Challenge #01477-D016: One Fine Day in an Impoverished Neighbourhood
“I wish time would skip ahead. I got here too early.” -- WitterPrompts
Paul checked her watch. "You're right on time."
"No. I mean... the whole future thing. It's like... most of my time has been spent waiting for stuff that should have been here, already. Like... I dunno. Tablets should have always been there since my childhood, you know."
"And flying cars?" teased Paul.
"No. Dur. You can't have flying cars until after self-driving cars have taken over. Because, look at existing traffic. We're not going to get much better in three dimensions," Karen was in full rant mode by now. "We should have telepresence tablets by now. Something like Google Glass only way more flexible for people who need glasses. Shit, we should be making glasses extinct by now. And not by lasic. It's like technology has slowed the heck down and nobody knows why."
"Something to do with repressed Millennials?" guessed Paul. She knew the pattern. "So much genius is stuck flipping burgers or on unpaid internships, there's no room for advancement?"
Karen sighed and straightened her hair. "Yeah. Like, if I could afford a college degree, I'd learn how to make these things a thing, you know. Hire other people who knew how to make things a thing. Start a business and everything. But I can't, so I can't, so they can't... and we're all stuck in a rut on Old Executive time. Building slightly bigger models with better batteries and more functions that we don't even use."
"Running Etsy accounts to pay the rent," added Paul, "Running GoFundMe to pay for the little luxuries. Doing commissions to pay for food."
"And the cheapest food makes you sick, so you have to do more commissions to pay for medicine. It sucks."
"And then they tax the cheap food in an effort to make you eat healthy, but you still can't get it because food desserts are a thing."
Karen laughed. "I tried to grow a tub garden on my balcony. I got busted for growing weed, even though it was obviously beans. I have an arrest record, even though the charges were dropped. I have a GoFundMe going to pay for the legal fees so I can get it expunged. Which means I've given up luxuries until that's sorted."
"So," said Paul. "When's Disney supposed to own the entire world?"
Another laugh. Laughs were hard in times like this. "I give it two more years. And then all governments all over the world will be run by corporations. At least until the revolution comes."
Paul lifted her water bottle. "To the revolution."
Karen lifted hers, "Viva la revolution."
They opened their lunchboxes and began eating their packed food from home. It wasn't good food. Karen had Beannie Weenies, and Paul had Chinese Scramble. But it filled their stomachs and fuelled their perpetual search for enough to get by on.
"Now I'm wishing time would skip ahead," muttered Paul.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / lzf]
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