The future. Where did I see myself in the future? Will I still be behind the same desk in the input office?

Click.

I like the sound my acrylic nails make when I’m typing. The other girls in the office prefer to mod their desktops to a voice recognition format but the satisfaction of hearing the smash of the enter button gives meaning to my life.

So right, the future. My boss has a future that’s protected with wealth, all dependent on little peons like me that keep the his world’s pendulum moving.

It’s up to us, the uploaders, to collect and chronicle the past for our clients. The pay is mediocre but the work is close to home. My position keeps my Dad from chucking me out for lack of a better goal or any real chance at another future.

It’s that word again. Future.

As I type up Jeff Hurst’s bio, a fit young man about my age, I’m reminded of why people like him become successful on this planet. He has a long list of academic achievements, tons of pictures of him with his Granny, and he even requested that a lewd set of sexual text messages sent from his girlfriend be saved with the lot.

Was it necessary for me to include that last part? No one would ever know if I excluded it from the data, not for another couple decades at least.

I’m responsible for life-data backup.

As an uploader, it’s my job to fit these people’s memories, experiences, and sometimes even sexual conquests into a convenient code. That info is then zoomed high up, past a pathetic excuse for an ozone layer. There, it ends up in it’s final resting place. It’s buried, snug and protected, in space. Space is the only safe place left, I reckon.

Our earth is crumbling up. It’s been an uncomfortable place after a war featuring nuclear technology left the big thinkers of society looking up to space for refuge. We had to either adapt to a land ripped by man-made rapture or colonize space once and for all.

My work ensured that people were remembered.

It is “Legacy Insurance.”

After the first private sector orbital flights became popular with celebrities and the well-off, some 50 years ago, space was conquered. A new market was born and I got a new job.

Click.

I just deleted a whole block of text and I did it on purpose. It was the bit about his holiday in Tuscany. Vino, sex, blah, blah, blah, it read. Was it raining in Italy at the time? Did it even matter?

I can re-write history, you see, this is my art. I can say that it did rain, and that Michael died and was reborn as a bunny. All this way, all this money and scientific knowledge to ensure a legacy and I can muck it up.

I don’t know if it’s worth it to upload the proof of our existence to the big server in the sky. It seemed fitting but pointless. I was paid on the belief that if anyone survived the next half-century, they would care about Mr. Hurst.

The idea is so selfish and human. But that’s why space is the only way out, the last effort. I doubt if Europe or what’s left of the States can survive much longer on the cusp of an it’s-too-late and a we-are-screwed situation.

I should be scared but I’m feeling oddly powerful today.

Looks like Mr. Hurst will be bunny in Tuscany.

Click.

Tags: bunny, click, future, space

This entry was published on Friday 2 January 2009 at 11:00. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.