The murder card

Dear diary, it has been nine days since my last post. I was overwhelmed with work, I couldn’t find time or the energy to write sooner. The past week felt like living hell. I thought my job would get easier in time, but EasyWay has proven me wrong by having a special theme week. If the idea were to be successful, which it was, they promise they would do something similar again in the future. I can only hope I have another job by the time they do this again. The first theme week was called Retro, the 21st century, so for a whole week, the style of the mall was adapted to standards of the previous century in the best way that it could have been. The company took a step forward from simply adapting the mall, their influence is so large, that locals adapted their entire lifestyle to the 21st century. So for a week, we lived like they did many decades before us. Still, not everything could be adapted like transportation. The main transportation method in most of the 21st century were cars and similar vehicles like them. Today cars are obsolete because they were wasteful, which especially applies to the use of gas, which was harmful to the environment, another one of their bad trades. They were also one of the history`s most dangerous machines, as they took many lives. But even if all that was gone, they were still very slow and with them, you could travel for days. Now we use trains for our transportation that are run on solar power, from solar panels that are built on the moon or asteroids. The slowest train goes five hundred kilometers per hour. Those are the kind we use here in Europe. Because frankly, we do not need anything faster. As Europe is the smallest country on the Globe, you can still reach your destination quick. The fastest train today is in Asia, which is no surprise as they lead in technology, just like they always have. That train can travel up to one thousand and five hundred kilometers per hour, but its maximum speed is rarely used, only if it would be absolutely necessary or life threating. It takes me five minutes with train to reach the city where I work, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Rome. From there I use my HowerBall, just like everyone else. They are used to travel at shorter destination like in the streets of city. Therefor their speed is slow and can reach seventy kilometers per hour. It has replaced walking and it is known as a modern version of bike, even though it doesn’t look anything like it.

The HowerBall is made out of a stretchable material, which was invented in the early 21st century but perfect decades later. Just by tapping the material in the correct order, it changes size. When you don’t need your HowerBall, it shrinks to its smallest form, which is just a few centimeters big. I just put it in my purse and go on. When I do need it, I stretches to egg shaped form, revealing itself in all its glory. Inside is a chair for one and in front of that chair is a screen. There you choose your destination, speed and the ball takes you wherever you need to go. The HowerBalls come in different sizes, smaller ones are for shorter people like me and bigger ones are for taller ones. You can also choose any color you want, I chose turquoise, which is by far, my favorite. I’m glad travel stayed the same during that week, because if it hadn’t it would cause a chaos. No one today knows how to operate a car and even more, no one really wants to. The store on the other hand, went through a lot of changes. Paying method stayed the same, because chip payment was also available in 21st century. Bu that was just about the only thing that changed. For instance, us humans had to do inventory instead of our robot helpers. Needless to say, at first the storage was a mess. It took me two long and nerve-wracking hours just to find a can of mushrooms. Machine was also in charge of customer complaints, but for this week, one of my coworkers had to do it. I did not envy that job. Everyone could see how stressed she was, even the customers, who of course took advantage of that. I think that week will haunt her forever. As we all know, people on the past make mistakes, just like people who live today do as well. The point of those mistakes is to learn from them, correct their wrong and improve what can be improved. One of the mistakes of humanity was an overflow of social media. Today it is still present but in only one form, and it is called the same as the day it was released, Facebook. When a person gets born, they automatically receive a Facebook account and that is all.

No other social media is used, because that is all we need. In the first half of the21st century, people actually choose if the wanted it or not. Eventually everyone did, so in the second half it was simply given at birth. But they used so many different ones. Ones just for posting picture, short thoughts, video, pictures that disappear in second and other nonsense like that. The heavy use of social media during that is responsible for the name that 21st century has earned. The era of narcissism. Just by examining social media of the past and its use, it soon becomes clear why. Selfies were all the rage for a long time, in fact people were selfie obsessed almost the entire century, but its popularity gradually feel. Today we see no point in posting dozens of selfies every week or even every day. Why would someone post their outfit or what they were about to eat, is beyond me. Most selfies didn’t provide any validation of one, they did not represent a special achievement, they sole purpose was to get attention that is purely based on your look. The more skin you showed, the more popular your picture was. So other that attention seeking, selfies had absolutely no purpose. It was different when a person posted a selfie when they accomplished something great, like graduate, get married, find a cure and stuff like that. But other than that, we see no reason to post thousands of photos of yourself. Psychiatrist have studied the selfie culture for many years, some still do. People were craving fame. Glory, money and though by posting their pictures would get them those things, just because they were beautiful enough. Sure, some models were discovered that way, but that rank of models was way below standard modeling. Just a cheap substitution for the real thing.

