Meet Annie
Meet Mimi
Annie often asks, “Mimi, can you tell me a true story about your childhood?” or “What was it like growing up in the late 30th century?”
Mimi has a way of dodging these questions inconspicuously. She’d often launch into another story, much to the excitement of the younger grandchildren who were more interested in exciting, fictional tales than anything else. Before Annie even realizes her question has gone unanswered, Mimi has skillfully redirected the attention of the group.
Annie’s daily life is a happy one. She is an only child yet a part of a large family with whom she sees daily. She has 9 younger cousins, 5 aunts, and 4 living grandparents. Each day, she begins her morning routine, by waking up from the automatic alarm system incorporated in her bedroom. At exactly 9am each day, the lights flick on, a good morning message plays, and soothing music lulls her out of bed. She makes her way to the kitchen where Mark, an automated kitchen assistant, is waiting.
“Do you want eggs and fruit this morning?” he asks.
“Yes, please. Thank you, Mark,” she replies.
Each morning plays out exactly like this, with very little variation. Annie’s parents are waiting outside, enjoying each other's company and the bottomless lattes and muffins offered by Mark. Annie, having kept a journal since she was a little girl, uses this morning time to journal about her thoughts and her daily plans. Once finished, she meets her parents outside for a morning walk around the property. They live in a massive, secured compound with her entire extended family. Each nuclear family has its own house, various automated assistants, and a spacious yard. Each house is connected to those around it through stepping-stone pathways which are closely monitored by automated assistants to keep the kids safe. These assistants know where each child is at any given time and help ensure the safety of the family.
Today, however, is not like other days. Today, Annie has made a promise to herself to learn more about Mimi, whatever it takes.
“I’m off to Mimi’s,” she tells Mark.
She bounds down the steps of the stoop, through the garden, across the stone pathway, and to the front door of Mimi. She lets herself in, as always, and much to her delight finds Mimi alone. This is my moment, she thinks to herself. She walks over to Mimi who is enjoying her morning coffee and muffin. Just like every other meal, Mimi made this one herself, denying any need for an automated assistant, a decision that seemed well-aligned with her clear disdain for technology. Annie, painfully aware of the silence that may soon escape them, chokes down the nerves and asks, “Mimi, why do you not like to talk about your childhood?”
Mimi looks up and simply says, “It’s hard to talk about things you may not understand. The world was different when I was a child. Things have changed – and for the better. I don’t like to dwell on the past.” And with that, she walks outside for her morning walk. Typically, Annie runs after her to join in, but today, Annie feels unsettled. She needs answers. She is old enough now. Why wouldn’t Mimi open up? Why is she denied the opportunity to understand her family history?
At this moment, Annie decides to make a plan. If Mimi wouldn’t give her answers, she’d just have to find them herself. The only problem is, where on earth could she find the answers she is looking for?
The idea hits Annie like a bolt of lightning – something deceptive and wrong, yes, but perhaps justified and necessary – she is going to steal her grandmother’s journal. Much like Annie, Mimi has kept journals since she was a child, a practice that had inspired Annie herself. If only she could find the journals of Mimi’s youth, she could then find the answers she craved.
Mimi’s walk would last thirty-three minutes, just like it always did. That’s how long Annie has to find the journals, banking that nobody else is going to drop by Mimi’s house unannounced and catch her snooping.
She begins her search in the large brown cupboard where Mimi keeps some of the storybooks she reads from. Although some tales are made up on the spot, even a skilled storyteller needs inspiration. She tears through each book, furiously searching for handwritten pages of times passed. After 12 minutes of searching, she found nothing. Nothing. She sits on the floor in front of the cupboard, fidgeting with the cabinet, trying to think of where else to look for answers.
Annie peers at her own hand, absentmindedly tracing the bottom panel of the cupboard. There’s a large locked box on the right side and dictionaries on the left. The locked box seems promising so she pulls it out – yet after a few minutes of attempting to open it, she realizes her efforts are in vain and wasting precious time. She slams the box back into the bottom corner of the cupboard. With this single slam and a stroke of fate, Annie notices that the box itself sits upon what looks like a small trap door. Her eyes widened. Her heart-rate spikes. She holds her breath. She carefully removes the box, pries open the trap door, and finds dozens of leather-bound journals, each carefully marked with the year it was used. Jackpot.
