Areeba Kamal

“Somehow, I get seated halfway down the table from her. I am trapped next to this young techno-optimist guy. He explains that current technology will no longer seem strange when the generation who didn’t grow up with it finally ages out of the conversation. Dies, I think he means.

His point is that eventually all those who are unnerved by what is falling away will be gone, and after that, there won’t be any more talk of what has been lost, only of what has been gained.

But wait, that sounds bad to me. Doesn’t that mean if we end up somewhere we don’t want to be, we can’t retrace our steps?

He ignores this, blurs right past me to list all the ways he and his kind have changed the world and will change the world. He tells me that smart houses are coming, that soon everything in our lives will be hooked up to the internet of things, blah, blah, blah, and we will be connected through social media to every other person in the world. He asks me what my favored platforms are.

I explain that I don’t use any of them because they make me feel too squirrley. Or not exactly squirrley, more like a rat who can’t stop pushing a lever.

Pellet of affection! Pellet of rage! Please, please, my pretty!

He looks at me and I can see him calculating all the large and small ways I am trying to prevent the future. “Well, good luck with that, I guess,“ he says.”
― Jenny Offill, Weather