The Morning Commute

At seven in the morning, Anthony Perkins woke up to the gentle vibration of the BuzzBed he had had just bought off of Amazon. As he did so, the screen on his ceiling flashed on. The top left corner displayed the temperature: 38 degrees, not much different than it had been during the first two days of winter. The day was Christmas Eve, and he was going downtown today to buy Christmas gifts for his nephews and nieces. “Screen off,” he commanded the screen on the ceiling. As Anthony walked out of his room, the door closed shut behind him. Hot coffee and a few strips of bacon were already waiting for him. He thought about how easy life in the 22nd century was thanks to technology. His BuzzBed supported him graciously in the daytime and buzzed to life each day when the sun was up on the horizon and Chip always had breakfast waiting for him.
“What’s the traffic like Chip?” Asked a smiling Anthony.
“I don’t even get a good morning? Joked Chip. “How’s the BuzzBed working out for you, Anthony.” The computerized voice just barely mispronounced “Anthony,” using the “tuh” sound instead of the “thu” sound.
“Haha, you know, It’s not too bad. You should try it some time.” responded Anthony.
Chip’s comedy filled Anthony with a sense of friendship and of homeliness.
Chip didn’t speak for a few more seconds. “HAHA..HA..HAHAHA. That is a funny joke. As for traffic, it’s pretty bad out there. The Systems are pretty jammed up. Other humans like you must also be shopping for Christmas gifts. Be careful out there.”
“Thanks, man.”
Anthony grabbed his briefcase and pushed open his front door into his elevator. They had cut the hallways out of the building years ago. Now, everyone just had their own elevator. There was no need for pushing buttons, because the elevator connected directly to Anthony’s car. The elevator didn’t start right when Anthony got in.
This time, the Kit Kat ad was first. The inside of the elevator door turned to a red screen with the brightness of the sun.
GRAB A BREAK…
GRAB A KIT KAT
A few seconds later the cold steel of the door was back and in plain view. Then the screen reappeared, buffered a little bit, and an ad began for Coca-Cola. The screen began to flash between actors, all sipping a bottle of Coke, while a happy tune played over the speakers. Thirty seconds later, after the Coca-Cola ad was finished, the elevator dropped into free fall, and Anthony soon fell thud into his car. Anthony drove slowly out of the parking garage and up the car ramp, where he waited to try to get onto the Systems. It was eight o’clock.
The cars flew past, one after the other. Each one followed two seconds after the next. Color did not exist among the cars. Instead, each one of that flew by seemed to be covered in a thin layer of black shine. The scientists and politicians in the regime had a passion for making things uniform. Anthony watched the glazed eyes of the drivers, as they passed, waiting for his chance to get onto the Systems. People now bought brain implants for just $5, thanks to very generous subsidies from the government.  Now, people used them all the time, especially when driving. When people had their implants on, their eyes looked frozen as ice. There were games channels, sports channels, adult entertainment channels, but most people listened to the news channel.
The news channel could be experienced through audio or both audibly and visually. Each 24 hour news channel broadcast started with an infomercial for the brain implants that ran from 12AM to 3AM. After that came the local ads. From 3AM to 6AM, the local station took over, and broadcasted ads for local deals. At 6AM, the Morning Commute Show came on. The Morning Commute was separated into two time slots: celebrity news from six to seven-thirty, and technology news from seven-thirty-one to nine.
Ten minutes later, Anthony found a gap in traffic and sped onto the Systems, turning right so he was headed the same direction everyone else was. Being one of the only residents in his city to not yet have a brain implant, he felt alone, like he was the only one awake anywhere on the road, and he started to really miss his computer, Chip. He looked around and could see the top few floors of the glass skyscrapers he was speeding past as he did. He could see workers, staring out the window, eyes glazed. The traffic seemed as usual, symmetric and orderly in every way. A couple of minutes into his drive, Anthony found himself having to bank a few curves that were meant solely to be traversed by the automatic vehicles of those with brain implants. Soon, though, the road straightened out again, and Anthony continued to forge ahead.
The systems were eight lanes across at every point throughout the city, so about fifteen yards wide. There were hundreds of on ramps and off ramps like the one Anthony had entered on throughout the city, each one connected to an underground parking garage, and each one on the right side of the road. And just like the systems, each ramp was brand new, with fresh concrete the color of night. It was about eight-thirty now, with still a ways to go to reach the store, seeing as how it was quite far away, and Anthony began to notice something peculiar. At each off ramp stood a man in a black uniform, with a weapons belt dangling from his waist. They appeared to Anthony to be government officials, owing to the large white insignia on the right sleeve of each man. The insignia looked like a two-pronged fork, or a lowercase h with the long end sticking through the middle. Though their presence was peculiar to him, it also comforted Anthony that they were there.
The U.S. government regime which was currently in power was the Party of Prophets. The regime was started by the mysterious Dr. X, a scientist and an innovator in technology who had promised a better tomorrow after the fallout from World War 3, eight years prior. World War 3 had destroyed entire cities and entire populations. People were very scared and very lonely, and looking for an answer to their sorrow. According to Dr. X, technology was the answer. The Systems were so safe that it was rumored nobody had ever crashed. The homes were secure too. Full body scans were now mandatory before entering any place of residence, in order to check for identity. For Anthony, the body scan took place as soon as he stepped onto the elevator to go back up into his condominium. And what better way to replace lost loved ones than computers who know everything about you. More than 90% of Americans under the Prophets’ regime now had computerized pals like Chip to keep them company. So all in all, it really didn’t alarm Anthony to see the hundreds of black clad men standing on the ramps.
