Tinker

By Ran Walker

It was the last Christmas gift Jet’s father had given him before he came to Sparkadia: a pair of FalconZ in the classic “university red” colorway. The shoe had been retroed once every twenty-five years over the past three centuries, had even been purchased by men in his family going back to 1987. It was a birthright, one that Jet thought he might never see. He still remembered the moment his father handed him the box: the light gray/dark gray stripes of the bottom covered by the crisp red lid stamped with the legendary word “Falconz.”

He’d been in Sparkadia for who knew how long. And while he often danced in Sparkadian hi-tops, he kept those FalconZ close, remembering his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and all his other family members who’d worn those kicks, feeling that single, lasting connection to an Earth that sometimes felt so far away as to have never existed.