This lead to narcissism, superficial and vapid people. When the social media was all the rage, people competed with each other who was more attractive. They put all their money and effort in their appearance, so eventually, that was all they could offer. Those lives soon became bitter once their look faded and they were left with nothing. Only then it hit them, they should have spent their lives better, not obsessing solely on their appearance but to focus on other things as well. Unfortunately, it was too late for those people, but some were smart enough to realize that something had to be done, so this wouldn’t go on forever. So in the other half of the 21st century, I believe some time during the seventies awareness groups for self-obsession and narcissism formed. Those group helped many people and helped form the society we know and love today. Now it is bluntly obvious that one shouldn’t post pictures of themselves merely for the attention. In fact, it`s even ridiculed, because it doesn’t make any sense. We don’t need hundreds of pictures of the same thing or something that has been done to death. We value ourselves well enough to not abuse our bodies. That includes growing old, up to the point where you are unable to live a normal life. Thanks to the many pictures from the previous century, we have a clear picture of how an eighty-year-old or even a ninety-year-old would look like. Their appearance fascinated many, so some people put together brilliant costumes to look old. Retirement was one of the most talked about things that week. Today is obsolete because it was such a burden on the economy. It was thing, when if you worked long enough, you suddenly didn’t have to anymore and the government would just give you money for doing nothing and simply existing. It is no wonder their society collapsed. Today, if you are found unfit to work, you are executed. We do not support laziness. Everyone must have a job. If by some chance you lose your job, you are given two years to find steady employment. If you fail to do so, well everyone knows what happens. That rarely happens, just like it rarely happens that someone becomes handicapped. Medicine has come far from that era, and handicapped people are no longer. Almost every back injury can be fixed, but still some cannot be. It is sad that those people die because of that, but that’s just the way it is. No one is born disabled as well. Today we have technology to detect any defect on a fetus as early as three weeks. If any defect is detected, the fetus immediately goes to surgery or as soon as it is possible. Majority of those babies get fixed, but those who aren’t are met with their early demise, as an act of mercy.

Parents usually agree with that, but still some can’t seem to part with their baby. But no matter how they beg, if nothing more can be down, the baby is put down, and in the long run, it is better for the whole family. Many diseases that haunted the 21st century have been cured, like AIDS for example and it is cured with Scorpio poison. Cancer is not as life threating as it used to be, most patients suffering from any form of it get cured, but the disease still takes casualties. Organ transplant has come very far in the last few decades. It used to be gruesome and barbaric. Doctors would cut out an organ from a donor, alive one or dead, take that organ out of the body and put it in another. Living with the flesh of another? That is just mad science. But those ways helped develop safer and more efficient organ transplant. If by some chance you need an organ transplant today, a healthy replica of your organ is manually grown and them put inside your body. This technique develops organs that are almost the same as the real thing and there are no possibilities that body might reject the organ. Besides medical technology, mobile phones have also witness great development with them. In the olden days, the rule the bigger the better was implied for phones, up to the point where it was getting really difficult to carry the phone with you. That`s when phones with projectors came in place. Those were easy to use at home or where a white background was available. But if you projected the context of your phone in public, everyone could see what you were doing. Which was also bad. So people though and though and developed phones that are in use today and have been for three centuries. Today our phones are only a one centimeter cube. You can simply put it in your pocket, wear it as ring or a bracelet, the choice is yours. When you need to use it, you simply tap on in three times and a projection of your homepage is shown to only you. You need a password to unlock it, and you are the only person who can do so for your phone. The content of your phone is well protected, so no one else can see what you are doing on your phone, unless you want them to.

