I wake up, and instinctively put my glasses on. They start humming soft lo-fi music as the memory of the dream I just had slips through my fingers. The music makes me think of coffee, and I slowly head towards the kitchen. The glasses show me a small list of things I must do.
As I do a task it automatically disappears. I don't need to do them in order. I start with the pushups. Once a task disappears a new one is added. There are always 4 tasks. I love them, they are always very positive and help me to be better every day.
Some of the tasks are work I need to do for my community, or for myself, or for the government. If I am healthy I benefit my community, if it is healthy it benefits the government, if the government is healthy it can take care of us.
There is no time limit, or anything like that, sometimes if I struggle a task will be broken down into smaller and smaller tasks until the glasses see I am making the right progress. If you ignore it for too long it just disappears and is replaced with another task.
In general time is not a big thing, the glasses know the optimal time to eat and drink. Honestly I don't know how people lived before, they must have been so unhealthy and stressed. I continue doing my tasks humming lo-fi, now I am cleaning the solar panels, we have a central battery in the neighbourhood and a whole bunch of solar panels, the cleaner they are the better. I really love when I get allocated to do it, I think it is really important, but the truth is, my 20 pushups task was just as important. The healthier we are, the clearer our mind is, the better our society is.
Today I was cleaning the solar panels with John, he was so bad at it. What a strange guy, but I know he is doing his best. It's so hot today, if I wasn't doing my 20 pushups every day I would be in trouble for sure, it must be 47 degrees, but my resting heart rate is 60, and I am exactly 60kg, the robots can't clean in this heat, it will damage their batteries. We do some things, the robots do some things. I help John as he is a bit slower and continue to my next task. It's time for a coffee break and I also get a nice cookie, blueberry chocolate!
John mumbles a bit, gets on his motorcycle and heads home. His bike runs on gasoline, I have no idea where he is getting it, we transitioned to electric transport years ago, it's not illegal or anything, there is just no way to get it. I hope I am not allocated with him again.
I wake up, the smell of fermenting sugarcane almost knocks me out, smells like sweet vomit. I remember my dream. I put on the glasses and do a few tasks. Nothing forces you to do them, but if you don't participate you just get less and less resources, as it is someone's task to make you food. I managed to reverse engineer the task's score, and I know how to make a task give me more score when I fail to do it and it has to be broken down. With a few tasks I can get enough resources for a whole month, enough for food.
Transport is free, cars can drive you anywhere, and pick you up from anywhere. But they always play this stupid lo-fi music because it is optimal for my brain, I can't stand it. So I use some of the food to make ethanol and ride my bike. I don't listen to anything, just the thumpy pum pum pum of my Yamaha SR250.
What an amazing bike! You have no idea, it is from 1983, air cooled, single cylinder, old school Mikuni carburetor. I had to modify the carb's main jet as the engine needs more ethanol, but now it works.
I take the bike and go to the solar power plant, I start cleaning, but I play the game a bit, I clean 98% of the panel just enough for the glasses to notice. They draw me a complete plan of how to move the cleaning device, and break down the task into 16 subtasks. This will be enough for the week.
This other guy looks at me weird. I don't care.
The task is done and I take off the glasses, get on my bike and go back home. Sharing the road with self-driving cars is amazing, they always go out of your way, you can even ride in the opposite direction of the traffic, they just go around you.
I can do anything I want. If you do something really bad you just become someone's task. Only murder and rape are not allowed. The glasses usually pick the right person for the right task. I am a bit stronger than most, so sometimes I get picked to collect somebody and put them in a car that takes them to a timeout cell. I have never been to one, but they say it's not that bad.
I do tasks because I want tasks done for me. Sex, medicine, food, energy are all systems that require many participants, you cannot do any of them on your own. The robots help a lot, but you can't test medication on robots, and even though we tried to make the sex work, for some reason it just didn't happen, not to mention we need to keep the human population stable.
As I prepare dinner my sex task arrives, nice lady, we eat dinner together, it is always awkward the first hour, however, the sex tasks are very nicely timed, the men get one every 17 days exactly, and the women get one exactly at the peak of their ovulation window. Sometimes I am sent to a woman, sometimes a woman comes to me. If I don't feel like it I just ignore the task. I usually do go, 17 days is a lot, and when I do go there is no need for protection, all STDs were cured a long time ago, and we do need babies, it is quite easy to raise them, you just do the tasks.
A car comes to pick her up and take her home. Damn, if only I could listen to this stupid lo-fi music... Life would be so much easier. I hate this vomit smell, it is hard to fall asleep because of it.
It gets dark, I take some of the alcohol and get on the bike, I follow the trail of Bluetooth crumbs, it always leads to a different place. We have a ridiculous amount of battery-powered Bluetooth things, we just name them a number we agreed on during the last party. Unobstructed, you can detect a Bluetooth beacon from 100 meters. We do one of those parties every month, the current number is 3778. We are just a bunch of random people that hate the lo-fi crap. It's not like we have a common taste in music, I like metal, Zak likes jazz, he thinks he is better than us, that pretentious prick, Mia loves this weird reggae rap mix, to each their own I guess.
Tonight the party is in an old tunnel, it is still used, the self-driving cars don't mind us, we hooked the audio system to one of the bikes and let it run. Nina Simone's Sinnerman is playing. I love it. Most bikes are single cylinder, you can always hear the thumps under the music, the idle engine rhythm is strangely complementary to Nina's clapping, as if she has 4 hands.
"Please hide me Lord" Nina sings, as I think about this guy at the solar power plant, I could hear the lo-fi coming out of his glasses, I feel my resentment growing. "So I ran to the Devil", as I take a sip. Mia is upset that her sex task was with a small dick. She had to do most of the work after. Zak has spaced out, looking at the air between him and Mia. The conversation fades away, we are just sitting and listening to the music. Next month I will bring Tool. The next number is 4721.
As the cars go around us, they remind me that our act of disobedience is irrelevant. You cannot disobey if there is nothing to obey. It is like being upset with the Sun.
I head back to my place, not looking forward to the vomit smell, I am not sure Nina Simone was worth it. I have everything I need, I can go anywhere I want, the car just wants me to be healthy and happy, the glasses are doing their best, giving me the right exercises at the right time, they really try to help me out. I don't understand why I am angry. I can even change the lo-fi music to whatever music I want, I can make the glasses sing me Nina Simone, they can even make her ghost sing for me. Something is seriously wrong with me.
I go to bed.
The dream was intense, I was walking in a forest as the earth below me turned into thick black water, I kept walking, every step was covering me in blackness, I could not sense anything as I was drowning, as I went beyond black, I woke up gasping for air. The smell of vomit reminds me where I am.
I put on the glasses and make some coffee. I really like coffee, I just hate it being a task. I try to enjoy the coffee regardless. Someone said, "The only zen you find at the top of the mountain is the zen that you bring with you." I am trying to convince myself to enjoy it. It's not working. Fuck.