Darren From Earth
The Future Is One Phone Call Away...

There were two possibilities for the origin of the incoming call, both of which he desired, but it seemed like nobody else did, leading Darren to believe that perhaps he shouldn’t be as excited as he was. That perhaps at his age he shouldn’t have jumped from the coach with excitement and that he should have kept his smile tempered. He had been told by his History of The Milky Way Galaxy teacher that he was a bit too jittery, and when he observed how his leg often bounced when sitting. Whether he was bored or excited.
His primary hope was that the call was coming from Karen McKenna. They had been on four dates so far, and as far as Darren was concerned, that meant they were supposed to be going steady. His friend Sarah Watts had told him that if they weren’t steady by two dates, it meant that the girl was a floozy. She confirmed that it was a face, mostly because it was the rules in not only human culture, but Martian, Xenon, and android culture as well. Yet he hadn’t seen Sarah go steady with anybody, and he had seen her doze off in his Milky Way history and culture class, leading him to shift between believing her and not.
He was unsure if their first time hanging out together was even a date, since it was at the sock hop with a big group, and not just the two of them, but the others; it was just the two of them. After their third, he steered clear of her but began to regret doing so, knowing that he liked her enough and would be okay with not going steady for six dates if she wanted. She liked a lot of the same things he did, so it seemed that it was rare for girls to like according to Pa. They spoke about robotics, which she thought was advancing, but Darren believed had grown stagnant. Yet on the date he claimed robotics was only getting better with each year.
The second possibility was that it was one of the universities he had applied to, and his hope was that it wasn’t Neptune University. Pa’s Alma Mater. A place he had only applied to due to the insistence that their marketing program was one of the best in their vicinity. He didn’t like the cold and had his vision set on the Mars State, which not only had surfing on the coast but also a great geology program.
“Incoming Message for Darren Partridge,” The phone chimed. Once he came close enough, Darren spotted the phone's projected hologram, which claimed the caller was unknown, but he was struck by disappointment when he saw the area code. It definitely wasn’t Karen, as it lacked the 001 area code from planet Earth; instead, the blue holograph floated with the letters 240, the area code for Neptune.
“Just swell,” Darren sarcastically muttered through gritted teeth. He gripped his hand around the phone tightly, slowly removing it from its base as he pulled its cool chrome to rest on his ears.
“Partridge Residence…Darren speaking,” Darren iterated. He made sure to follow the instructions Ma told him whenever he answered the phone. To do so with a smile and a cheerful tone so the being on the other end knew that you were happy to hear from them. Although Darren doubted it when he got a call from an Xeno from Venus, where in their culture a smile is seen as rude. He heard nothing but the familiar buzz of static at first. Sounding as if it was an eternal sense of silence being pushed with the occasional pop, “Hello,”
Hearing nothing again, Darren slowly began to place the phone back onto its hook, slightly bothered by the interruption, until there was the sudden calling of his name.
“Him...Darren, what’s his name? Part... something, one of 'em boys from Earth,” A gruff voice said, his words sounding as if they lived between the halfway point of a question and a statement, as if he was unsure of what exactly it was he was saying but wanted to seem certain anyway. He had a distinct accent, straight from everybody who was raised in Neptune. His words were slow and spoken with a thick drawl.
“Uh... hello,” Darren stuttered. His awkward words were a mixture of attempting to do multiple things at once. Since he was speaking at the university, he wanted to come across as far more distinguished than he actually was, but he quickly remembered that people from Neptune were supposed to be laid back and preferred authenticity, while at the same time recalled how saying hi wasn’t appropriate, but instead a hello sir was proper.
“Earth?” Another said, “Another earth boy. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Excuse me, sir... It’s Darren Partridge. Darren Partridge from sector 34. On Earth. I sent my application to Earth just a couple of weeks ago by drone,” Darren said, but when there was no reply, Darren quickly realized that they couldn’t hear him.
Feeling guilt over eavesdropping, he considered doing the sensible thing and returning the phone back to its hook, not hearing what he wasn’t supposed to hear, but Darren dismissed such an idea as the right thing and instead did the sensible thing. Making sure he knew exactly what the university thought of him, as if he did, there was a probable cause to know what he needed to change in order to get into his desired spot at Mars U.
“No, he’s a good one. One of the few that come from Earth… Really, I do mean it this time,” the recruiter stated.
The comments pushed Darren into an instant sensation of euphoria. He was clearly a shoo in, far better than any competition that had ever been around. He had always thought it to be at times, but at others he was doubtful. There was no other person who had claimed to be a poet and a surfer like he was. Plus he always thought that he didn’t deserve to live on earth anyway. It may have been humanity's first planet, but it wasn’t where he should stay. What he needed was some kind of escape, and it seemed like he was about to get it.
“Oh, look at this,” the man stated, with what sounded like a chuckle. It seemed out of place for somebody who was about to sing his praise, but he noticed that what began as a chuckle slowly found itself morphing into a laugh. “Studies Geology…Earth geology. Over thousands of planets, and apparently Sedemenery rocks are the most important in the universe, when Valcrac Crystals and moonberries exist, but no rocks are the most important thing that people seem to care about,” the recruiter stated, followed by a mocking laugh.
Quickly Darren knew they were probably right to laugh at him. He had put forth great effort into his essay but hadn’t put much thought into if anybody wanted to read it.
“What about that Gaza Raza…Girl from Mars…or are they girls? Don’t they have like six genders?” The recruiter said, as suddenly the connection faded.
Already knowing he had been rejected, Darren hung up the phone with defeat. Without the chatter of the admissions officers, he heard the background noise of his sister Rosie playing video games upstairs with her video games upstairs. Although she was too old for it and seemed to think that liking old-school VR somehow made her more sophisticated, despite Darren telling her that she was trying too hard, she remained unchanged.
In the kitchen he heard the quiet drip of the sink as Ma prepared dinner; she made sure that she was quiet as she did it. Pa told her that she was too loud when she whistled; Rosie claimed that ever since she had become vegan, she didn’t like to see big groups of beetles being cooked. So now Ma was mostly silent in her whistling but took double the time to make two dinners.
The phone rang again, and he saw on caller ID that the message came from Mars University, but his enthusiasm to answer had dwindled.
“Hey…It’s Darren,” Darren answered shortly after picking up the phone.
“Oh uh…Darren Partridge,” The voice on the other end said, “This is admissions from Mars University. I just wanted to speak more about the paper that you sent in. Tf you have a moment,” The admissions bot stated. Darren was well aware that it was a bot, based on the mixture of natural, cheerful upswings in tone paired by strings of flat words.
Despite being around way before Darren had been born. It was an aspect of chatbots that never seemed to change. Apparently the creator had put it in a clause that their original programming should remain.
“Ya it’s me. I’m actually not that interested in rocks. I have other interests. I’ll make some changes,” Darren proclaimed.
“We enjoyed your writing, Mr. Partridge,”