Flash Fiction story
By Ken

The short story below was part of a flash fiction contest held by New Scientist magazine. The objective of the contest was to provide a glimpse of how life would be 100 years hence. The only caveat: the story be no more than 350 words. It was an open contest and the winner was declared on the 16th of December, 2009. The winning story can be read at this link.

“
The alarm goes off. Six am. Five minutes and my rest-pod will snap open with blinding light forcing me to wake up. I place my right palm on the latch-pad. As the pod opens it tilts so I can stand up, as if from a chair. My weekly meeting starts in fifteen minutes.

Ten minutes later I am wearing my work interface and walking to the virtual desk that comes into view. Countless v-mails await my attention. Later. Right now, I have to find the meeting agenda.

“Weekly progress update. Meeting 00213”, I call out. I can hear sounds of file organizer drawers being opened and papers flipped. Wish I could turn off this gimmick … here we go. A seven page document hovers before me.

“Agenda, please”, I request and, in response, a voice rattles off each point. As the agenda is recited, several avatars appear around me. Meeting room appears, complete with chairs around a circular table and a screen on one of the walls. Frankly, all this is unnecessary but my boss likes his meetings to have “old-world charm” to them. Whatever.

Handshakes and small talk. The meeting gets underway and I am trying to concentrate on what the participant from Japan is saying. The transliteration software needs some work. 32 minutes later, the meeting's over. The usual good-byes. I read the minutes of the meeting, once again, at my desk. A new bright-pink v-mail is begging for attention. Oh oh.

I undress from the work interface. The coffee panel in my kitchen wall looks the most interesting thing right now.

Wearing the social interface, I grab the coffee and walk into the dating room I was at last night. The room is full of hopefuls. Too much chatter. Time to turn the room volume down. A lady walks up to me.

“Matt?”. She asks.

“Yes ...”. Before I can finish, she leads me to a corner table.

“I am sure you remember Kylie?”. She says slyly and leaves.

“You're late!”. Kylie exclaims, my girlfriend of 12 hours. Groan. Women.
“

(Ken is a senior Indian IT specialist who has worked with a number of software technologies before taking up his current assignment in Australia.  He is a strong advocate of the open source movement. Techgoss thanks him for allowing us to publish his short story)