The year is 2060.
When I was a kid the future was everything. All the films about flying cars by the year 2000 and cool toys and transportation. Lightning speed teleportation. Meanwhile the world freaked out at midnight thinking this new technology would end itself because we didn’t know if the computer knew what to do after 1999. We didn’t know if they could process. That’s how dumb we were. We were afraid a computer we created wouldn’t compute that 1 + 1999 = 2000 on a digital calendar. How ugly it was that our intelligence allowed these reindeer games, and for the first time, very publicly.
It happened to all of us. All of whose parents didn’t stay together, all of us who didn’t have enough money growing up, all of us who were afraid to say anything without being yelled at, all of us who needed to feel anything after a lifetime of never knowing the world before the internet.
We stole. We stole here and there from companies that didn’t support human rights. We stole from companies that had enough money but didn’t pay their workers enough. We stole food, clothes, art supplies so we could sustain being alive before technology took that, too. It was two decades of job losses, the worst homeless crisis anyone had seen. The real aftermath of a worldwide plague.
I spent my early 20s watching people I cared about die overnight or over the years. I watched them suffer mysterious ailments.
Public shame and fear turned us into one of those trending TV shows. We always said “how could that happen?” But it did. It was gradual, that’s why we didn’t notice it.
It started with fingerprints to unlock your phone, Face ID. It started with identifying ourselves before we knew who we were. It was the left. It was the right. It was the undecided. It was the world.
Door cameras to communicate.
Online groups sharing videos and stories of strangers.
Misinformation.
America armed Israel as America had always done out of guilt for turning away the boats of Jewish families begging for help from the US before WWII.
The world begged for a ceasefire. Russia sent submarines to Cuba and no one noticed. America put their big show on to distract the world while they silently began the process.
We were all old now. We didn’t harm anyone physically. We just needed help while our country funded wars around the world so we did what we had to while we thought the government was occupied.
Elon Musk started buying television networks after social media. That’s when it really became locked in. And more billionaires followed the same. There was nothing we could do. Years went by. More and more people forgot what things were like. Advertisements were so subtle. Paying $30 to brush our teeth with dirt after a lifetime of baking soda, fluoride, and mint oil. It was so confusing.
There aren’t many of the generation that didn’t end their own lives left but after us the suicide rates did go down. They started putting a research chemical in the water. 2-oxo-pce. Trace amounts of it did bring up people’s spirits without triggering psychosis and by the time we found out no one really cared because they felt better. It’s weird now to think it was a good idea. Sometimes I couldn’t figure out if I just finally gave up or the water made it easier to accept life as it was.
When they came for me that must have been why I felt I deserved it.
They had it all on camera. They created AI to scan for repeating thefts. They counted the costs. We couldn’t trust AI to ban accounts promoting hate, but we trust it to recognize faces.
It was something we worried about initially but there were so many other things to consider in the world, it honestly didn’t seem as bad in comparison.
The trials were fast. A split second snapshot of everything you took rapidly passing a screen with a print out of your debt. It wasn’t always you in the photos, though. There was no way to argue with the algorithm. It clocked me for a Mazarati. I don’t even drive.
Of course we didn’t have the money. It was always an insane amount, because the technology was a barracuda and we changed so much. You just had to accept it once they showed up.
Any crime committed, if documented, can be used at any time against you. Statute of limitations no longer existed.
Disease was everywhere and they needed a way to combat it faster. No ethics in science and progress. The public was worried and we were the morally corrupt past. Justice must be served. Didn’t matter if you killed someone or you stole 10,000 diapers. I just happened to be one of the people who couldn’t afford the things I wanted.
They poisoned us. They infected us. They killed all the people in prison before they got to us but they learned so much doing that only a fourth of us died when it was our turn.
That’s pretty impressive.
One day I was checking the mail and it felt like a month later every political leader transferred power or position. Everything lined up perfectly for a total control of the people in what they called saving humanity. Moral superiority won but for some reason it was always against the people who needed the most help. They’d find any reason to use your body and be able to rationalize it with a nation they instilled nothing but fear and helplessness into.
You never really made contact with anyone again. You spent your life with robots checking your blood, your vitals, feeding you, bathing you, drugging you, analyzing you, and keeping you alive as long as they could so somewhere in the world the results of testing could be shared to bring hope and promise for the next generations that cures could exist and that they were fortunate for our sacrifices.
The food was good. While we were shunned for petty crimes there was a large amount of money donated to keeping us comfortable. I think it was so the public would feel less guilty.
It was catered to what would extend our lives but still flavorful. Roasted chicken, low salt, lots of herbs and hearty greens. Fruit was always ripe. Healthy amount of nuts and seeds. Cheese once a week. We had endless access to literature and the news. Best medication. Gym equipment. It was like prison but you never left your room and you were taken care of. But you didn’t have love or ***. You didn’t feel anything anymore. Maybe it’s the water talking but it was kind of nice to not think for myself in some way. Realistically they didn’t really have a choice but to keep us well managed. We were going to be the last line of subjects. They had to keep us alive, the rest of the population didn’t do anything wrong.
The only comfort that could be taken in those boxes we lived in was knowing at least we died for something after a lifetime of watching senseless death from a screen. My body was used for science. I had a purpose. I committed crimes I needed to because I lived in a terrible world. The new world was better. It was kinder. I don’t hold it against the living. They only knew what they were told.
We were survivors when we were young, but by 65-70 you were something the new world couldn’t comprehend. Lack of morals. No respect for the law. They didn’t understand it was different back then.
Social media became learning platforms. There was no discourse. No name calling. They saw what was left behind and assumed there was no explanation other than we were just bad people and corporations had been working so hard to give them a livable future and maintain a habitable earth.
My generation was to be the last one that experienced the experiments. They did eventually find a cure for everything. Depression, every flu, blood diseases, ***** failure, cancers. They didn’t use it for profit. It’s what I always wanted. We all wanted it. We wish we had it sooner.
But the day I died, humanely euthanized, something changed. The news was on. They found water on the moon last year, raving about how pure and untouched it was, and started transporting it back, and all the people who could afford it got sick with something we’ve never known before and I realized it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do when I was young. I deserved to try moon water before I left, not them. That was the future I was promised.
