When Autumn Comes Around
The Changing of Seasons and Sensations...
I was there when the switch was flicked and all went warm and cold. That wonderful change of color against that eternal cobalt blue of the skyline. I was there to see the leaves brown, the yellows and reds slip from the branches and onto the grass, whose blades withered, yet never faded. I didn’t pull that great lever in the city’s heart, I wasn’t the one who chose for autumn to be, I just happened to be there. There by the trees when it all happened.
I had spent the morning clearing up the litany of reports left on my Ace module. Reports of all sorts of minor electrical failings; phones, malfunctioning touchscreens, synthesizers acting up. All the little things the network was missing. It was a five-second breakfast, and off on the rounds in my old beater of a hovercraft. A fix here, a replacement there. On and on like that for the whole damn day. Once I had crossed the last of the list off and mopped my brown-furred brow, I was ready to just drop dead in bed.
Until it happened.
I was parked by Empire Square Park filling out the rest of the report on the last apartment. I gave the form my John Hancock, submitted the file, and closed the window on the center-console screen. And it was just as I looked up that I saw all those rich green treetops start fading, high above the tall dark wall. Slowly the leaves went from green to yellow to red and brown. Some began to dance and fall away as a soft breeze wafted its way through the park, carrying the others onto the wind.
I jumped out of my ride and went up to the entrance. There were a few folks there, but no one seemed to notice the great change happening around them. When I took a good deep breath of that air though, I let ‘em know.
“Happy Fall!” I shouted with a smile.
Some of the hounds looked at me a little funny, but I’d say more of ‘em smiled and waved right back. I took the win as it was and got right back in my ride and headed home. It was just such a little thing, watching a season change before your eyes, but that little thing carried with it a feeling I haven’t known in a while. Something anyone can savor and understand if they really want to feel it. It’s that feeling of something new coming around the corner. A cozy feeling of the world in a new way.
That feeling when autumn comes around.