Smart-World

When he’d finished the plate of Puff-Biks Aaron raised himself from the couch ready to make his way to the kitchen area. Noticing tiny remnants of the snack laying on the weave, he picked up the dome shaped ZAPITUP from the coffee table and passed it over the offending debris. With a sort of zizz the crumbs vaporized. Replacing the device on the table he crossed his living space. Everything he used was a device, words like gadget, utensil, widget, gismo or tool were long extinct.

Eight round blue fibrous envelopes lay on the shimmering INTELLI-KUK work surface, each like open clam shells. Scooping them up in one hand he took them to the DISPOSE-ABLE port on the right side of the work surface. As his hand approached the port a membrane sealing it opened like an iris. Aaron felt the gentle pull of its force-field lift them from his hand. The membrane closed seamlessly after the packing from the Puff-biks passed through. There was a DISPOSE-ABLE port at each end of the work surface, each with a maximum diameter of 30 centimetres. Anything bigger had to be offered to the DISPOSE-MAX port in his enter vestibule. The MAX port as it was generally called took up almost one wall and opened up to a diameter of two metres. This was considered large enough to take any unneeded domestic devices or the packaging they came in.

In Aaron’s DOMESTINEST there were DISPOSE-ABLE ports in every room. Smaller ones in the lavi-pad and bath-pad for tissues and slightly wider ones each side of the beds in the slaap-pads for used sex-tishooz, condoms and bedside snacks. Only Top-Lucks.DOMESTINESTS had ports in every room. Standard versions had two ports, and eco-versions only a communial large port.

Aaron was forty-eight years old and lived alone. His slaap-pad ports were never used for condoms, but occasionally, when he watched a pawnphlik for example, they got rid of sex-tishooz for him. His wife and two children were killed in a road accident when he was thirty-three. Accidents like theirs happened a lot. Mowed down crossing a road on the way to the Recri-paak by a faulty Silen-truk with a broken Pedest-larm. They never knew a thing.

Devastated at losing the only thing he lived for, Aaron considered self-euth, but his wife’s parents convinced him it would be an insult to their memory. His parents agreed and paid for him to attend psycho-skool. Being on sub-standard income he could only just about afford to run their DOMESTINEST.eco.

At psycho-skool they advised him to upgrade his life to make it easier to cope with his loss. Take your mind off things they said. Spoil yourself. A personal comforter allocated to Aaron suggested he look into signing up for the WWW.DEPOP-TAYLED-EUTH programme since he’d already thought about self-euth anyway. After leaving psych-skool and back in his cramped DOMESTINEST.eco he got very depressed at all the memories it brought into his brain. The pamfi-livre his comforter gave Aaron on leaving P-skool started him seriously thinking about the TAYLED-EUTH programme.

There were several offers available on the standard U-CHOOZ whereby you decided on which age you wanted to be when you were euthanised. The lowest the age starting at thirty going up in ten-year segments to seventy. U-CHOOZ members were given a guaranteed salary for the rest of their remaining life. The shorter the life – the higher the salary. Having employment was unrequired. At the end of the term the “closure” would be quick and pleasurable with all legal documentation automatically taken care of. Aaron wasn’t impressed. He didn’t like the idea of a fixed day hanging over his head. He reasoned if he became depressed such a thing would make it unbearable and he’d likely self-euth anyway. As he flipped through the pages he came across the LUCKS-OPN offer. This caught his interest.

A member signed up in LUCKS-OPN would be awarded an executive level salary, an executive level vehicle and a Top-Lucks.DOMESTINEST in a place of their choosing. If they got bored with the area/country they lived in they could change to another location whenever they wanted. The time and method of their “closure” would be open ended and would arrive without warning. There was no opt-out or lifetime extensions available like on standard U-CHOOZ options. The LUX-OPN emblem at the top of the page read: LIV-LIFE LUV-LIFE FILL-LIFE.

Aaron chose a lovely coastal town halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco and had enjoyed nearly every minute of the fifteen years he’d lived there. Today was a little special, he was expecting a delivery of the very latest holographic DOMEST-KINIMA setup. He’d already prepared a place for it in his recri-space. At precisely 13.30 his front door warbled. Outside, after Aaron confirmed himself its handprint screen the delivery drone de-clipped a dispo-trolli and took off.

Wheeling the it into the recri-space, he wasted no time in de-packing and setting up the device. After just thirty minutes work he was watching the opening credits of the latest Academy Awarded holo-phlik hovering at eye-level. First, though, being a tidy minded guy he set it on "hold" while he gathered together all the internal 4md-pak items. Putting them inside the dispo-trolli he pushed it to the large DISPOSE-MAX port. The covering membrane measured the dimensions of the waste and opened up a circular gap through which it would be pulled and pumped to a re-syke plant for rendering into molecular particles ready for sorting and re-formation. As it entered the hole Aaron felt the power of the force field acting on the trolli increase. The membrane re-adjusted the diameter to allow Aaron to pass through.

Image: Smart City from wiki commons