If you want to share what’s happening on your screen, you simply generate a password for another person, which can allow them to view your screen from two hours up to two weeks. We are able to see the screen of the phone with bionic lenses we all wear all the time. We are also able to take pictures with our phones, but that function is rarely used. Mobile phones are the only phones today; landline phones went obsolete soon in the 21st century. One day during this special theme week a demonstration of old time payments was presented, using plastic card which were called credit card or even using paper or tiny little pieces of metal. One was called a bill and the other was called a coin, an ancestor of bitcoin I guess, I’m nor really sure. Those payment methods were slow. Today you simply swap your chip over the cash register and your payment is complete in seconds. The presenter told us that before chip payment method came to place, sometimes the cash register didn’t have the right amount of money in it. So it bills or coins were missing from the register, the cashiers had to make up the difference with their own money, regardless of the amount. So considering that, cashiers in the 21sr century had it even worse than we do today. Who would have thought. 21st century, considered itself as being advanced, technological, inventive. Now we know, that is far from true. That was proven by their obsession with space. Today we are well aware that space is nothing more but a colorful wasteland, filled with dead planets, with Earth being the last surviving one. And it is going to die a lot sooner because how it was treated in the 20th and the 21st century. The space doesn’t offer much, expect asteroid mining or huge solar panels. People back then were so obsessed with the promise of space, they completely forgot about out Earth. Instead of exploring it all, they rather explored the space, leaving it on second place. They did nothing for it, it was just abused and destroyed and now it’s up to us to fix their mess. Some of those who messed it up, though humans could live in space.

It is possible today, but frankly, no one wants to. Why would someone leave our beautiful, colorful planet to go live one a dead one? Makes no sense. Nowhere in space you can find green forest filled with furry little creatures. You can’t see the ocean, feel the sun on your face or a cold summer breeze. Rarely anyone appreciated it during that narcissistic time. People in the past have been loving towards the Earth, but at some point, that changed. They forgot about its beauty and started taking it for granted. Then destroying it. Destroying forest, trees, homes of animals, just to make products for themselves. That got out of control quick and soon something had to be done about it. Wooden product made just for fashion or trends like wooden glasses, shoe, keyboard was the first that got banned, during the second half of the 21st century. Tables and other furniture quickly followed. When technology was developed enough, pencils, paper, were banned too. Now all paper is digital, so are pencils. Artists no longer use canvases or paint, all is done digital, just like learning how to play an instrument. For example, if you want to learn how to play a guitar, you can either get one which is made out of biodegradable plastic, connect it to your phone. Or you can download a digital one, which will be projected, the choice is yours. During this week, I have also learned that people during the past have also used wood for warmth, by burning it. That was something that was hard to grasp for many people, including me, so it had to be explained further. Burning wood for heat was a practice known very well before our time, it went on for centuries. This way was quick, but the heat didn’t last long, few hours at most if you kept on piling wood. It left behind an unpleasant smell and smoke. Basically, people were starting fires in their own homes. Today we use an artificially developed substance, which costs about one thousand Euros. You place it anywhere in your house or apartment, activate it and it keeps your place warm for years, even up to five. It doesn’t leave behind any smell of smoke, it is small and light and all we use for heat today.

Mostly. People who cannot afford it, but those are very rare, use radiators. But plastic was even worse that the use of wood. Most of the plastic from decades ago, is still degrading today, leaving toxins behind, and there is no safe way to get rid of it, without some damage to the Earth. A horrible and cheap material, who was used more and more frequently as the time passed. At some point even the majority of clothes was plastic, which was very bad for the skin. We still use some form of plastic today, but ours is not the same as it was forty years ago. Ours is environment friendly, it degrades safely into the ground, so it doesn’t poison it and some is even made of recyclable materials. We have learned that what we take from Earth, we must give back, to keep it healthy and strong, keeping it alive for as long as possible. Today everyone knows how to appreciate our mother nature and how important it really is. Even though majority of us won’t get to see a lot of it, thanks to the societies of the past. As I have mentioned, people in the previous century were space obsessed, and when vacationing on the moon was made possible, everyone wanted to go. It was expensive at first, just like it always is with every new technology, but soon it became affordable and the biggest attraction of that time. As space travel got cheaper, vacation on Earth was getting more and more expensive each passing year, up to the point where only the rich could afford it. And it stayed the same up to this day. Nowadays everyone can afford a vacation on the moon, some even on Mars, or road trip around galaxy and stuff like that. But being able to swim in an ocean, or climb a mountain or even just taking a walk in the forest has become reserved only for the richest. Those places are now well protected and you can’t just randomly go swimming if you want to. Unless you have a ton of money. There are man-made oceans, lakes, mountains and even forest on the moon, but it’s not the same thing. I went swimming in that ocean once and I felt trapped. I felt as if I was trapped in a snow globe, like a dirty bug. One of my biggest wishes is to someday swim in the real ocean and feel real salty water on my skin. To dive down deep, as deep as I can, see sea creatures and see the world that lays underwater. I think of it every day, little less during winter, which is my favorite time of the year. I especially love it when it snows, because that is of the few wonders of nature that hasn’t been taken away from us and everyone can enjoy. This is the same reason that there is no man-made snow on the moon, because it wouldn’t come close to the real thing. But virtual reality came close to recreating the feel of snow. I use it a lot, to escape reality. I mostly watch the underwater world in all its beauty. I sometimes lay in my bathtub, fill it water and salt extracted from the sea and pretend I’m deep in the middle of the ocean, away from everything.

