Harper Kingsley blog

1999

Party like it’s 1999. When gas prices were manageable and rent was somewhat affordable. When dreams felt attainable even as voices screamed “The world is terrible!” When Mom Jeans were so normalized that even men wore them.

It was a time of innocence in that everyone thought they were so jaded that nothing could effect them.

Missing children were assumed dead. Strangers were dangerous. Latchkey kids had grown up to be latchkey teenagers. And “Highlander” reruns were still on TV.

Moon pies and Twinkies. Licorice whips and candy necklaces. Roller rinks and community swimming pools.

There was no satellite radio. People walked around unmoored and unanchored and cellular phones were so expensive they could only be dreamed about. Electric cars were an idea of the future and solar panels weren’t even owned by the rich.

People carelessly used baby powder and the story of someone suing McDonalds because of a hot cup of coffee seemed ridiculous rather than horrifying. People trusted the big brands that had raised them and nobody worried that they someday wouldn’t be able to afford a cup of drinkable water.

It was a time of change, when modern social consciousness was just beginning and hadn’t yet been slandered by questionable sources. When the Internet was young and search engines were just beginning to find their way and hadn’t yet been corrupted by manipulated algorithms. When kids hung out in the woods to smoke weed and skate parks were just becoming popular and hadn’t yet been destroyed along with nearly every other teen friendly activity by stealth-hater “mom groups.”

Cars were loud. Fast food was delicious. And people could enter airports without having to remove their shoes.

1999 was a time before HTML 5. It was a world of Geocities and AOL. People would Ask Jeeves and peruse Alta Vista to find movie reviews for “American Beauty” and “Fight Club” while “The Matrix” made them question their very reality.

People felt young and free or old and weary as they welcomed in the 2000’s for the very first time. Some laughed and some cried and some stockpiled supplies in fear of Y2K.

People partied in hope and in despair and in desperation for a future they couldn’t envision.

It felt like the future was happening “right now.” Anything was possible, from the glorious to the grim. Nothing was out of bounds. It felt as thought no limits had been set.

The world was open and new. Murders and conflicts were happening in countries far away. People wanted to “Believe” that “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay” to “Slide” into the “Heartbreak Hotel.”

Summer was hot, winter was cold, but weather seemed more normal and less lethal back then. It was a year of change without being a year of tragedy. Fear and paranoia was in its beginning stages and survivalism hadn’t yet becoming a popular lifestyle choice.

1999 was a time of innocence because people hadn’t yet realized how bad things were going to get. The Doomsday Clock was 9 minutes to midnight and it felt further away than the moon.

There was a sense that forever was yet to come.

And that’s why he chose to set his time machine to the spring of 1999. It was at the limit of how far the machine could go back, but he refused to go to anywhen closer in time.

The machine could only make one trip. He only had one chance to bring the Doomsday Clock closer to morning.

So he was going to party like it was 1999.

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NOT SUITABLE

There was a time before jealousy. A time of happiness or at least quiet contentment.

And now there was this.

Looking around at everyone else wearing their Suits. Sleek, boxy, fitted, loose, every style and color and type worn with the unselfconscious ease of personal excellence. Of knowing they were wearing personal armor and strength and flight and immortality all tailored to their particular gene structure.

Even the ugliest eyesore Suits were beyond his reach.

“Bad genes.” That’s what he was told. Blunt and casually cruel. As though destroying dreams was just another everyday thing.

An Unsuitable. That’s what he was. Him and a handful of others. A minority segment of the population that were by turns pitied and reviled.

Cosmic rays. Contact with forever chemicals. Some terrible mix of events that happened pre-conception. All the different ways that a gene structure could be so damaged as to make someone forever Unsuitable.

He remembered lining up with the other Aged Tens. All excitedly describing what colors and styles they would turn their Suits once fitted. Planning where they would fly and what they would do. The Suit feats that they would accomplish.

Everyone secretly fearing that they would be found Unsuitable. Loudly boasting to cover up the sense of dread.

He’d been the only Unsuitable in his Sector that year. The only one hunching his shoulders under the weight of looks and whispers and unwanted notoriety.

It had been near unbearable but there was nothing he could do about it. His genes were what made him Unsuitable. But they were also what made up his body and being.

He’d looked at the research. A desperate and sad kid that suddenly had no friends as everyone else was exploring the wonders and joys of Suit life. He’d had plenty of free time on his hands to look things up.

There was no changing his Unsuitable status. Science had attempted to make changes. To rewrite genes, to splice in changes, to delete the bad and promote the good. A lot of people had volunteered to die in horrible ways before experimentation had been made illegal.

Some people couldn’t bear to live as an Unsuitable. They were a demographic with a high instance of suicide and drug and alcohol abuse.

He’d even had thoughts before. When he looked around the dinner table at his family in their Suits. When he went to school and no one wanted to get close to him. When those around him were warned about his “delicate constitution” and treated him as if he could be broken by a hard look.

From the time he was ten years old, he had felt as though all his dreams had died. Because in a world of wonder and joy, he was found to be Unsuitable for any of it.

He was a normal human in a world populated by gods. That’s how it had been described on the Not Suitable website. Gods and humans.

It wasn’t that he was defective. His genes were perfectly fine. Look at him. Two arms, two legs, a face, a body… he was completely and normally human.

It wasn’t his fault that his genes refused to accept fusion with a Suit.

It was something that had been done to him before he was born. Likely before he was even conceived. Some unlucky turn of events that resulted in the mutation of the cells that had become him.

He didn’t envy what he didn’t have. He was jealous of the opportunities that had been taken from him.

He was Unsuitable, but he was alive.

=END=

• The Paypal: https://paypal.me/harperkingsley. Directly support the content.
• The Patreon: https://patreon.com/harperkingsley. Become a patron and receive access to Patreon-only content and bonus posts.
• The Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/harperwck. Artwork, links, a way to support the creation of new content.
• The Amazon shop: https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0. See curated lists of items, and if you click an item but buy something else I still get money for driving traffic.
• The story site: Kimichee: https://kimichee.com. Stories, poems, and reviews; no excess babble.
• The blog: https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog. The stories, the meta, the babble, the news; a broad spread of content.
• The Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/harperkingsley.bsky.social. Shares, re-shares, babble, writing notes, drabbles, anything and everything and all the things in between.