The Future

I woke up in the future. Not even a particularly good future. One of those futures where there’s airships everywhere and TVs have been replaced by VR helmets. At least it wasn’t a hovercar and protein pill future I suppose. But still it was pretty disappointing.

Anyway, I had the afternoon to look around, as my return nap wasn’t scheduled till seven. So first off I went straight to the park and they were playing this game that was exactly like football, except some of the rules were slightly different. Then I went to another bit of the park, and they were playing this game that was exactly like cricket, except some of the rules were slightly different. Later, I went to a third bit of the park, and they were playing basketball.

I sat down on a bench, which was made out of some sort of futuristic wood alternative that was almost but not quite comfortable to sit on. It started to speak to me of times past, but these times were, to me, times yet to come. It was pretty mindblowing in a way. In most other ways it was exceedingly boring.

Suddenly, the sun went behind a zeppelin. The wind whipped up. A newspaper fluttered by. I tried to read the headlines on its wings but unfortunately my pun acuity was twenty years out of date so I had no idea what was going on.

Anyway, that’s the future. I was hoping for some better satirical content really but there was fucking nothing.

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Notes:

1. Written June 16th, 2020

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Return/Leave (places in space #29)

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Notes:

1. Written on June 18th, 2019

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk was on the telly, his dead face glistening under the studio lights.

“Rrrrrrrrr” he said, as the motors that powered his jaws slowly powered up. “Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”

A single drop of blood welled at the edge of his final human eye, seeming to defy gravity at first until you realised it was a fake, made of resin or wax or plasticine or from carbon nanotubes or jam or something, created to evoke a sympathetic response in the viewer. “See,” your brain went, “he’s human just like you.”

You hated your brain but it was the only one you could afford.

His other eye pulsed through sixty trillion colours a second, each one newer and more expensive than the one before.

“If we’d kept the old tv, we’d never have been able to see them all,” your brain said.

“I like that one,” your mother said, freezing the image and then cycling back through the frames until his eye was teslorange (a sort of purple). “I wonder if I could get some antimaccassars that colour.”

You pressed his eye and the catalogue opened up directly into your brain and crowded out most of your other sensory inputs until it had loaded the page.

“They cost $87348732.21,” you said, glumly.

“Oh, that’s quite a bit,” your mother said, but by the end of the week you knew she’d have one over the arm of every chair in the pod.

You wondered sometimes where the old antimaccassars went, but you never quite dared ask.

The image on the tv unfroze. “Hsssssk,” Elon Musk concluded, as his hour came to an end. “Hsssssssssssssssk.”

It was Mark Zuckerberg next, the camera centred on his jumper, the top half of his head protruding out of the shell of the telly and half way up your living room wall.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaater,” he began. “Proooteeeeeeien.”

Your mother was entranced. You feigned disinterest. Later you bought four decilitres of water and several unsorted proteins.

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Notes:

1. Written on September 3rd, 2018

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