Future Sight

The year is 2050.

I stepped out of the shower, my midnight ritual; once again the soap failed to cover the scent of floral sanitizing chemicals leaking from the water.

As I couldn’t bear cold water or the price of nerve caps to make it more tolerable, I had to shower hot. A click sounded in my ears and, as usual, the bathroom tiles began breathing with a slow, mesmerizing cascade. Moisture was slowly being sucked out of the air and into the building’s dense copper subframe. The condenser was somewhat loud, but nothing could drown out the sound of my local intelligence.

I named her Dot.

“Your video has accrued 41,27-”

“Filter by group, please.”

“Filtering…”

The thin metal sheet attached to the wall began to glow with heat and I pulled out a tray of my regular cosmetics. These days I favor Gecko Facial Gel. The Starfish brand gave me cancer after only 4 uses, which was annoying and expensive to remove. Gecko takes around 40.

A huge improvement.

“Filtering complete.”

“Ok, go ahead. Give me the negatives first.”

As I applied the gel, every cut I suffered from the plastic storm that hit us yesterday healed back to my normal silky smooth skin in no time at all. Starfish could never.

“Users are making inquiries about your mental state-”

“Next.”

I pull out my tooth polisher and begin to work at sanding down my front canine. I kept telling myself to hold back on the coffee drops, but kicking a habit was more difficult than starting one without the Citizens United business package. I wasn’t putting credits down on that mainstream scam.

“Users are asking why they should care about yet another cartel war outside of the country.”

I nodded my head. The guest I had on my podcast spent 34 of the 58 minutes talking about that war and how we had a duty to urge its end. After many minutes of beating around the bush, he ultimately came down to say, “We have to make the rest of the world better before we can be better.”

Redstar nonsense. I didn’t even need to hear the audience reaction to know what they’d say about that. But I wasn’t ready to throw away my integrity for slot tables and dirty credits just yet, so I had to play along.

“Response.”

”…Ready.”

I began to grind my feet on the pumice floor as I spoke.

“I understand the impulse to ignore the rest of the world, especially after recent events…”

My mind flicked to the bindings of my window’s Faraday cage. It was coming loose again.

“But this is the sin of the Technate. The blood we shed was for the purpose of a more fair and equal world.”

The business model was a racket, plain and simple. Faraday cage for 20 credits. Mounting brackets for 200. Did they think they were Apple? I’d rather spend 500 on duct tape than give them a single byte.

“If no one cares for those in our protectorate, then what will become of them? Don’t we have a duty to fulfill? It wouldn’t even be that expensive. They only have so many nano drones left to fly at each other before they’re dry.”

I stepped out, dry and sanitized, into my bedroom. In some way the room was more primitive than the bathroom. My unit didn’t come with a kitchen, so I was surviving off ration bars and take out. My next big purchase was to be a stomach augment, and my tablet was crowded with all types of articles and testimonies decrying the danger of putting what was essentially a furnace into your abdomen.

I struggled to see the problem however. Maybe you’d get a rude comment from a meatbag or two, but no laws were being broken. Did it truly matter? Of course not.

“Format.”

“Complete. Would you like tailored responses or a community post?”

“Tailored. Make them feel special. Warm tone.”

“Processing…”

“And pause responses for a while when you’re done. I have work.”

I stood in front of my dresser, an ADT-1000 series, and stood in place to watch the small screen built into the drawer. Another tile replacement advertisement. Were my tiles already wearing out? I bought them not even a few months ago.

“Comment posted. Have a nice day, sweetie.”

I glanced up for a moment to smile at the apartment camera.

‘Signal interrupted. Please restart.’

“Shit.”

I turned back to the dresser to watch the tile advertisement start again from the beginning. 2 minutes passed as I stood naked in front of the ADT-1000 dresser before it finally clicked open and allowed me to get dressed.