11
" I could close my eyes, and the sounds of the party weren't so different from those in college, but I wasn't tricking myself. The feeling in the air had changed. There was a whole world out there, beyond wherever we were gathered. It didn't matter whether it was a cramped walk-up or a tar rooftop or a weedy backyard strung with lights. How you spent your time was suddenly up to you. There were other options. Infinite, terrifying options opening up like a crevasse and no one to tell you which way to go. I think everyone was wondering, through the haze of weed and beer pong and tequila shots, whether this—right here, right now—was in fact what they were supposed to be doing. I suspected I wasn't alone in detecting a desperation in the muggy air, people laughing too loudly, drinking beer that hadn't been chilled long enough. "
― Anna Pitoniak , The Futures
15
" Any given day, in any given subway car, there were people who were happier than I, people who were sadder than I. People who had erred and people who had forgiven. I was mortal, imperfect, just like everyone else. It was good to be reminded of that. But that mortality also made me old. I felt like I might vanish in a second. I realized—knowledge that arrived all at once—how much the world would continue to change after I was gone. Someday, people would look back on this era in the same way I had looked back on the settlers of the New World or the cowboys of the West in the slippery pages of my schoolbooks, strangers whose lives were distilled down to a few paragraphs and color illustrations. They would shake their heads, not believing that we could have known so little. It was nearly impossible to imagine the continuity. Then they would turn away from the past and continue their lives in a world transformed by technology or disease or war. By rising oceans or collapsing economies or by something that we—we soon-to-be relics—couldn’t even imagine. But I wanted to. I wanted to imagine, and then to see. I clung to the time I’d been given. I didn’t want to leave. "
― Anna Pitoniak , The Futures
