Please enjoy my short story assignment for this week. What do you think is happening in Callie and Sandy’s world?

The Last Day Things Were Normal

        Callie lazily poked her head out the window, with her eyes closed, she inhaled deeply, then gasped “Mom! I don’t smell the orange blossoms! Do you?”
	Sandy rolled her window down and stuck her head out. She wished the car would drive a little faster, but she had no control. She took a deep breath in, “honey, it might just be that there is no breeze. I am so ready to get out of this car, what a long drive!” 
	Callie scolded her mother, “I don’t know why you didn’t want to take a nap, you weren’t driving. You could have rested some.”
	“I’m not quite sure I fully trust these robot cars,” replied Sandy, “but I don’t know what I could have done if something went wrong anyway, since we are both sitting in the back.” The car slowed to a stop at the top of the steep driveway. Sandy hopped out quickly, as if she had been sitting on something sharp. 
        Callie rolled out, stretched her limbs and inhaled deeply again. “Mom, it stinks out here! We should be able to smell the blossoms now. I feel the breeze on my face, but it smells like the gas station,” her face shriveled. 
        Mother and daughter stood there sniffing the air. One orange tree was nearby and Callie was able to stick her nose directly into a large cluster of creamy white flowers. Callie huffed, “Have we been gone too long or something? Is my nose not used to the smell of these, or what? I don’t get it. Something feels off. I don’t see or hear any bees either.”  
	Sandy sighed deeply as she told her daughter, “Let’s just get inside and settled in, we are finally home! Aren’t you so happy to be home after everything we have gone through these last four weeks?”
	Callie dragged her feet up the concrete steps, as soon as her mother opened the front door they were met with a low humming noise they had never heard before. They looked at each other, puzzled. 
        Stopped in the doorway, Sandy could hear their driverless taxi making a 20 point turn at the top of the narrow driveway in order to turn around. She turned to watch it and said quietly to herself, “Would you look at that.” Sandy was transfixed by the vehicle maneuvering on it’s own and it made her shudder.
	“MOM, snap out of it! What is that noise?” Callie began stomping around the house, beckoning her mother inside to help her solve the mystery. She stopped at the 70 inch tv in the living room.
	The screen was illuminated, bright red with bold, black text that read STATE OF EMERGENCY IN EFFECT. The low humming was coming from the tv.
	Sandy stood too close to the screen, red reflecting off of her face, “Why is this on? I know I didn’t leave it on before we left, and what is the emergency? I’ve been browsing social media for the last five hours in that robot car and there was nothing about an emergency on my algorithm.”
	Callie quipped, “That’s because your algorithm is nothing but cottage cheese recipes and bra ads.” 
	Sandy was not amused and asked Callie, “Can you change the channel? Does it say that on all channels? We need to find a radio.”

Thanks for reading. Sincerely,
Jen

Okayest Jen publishing on her blog instead of studying.