The Year 2200

I have never seen a tree, a blade of grass, the ocean or even a mountain. The country side only exists in old adventure movies and fantasy books. Cities of endless concrete and chrome range across the United States of America and I live right in the center of New York.

Cars flash dance across the sky, which is a humid green from pollution and neon light. You can't walk five minutes alone without bumping into someone, population has skyrocketed like the cars above us all. We are all ants, climbing on top of each other, racing back and to from work everyday and night, none stop! We've collected a horrendous stench of body odor and sweat, that lingers in this nightmare, giving New York it's signature flavor of rot and corruption. You never get a moment's rest and the noise is constant, loud and irritating.

This is why hearing modifications were invented; so we can adjust our volume input when life gets too hectic. The city almost seems peaceful when you go into mute; suddenly the rattling, thrusts and beeps of cars seem like shooting stars across the night's sky, flying a million miles per hour, leaving behind rainbow colored flares all around. However, that's only if you don't get knocked over by a passerby for keeping your eyes off the path ahead.

Privacy is a thing of the past. It is absurd that people once had their own individual houses! Gigantic apartment complexes range across the whole country, giving us all claustrophobic rooms of every necessity. A window, a door, TV, kitchen and bathroom. I'm out the room in under a minute! With metallic sheets for walls, you can hear everyone talk, turn or twirl.

We never slept, nobody had and none of us could. Every hour someone was awake. If they didn't disturb you, the street's screams would. Luckily, we all got mute buttons now, but we didn't last year!

Rise from the dead every morning at three in the morning! Take your daily dose of sadness and slave away from dawn to dawn, every day and night until we reach 300 and drop dead dizzy from lack of rest. For there ain't no rest for the wicked, and apparently that's all of us in 2200! We work for pennies and can't afford rent.

We all work in jails, huge, grey, ugly structures made of chrome that are always dull, because the sun never shines. Sunny hides behind masks of green and brown clouds, to ashamed to reveal his bright, golden face upon our city of dirt and misery. So we all work in darkness, artificial lights are barely bright enough to get us through the day. The best jobs are done by machines, we just pick up the slack.

Even art and entertainment is artificially created. Why hire artists, authors or actors when a sophisticated AI can do it all? It may not have the human experience or passion behind it, but they can make blockbuster popcorn flicks with computer graphics so perfect, you can't tell the difference between what is real or fake. They can even create computer generated actors, bring back the dead from movies of old too and nobody can tell the difference. Computers can create photo realistic images of anything you can imagine, just type in what you'd like to see and in under a second, it's displayed on your screen. The corporations don't care if these stories have no soul, they are owned by the richest of the rich, who live so high in their towers, the sun still shines! While we're all left to rot, in the dark depression of 2200.