Before we connect, some things you must know.
Thank you listening to the prelude for Paired Season Three! Stay tuned this season for guest stars, mysteries, and the frightening spectre of machine learning. It'll be fun!
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Credits:
Creator/Writer/Producer - Liz Anderson
Editor/Composer - MJ
Cover Art - Adrian Theuma
Theme Music - Arne Parrot
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I’d like to tell you a story. A short story, don’t worry.
It is a story about the future, but looks quite similar to now. That’s the thing about the future. It’s never as different as you’d like it to be. Everything old, new again.
Let me show you this world. Let me give you some space to stretch out. Perhaps...a city corner. Yes. Here is a sidewalk, crowded with commuters. It is 9:37 AM. In the future, the work day begins promptly at 10:00 AM. That’s new. The elevated train smells like bleach and sweat. That’s old. As Sondheim’s successive hundred people get off of the train, the early birds of the world get off the elevator, enjoying the brief silence as they sit down at their open-office work station. They sip their coffee, look out the window, and wonder for the hundredth time if this is all there is.
Everything old is new again.
The city is too tight. I promised I’d let you stretch. Perhaps...a warehouse. Here is a cavernous facility in the middle of North America, dotted every so often by dozens of people manning dozens of machines. A woman in a hairnet drives a forklift. A forklift! Now that’s old. Hard to improve upon the classic forklift. This particular forklift has been in this warehouse since this particular spot in this particular region of the continent was called Colorado. No longer...that’s new. As these employees dart their way through miles of aisles, waving occasionally to a coworker, they think. A few are bored. A few are tired. A few are in a weirdly good mood, given the circumstances. All of them have someone they’re worried about.
Everything old is new again.
I’ve changed my mind. We’ve stretched too much. Let’s find someplace to snuggle up. Perhaps...a house. On the panhandle, a modest two stories, on stilts, of course, because....it’s the panhandle. A pair of hands with painted nails tinker in the attic. Tinkering is supposed to happen in the basement of course, but in a stilted house one must make do. There is a house unconcerned with “new.” Cisterns, old. Gutters, old. Thick bottle-glass widows, old. Even the children of this house are old - they read smelly books and watch dingy films and dream old-fashioned dreams of milk cartons, knee socks, and what it might be like to kiss under a tree branch after a storm.
But the hands upstairs...those tinkering hands...those hands are interested in something new. Something new, to solve the world’s oldest problem. Something new enough to make up for not having something borrowed or blue. Something so very, very, very new, it will feel as if it should have always existed.
But not yet.
Until then, everything old is new again.