The Pedestrian Workbook Ans : ICSE Treasure Chest ( Evergreen )

Leonard Mead’s solitary walk in the open
Leonard enjoys solitary evening walks in the open. The year is 2053. A. D and the time is eight o’clock on a misty evening in November. He looks around in all directions, choosing in which to go, although, as he says, choosing a particular direction hardly makes ‘any difference’. He thinks that he is ‘alone in this world’. On such nights he would walk for hours, passing darkened houses, which he likens to ‘walking through a graveyard. All that he sees inside are flickers of light, ‘gray phantoms’ or murmur from open windows of ‘tomb like buildings’. Unlike the freedom-loving individualistic Mead, who is out, active and free, the people in their homes are described as all the same : lifeless, passive and trapped in their grave-like homes. They are as good as dead.

Mead’s unusualness
Whereas other people remain indoors, Mead embarks upon his evening strolls. In order not to cause any disturbance to others, or not to create any sound with his footsteps, he wisely begins wearing sneakers. He knows wearing hard-soled shoes would catch the notice of others and surely startle the dogs who would start barking.

Mead enjoys the open nature
Mead walks to the west towards a “hidden sea” through frosty air that cuts the nose and makes his lungs ‘blaze like a Christmas tree inside’. He whistles to himself and picks up a leaf, examining its skeletal pattern’ and smelling its rusty smell’. He is swayed by the natural world and its beauty.

Mead, only person outside
As Mead walks as a lonely person in the open, he addresses the other citizens inside their homes. He whispers to himself, as if he were calling the inmates: “What’s up tonight on Channel 4, Channel 7. Channel 9?”. He begins to speculate that they must be watching their favourite shows of adventure, quiz or comedy. He thinks that he himself is wandering alone, “upon the center of a wintry, windless Arizona desert’ with no house in a thousand miles’. It’s already 8.30 p.m. and the people are just sitting passively in their houses.

Mead’s daily routine
Mead reflects that he has been taking solitary walks for the last ten years. He has observed that during the day the city is overrun by a thunderous surge of cars and the residents drive home like a great insect rustling. But at night, the street is empty like streams in a dry season. It is dormant and lifeless.

Mead stopped by a car
As Mead starts to turn towards his home, he suddenly encounters a car that flashes a ‘fierce white cone of light’ on him. He stands entranced, ‘stunned by the illumination’ and then is drawn towards it, like a night moth. A ‘metallic voice addresses him from the car and orders him to remain stationary and put up his hands. This is the only car moving in the city at night as the ebbing crime graph does not need big police vans or a force to patrol at night.

Mead interrogated
The voice from the car begins to address Mead in a ‘metallic whisper’. It enquires about his name and profession. Mead replies that he is a writer, even though he has not written in years since magazines and books don’t sell. He is further interrogated by the voice from the car as to what he was doing outside at that hour of the night. When he replies that he was just walking’, he is further questioned about the purpose of his walking. He says that he was ‘walking for air’, walking to see.
The car further asks Mead about his home life, about his residential address, his ownership of an air conditioner and television and his mental status. Mead replies frankly that he does not have an air conditioner or a television, and that he is a bachelor. During all this interrogation, the car speaks to him behind a ‘fiery beam’ of lights. The silence between the questions is taken in itself as an accusation.

Mead, a suspected criminal
Mead is judged to be a non-conformist and a danger to the law-abiding population when he tells the car that he has walked alone each night for many years. At once the car’s back door opens, and it orders him to get in. Though he claims innocence, he is thought to be deviant in his behaviour and thus a great threat to the rest of the population. His non-conformity is viewed as crossing the line into deviancy from the normal standards of social behaviour.

Mead taken into Custody
Mead is asked to sit at the back seat that looks like a little black jail with bars. He notices the car smells of riveted steel and harsh antiseptic. He asks where he is being taken. After some hesitation and ‘faint whirring click’ that sounds like a punch cord being processed, the car tells him his destination: The Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies’.
Mead gets in the car willingly, he knows that he is completely powerless in the face of the state authority wielded by the car. As his car moves past his house with bright light, the robotic car drives him away, leaving the empty streets, with empty side-walks. no sound and no motion in the cold November night.