Full Send

I sit in my 3rd period anatomy class. It’s Thursday. Tomorrow we have our big test covering all of the skeletal bones. Mrs. Stewart put us into lab groups to study one last time. We start going over the skeleton from head to toe, but when we reached the clavicle, I stopped, looking over at one of my lab partners, Maclean. “Hey Maclean! Remember that time we went skiing?” I said, trying to get his attention. “Oh yeah…”, he replied with a smirk.

I believe it was the winter of 5th grade. My friend had invited me to go skiing with him at Willamette Pass, an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up. The time comes and we start heading up to their family friends cabin. We ate ravioli and sweet sausages. The collage of thyme, rosemary, and sage emanating through my mouth. We try and go to sleep, but the excitement that awaits us tomorrow is too much to contain. Eventually we drift off and go to bed.

In the morning, we got suited up and ready to hit the slopes. I couldn’t remember if we ate breakfast or not, but it didn’t matter, we had to get to the mountain as soon as possible. We stood outside in the frigid morning temperatures, waiting for the car to heat up before clambering in with all of our gear. We arrive at Willamette Pass, it’s only my third time ever skiing here since my family preferred to ski at Hoodoo. Although Maclean’s a better skier than me, I decide that I’ll just push myself a bit and get out of my comfort zone, an idea which didn’t work out the best for me. We spend lots of times skiing through the trees, something completely new to me, and something I learned that my skis were not quite adept to handle the deep snow. I’d get going for a few feet, before slowing to a stop, getting enveloped up to my knees in the white powder. We take a left turn off the mountain, out of the ski area boundary, and into a steep and deep forest. Maclean skis ahead of me, waiting at the bottom. I decide to take my time. Nearing the bottom I fall, needing to take my skis off to regain a manageable position. After a good while, I make it down to Maclean. He seems pissed off, but I don’t care, he knew what he got me into. We start making our way toward the lodge to get some lunch.

We head back out again after eating, going to this one particular spot on June’s Run that had a natural ramp. I can’t remember if we tried the jump before or if we had even thought about it, but I just remember screaming toward this jump, and sending it as hard as possible. I landed, successfully, and attempted to stop, but the outward edge on my ski caught the snow, acting like a lever sending me straight onto my shoulder. I wasn’t sure what had happened at first. I thought I had just wiped out like normal, but there was this sharp pressure in my shoulder, and I knew something was wrong. I tried to talk to Maclean about it but he didn’t really bother to listen. When we made it back down to the lift, I was telling him that I wanted to go to the ski patrol building to be checked out, but he had just happened to run into one of his other friends, so he left me to figure out how to get back down on my own.

Given that I had only skied there twice before, I didn’t remember anything from those previous trips, so the only way I knew to get down was a shortcut through the trees, followed by a short hike, and finally a ride down Good Time Charley, a black diamond. Now normally sending a black diamond is a simple task, but when you think you’ve broken your arm and the adrenaline rush begins to dissipate, it becomes a completely different challenge. About a quarter of the way down from scooting on my butt, I notice a very distinctive shade of purple coming down the mountain towards me. I can’t remember how she noticed or what prompted her to stop, but the next thing I knew, my mom’s best friend was there with me helping me get down the mountain. We made it to the ski patrol building, they wrap me up in a butterfly sling, telling me I most likely have a broken collar bone and a possible dislocated shoulder. At the end of the day, Macleans dad comes to pick me up, feeling terrible about what had occured. I make it home, where my dad promptly take me to urgent care, and I learn that I’d fractured my clavicle. The inconvenience didn’t last for long though because I was back skiing in four weeks.

The Final Cloud

The Final Cloud

   

“This has been your weather for today, thank you for tuning in and I’ll be back tomorrow, Kenny Dupont signing off”. I grabbed my coat, turned off the lights, and began my walk home. The world was very different than it had ever been, united yet splitting at the seems. Walking through a particularly sketchy part of town, I hear a voice croaking out from the shadows, “care to spare a juul pod”. This was the world we lived in now, where people cared more about getting their nicotine fix than a job or their family.

Many years prior, in the late 2010s, lots of new information had been collected and showed that the effects of vaping had no implications on one’s health. Slowly, people stopped smoking and starting switching over to a new device, the e-cigarette, or “vapes” as all of the cool kids had said. I watched as these vapes destroyed friendships and racked the inner minds of my  friends. Eventually, in the mid 2020s, the government started to take notice of this new epidemic. Instead of banning the products like everyone had expected, they simply bought out many of the other companies. In short press interviews, they explained the dangers of the minimally regulated market, and how this was their reason for monopolizing. The change definitely freaked people out at first, but provided people still got their nicotine, they were satisfied.

I couldn’t trust anything the government said. After 9/11, I didn’t understand how anybody could. When I heard about the government taking control of the vape market I knew it went much deeper than regulations.

Working at a news station sure had its benefits. I had access to information that the average citizen could never get their hands on. Valuable data about the climate like CO2 levels in the atmosphere and population data like average income or ethnicity. Usually, we didn’t have a need for this information, other than broadcasting the weather of course, but I got to thinking. There’s no reason the government would do this because of regulations, they must have another, much bigger plan.

I talked to my coworkers about it, and we thought up different reasons this could be happening. Some of them thought this wasn’t strange at all and that the government was actually just regulating the market better. Some thought that they just saw how big the market for nicotine was and realized how much money could be made. All of those ideas were viable, and maybe even partially true, but my friend Richie and I discovered otherwise.

Richie had always been an avid vaper, but when the state bought out the market, he got skeptical. We started researching together, looking through every graph and health report, trying to find anything that could help us. And we finally stumbled upon it. We had been comparing the birth rates of the current year with that of the previous years and we noticed a significant decrease. It went back far. They had been testing this since the mid 2020s, since everything changed. Knowing that our own government had been and was currently implementing population control was world changing news. We had to get this out there. And what better way than a news report.

It was the next day. Today was the day. I put on my coat, walked out the door, and strolled to work, my anticipation building with every step. I met up with Richie and we setup the studio, preparing for the morning news. Thirty seconds. I went through everything in my head, wondering how all of this would pan out. 10 seconds. Well, here we go. Five, four, three, two, one…