Hussein was finding inner peace in the Himalayas.
But despite the crazy changes, the advanced technology, the artisanal carbs, and the philosophical transformations, the core of our friendship, the weird, dysfunctional bond that had held us together for so long, was still there. We were still the same slightly lost, slightly broken, but ultimately lovable group of misfits we had always been.
Maybe jumping forward twenty years wasn’t so bad after all. It was a chance to reconnect, to see how life had unfolded for my friends, and to laugh (and sometimes cringe) at the unexpected twists and turns. And maybe, I could even learn a thing or two about finding my enlightenment – even if it meant enduring another water buffalo backache. Me? I was still trying to figure out how to use the hovering toilet.
©Habib Dabajeh