the year is 2060. You are sitting in a holiday-themed table in a holiday-themed chatroom hosted in the in the North Atlantic Treaty Metaverse. Your grandchild's avatar hands you a rendered non-fungible token greeting card which itself incorporates Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokens into its greeting. It shows the other apes owned by other family members playing the song "Despacito." Your grandchild is excited to show you the inside of the card, which depicts them as Daddy Yankee. "It's crazy to think these apes used to be worth more than 3 yearly Muskorade fluid rations," they say, "but I saw it and thought it would be cool to give you something new that would remind you of when you were my age."
The room is suddenly filled with several avatars, each wearing orange turbans and waving orange flags. The new arrivals begin screaming racial slurs and calling you and your family infidels. You hear a voice cry out in song at maximum volume:
Namaste Sada Vatsale Matribhume
After the accidental nuclear-self annihilation ordered by Russian President Alexey Rogozin, the world recognised the costs of war became too difficult for humanity to bear. Following the collapse of agricultural output worldwide, the current generation of warfare instead simulates conflict in the metaverse, assailing their enemies' capabilities to retreat from the misery of contemporary life. The world is now geopolitically bipolar and divided between the Eternal Hindu Republic of India and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance and suffers due to the hybrid conflict imposed by the EHRI and responses by NATO. Religiously-oriented chatroom raids have become commonplace during holiday seasons as they fall below the threshold for a kinetic response.
Your family continues to sit in their seats, eating their simulated food in silence. Twenty minutes pass before the turbaned avatars simultaneously disappear. The sweet angelic voice of Luis Fonsi returns to the stream. You feel the need to relieve yourself. You excuse yourself from the room, removing your metagoggles and shuffle through your fishtin apartment. You open the back flap of your VRsuit and sit on your toilet. You open a magazine on meta-interior decorating, showing you the options you can have for your very own meta-property. You clench in an attempt to shit, but are constipated from eating insect protein rations so it takes 20 more minutes before you can return to your family.
You re-enter the chatroom as the children are opening their presents: for the eldest, a new Wrangler pair of jeans non-fungible token for use in the North Atlantic Treaty Metaverse and a pass key for a meta-arcade owned by Valve-Chuck E Cheese LTD, the exclusive means to play the newly released Half-Life 3; for the youngest (who just started kindergarten), a cigar sneer non-fungible token, a ticket to the Metales concert, and a new textbook on quadratic functions. The breaking news chyron flashes on the walls: former Kushner administration ambassador Dennis Rodman has died at the age of 99, the last surviving member of the administration. Your family falls quiet in mourning. Your child says "He was a relic from a time when leadership was serious, not like the clowns we have today."
Your family say their goodbyes and log out. You take off your metagoggles again and get up from your chair, looking out the window to the smog-filled desert of America below, reflecting on how you spent the better years of your life on a Pokemon forum.
The room is suddenly filled with several avatars, each wearing orange turbans and waving orange flags. The new arrivals begin screaming racial slurs and calling you and your family infidels. You hear a voice cry out in song at maximum volume:
Namaste Sada Vatsale Matribhume
After the accidental nuclear-self annihilation ordered by Russian President Alexey Rogozin, the world recognised the costs of war became too difficult for humanity to bear. Following the collapse of agricultural output worldwide, the current generation of warfare instead simulates conflict in the metaverse, assailing their enemies' capabilities to retreat from the misery of contemporary life. The world is now geopolitically bipolar and divided between the Eternal Hindu Republic of India and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance and suffers due to the hybrid conflict imposed by the EHRI and responses by NATO. Religiously-oriented chatroom raids have become commonplace during holiday seasons as they fall below the threshold for a kinetic response.
Your family continues to sit in their seats, eating their simulated food in silence. Twenty minutes pass before the turbaned avatars simultaneously disappear. The sweet angelic voice of Luis Fonsi returns to the stream. You feel the need to relieve yourself. You excuse yourself from the room, removing your metagoggles and shuffle through your fishtin apartment. You open the back flap of your VRsuit and sit on your toilet. You open a magazine on meta-interior decorating, showing you the options you can have for your very own meta-property. You clench in an attempt to shit, but are constipated from eating insect protein rations so it takes 20 more minutes before you can return to your family.
You re-enter the chatroom as the children are opening their presents: for the eldest, a new Wrangler pair of jeans non-fungible token for use in the North Atlantic Treaty Metaverse and a pass key for a meta-arcade owned by Valve-Chuck E Cheese LTD, the exclusive means to play the newly released Half-Life 3; for the youngest (who just started kindergarten), a cigar sneer non-fungible token, a ticket to the Metales concert, and a new textbook on quadratic functions. The breaking news chyron flashes on the walls: former Kushner administration ambassador Dennis Rodman has died at the age of 99, the last surviving member of the administration. Your family falls quiet in mourning. Your child says "He was a relic from a time when leadership was serious, not like the clowns we have today."
Your family say their goodbyes and log out. You take off your metagoggles again and get up from your chair, looking out the window to the smog-filled desert of America below, reflecting on how you spent the better years of your life on a Pokemon forum.
