Future Shock

15

I start walking, and it’s not long before the others catch up. After a few blocks of office buildings, we turn onto a busier street with a large strip mall and a giant parking lot. The place doesn’t look much different from any other shopping center from our time—just a chain of bland, beige-colored storefronts and restaurants—except for the strange egg-shaped vehicles parked in front.

“Look at the cars,” Trent says. “No one’s driving them!”

A car slows as it turns into the lot, and I glimpse someone lying on their back, with their eyes closed. In the next car, two people are making out, not paying attention to the road at all. Everywhere we look, those strange egg-shaped cars whip around without anyone at the wheel, like they’re possessed.

“The cars drive themselves,” Adam says. “They must all be connected somehow, some sort of GPS and traffic system, along with spatial sensors…”

“This is the kind of stuff Aether wants to know about, right?” Trent asks.

“Let’s get a closer look.” Chris’s head turns to follow each car that passes by. “I’m a mechanic, so I assume this is the kind of s**t Aether picked me for.”

We head into the lot and peer inside one of the parked cars. There is no driver’s seat, no mirror or pedals. The dashboard, steering wheel—everything you’d use to drive the car—are all gone. It’s like the inside of a limo, from what I’ve seen in movies anyway. Plush couches line the inside walls of the egg, with a low table in the middle.

Chris studies the car and kneels down to check under it. “It looks like the entire thing is used for passenger and storage space. There’s no hood. No room for an internal combustion engine.”

“But then what powers it?” Adam asks, kneeling beside him. “Is it electric?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe some sort of kinetic or solar power…”

I have no idea what they’re talking about, but at least they aren’t fighting at the moment. They continue debating how the cars work, but I tune them out and study the stores. There’s a big drugstore, along with some clothing shops, a couple restaurants and fast food places, and some others I don’t recognize.

I catch Zoe drawing furiously in a sketchbook, which she must have found in her backpack. Every few seconds she takes quick glances at the stores before turning back to her page. I peer over her shoulder to get a better look. In a minute, she’s sketched the shopping center and all the cars in front of us, down to the tiniest detail. Not bad. This must be her talent.

A car stops in front of us and part of it slides open. Two women step out, the door shuts, and the car drives off by itself. The first woman wears a long-sleeved dress with tiny blue lights flickering all along the edges. She has a black facial tattoo, a pretty design of swirls and flowers, curling around her left eye and along her temple. The other woman is wearing something similar, but the tattoo on her face looks like leopard print.

Are facial tattoos common in thirty years? That’s a strange trend.

But as I watch, the leopard print design changes, flowing into a new pattern, and I gasp out loud. The women hear me and give our group a strange look before entering a place called Frosty Foam. Probably because we’re all staring at them with our mouths hanging open.

“Did that just…” Zoe asks. “Her face…”

“I don’t know, but we need to find out,” Adam says.

I nod. “We should split up and check out some of these stores.”

“Come on, Trent,” says Chris. They take off toward a huge drugstore called Aid-Mart, leaving me with Adam and Zoe.

We check out the Frosty Foam place first. It’s like a frozen yogurt shop, except that it sells sticks with foam on them in different flavors ranging from green tea to bacon to cupcake. Signs all over the place proclaim that it’s a fun, low-fat treat, but it looks like a weird, frothy mess to me.

The women with the face tattoos sit in the corner with bright-purple foam sticks, but there’s no one else inside. Instead of a counter with a cash register and someone to take your order, there’s just a wall of screens with a menu on each one. There’s also a TV showing the news, with a headline about supply problems with the Mars base and an ad on the side for cloning your pets. The date and time are displayed on the bottom, confirming our suspicions. We’re exactly thirty years in the future, even down to the day.

For a minute, our eyes remain glued to the TV screen, taking it all in, absorbing that this is really happening. I set my mother’s watch to match the current time: 8:13 a.m.

“Thirty years,” Adam says, shaking his head. “And there’s a colony on Mars now? Awesome.”

“I want to try one of these foam things,” Zoe says. She taps the screen for a coffee-flavored stick, but it flashes an error message: ID NOT FOUND. She tries again with no success. “Am I doing it wrong?”

“Maybe that one is broken,” Adam says. He tries the next machine, pressing a few buttons, and the screen reads, “Thank you.” Part of the wall opens up, and a light-brown foam stick slides out.

“Thanks,” Zoe says, grabbing it. The wall closes back up again a moment later. She takes a mouthful of foam and laughs, wiping at her lips. “It’s good! But weird at the same time. Like eating flavored bubbles.”

Adam examines the spot where the opening was. “This place must be all automated.”

“What about the food?” I ask. “Someone has to be preparing it, right?”