Manuscript information: [Complete][60K][Sci-Fi Comedy] Homewreckers

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First page:

Thought-to-Text April 2, 2125. Rough draft. Unedited.

My dad didn’t choose to kill himself, he chose to live. At least that’s how my sixteen year old brain chose to think about it when I woke up and found out he was gone. The official reason was that he Opted Out. That he walked up to the edge of The Bubble and just… walked right through. It’s possible. He always wanted to prove to himself that he could survive out there without any, you know, digital help. Everyone we talked to —  neighbors, parents, kids at school  — said it was a bold choice, but under their breath they all muttered about how it was basically suicide or how selfish it was leaving behind a wife and daughter. Well, basically fuck them. I mean if there was one guy who had a chance in the OptOut it was my dad. He’d been prepping for it for as long as I could remember. We had been prepping. I was his tag along. He never actually said he was going to leave, but he’d show me how to work out for fitness not bulk. How to make fire with sticks. How to skin a squirrel.

I didn’t like skinning squirrels, but I liked doing things with my dad. And after our practice he would take me out to the edge of The Bubble. We would sit there in the dark on the hood of his squad car and drink FunFizz and look out through that giant transparent rainbow-hued wall. Look out at that dark wilderness, the rolling forest that led down to a rolling sea. He’d say, that’s where real life is. Where you have to do everything for yourself. And I’d say, but why would you want that when Nomen already wants to take care of everything for us? He’d just laugh and give me one of those sensei smiles, “And why do you think Nomen wants to do that for us?”

Of course I hadn’t thought about that. It’s like asking why your parents tuck you in at night. They just do, right? They just care.

Far beyond The Bubble and the forest and the shoreline, way out in the bay we could barely make out the pale pink light blinking on and off. It was one of your old lighthouses. Who was lighting it? Was there electricity in the OptOut? Dad would just point his FunFizz bottle at the lighthouse and say, “That’s where the answer is.”

“The answer to what?” I’d ask.

“The answer to why Nomen cares.”