Friday, February 29, 2008
life may not be spiffy every day, but it's a damn sight better, than rotting clean away
A scientist perfects a machine that allows him to travel in time. He decides to go forward, to view the wonders of the future.
Upon arrival, several centuries ahead, he finds the world a very different place. Thanks to supernutritious food, perfected plastic surgery, and improved makeup/clothing, all future people are nine feet tall and so radiantly beautiful that it causes the scientist physical pain to look upon them. All menial jobs have been eliminated through automation or exported to poorer countries. The Tennessee Data process allows someone’s memories and soul to be extracted after death, so nobody ever really dies.
The future people don’t care that he is from the past, and mostly just throw things at him because of his appearance. Immediately, the scientist attempts to return to his dismal old time. However, his time machine has broken down and cannot be fixed. He then tries to find some kind of work so as to go to a crappier, poorer country, but this fails. Finally he is reduced to begging, hoping to someday earn enough money to buy a paper bag to cover his face, which would stop the future people from throwing things at him so much.
One day he is laying on the street corner where he lives (future concrete luckily being as soft as down) and he accidentally catches a glimpse of the comedy show that someone walking by is watching on their futuristic phone/tv/computer gadget. Future comedy is so incredibly funny to someone from the unsophisticated 21st century that his brain is overwhelmed and destroyed by it. He laughs himself to death, which takes about four minutes. The Tennessee Data process is performed on his corpse, and the scientist lives on in a computer at the public library. Occasionally, people who are making movies set in the past come and copy some of his memories, for use as accurate stock footage.