Life in Twenty Second Century

It seems I had just shut my eyes when I was woken up my robot assistant. When I looked into his eyes for time, I saw that I had been asleep for than six hours. He communicated to me telepathically that I was to be in another town in half an hour. I dismissed him with a nod and was ready in another fifteen minutes.

The town I was to travel to was at a distance of 1000 miles. I got down from 500th floor penthouse. The elevator took me to the roof of the building where my air-car was parked. I got into the car. As I pressed the code for the town, the belt tightened itself around my waist and soon I was airborne.

It was a short fifteen-minute journey, so I decided to enjoy the view of earth from top. The forest had taken over the land where there used to be roads. Nobody travelled on the ground these days. Everyone travelled by air-transport. The view from top was breath-taking. I noted to visit the forest area one of these days. In fact, the entire area outside the city limits was forest area.

We had been planning to have this physical get-tother for a long time. After many postponements we were able to finalise today’s date. We had, however, been meeting virtually almost every day. This was a get-together of friends. Even for office work none of us ever got out of our rooms. Any work which involved visit to factories or offices was performed by robots.

The meeting lasted till evening. It was not as if we were meeting after a long-time. We realised that virtual meetings were as good as physical meetings. Still, it was great to meet and hug close friends after a long time. In fact, it was also after many days that we were having food, mostly we took food capsules.

In the evening I was back in my penthouse. The house opened without me using any key. The sofa was spread as the room sensed my mood that I wanted to sit on sofa for some time.

I collapsed on sofa, my eyelids started drooping. Sensing it, the sofa positioned itself in the reclining position.

I wondered what kind of life my ancestors had without such facilities. At the same time, it must have been great to live in the physical presence of your close family. These days everyone stayed in a house alone.