A Splendid Future. Daniele Lippi

tried to click on and then went silent with a loud crack. As usual.

      He walked along the narrow hallway, where two people could barely pass side by side, reaching the elevator. This was maybe the only decent thing in this building and surely the only one receiving maintenance. It was large, fast, with mirrors on the side walls and the ceiling (unfortunately all broken) and a capacity of at least thirty people; it could bear up to almost five thousand kilos. It reached the twenty-third floor in the blink of an eye.

      A hallway even narrower than the one in the ground floor. Standard security door with fingerprints, iris and personal chrono-chip recognition. Apartment 23/9. He entered. The door lead directly to the small kitchen-living room. From there, a door led to the bathroom, another one to the small bedroom (with disappearing bed in the wall) and so much for his house. All his life. Nothing more. He was obviously on rent. A house, even this apartment, would be too expensive for a normal guy like him.

      He headed straight to the fridge. He took out a bottle of low quality beerotch and fell on the old broken couch. He turned on the virtua-TV, staring the three-dimensional holographic images in front of him without seeing them. He slowly gulped down the bottle, without thinking about anything, then he decided, while staring at the merry white-haired and bearded man on the label “I’m not going to work until I get my results.” he declared, before slipping into a dreamless sleep.

      The following days passed slowly and lazily. Fred spent most of his time looking at stupid pointless programmes, listening to music, playing and most of all sleeping. As he’d told at work that he wasn’t fine, he couldn’t go out. These days every company would activate the “illness assurance” provided by the neighbourhood Keepers: an automatic face recognition programme that used the thousands of cameras scattered all over town to catch you anywhere you might go.