By Clyde

In the year 2040, if we’re all still alive we may find:

• We disembark from the New Salisbury Stanback Station, which has been moved five miles south of town to be closer to Concord Mills.

• Numerical city streets, named after no one, radiate from the People’s Epicenter into one big circle of holistic humanity.

• In the Bell Tower Green Park, a simple obelisk with no words on any side awaits text to be approved by a committee.

• “Nobody gonna look at you”: Churches and temples are surrounded by big black curtains, so no one is offended as they pass by.

• Graffiti covers all walls, cars, trees, sidewalks and roads, with skateboarder lanes beside bike lanes on the soon-to-be-completed Newsome Road.

• Downtown stores are all used just for window displays of art, with shopping only online and your packages arriving before you do.

• Solar farms now double as drive-in movie theater screens with farm-fresh concessions.

• A Koco Java is built beside every Dollar General.

• Small change is out. There are no cash sales, which eliminate robberies, drug sales, peddlers and also flea markets, yard sales and lemonade stands.

• The Cheerwine Festival takes over 20 blocks with more than 100,000 slushies.

• Cubical self-driving cars that all have interchangeable parts float in vacuum tubes to eliminate wrecks and traffic deaths.

• Police drones with nets that drop onto criminals and robbers as they flee the scene so they don’t need the high-speed chases.

• Telemarketers are still alive and well and work for collections agencies.

• Schools are divided into districts with buses to take your children and bring them home, where you can teach them whatever you want to everyday.

• Climate change has taken all this old world can give. It forces you to stay in your box, so you don’t touch dirt, leaves or find a bee on a blossom or a bird feather on a hike.

• N.C. votes are aligned into what they call 100 “counties,” with two elected officials for each. It works very well, thank you.

• iPhone watches have replaced all cellphones so you can’t leave home without it or drop it in the toilet.

• The revolt against plastic straws and styrofoam has resulted in a boycott of fast food joints. Plastic bags are also illegal. So, there is no litter.

• The city now has 1,000 employees who are still working on how to tax God or bars for stormwater runoff fees.

• Mr. Lane Bailey, a cultural asset not ready to retire, has taken Dickensian advice: “Constraining his mind, not to wander from the task.”

• “Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies:” Nobody is guilty of anything anymore, so lawyers, courts and prisons have taken over the cannibus and moonshine industry.

• As a result, the Rowan Museum has occupied the other two courthouses for the collections of 2020, called “the way we were before we got into this mess.”

• Flags, bumper stickers, prayer and T-shirts are banned because they encourage self-expression and false ideas that may incite a riot.

• Dogs and cats have made their very own emergency window at the newly merged RowRegMedaNovant.

• A statue of Salisbury Post Editor Josh Bergeron, seated on the bus of freedom of the mess, has been vandalized outside in the Post courtyard.

• The word “Yankee” appears in a column by Clyde, who is still driving his old Bronco.

• “In the year 2525, if man is still alive” aint gonna need guns to survive.”Vita brev,” already.

Clyde lives in Salisbury.