At 8:55, an announcement began to ring out through loud speakers throughout the city:
“ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ALL RESIDENTS PLEASE TUNE YOUR IMPLANTS TO THE NEWS CHANNEL. AGAIN, ALL RESIDENTS MUST NOW TUNE YOUR IMPLANTS TO THE NEWS CHANNEL. YOUR COMPLIANCE IS EXPECTED.”
Anthony found this strange, because he had no idea that these loud speakers even existed. But looking back on the regime’s strange policies thus far, he figured it must be for a good reason, and so it didn’t trouble him. In fact, he hardly paid it any thought at all until the clock on his car radio hit nine o’clock. Nine o’clock was the time when the Morning Commute ended its broadcast over the news channel.
Out of the corner of Anthony’s left eye, he could see a male driver’s face begin to contort: his cheeks and forehead scrunched together in a look of pure anguish. The only thing which stayed the same on the man’s face were his eyes, still stuck in a trance. The man’s head started to shake side to side uncontrollably, and he brought his shaking his hands up slowly and covered his ears with them, but this seemed to bring him no peace. The next thing Anthony knew, the man was passed out cold. Turning the other direction, he saw the same thing beginning to happen with an old woman one lane to his right. Her lips curled and her whole body shook, until she passed out after a few seconds of pain. The next thing Anthony knew, all of the cars on the Systems had stopped dead in their tracks. None of these automatic cars were supposed to stop until they had reached their destination. He swerved to a stop, and took the keys out of the ignition in a panic. As he pushed the button to slide his car door open, the dead silence and the bitter cold of winter hit him immediately. He looked onto the maze that was the Systems: he could not only see the part of the Systems which he had been driving on, but also the loops of roads that branched off from this one, and more loops that branched off from those. Everywhere Anthony looked, high and low, was a part of the Systems, filled with jet black cars that seemed suspended in time. The sun, now high on the horizon, illuminated the whole scene.
Anthony ran over to help the man to his left, each step echoing against the concrete. To Anthony’s thankful surprise, the door was unlocked, and he slid it open to find a middle-aged man with his eyes still entranced, despite his unconsciousness. Taking the man’s hand in his, he tried heaving him him out of the car, and managed to get half of his body out onto the street. After one more big pull, the man’s body fell down onto the black concrete. Anthony tried everything. CPR elicited no response, no matter how many times he pumped against the abdomen. The lifelessness of the body reminded Anthony of watching his wife die in the war. He got so shaken up that he almost began to cry, before regaining his composure, and checking if maybe there was something stuck in the throat of the victim, but there wasn’t. Anthony was so confused. He looked for signs of distress all along the body, anything that would have caused the reaction that it did. Finally, Anthony was forced to give up. He foolishly began running from car to car, only to realize that everyone else on the Systems was just as out of it as the man Anthony had tried to save. It seemed as though nobody had survived whatever it was that had happened. Anthony sat down cross-legged on the concrete and began to cry.
Good description
Hinting at life before
Add more technology bits
Chip, elaborate
Verisimilitude
Suggestions:
Anthony subscribed to the new way of life, why doesn’t he have a brain implant?
Description of Anthony
Ryan: Why? More backstory
Flashback
Government sponsored products
Nolan: good start
Hunter: Scene where he interacts with other people
Philp: Explain why technology was the answer

Minutes later, the silence was broken by the sound of marching. A black clothed man who stood at the off ramp across from where Anthony was sitting began to march onto the Systems. The officer marching forward had a look of determination on his face that Anthony hadn’t seen in awhile. At first, the man paid Anthony no attention. Instead, he stopped at the first car he encountered, which was in the far right lane. He slid open the driver’s side door, and brought his two arms underneath the lifeless body like a lift fork. Anthony watched in awe as he picked it up, walked back towards the on ramp, and rolled the body down. The officer turned back one hundred and eighty degrees, and this time headed for the car in the lane just across from where he had just taken his first victim. However, he stopped halfway to his destination. He began swiveling his head, looking for something along the road. Soon, Anthony realized that it was him the man was looking for; he must have sensed his presence. Thankfully, the man seemed not to notice him as he marched forward until he reached the second car. This time it was a young woman that the officer/soldier plied from the car. The man kept going like this for minutes and then hours. Each time he would get near the last car in a row of eight cars, Anthony would be forced to dive behind the next row of cars when the officer was turned around towards the off ramp. Anthony thought himself to be no match to this man in uniform, and continued to hide instead of plotting an attack.
If Anthony had stood up, he would have noticed that the same thing was happening all throughout the city: hundreds of officers were taking thousands of people from their cars and rolling them down the off ramps of the Systems. But Anthony stayed crouched until seven or eight rows of people had been taken right in front of his eyes, and then finally he made a run for it. He had no way of knowing if  these people were alive or dead; he only knew that he had to stay alive. He composed himself, took a deep breath, and started off in a sprint in the direction of the store.