Friday, October 14, 2011

Life in 2110.......


Life in 2110.......


Finally,after 2 months of eager waiting,I have got my chance to register and preserve a record of my thoughts on digital media.There is this feverish wait for this chance throughout the world,what with digital space supposed to get "extinct" in an other month.From then on,thoughts can stay only in our heads-and we can afford only so much!!!.I really hope this page is read the mandatory 1000 times before next week-so that it is preserved forever.

Life has changed so much in the last 100 years...more so in the last 50.I stopped aging 60 years ago,so that I could remain forever 40.To stop aging is a fairly simple procedure.They take your cells out at the age you want to stop aging and preserve it.Each year you are injected with the same cells,which multiply inside your body,replacing the older cells.It is a painful procedure,but worth the trouble.Death is distant now..unless an accident or a natural calamity.The only condition is that I must not have a progeny-births without deaths are dangerous for the planet!!!

My day begins with a lot of gymming..oh not physical activity in the least!!The trend of the day is "Brain Gyms".These are specialised centres for keeping your brain in shape.So you have the odd physical activity which supplies more oxygen to the brain,but majorly each workout is aimed at improving the activities of the various lobes and coordinating their functionality.It is very rigorous but intellect is the order of the day...so we have to go through it!!

After a couple of hours,it is office time!!Traffic jams are a thing of the past.The cars now are really efficient and high-speed for that.They levitate a couple of inches above the ground,powered by electromagnets in the car and the road made of iron.Pooling of vehicles was made mandatory even before I stopped aging.That way things have improved a great deal.

My office is a glass structure,fully equipped to tap and amplify solar power(Coal exhausted long ago.So did water.Nuclear was disacarded after World war 3).We enter after a process of DNA matching(Retinal scans are history).Each of us is given a work-station and a cubicle.Our employers expect a lot from us.Each of us is monitored using a Caesium clock accurate to one-millionth of a second.It is programmed to stop if we stop working.We are to put in 6hours of effective work and this takes 10 hours in normal time!!. We are discouraged to step out of our cubicle and talk to neighbours.To give us company,each of us has been given a robot we call DIGIBOY.We are supposed to talk to him when we get bored.The lady employees are given a similar DIGIGIRL.We are planning to ask the managers to swap the robots given to the male and female employees.But the worst part is that these robots are charged using our energy.You have to wire them up to your body,so that they start talking!!All these measures to make sure we are efficient.3 days in a month where your efficiency drops below 95% and you are fired.Measuring the efficiency is again a very complex algorithm...so let me not bother you.

Two concepts which seem to have changed forever are food and money.Food is now basically capsules.It is a capsule per day with all the nutrients in their RDA.This capsule is designed to bloat once it enters the stomach..so that the fullness and the satisfaction is somewhat there.The nutrients are absorbed by the body,but the capsule comes out as excrement.We take this back to our company which gives the nutrients for the next day-in the same capsule.(Yes,every company takes complete care of employees now).So in a way.we are eating our own excrement each day.But this is the hard way Nature has taught us the value of recycling!!

And money.The wads of paper are long extinct.The new currency is memory.In units of bits,bytes running upto Peta bytes now.Each day,the company gives us blocks of memory and we fill it up efficiently to get our capsule.If we manage to save some blocks of memory,it goes into our account so that we can sell it once  we retire for capsules of food.It is really as simple.

Social life is virtually non-existent.Holidays have taken a beating.The company does not want us to go out of town.So all we have are virtual tours,monitored by robots,which are programmed to provide us with the experience of travelling to a place and back,while we sleep at night.So each of these tours is basically a dream lasting for a night,but we have learned to enjoy it all the same.(I have already been to the North Pole,mustering resources for a trip to the South Pole).

The only concept  lasting from erst-while life to today's has been social-networking.Many sites like Facebook have cropped up and are cashing in on our busy lives.I have never yet met my neighbour in person-but we chat up each day on our local network.
As I wind each uneventful day up,I wish I could dream while I sleep-to lend some colour to my life.But then,the robot on my bedside always ensures my sleep is dreamless as well!!

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