He saw everything for the first time. Spread out before him, yes, the world was his oyster. He reached forth his hand, but unseen, as he should have known, was the wall. He could touch it, if he could just touch it. Everything he needed, the love, the comfort, the possessions, the knowledge.
The frustration didn't set in until later, but not much later. He took the time to soak it up, to breathe it in, to become accustomed to his surroundings. It was a relief. He would do things the way he remembered. He wouldn't be concerned.
There was...
2070 grains of rice. For six people. To last six weeks.
Less than 60 grains of rice per week.
No water too cook it with. All the water is too polluted.
We don't even have canned beans anymore.
What if you were one of these six people?
Maybe you could save your brother, child, or friend by sacrificing your own life.
Would they eat you??
Maybe, but at least you would no longer feel the pain of your body slowly eating itself.
Would you really be saving your family, your friends?
After all, there is no guarantee of another 2700...
Please do not ask me to write some fluffy SciFi romance. Nothing will have changed by 2070. I will probably still be alive, I will probably still have this fucking job.
Remember when you hired me, based on the screenplay in my application? I worked hard on Zilly and Jack. For years, my every step was fueled by the thought of Zilly and Jack seamlessly executed on a Broadway stage. (A production, I mean, not a beheading.)
"Such wit!" you exclaimed. "Such cutting-edge quirks! We love the way Zilly listens to movie soundtracks while she studies BioChem! Dun Dun DUN!"...
.. 2080 ... 2090 ... 2100. 2100 NE Swenson Avenue, that was the address. Harold was certain of it. He could almost feel an unnatural attraction to the simple white door with blue finish that innocently faced the street, surrounded by colorful flower pots.
A hesitant step after another, his heart pounding, he approached it. His thoughts were hundreds of miles away, in his home country, where his family was held hostage. They were watching his every move, listening to his every breath. If he failed, his wife and children would die.
His hand rested on the doorknob. The windows...
2070. Man enters final stages of the information age! The shortest technological age of human history. With the global bandwidth of each home computer reaching a collective average of 1GB per-second, cell phones capable of literally recording an entire persons life, from womb-to-tomb, and neural implants giving humans longevity and superior thinking processes. The information age, though a short yet potent time, is nearing it's end. Soon we will be entering the space age. With the completion of the atmospheric tower, which will eliminate the need for rocket propulsion in order to leave our beautiful planet.
"2070. 2071. 2072..."
Abe sighed, noting down the number and position so that he could start again later. He couldn't imagine starting again later, picking up the count, forcing himself to mouth the numbers, let the numbers run through his mind and out of his mouth.
But it would happen. Eventually. But at the moment, he could take a break, relax in a place where the numbers had no meaning.
Sometimes, he felt like the numbers he was counting were his own regrets and mistakes. 148, that he never asked out Jenny Mare three years ago, that he watched her...
2070. Je regarde par la fenêtre. Les douze coups viennent de sonner à l'horloge. Sur la place, dehors, des petits chalets de toile sont montés, et regorgent de victuailles et de boissons pour les fêtards. La foule se presse, danse au son des violons, et s'embrasse et s'embrasse pour se souhaiter la bonne année.
Je tends la main vers la petite table, j'attrape mon bol de tisane et le porte à mes lèvres. Ma main tremble, ses veines sont saillantes et sa peau fripée. Les tâches qui la parsèment sont le décompte des années.
2070, le monde n'a pas changé....
It was happening again. Blindfolded, naked, cold and shivering she sat on a chair. She could see herself, as if she was detached from her body. Blood and saliva dripped from her lip and her right eye was swelling from where her attacker had punched her. She had tried to fight him off but he had sneaked up from behind and wrapped his arms around her. She had thought she would suffocate as he squeeze the breath from her body. Blackness surrounded her as she passed out. When she came to she was in the boot of car. She couldn't...
He had been happier when he was unhappy.
It was difficult to fully explain; his days of being an asocial shut-in were, upon reflection, paradoxically better than his life now. The words had flowed then, from his mind to his keyboard to the story, he could see and imagine vividly what he did not have.
Now, with a college degree, a good job, a new car, a girlfriend and a house in the hills, he was a markedly happier, and thus unhappier, man. He couldn't finish anything he set his mind to. His efforts were as half a page of...
Drip. Drip. Drip. The blood plopped to the concrete floor like a leaky faucet. He contemplated about the throbbing pain he felt with every plop.
He enjoyed that feeling. Concentrating so much on one pain over and over again. The first time he asked his boyfriend to blindfold him and punch in him the face - his boyfriend thought he was being dirty.
"You like it rough..." he had coyly responded.
The problem was it stopped being about the pleasure and more about the pain. He wanted to feel the warm liquid glop from his mouth and puddle to his...