by Jose Moreno
CHAPTER II***
From 5:00pm to 7:30pm were the adored “allowed hours” for all the “unlucky” under age youngsters; It was a time when minors could go unfettered outside their homes without being arrested. Anxiously, at 4:46 pm, after finishing the last line of his poem, Barón stood up and stretched; then, he began to do jumping jacks in order to warm up for a delightful stroll, which he was going to do on the clean, light gray, pavement outside, which was waiting desperately for him. As he often did whenever he was inspired to record his original thoughts, he grabbed his beloved voice recorder—a one square inch by one tenth of an inch device-- from one of the three drawers of the shinny metallic bureau next to his bed, connected it to the TRS by placing the device inside a one square inch space on his right shoulder and, at exactly 5:00 pm, like a raise horse, he ran from his dull room to the door of his house feeling free again. Trying not to show his excitement, he gently opened the door, felt the humid fresh air for a second, and joyfully walked out of his house, with the two fold intension of carrying out his medically required Cardiovascular Walk, and heading towards the enchanting and beautiful park to meet with his beloved friends.
While he was walking out of the black, metallic, front gate, which was 15 feet from the front door, he was paying attention to all the quirky social subtleties and idiosyncrasies of the unchained students that were coming out of their houses, and he found amusing what he was observing: they looked as if they had just woken up from a long sleep; their irritated eyes were sensitive to the day light; their faces had no expression; their body coordination seemed poor after being mostly sedentary for several hours. Barón often joked about this moment calling it “The hour of the resurrection” when he was trying to chat casually with students that were passing by; it was a joke that often made students walk away from him.
While he was walking, he noticed that the sky was glooming and his TRS showed that it was 82 degrees Fahrenheit outdoors –A temperature that the automatic regulator could lower to a more comfortable temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit inside his TRS. When he was already half a block away from his “suffocating” home, he said to the servile voice recorder on his TRS “Activate and begin to record”. Immediately, a visible red light turned on in the convenient chest area of his TRS indicating to anyone passing by that he was going to be having a functio-communication—it was a way to tell bothersome teen-agers passing by that he was not available to socialize. Then, he began to record his soft voice with an enraged tone while he was walking slowly towards the beautiful park that was just seven blocks away:
“I am sick of spending most of my day interacting with inanimate objects. I am a 16 year old teen-ager, living in south Truxes, with perfect scores on all my standardized tests, with an impeccable discipline record, dreaming about living in the fields away from any functiomaton guided system. I consider nature to be the anathema of technology, a disguised theme that I have discovered through my intense self study of romantic poets. What makes functiomatons worse is that everywhere I interact with an electronic device more than people…Oh! Look at that… Right now I am seeing teen-agers sending messages to one another instead of speaking to one another. I am irked at the poor socialization skills that people display; for instance, the students ‘parade’ on the streets during the allowed hours in perfect straight lines; they look like their heads are on the clouds; they do not greet each other; they seem that they only react to the lights and messages on the TRSs; they do not make eye contact –Even Boyfriends and Girlfriends do not display much affection and look at each other for several minutes before uttering some ridiculous line. I blame our functiomaton world: Because functiomatons perform only what is practically required, it is not necessary to be friendly, polite, funny, sarcastic, or witty to maximize one’s opportunities in life as it was during the last century. END OF PARAGRAPH… I am mesmerized by romantic poetry. Often, I like to close my eyes and recite my favorite poem before going to sleep. In my mind, I can form a perfect world where I can escape any interaction with the functiomatons of my life. In my imagination, I love to be in a forest in the middle of the day when the sun illuminates everything, hearing the birds chirping, on a bed of grass, and smelling the humidity that fills the air. I know it is a quixotic idea, but I think it is the morally right way to let humans flourish because I am a slave of cybernetic laws and those laws have no compassion for my personal views…”
