It is the year 3330 and like most other distractions, ice cream is illegal. I had just gotten home from a brutal Day 5 at Bryson Inc. Bryson holds a firm position as the country's premier manufacturer for the bytemites fueling the war. Today we received a defective digital legion and I spent the entirety of my 12 hour shift restoring code sequences to stabilize each nano soldier's Interpreter - a tool used to report online disturbances from the East. Just moments ago I saw Gary, alive and well, driving a vehicle advertising ice cream. Like me, Gary is (or at least was) an engineer. In fact, Gary told me yesterday that I was his replacement at Bryson, only he referred to the massive tech giant as "Fryson" on account of what he imagined it did not only to the constituents of the East but to the minds of its employees as well. Gary was piss drunk then, he was piss drunk behind the wheel of the truck, and he was piss drunk when he made direct eye contact with the barrel of the vaporizer that ended his life. But it wasn't so much the piercing stench of homemade alcohol that I will remember from my encounter with Gary nor the ash pile of his remains I could see outside my kitchen window. No. It was the exchange that I will not forget. Gary was much older than I but only by a few hundred years. He had lived in a time where municipalities were named and he spoke very fondly of a place called Atlanta. He spoke of seasons, books, music, and "weak ends". In fact, I cannot recall a point during our conversation in which he mentioned anything relevant to the time after my birth. But eventually he drew focus and made his point: Nostalgia. He was preaching the driving force behind the East. He was preaching the power of what he had spent his life fighting. He was preaching his last rite. "You wannas know something, buddy? I'll tell yas. I useta sweat! I useta sweat so much that I didn't wear a shirt when I did! And you wanna know something? That was alllllllright! it wasn't just alright, it was A OH KAY buddy. And you wanna hear the best part? My MOTHER useta give money to pay for ICE CREAM! Because the ICE CREAM came by the basketball court once a day, you could bet your allowance on THAT!" I am not sure how Gary got the ice cream truck and I don't think I can spend any more time dwelling on it. It looks like we will win the war and then it will only be the scythe of my own mind I will have to worry about. But maybe one day, when I have the time, I will come back to this and read about Gary. "I mean, we ain't really even living buddy. My living is OVER! I haven't lived since I was a boy and I don't think I will ever be a boy again!"