Where we live now

In a dystopian future-now a spotty 13-year-old called Chris Martin receives a drone delivery...

The package is from Jeff Bozo’s company Rainforest. The company, ironically, is named after one of the major things it’s helping to destroy. (Jeff’s original company, Kittens, closed when the true source of its range of strangely soft furry underpants was revealed.)

Chris is an unremarkable teen. He’s gained little experience of the world beyond his scattered Dorito crumbs. He wipes his grubby paws on his cargo shorts. Quaking, he dons the blinking headset that emerges from oceans of plastic and snow-showers of filler. It’s made by one of several companies led by Elon Musk, a man apparently named after the overpowering stench of maleness.

Chris flicks a switch on the side of the headset. A low whine. He’s transported into a world entirely made for him. Like a lucid digital dream. He is completely in charge of his own destiny.

Being relatively unimaginative, he opts to be something in this world he knows would otherwise be entirely out of his reach. A rockstar! The headset accesses his most creative synapses. Sadly, the avatar this generates only musters the approximate charisma of a trainee bank clerk.

Scouring his mind for its dearth of ideas, the AI decides Chris’ hit song is simply called “Yellow”. As often happens with AI, the words make no sense. They’re almost magically unmemorable beyond that single word.

But this is Chris’ Brave New World. In no time at all stadiumsful throw their voices and digital knickers at him as he wallows in his own glory.

He marries a beautiful movie star, of course. But the relationship falters. No matter, the AI fills in the gaps, like the Celine Dion filter on a forehead of zits. He ‘consciously uncouples’ from her. They meet again when their beautiful daughter hits the otherwise incomprehensibly outdated debutante scene.

To make this flowstate more tangible, Chris’ mind and the AI fill in the background. Chris is a big fan of classic 1990s sci-fi. He loves the outrageous bad guys and grotesque caricatures of power. So in his world Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes, slightly incongruously, the Governor of California.

Donald Trump is President.

In any rational space, this would, of course, be absurd.

Meanwhile, somewhere in this personal metaverse, another artificial intelligence called Andy Kenworthy becomes one of 8 Billion bit-part non-player-characters in Chris’ electric wet dream. He writes a clumsy satire on a blog a few hundred people read.

Chris, somehow, stumbles on it. He rips the goggles from his tear smeared eyes, chucks them back in the box and runs outside to throw sticks for Adele, his dog. Intrigued, his step dad Phil Collins reaches for the headset…