Let Me Walk You Through The Pedestrian

The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury really captivates your imagination. If you read it closely, it makes you feel differently about the future. How cold, quiet, uncomfortable. Lonely. Lonely it might be. You can feel the lonely atmosphere while he's walking down the street. It's dark and cold. So cold when he breathes, you can see the fog in the night. As he's walking down the houses, he peers into random houses in the neighborhood. Everyone is glued to the television. They are in their homes together yet not together. They're, well, alone. All in the same house, same room, same couch, together. Yet still, alone. As he's walking through the night, he makes this self conversation. " 'Hello, in there,' he whispered to every house on every side as he moved. 'What's up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7, Channel 9? Where are the cowboys rushing, and do I see the United States Cavalry over the next hill to the rescue?' " Mr. Leonard Mead certainly knows how to entertain. He seems like an average guy, nothing out of the ordinary. Just someone with sense in this world in the year 2053 A.D. In this cold, dark world. Alone. He walks, as if going somewhere yet not going anywhere at all. Just taking a stroll. Or maybe? Just maybe, he was looking for something. Maybe he just wanted to see if he truly was the only person left. Everyone is so isolated and according to Mr. Mead, he hasn't come across anyone else in his numerous strolls. Maybe he wanted to prove something. He was not alone. "In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not one in all that time." He notices this dip in the sidewalk by the curb. He almost tripped over it. He notices this in a strange way, as he has never came across this before. Everyone has had that adrenaline rush when you almost trip or ,unfortunately, end up falling.  "The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass." The streets are beginning to break and crack after all these years. Not aren't being tended to. Maybe, they aren't needed. No one really walks anymore. But as Mr. Mead turns the corner, he gets flashed by a light. "He turned back on a side street, circling around toward his home. He was within a block of his destination when the lone car turned a corner quite suddenly and flashed a fierce white cone of light upon him. He stood entranced, not unlike a night moth, stunned by the illumination, and then drawn toward it." Like a moth, he's drawn. He's curious to see if someone is joining him. He has almost reached his home as well. This shows how curious Mr. Mead is. A regular person would have tried to go straight home, bothered yet incurious. Yet, this world is different. So who knows what a"regular person" would actually do. Sadly for Mr. Mead, it's just the police. "The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left, wasn't that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty streets." Crime has gone down? Now isn't that something. Maybe the future does hold some positive things as well, so who knows. Mr. Mead. He knows. After all, he is a writer. Anyone would guess that he keeps up with society and its rules & regulations. He has this brief, yet intense interrogation about Mr. Mead's intentions for this stroll tonight. Even tries to lighten the mood. 
"'Are you married, Mr Mead?'
'No.'
'Not married,' said the police voice behind the fiery beam. The moon was high and dear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent.
'Nobody wanted me,' said Leonard Mead with a smile.
'Don't speak unless you're spoken to!'

Leonard Mead waited in the cold night." 

A swing and a miss for Mr. Mead. After this long conversation, the interrogator tells Mr. Mead to get in. He comply's. After all, Mr. Mead is a smart man. "He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all." Now, a car that talks & drives itself. That really is something. I was expecting RoboCop, personally. As he gets in, "He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there." As expected. But what happens next is very interesting indeed. 

"They passed one house on one street a moment later, one house in an entire city of houses that were dark, but this one particular house had all of its electric lights brightly lit, every window a loud yellow illumination, square and warm in the cool darkness.

'That's my house,' said Leonard Mead.
No one answered him.
The car moved down the empty riverbed streets and off away, leaving the empty streets with the empty sidewalks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night."

He sits in this futuristic car by himself. If you've seen the movie Joker by Todd Philips, you can picture this quite vividly.  As Mr. Mead sits there, we(the readers) wonder what he's thinking. The sequence of events that has led him here is kind of ironic. A man that just wants to take a walk through his neighborhood gets caught up by the police. This really may be a future that we are leading into. A cold, dark, enclosed society. Being there yet not being there at all. Together yet apart. With technology leading the way. This story can very well show how we need to come together. If not we might be. Will be.

ALONE.

Not a society.

Just a citizen.

One citizen.

One.

PEDESTRIAN.