Lukas has the same personality and is the same person as our Lukas from the 21st century. He is also 28 years old and he also made a decision. His parents didn’t have a big impact on him at his age of 18 anymore. He didn’t have to look for a job or to study for a living anymore. At this time everybody studies or works only if they want to. However, the achievements of this new century allow not only to have a fulfilling life in a material abundance for everyone, but also to waste it all. And this is Lukas’s story.
Our hero begins to wake up around 2 pm in his bed on the 30th floor of the residential skyscraper where his condo is placed. He has an astonishing view from his flat – other residential skyscrapers and a lot of others in the background of his megacity. Therefore, since he was already bored of the necessity to look for his smart phone everywhere, he has decided to install a minicomputer with the internet connection right into his brain. Now he can launch it with just a thought. Although, he is not such a conservative person as his parents are, fighting against this kind of progress, he says to himself that he is not even so stupid as some of his peers who do not quit their implanted computer even during their sleeps. Anyway, he tried it and the targeted ads in his dreams annoyed him.
And so Lukas checks the newest updates of his fellows on the social media site, his money account status and the courses of the stocks of his companies in which new servants of the human, the hi-tech and very often even humanoid robots work as investors, entrepreneurs and often as universal employees for everything.
Although each citizen receives unconditional basic income because of the market-efficient and socially-fair taxation of gains, and this income is a combination of fixed amount per capita plus another amount which is counted through clever algorithms from all available information which corporations and governments have about everyone, the additional amount can be created just to fulfill everyone’s individual needs.
However, for most people it is still not enough and it would not probably even be sustainable. People have always been used to being motivated by profit and by the aim to have more than others, so even Lukas invests everywhere trough his robots, so that he could one day have his condo in the orbit of Saturn, or to have genetically modified body, or to prolong his life up to 160 years.
Suddenly, it is four o’clock in the afternoon and annoyed Lukas goes to the toilet. Moreover, it has been for a long time one of the things which burdens him most. Even though he has a personal gym in his condo, as most people have, he is no longer interested in it. He just used his thought and his personal android prepared a fresh breakfast from high-quality bakery products and vegetables and brought it to his master right into his bed. The necessity to eat food physically annoys him too but he does not want to become one of the losers who already live only in virtual reality and are getting the essential nutrients through putting them directly into their veins.
Once again he checks the updates of his fellows on the social site. He has breakfast, so he had to refuse an invitation to one game in virtual space. One status of his friend from high school annoyed him. She boasts that she works on a great project which helps people to live their real life. It pisses him off. He himself spends all his days by consuming and he very often feels unfulfilled. However, he is too lazy to live somewhere near nature, to work on his self-development, to educate himself or to think how to improve other peoples’ lives. He would have to force himself too much. Fortunately, he finished his breakfast, so he can close his eyes and fully delve into the virtual reality where with other of his friends he experiences various adventures which are not yet technically possible in his current world.
Sometimes he takes a break to get the annoying food. At eight pm he quits the games and he launches a serial on his huge television which is as big as the wall in his room. He watches seven episodes and then he enjoys a virtual porn. By five am in the morning he feels fatigue. He closes the window by his thought since the bird-singing is depressive to him. He had a dream that he could live a totally different life but he would rather forget it until the new day.
Part 9: Will we work in the future?
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