The Perfection of the Future Trish Ferrier This place is a busy place, high sky scrapers of flawless design, anti-earthquake, hurricane, great depression; you name it, nothing’s bringing these buildings down. No, not now, that hasn’t happened since three thousand and forty five, and of the last few colonies here on Earth, we held up longer than most of them. Of course, then you got some freaks who think to leave Earth for somewhere else is like a mark against god- then you got the hermits who are just scared and don’t wanna leave home, then you got folks like me, business men jus’ tryin’ to make a buck on the last empty condo, and then- Well then you got the gamers. Almost like a different Race, those folk- some say they don’t ever leave home, don’t ever go buy food or go out for fun, someone says they got it all at home; a system to keep them entertained, computers to do all their work for ‘em, Bots to clean their rooms, and because they never move, they got Bots to dress ‘em too. Some say these guys don’t age- supposedly they don’t move enough; supposedly their bodies don’t wear out. They say there’s a guy been livin’ since two thousand and twenty four, say he hasn’t ever left his house, family all moved away and he just stayed. Not sure if it’s true or not- maybe he’s dead and fingers jus’ keep twitching on that Play Station 800, hell if I know. But, I have to wonder, does he even know we’re out here? All of this, the world- does he even know we’re alive? Does he know that he’s one of the only three million left? Does he know about the next big bang, coming to wipe him out? Does he even care? Think he even knows the light of the sun anymore? Think he’ll even move when the big bang shakes his house? Cause’, I’m sure his house isn’t earthquake proof. Think, he might stop playing when the walls of his house begin to burn- or, will his virtual 3D Driver just have to short out and melt over his eyes before he realizes that there’s another world out here? I mean, what can be so much better about a virtual world anyway? Does he honestly think that, after he’s gone, he’s still gonna keep playing? Is the real world that bad? I mean, I dunno what he’s thinking, we were able to genetically engineer all the extinct animals, made it so the water don’t taste too bad, and sure it took us three hundred years to build that ozone dome, since the sun melted away at our atmosphere. Don’t know why it’d be so bad, we got us a lovely planet fifty trillion light-years from here, and we put a stop to all those protesters, don’t know why it’d be so bad… Isn’t life perfect now? Why would he want to hide from it all, it’s not so bad… is it?