Chapter 8: Buying the Lottery Ticket & Getting Groceries
After leaving David’s place, Tyler immediately made his way to the store where the trucker had purchased the lottery ticket in his past life.
As Tyler walked down the road, he couldn’t help but look around, subtly observing everyone and everything around him.
For someone who had come from than a decade in the future, and one that is advanced in technology than this, the difference was staggering.
Just stepping onto the sidewalk felt like stepping into a time capsule.
The streets were quieter, not because they were empty, but because the world hadn’t yet drowned in endless streams of content.
No one had their AirPods plugged in. Everyone still looked present, as they didn’t have their heads buried into their phones.
The cars on the road were bulky and loud. Gas-powered engines that coughed smoke when starting up, not the sleek, near-silent EVs he was used to seeing on the road, in the future.
The average person here still manually rolled down windows, still got annoyed when the check engine light came on and they couldn’t ask an AI what’s wrong.
The fashion alone was jarring. Unlike in the future where anything was being called fashion, here it was just baggy jeans, graphic tees with loud fonts, livestrong bracelets, skate shoes.
The height of rebellion was a lip piercing and the scent of cheap body spray.
The phones? He nearly laughed. Most people were using chunky slide phones or flip phones—clacking them shut like they were cool.