“Welcome to the future Mr. Arnston!!!” shouted an over-enthusiastic voice from the intercom. James Arnston had just stepped out of cryogenic freezing and had begun the greeting process for new additions to the year 2063 AD. He was in a clean facility about the size of the first floor in a veterans hospital. All the walls were bleach white and it kind of hurt to look at them, perhaps it was just the after effects of the thawing process. Cryogenic defrosting had been perfected 20 years ago, first they thawed the more important individuals such as Walt Disneys head then slowly worked their way down to the more average citizens.
After walking around the facility quaintly named CryoCorp Dethawing Unit 00047, James went to the clothing station and was disappointed to get a black shirt and black pants, black socks and shoes. Fashion had obviously gotten more boring as time had gone on. Although this was unsatisfying for him it would not diminish the excitement he had to see what the future had become. Would there be robot dinosaurs walking about delivering packages? Or perhaps the fabled flying car he had seen in so many movies. With optimal expectations James followed the helpful directional arrows to the exit and saw the future for the first time and….
It was full of ads……Everywhere you turned there was an ad staring you in the face. The future city itself was nothing special either despite the fact that every surface was now capable of producing video. It could of been New York, Los Angeles or Toronto from 2010 but packed with advertisements. Dazed, he began walking down the sidewalks. New flavors of Stride gum came flowing out of sky scrapers, a virtual Doritoes bag exploded from displays embedded on the sidewalks and the Mac Guy was walking beside you in the video wall that was on every building discussing why that PC was such a dick. What was so strange was that no one else seemed to mind, not one other pedestrian walking along the street cared about the ads. No one else was getting annoyed, just James.
Fearing a mental breakdown from annoyance he ran to the nearest alley, hoping for peace. He found none there for the ads were omnipresent, embedding themselves in every city wall. In the alley however was also some hooded teenagers making a drug deal. “Some things never change” he thought to himself. Approaching the group James asked “How can you live with all these ads and noise??”. “Just tune it out man, you can choose to ignore them. The city isn’t going to pay for itself you know.” responded one of the druggies. “How can I? They’re fucking everywhere!!!” shouted James. “Look calm down… I think I know what this guy needs, here’s a stick of gum” said the man. He handed over a thin strip of cool mist Stride gum and James took it in his hand before hungrily popping it into his mouth. “This is quite refreshing” James thought to himself. “Now if that’ll be all we’ve got to get on with our business” said a voice from the group. With that the circle of teens closed and he walked out of the alley back into the main streets.
James attempted to follow the advice of the teens but his eyes felt like they were being assaulted from everywhere. He also began to feel quite hungry and realized he was almost starving. After spotting a bright sign advertising snack foods James ran in searching for some Doritoes. Without getting into too many details about Mr. Arnstons finances, he had deposited 20,000 dollars into an account that he could access in the future should they ever be able to defrost him. That results into approximately 100 future dollars. This was enough to buy a couple packs of Doritoes. Once purchasing the limited edition cool ranch breeze edition, James chowed down and felt greatly satisfied. Stepping back outside James began to feel more at ease and walked down the street. More and more he was tuning out all the ads, finally starting to enjoy his new home. Images of bottle caps splashing into a sea of Pepsi were no longer annoying eye sores but just things to ignore.
After exploring for a couple minutes he spotted an internet parlour and decided to see what had become of the internet. State of the art Mac computers were plentiful in the building. James spent many hours and future dollars catching up on all the things he had missed in the years he was sleeping. He read a great many things but what he did not read was the recent news of PC Elitist groups running into Mac primary internet parlours and stabbing random users with syringes laced with HIV. “Ouch” thought James as he was stabbed randomly. The last fleeting thoughts of Mr.Arnston were “Wow, this Stride gum DOES have a ridiculously long lasting flavor…”. *Death
Future Ads is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at iliekstories.wordpress.com.
