Project 1 Environment – Future Wheels
Future Wheels goal: Create a set of 2-4 Futures Wheels that speculate on a possible future, or futures.
When the human race becomes allergic to Coffee
Everything becomes screen-based
No more physical store
Further Scenarios development:
CONTAINER
The GUY presses the elevator button. Two giant doors as the size of a wall open.
He took a deep breath, facing the garage-size elevator that opens up to his entire apartment.
He couldn’t make the move into the elevator as he hasn’t stepped outside for years. Living at home has never been easier these days as all storefronts or commerce have been utterly digitized. He instead, returned to his online interface in the center of the room.
He opened up The GIRL’s dating profile. They’ve been exchanging conversations for a month by now. In her profile caption, she says: “Want true love below 200 pounds”. He doesn’t even need to weigh himself to know he is far beyond that 200, so are most of the society as nobody walks outside for exercise or cares about how they look physically anymore. The guy looked down on his belly roll and disappointingly gazed out of his window.
He slides the rim of his glasses, his vision zoom into a neighbor’s window. He pressed “Order that” once a box outline identifies the food on the table. He tilted his vision to the right, watching this other guy running on the latest Lightening fitness treadmill in the window next door.
“Lightness fitness.” The guy murmured. He has been considering subscribing the service from the company, but the high cost of the training service monopoly held him back. However, today’s guy seems to determine for a change. He has been at the bottom of the food chain as a programmer for a number of years,
and though his obesity doesn’t bother his online presence, he is longing one day soon he can connect further with the girl and even move in with her.
After contemplating, the guy hit the purchase button, which takes him immediately to the package tracking page. Within a second, the package is shipped from a local warehouse, and it moves through a strenuous underground orange line all the way to guy’s building. Then the package moves onto a blue line, which starts to elevate. And “Ding”, the edges of one wall of guy’s apartment starts to flicker a dim blue light, and the elevator doors, which is the entire wall, opens up to him. Guy’s service robot immediately moves over and drag the package to him. From spending most of his savings to receiving the package, it took only about 10 minutes.
The guy opens up the package where he found a glasses attachment and a round-shaped matt. He adds the attachment to his glasses and immediately a trainer is projected in his vision. He changed the trainer’s look and the voice to the girl’s but cracking a basic hacking trick. He slowly stepped on the round matt and started his weight-losing journey...
Aftermath:
Fast forward, the Guy lost a lot of weight and finally decided to ask the Girl to webcam chat. He never wanted to do it because he was obese. However, the girl said she still wanted to keep it online for now and she is not ready
He keeps bettering himself, and he delivers a lot of special gifts to the girl’s encrypted address
One day he is lacking inspiration for dinner again. He looks out of the window and browsing on a window where he sees very familiar gifts
Confirm the girl is actually an obese girl.
One flew over the coffee’s rehab
It’s 3:29 pm. A couple of patients walk into the prearranged circle of chairs. They all sit down one by one. The nurse came over and handed each of them their daily afternoon meds in a modular tube. They twisted the top layer off and a teacup with hot steam emerged. They all start sipping on it slowly. Some continued to twist the bottom layer from the cup, swallowing different colors of pills and candies. The nurse cleared her throat: ”Okay. Hi everyone. Welcome to your first treatment talk. Why don’t we go around introducing ourselves first and tell each other what’s our story about and why do we come here? Leonard, why don’t you go first.” Leonard pauses his yawn and opens his eyes widely: ”Hi, Leonard here. Ummm. I’ve been sober for two months now. A couple of months ago, my wife divorced me because you know… she is immune and I’m not. It was very difficult at the critical point of our marriage. My anger issue and withdrawal from coffee really killed the last bit of spark. She always found me in the hospital when I relapse on coffee. It was bad. But I want to be different now. I’m determined to get better and live with my pain. I believe we all can get over this. Leonard looked over to the woman next to her. “Hi, I’m Marissa. I am a surgeon. Being allergic to coffee has affected my life to the greatest distance. I understand I’m not the only one, so are very one here and a couple billions of people outside. I started to realize my withdrawal symptoms after my official diagnosis. I tried different ways to cope with it like implants, psychosis stimuli and such… and couldn’t really bring me to the normal level of performance. I believe in our medical system thus I’m committed myself to here full-time. Marissa sipped her tea and smiled. People continue to introduce themselves in order. Some have anger issues; Some developed Narcolepsy; Many lost their jobs and coffee shops; And even more lost their motivation for lives. People are having a hard time dealing with the reality of the sudden genetic mutation that affected almost half of the planet. As to what caused everyone’s coffee allergy, some say it’s the god’s will while some say it’s due to the climate change. One thing we know for sure about is that lives and relationships will never be the same for those that consider coffee as life rituals and daily essentials.