Strangers

I can’t tell you who I am, or what I do. Let’s just say that I have a very interesting job and very occasionally, it can get even more interesting. Last month I had one of these occasions - somebody posted me a USB data stick without any explanation.

I have no idea where it came from or why they decided to give it to me, but on it was a piece of video – some BBC news footage actually; a documentary of some kind. I didn’t recognise the news reader so at first I thought it was somebody fooling around for YouTube. Then I started noticing other things - the colours and fonts on the screen didn’t look right. It was showing a piece about London but the clothing, the hair styles, the language, everything, were all slightly wrong. Something came up on screen and it made sense but I still couldn’t believe it. Either the date was wrong or I had just seen footage from the future.

It was from one-hundred and twenty years from now. The world had moved on: innovation and invention, one after another, kept on coming and forever pushing the boundaries of modern science. In such a small space of time huge changes had taken place in every conceivable direction and had solved many of the problems we face today. Hydrogen fuel cell technology had taken off and had started powering the majority of vehicles. Nanites, atomic-sized robots, originally designed to clean every inch of the home, are shown being used routinely in the treatment of cancers, widely hailed as a cure.

Even the boundary between man and machine had become blurred - more and more humans had been fitted with bionic upgrades. What started out as advances in prosthetic limbs technology used to treat wounded soldiers, was soon exploited by the rich and the “bioprosmetic” industry was booming. Even the average Joe had, by our standards, super-human strength, vision and memory. Losing your personality to accommodate Zettabytes of perfect recall was seen as a small price to pay for this ‘gift’. It looked like things had gone completely out of control.

I’m not sure what I can do with this video. To be honest, I feel a bit embarrassed writing about it so I don’t think I can hand it in to someone. I don’t actually know who I would give it to, but as stupid as it sounds, it looks real enough to convince me.