100 Futures: Tales of Possibility

.06

2016

I just feel like I'm stuck behind a locked door looking out at life through a peep hole. The view is full of potential but I'm sitting behind a desk listening to the mediocre ponderings of this, at best, average human being. Not only that, I must submit my work to her for assessment. This woman who has never held an original thought in her head is going to tell me the worth of my thoughts. If I refuse to let this stranger fondle my brain I'm a trouble maker, probably learning disabled. I'm not learning disabled I just don't care what they are telling me, and the whole fact of being forced to learn their garbage has turned me actively disruption abled.

2025

I graduated but just barely, probably it was because they didn't want me hanging around any longer.  They just wanted to get me out. The graduation line felt like a cattle house. Turns out that every thing I do feels that way because I'm part of an 80 million person generation, and 400 million person country. There are so many people everywhere I go.  I can't escape the crowds. The ideals of the country do not work in a civilization of this size. People have tried to pull them along with us but there is just too many people. The giant wheels of government squash people regularly, simply because its so big and can't help itself. No matter how good an elephant is at playing hopscotch the ants below are screwed. You can roll up the bill of rights in as tight as possible and stretch it into a cone shape, and hold it up like a spike and hope the elephant retracts before you get crushed, but probably it won't hold up, not with the Patriot Act and the Keep America Safe Act. How about adding a few amendments to bolster the bill of rights instead of always "Act"-ing to undermine our freedoms.

2038

Corporate serfdom has replaced the agrarian society of Thomas Jefferson, yet politicians still quote the man. If a man recorded his voice speaking every word in the dictionary he could then be quoted saying anything someone needed. Thomas Jefferson wrote a lot so its not hard to get him to say what you need him to say. The bible is no different. Tell a thousand stories and you will cover a lot of wisdom, if only taken in key hole size. People have told me I'm preaching to the choir. Of course I am. I'm not going to speak with people who disagree with me. That would be like having friends that hate you. Unlike school if strangers think my work is poor quality they can go keyhole themselves.  But now I work, and have to do as I'm told otherwise I get fired.  I serve the people that I can hardly stand.  I do it with a smile and then I go home and die a little. If I can just save enough money to buy a piece of land and a one room cabin.  Then I can eat beans and be alone.  

2049

The boomers are dying off like we are a blueberry bush that has contracted a disease. There is death all around. They were supposed to cure cancer like fifty years ago and yet it still haunts us.  China is finally in revolution, only fifty years later than expected, and the war's death tolls are added to the dreary state of the civilized organism. Famines are back as well because there just isn't enough water, and still too many mouths.  India and Pakistan nuked their own mountain water supply to spite the other, and so they both starve.  They are all fasting now.  For the first time in 500 years the population of the world is falling. I've never been happier. I've got another fifty years until I can contribute to the cause, but the world may be a roomier place and ironically I keep on living to see this happen. I eventually purchased a small plot of the Western Slope in Colorado, land dropping in price thanks to the number of people dying, and I stockpiled beans and other basics.  I built a shelter with my own hands, and froze my ass off for several years before finally getting it into proper shape.  I read and hunt and sit in silence. 

2063

Turns out I'm going to be part of the problem. My health is holding against all genetic and personal behavioral history. Perhaps its my owned damnned fault for not drinking and or smoking. Should have had lots of unprotected sex, drove without my seatbelt, eaten fast food, drank coke. I could have. Seems I'll be outliving all those people to bothered me.  I enjoy the solitude.  Way out here it like I'm the only person on the earth.

*Killed by bear.