The Year 3031

*tick*..*tick*..*thunk*

The clock broke, spraying tiny springs across the room. James heaved himself off his old couch and walked over to the now broken clock. It annoyed him whenever it did this, he paid a lot of money for it, and he expected it to work. He flipped open the side panel and look at the LCD display inside. Somehow, the settings had changed to “break regularly”. He tapped a couple of buttons and scrolled through the options; 5mins fast, 5mins slow, stop at midnight, work fine. James left it on this setting and closed the panel.

This new “real life” simulator he bought wasn’t working the way he liked. His friends had laughed at him when told them about it; they asked him what the point was? He wanted to get a feel of what it was like without computers. However, he soon realised that it wasn’t as easy as that, even the old furniture had computers in them to allow them to be modified by the user. The only thing that was “real” was an old pen that he had found around a year ago.

He was exploring the ruin of an ancient city. The city used to be called Perth, judging by the buildings still standing it looked like a beautiful place, and at some point, the sludge river would have contained real water, and possibly fish. However, few people believe those stories, fish and other animals died long before humans came around, I mean, why any civilised society would wipe out other creatures.

James was looking through a building that was believed to contain bells, which had rusted away at this point. There was a box in a corner that hadn’t been touched for over a millennia, he carefully opened the lid. *ACHOO* the dust from the box filled his nostrils. Inside he saw the long thin shape of the pen. It quickly became his most treasured possession.

The pen became quite the novelty of his friends and family. Something that you could use to write with, that didn’t need verbal instructions. The fun quickly ran out when they found out that paper is made to automatically correct spelling, grammar and handwriting. The pen eventually found its way into a display cabinet, where James would stare at it every night and wonder what it would be like to live in those times. That’s when he bought the “real life” simulator. Everything in the room was set to look old and shabby; there wasn’t any trace of modern technology to be seen.

He eventually learnt to adapt and he quickly picked up all the little quirks that came with the time. Like the toaster not popping out the toast when it’s cooked, in fact James burnt the house down several times before he realised what was happening. It only took him two microwaves to find out that metal shouldn’t go in them, and that milk should be kept in the fridge.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. Seasons changed, as they tend to do, winter became spring, spring into summer and summer into winter again. That was a cold year. James became comfortable in his life and realised that the 21^st century is a good time to live in.

Maybe next week he could try the 26^th century; he heard that McDonalds made good food in that time.