Halloween 2040
You swing your legs over the side of your Wirecutter-mandated Bed Pod. Your coffee maker beeps, having sensed the changes in your heart rate and breathing that foretell your bleary exit from the world of dreams. You pick up the coffee needle and make 3 quick incisions in your gums with it, delivering a potent blast of neurotransmitters, nootropics, and stimulants to your endocrine system. The world begins to speed up as it does every morning, and you watch yourself go through the motions: getting the kids out of their bed pods, ordering them self-driving Ubers to school (only a $1400 monthly subscription). You give them each dehydrated lab-grown Tiết canh for lunch—hopefully the line at the rehydrator won’t be too long today. You make a mental note to text the schedule bot to give them a little extra time at lunch today (only $78 per kid).
Your work day goes by pretty fast—you’re doing branded for Chipotle, so you spend most of the day reacting to the hourlies and delivering targeted subliminal messages in people’s Spotify streams that play inaudibly under the music. You see your metrics at the end of the day—7583 burritos sold to the people you targeted. This used to thrill you, but it’s pretty commonplace now to have this kind of reach. You feel like a bit of a loser, but then you think about the anti-capitalist sentiments that you once felt made up your core value set. “My worth is not my productivity,” you affirm to yourself out loud, like your therapy supplement bot encouraged you to. You feel a bit better.
It’s Halloween, so you’ve got costumes for your kids all ready. Esther is going to be a carrot and Anjali is going to be a ghost. You planned to take them around your walkable mixed-use new development, popping into local businesses like Pure Barre and Corelife Eatery for some trick or treating. But when Esther gets home she’s crying, and she tells you that there’s a new costume on KidTok+ that’s trending and that she really wants to wear that instead. It’s a latex mask of a popular streamer named Air Conditioning. You gently explain to Esther that Air Conditioning is Black and it’s not appropriate to wear a latex mask of their face, but Esther doesn’t want to listen. She says Caileigh at school is wearing a White version of the costume called Air Conditioning (Taylor’s Version). You look at that version. It costs $4000. You press the button, and one hour later the costume is at your door.
Anjali is such a cute ghost this year. She keeps running around your back and grabbing your legs and yelling “Scared you!” You’ve marked down your trick or treating path on the Halloween USA app, which has matched you with businesses and apartments that are giving out the kinds of candy that your kids want. You’ve fastidiously avoided any locations with the green “healthy choice” symbol. Even though you know you’ll have to pay the FDA for your kids to get to eat this much candy, it just feels worth it to you, and in keeping with the true spirit of Halloween. The world is so soulless now—let them have this fun!
At each door, you’re greeted by someone who looks, then scrolls their app, then lights up—Oh, you must be Anjali and Esther! What a cute ghost costume, and I love your carrot costume! Esther tries to say that she’s not a carrot, she’s a whitefaced version of a streamer best known for donkey kicking seagulls at the beach, but the candy is always already out, and the host is looking back at their app. On to the next house, you say helpfully. The girls look tired.
At home, the candy is stashed in a secret place. You read gentle parenting books to your kids as they fall asleep. Your stimulants leave the body at exactly 11, crashing you hard into your bed pod. You snuggle into bed. Damn, you think, the future is fucking awesome!!!!
Nabeel’s Footnote
I was trying to read through this and come up with a pithy, funny reaction to some little part of it. It’s all good stuff. I’m not denying that. It’s just that I rolled my ankle this morning and that’s kind of all I can think about at the moment. There’s nothing else that feels more urgent right now than the dull, stiff pain in my left ankle. Sorry to all.