Letter from the future

My name is Agnieszka and I’m a normal twenty-five year old woman. I was just talking to my husband-to-be Martin. Everything is fine - :-) lit up on his screen, situated on his chest, which means he is in a happy mood. Once, something called an "expression" would appear on peoples faces, hands were also used to express feelings, even their whole bodies - cool fun.

Martin is Norwegian, but that doesn’t change anything, because we communicate by the help of a keyboard. Language has become irrelevant, everything is currently translated. I can’t even remember what the language I use everyday is called. Sounds aren’t as essential as they used to be; in actual fact most people don’t even have the need to talk, only typical "oldies" try to communicate that way, but nobody takes any notice of them.

Martin loves me. Last time I saw him face to face, his screen which shows his emotions went totally mad, so that there weren’t enough scales to show how much he feels - now that can only mean big feelings. We see each other quite a lot, as often as once a month. Apparantly in the old days that would have been something unimaginable, but right now we don’t feel the need to see each other more often, we can observe each other 24 h on monitors of different types and sizes. That depends on taste, I hate *over dressing* myself with screens as some women do, that’s why I wear a typical men’s wrist monitor of changeable size.

Of course sometimes I use screen lenses, but I try not to exaggerate - I have a couple of friends who are addicted, that’s a real tragedy, zero contact with the real world. Thanks to our monitors we can see our close friends at any time, day or night, they can see us too; that’s the great thing about it. There are no misunderstandings, secrets, you get to know the person one hundred percent in every situation.

I remember my grandmother was "embarrassed" - I never got to know what that really means - she tried to hide from the cameras, when of course that’s impossible. In actual fact why hide, the more people see us the better. Grandmother was a very weird person; I heard she worked in the perfume industry, as did everyone in our family. I don’t really know how to explain to you what perfume is. We don’t use that anymore. Apparently it was supposed to attract other people, but not at a far distance, it only worked when people used to be close by. Some people used to attach a lot of attention to the sense of smell, but at the moment because of nutrition ( tablets - we receive the taste sensation virtually) human beings don’t give off any smell and we’ve lost that sense completely. The unusual behaviour is called "smelling flowers".

I don’t understand all this fuss about being close and the sense of smell, it’s much more pleasant to look at someone than to touch him, it’s so irritating and embarrassing, when you feel the physical presence of someone else near you. There is of course sex, as my grandfather used to say, it’s irreplaceable but most people would rather use sterile methods of fertilization. But me and Martin allow each other to meet for only a couple of minutes, it is a pleasant matter, besides we have big publicity. I’m a traditionalist and I would even decide to give birth to a child, even though tube babies are less troublesome. I’d have an additional being to look at, that’s so sweet.