Annie decides to take the journal from the year 3000 – the turn of the century felt like a good place to start. She stuffs it under her shirt and retreats across the stone pathway to the safety of her bedroom. I’ll bring it back before Mimi even notices it’s gone, she thinks to herself.
Curled up in her bed, Annie opens the first page.
“I accidentally changed the world,” Mimi writes. “After spending much of my life living under this godforsaken overpass, witnessing the mass destruction of the country, I had a chance to make a wish and I took it. The consequences of my actions are yet to be realized, but certainly must offer some improvement compared with the current state of the country.”
What in God’s name had she done, Annie wondered, hanging on to each line of scribbled text.
“It’s been one thousand years since the Internet became widely available. Commercial companies and privatization became pervasive rather quickly. From there, it didn’t take long for this technology to divide the nation, causing a massive and deadly civil war,” the journal continues.
The Internet? Annie sounded the word out, it felt funny as it rolled off her tongue. She’d heard the word before but never said it herself. A civil war? What war? Annie knew nothing of this, which was cause for pause given the fact that she had grown up in the United States of America, a united country that had been around for centuries. Perhaps these are mere fictional musings, things used to inspire the stories she tells, Annie thinks to herself.
“Nobody could tell right from wrong. There’s too much information out there – people can find ‘data’ to support any ludicrous belief and there’s just no room for reconciliation. We don’t need more information, we need more connections. More humanity. The only way forward is to go back and undo the mistakes we made, to pave a better way for the future.”
To go back? Back where? Annie’s mind races as she tries to unpack the meaning of her grandmother’s words.
“Last night, I made a wish on a shooting star. I wished that I hadn’t had to grow up under an overpass – effectively homeless. I wished the war never happened. I wished the world hadn’t become so polarized. I wished for a better life for myself. I wished for a better life for everyone. I wished for a better world, a better future. Maybe I am going insane, or maybe this whole thing was a dream, but this morning when I awoke, I found myself living in a perfect house, alone. As I wandered through the streets of this strange, beautiful land, I saw other young individuals like myself, on walks and in their homes through the window. They seemed unconcerned and untroubled by what felt like an extremely sudden change in scenery, to say the least. I can’t seem to piece this together – did my one wish really change the course of history? What day is it? What happened to the war? What happened to the dystopian world I fell asleep in last night? What happened to the Internet and the technology that caused all of these problems?”
Annie slams the journal shut, overcome with emotion. She needs to talk to Mimi, alone. I need to tell her what I have done. I need to hear these words directly from her mouth. I need to understand.
Annie rushes back across the cobblestone path to Mimi’s house. She enters the kitchen. Mimi looks at her knowingly, kindly, curiously.
“So, you have read my journal, haven’t you?” Mimi asks.
Not understanding how Mimi knows this, and not even caring to clarify, Annie looks up at Mimi and says, “I know what I did was wrong. But I needed answers. Now, will you tell me about yourself?”
And with that, Mimi launched into her longest tale yet. Annie notices some recurring themes and characters from the “fictional” stories Mimi tells the family, now realizing they were all based on a reality that Mimi had lived through, one that had wished away on a shooting star. This reality, as Mimi told it, began with the privatization of the Internet. This privatization allowed commercial companies to spearhead innovation and progress – perhaps an altruistic effort at first. Yet, it quickly devolved as political polarization permeated every inch of society; one could not tell fact from fiction; no balance was struck between public interest and unrelenting creativity and innovation. It was a society that was destroyed by progress in the name of progress. Large media conglomerates moved in and made profits on the attention spans of the public. Ultimately, much of the information shared functioned to keep people online, Mimi explained. It was rarely altruistic or functioning to preserve a cohesive society. In fact, it was very much the opposite. Mimi’s single wish on a shooting star had erased this technology from the lives and minds of citizens. It was not pervasively available but instead was used by governments and experts to communicate important information. Not any idiot could publish their thoughts online as facts.
Mimi rejected technology altogether in her life today, explaining her disdain for the automated assistants available in the commune. Annie also came to understand the fascinating reality that all of Mimi’s stories weren’t made up at all – they were about her. The experiences she had before the fateful night she wished on a star. It’s the life she left behind. She’d been sharing herself all along, Annie just hadn’t been able to see it.