Where is just me and no one else. Then I get envious of people of the past. They had all this and never appreciated it, took it for granted, thinking it would be here forever. Bu it’s not. Even though I live close to the Atlantic Ocean, I can never go. Just like I can never time travel and go back. It’s still badly developed and dangerous. But nature is the one and only reason I wish to time travel, nothing else. I don’t know if I could live in the past, I would miss our technology too much. And there is not one era in history where I like the fashion, but the fashion of the 21st century, was the worst. Firstly, they couldn’t come up with something good, so they just copied trends of the 2oth century and just changed them a bit. Leggings were a big deal for almost a half of century. They started out horribly, looking like thick stockings but soon they got better. I must admit, for a while they looked like a decent piece of clothing if styled properly. But soon they got worse. They were getting thinner and thinner every year until they were the same as wearing nothing. Then that became a trend. That’s when the so called era of Adams and Eves became. People only wore tiny pieces of fabric that covered their reproductive organs and nothing more. Even in winter, but to be fair, they did style their wardrobe with fashionable high boots. But even that wasn’t enough to keep warm, so scientist developed little heating devices that were put on certain areas of the body to keep warm. They came in all kinds of shapes and colors, so they could mix and match with their plastic bodies. Everything was plastic and fake, breasts, lips, eyebrows, everything. But the fashion of first two people did bring something good. During that era, the obesity rate was the lowest, and most people were healthy. No not healthy, that is the wrong word. They looked good and did just about anything to achieve the ideal body of that era. Just around then the technology to bring back people who have frozen themselves in the 20th century or later was well advance to bring them back. Most of those people were stars from the 20th century and when they awoke in the future their initial happiness was soon replaced with shocked. Compared to their time, the time they have woken up in was horrible. To them, people have lost all morals and self-respect. To them, they did not value anything else but their bodies and appearance. And they were very right. They were disgusted with their behavior, their trends and how they were ruining our Earth. So they spoke up because they were well aware something need it to be done, otherwise things would just become worse and worse.

That took place in the seventies of the previous century. Their words made a big impact of the narcissistic society and they finally woke up and started using a long forgotten body part, their brain. That was the begging of the society that is formed today, the breaking point. Recycling was taken serious. Mining on Earth became illegal and was moved up to asteroids. Producing products that aren’t biodegradable became illegal, soon after that producing wooden object went illegal as well. Even the bodies of deceased were put in good use and are still today. When you die, your body is put into biodegradable coffin and your body is used for growing trees. The soil uses the minerals coming from your body to grow trees and it does the same from those who decide to be cremated. When those cemeteries were widely spread, the existence of ghost was proven by science. With Earth friendly trend taking over the globe, it was soon discovered that even Wi-Fi was Earth damaging. Even though it was wireless, it still required cables that laid in ground to work. So today we use the improved version of it, called Li-Fi. This system uses light bulbs or solar energy to work. The lightbulbs disperse our internet source and solar energy does the same when, both using a microchip which you simply put over the lightbulb. The system was actually developed in the early 21st century, but was somehow forgotten and only achieved mainstream use in the year 2082. But there is one thing I like about 21st century. The music. It was so diverse everyone found something they liked. And many people were making when it became possible to produce just using your computer. I think it might make a comeback after this week, everyone seems to enjoy it, I think mostly because it was light and fun. I like music today as well, but it is very serious and complex. Which is still a good thing, but it doesn’t relax you like the music of the past did. So eventually the week of the narcissistic society passed. We all had a good laugh but quickly went back to our normal lives, being grateful for the advantages our social structure provides.