Future of Technology and its Users

PARADOX OF CONNECTION

The transparent slide doors open as she walks out of the company’s building. An indecipherable expression remains on her pale face as the pink tech-lines glow against her flawless smooth skin. She has a petite and sophisticated body, an ideal figure. The pink electricity flows through her veins indicating her existence and entity. She is contemporary yet modest.The flying drones whizz above her, automated smart cars and bikes manoeuvre on the street ahead her as a few individuals bustle around her and her virtual assistant that floats beside her.

She hadn’t joined this company due to a ‘want’, but due to a ‘need’. She had run away from her house when she was a small child, since back at her home planet, there was barely any technology and here, like many other planets, you could do whatever you wanted, the options were plentiful and the technology enabled you to do it. She’d grown a lot from the internet that was provided here, she could learn and do everything in a tap.

But she still missed her family; they had loved her, taken care of her and provide her everything they could. She missed the cheery & carefree times and since internet didn’t exist in her home planet, she couldn’t speak with her family – with her exuberant and zestful brothers, with her affectionate parents.

And now she was busy building a life, but it was difficult, since everything was a ‘competition’. She wanted to be a marshal, where she could be a dashing heroine, flying and shooting into all kinds of dangers. She dreamt using neutron- blasters, ray guns & lasers; navigating through galaxies and hacking into complicated systems. She always wanted to ‘save the world and it’s people’. But now, she was stuck in a big establishment where she had to do nothing but sit in front of a wraparound screen. There where barely any marshal positions and most of them were for better mutated creatures like – celds, dynomas, aquas, etc*. They would never give those positions of honor to an ordinary cyber like her, or so she thought.

An alert makes a pop sound in her ear, she taps on the paper thin screen and sighs. It’s her boyfriend’s message, or at least he was before she got to know that he had cheated on her, with the validation by a video sent by an anonymous messenger. She wasn’t really shocked but she was crestfallen, since her friends had warned her and suggested her to choose some ideal guys in college, who even wanted her for her beauty and other attributes.

But she had ignored them then. Even though she had met him on a dating app and had a long distance relation, they used to holo-chat very often; his muscly, well- built body was always there, they’d talk for hours sharing experiences and he ‘looked’ real but never ‘felt’ real, she couldn’t feel the connection and the emotions that sparked between them. Now she wondered if it was because there where never emotions between them or it were just the drawback of a hologram; whether she should even have started a relationship with someone so far away.

She steps into the train amongst the crowd as the doors slide close behind her and following the rail track lift itself above the ground.



An alert makes a pop sound in her ear, again, she taps on the paper thin screen and rolls her eyes. It’s a condemning and lambaste comment on her new post containing a picture of her in her workclothes with a caption “Moving on and starting a new life”, some people had supported her and some had criticized her, but that didn’t matter since it was the number of views that mattered more. She worked as a model and these views helped her get credits^. Now she wondered if the effort put and credits acquired, even worth the rebuking and upbraiding she received; whether written words were substantial enough.

She walks out of the train alone and the doors slide close behind her as she steps into a lonely alleyway.

An alert makes a pop sound in her ear, again, she taps on the paper thin screen and presses her lips into a thin line. It’s a picture of a friend who had shifted to another planet like the many others. Hence lately she spent time alone, as all her friends were far away or busy, and texting & holo-chating wasn’t that easy when you have such a dynamic lifestyle. She couldn’t even make new friends, since all of her colleagues where so sundry, each was from a different planet and culture, and even though they could converse with the help of an autonomous translator it was difficult to understand the emotions and where they came from, without the help of internet operated psychology search engine`` (which very often lead to more misconceptions).Now she wondered if she’ll ever meet her old friends again and when they do will they be like they were before or like they are online; whether she will make new and ‘real’ friends.

She finally reaches her house, places her hand against the biometric scanner and a concealed lock opens with a
click.

She walks into her small apartment, tosses her phone to the round shaped virtual assistant, it says in a composed and robotic voice “I am storing this device in the gadget department”. She blatantly ignores it and grabs a few tools and devices from the table, she then deftly works about with them while joining wires and other things and
she programmes the systems by creating the holographic graphs and codes with the help of her mind and her agile fingers.

It’s almost dawn and many hours pass as she finally finishes her work. She inserts a chip into her virtual assistant which beeps and whirls and shuffles itself into strange and bizarre frameworks, contorting and deforming then re-molding again. It hums and buzzes and whirrs with other ear-piercing frenzied noises. Then suddenly, an intense light radiates from it blinding her as she covers her face with arms. Finally the noise stops and she could hear a pin drop, the light subsides and she relaxes to she her virtual assistant again.

She is still round like she was but the buttons are gone and a screen displays on the front, it flaunts designs that look like two eyes filled with tenderness and a mouth with a bright smile dancing on her lips. Two small semicircle ears are allocated on the sides with neon rainbow colored bows fastened on it. She couldn't be more endearing. An affectionate voice is heard as her lips move - “Hello!” - it sounds life-like . Tears moisten her eyes as she flungs herself to the round structure and hugs it twirling with it in her arms.







“Priti! Wake up!”
I open my eyes and jerk up on my bed.





“What was that?” I ponder“A dream, reality or future vision?”





^credits – futuristic money

`` psychology search engine – a futuristic software that records the language and signs of a person , and conveys to the other person what it means and symbolizes in another culture.

*celds, dynomas, aquas, etc – imaginary types of intelligent creatures with different capacities and home planets