(Inspired by Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better )

 

Welcome to the year 2035.  Welcome to our city, although things are different today than when I called it my city.  Like before, I still don’t own anything.  If I’m being honest, I don’t know that I even own myself anymore.

This wasn’t what we wanted to happen when we started our city five years ago.  We wanted a place where wealth and poverty were meaningless terms referencing a distant, darker past.  It seemed to work for awhile, but something happened since then that turned our dream into… well, something else.

Everything here is still free, but nothing is worth having.  People don’t worry about breaking the bicycle they’re using because they don’t own it.  They just discard it and order another.  This is also true with appliances, cars, buildings, clothing, and everything else.  The robots and AIs that were built to repair everything they can or clean up the streets and sidewalks of what can’t be repaired have a hard time keeping up.  Honestly, I don’t know why our city hasn’t just ordered more robots.  But it means that I don’t like going out for walks and bike rides anymore; it’s hard to get a bike that isn’t already broken, and I’d have to walk on streets and sidewalks covered in old junk waiting to get picked up by the cleaning robots.  It’s less depressing to just stay inside, but not entirely.  One time I came home and the people who were using the living room while I was gone had a party or something, but I guess things got out of hand. The room was full of leftover food and other messes, and the walls were really torn up in some places.  I had to clean up the room myself, and it took a week or so for the repair robots to be able to get to my order for new walls, because they were running behind.

I think another problem is there’s a lot more people in the city now than before.  At first things were wonderful, but people from outside of the city started to move in.  It was only natural that they wanted all the free things we enjoyed, and at first we welcomed new people.  But adding new people increased the demand for things like food and appliances, but especially living space.  I used to have a living room, but because the city is so crowded it’s being used as other peoples’ bedroom now, and I shouldn’t complain because it really wasn’t my living room to begin with.  Things can get really awkward when one person needs to use a room for a business meeting, because it might have people sleeping in it already.  Arguments and fights can happen then.  Fortunately the city tore down some older houses and is building bigger and taller buildings to create efficient space for lots of people.  They’re going up pretty quickly so we’re told that soon each of us will have a little more room.

Plus it might have a nice view of the building next to it.

I’ve spoken with some of the people who came from outside of the city.  One of them used to be a farmer and grew some of the food we eat here.  When I asked why he stopped farming and moved here he said  “Why shouldn’t I?  Everything you need is free here, so my whole family and I moved here after the farm was taken from me.”  He explained that the city took his farm so that they could make sure we got the food we needed.  I guess I can’t blame folks for wanting to move to our city because it was so great here, for a little while anyway.  But it seems like it was better when there were fewer people.

There are supposed to be robots doing the farming work now, but I heard they’d begun to break down a few years ago and not enough people who knew how to fix robots wanted to leave the city anymore.  People in our city couldn’t get enough food to eat all the time, so the people in charge of our city had to force the technicians go out and fix the robots and force the farmers to go out and make sure the food was growing properly.  Before 2030 people could be enticed to do work by offering them money, but those days are thankfully gone.  Forcing people to work against their will wasn’t what we wanted, but people need food.  Fortunately the robots are mostly working again, but sometimes I’m still told that the food I want is unavailable for order.  Maybe half of the people who wanted a turkey last Thanksgiving got one.  I’m sure that once this emergency is over the people farming and fixing robots can come back to our city.  But maybe it’s better that they don’t come back.

Another thing that’s still free is energy, but we don’t have it all the time.  Some places like hospitals do, of course.  But even our free and clean energy isn’t unlimited, and the machines that make our energy need maintenance.  Robots were supposed to do that too, but they don’t last forever either and need repairs sometimes.  To save energy, most buildings have their power cut off during the night.  This can be tough in the winter, but you learn to order extra heat in the day and bundle up at night.  But that overloads the grid sometimes, so power can go out in the day too.  Then it’s extra cold at night.  It can take awhile for the repair robots to fix the grid, especially in the winter.  Our city really should have ordered more of them.

With so many people in the city now, disease is a problem.  Our sewer system wasn’t designed to handle this many people, so it backs up from time to time, which makes the place smelly and unpleasant.  All bathrooms and toilets are public now, of course, but most of them are really gross, so a lot of people just find places outside where they go to the bathroom, like our formerly beautiful natural spaces.  Even worse, the sewers backing up can make people ill.  And because nobody owns where they live you can’t isolate yourself unless you go to a hospital.  But those are even more crowded than the buildings we turned into living pods.  People wear cloth masks and gloves all the time to try to protect themselves from everyone else.  The city tells us that’s enough to prevent infection, but people still get sick somehow.  Surgical-style masks and gloves can’t be ordered because the hospitals need them more than us.  You can get them from certain shady people if you really want them, but I don’t want to get in trouble so I use, wash, and reuse the cloth ones I’m allowed to have.

I had no privacy back in 2030.  I know this, but it somehow feels like there’s even less privacy today.  There are so many people now.  Even the bedroom I’m in isn’t private, since I don’t actually own it.  Anyone who needs the space is entitled to it.  Right now there are four other people sleeping in the bedroom in which I live, and it can change from day to day.  I’m not sure who they are, so I sleep with my mask on.  And if I don’t like the room I’m sleeping in because of the other people, the city says I have to find another room to sleep in.  I know it’s because I don’t own the room, but I don’t like that rule as much as I used to.

Because the streets are messy and the sewers are backed up and the power and food and appliance services aren’t working the way they used to, the people in charge of the city declared that the residents had to help out, at least for now.  People who had technical skills got assigned to jobs they could help most at, but painters and artists like me don’t know how to fix power lines or farming robots, or be nurses at the hospitals.  So to make it fair, everyone without a specific needed skill gets assigned a different job each month out of the jobs that need to be done but don’t take long to learn.  We’ve been told this is just to solve the current emergency and that once all the worker bots are fixed then things will go back to the way they were.  Hopefully the emergency will be over soon.  This month I have to work cleaning up the sewers so our waste doesn’t back up into the streets.  It’s disgusting and grueling work, and I don’t want to reuse my mask after a day in the sewers, and it makes me resent everyone else in the city for causing this mess.  But if I don’t work hard enough the people who are assigned to monitor my progress can recommend me for reassignment, which means leaving the city and working somewhere else.  I don’t know of anyone who was sent for reassignment that was allowed to come back to our city.  I’d like to see our city return to what it was five years ago so I keep my head down and try hard to do enough to not get in trouble.  But I can’t say I’m happy doing this.  I’d much rather be painting.