To Ease the Passing of Time

The year 2050

The world has kept changing since Wayne Doucet was born half a century ago, a few months after the beginning of the new millennium. It has kept changing but it seems to be going only in one direction: towards more isolation and loneliness.

Wayne was the only child of a couple of very successful real estate agents who didn’t have a lot of time for him. To keep him busy and quiet, they bought him the finest gadgets available: video games, iPads, cellular phones and computers. As a child, Wayne spent countless hours alone in his bedroom playing games and surfing the Net. By the age of ten, he knew everything about sex. He had seen videos of practically everything that can possibly be done including sex with animals. When his parents were home, they were on the phone talking with clients or looking at properties online. Wayne had a few cousins. On the rare occasions that they met, they didn’t really talk. They were too busy with their phones or tablets to even look at one another.

After high school, Wayne studied commerce at Carleton University. He had a few friends but they were too busy to socialize. Shortly after his graduation, he became an underwriter for an insurance company. Most of his clients are small businesses and corporations. Since he does most of his work from home, he rarely meets them in person. He hasn’t set foot in the office for the last three months. Even the meetings are conducted online via video-conference.

When he was in his early thirties, Wayne was married for a couple of years to a colleague by the name of Judy with whom he went to a business trip in Atlanta. It turned out that all the sex videos that they both had watched when they were too young had created unrealistic expectations that made it impossible for them to have a meaningful sexual relationship. They could not use sex to communicate and express their feelings towards each other because they didn’t know how it could be done.

After Judy left him, Wayne thought of adopting a baby. One of his friends told him that he could even be the father. He told him, “All you need to do is send your semen to a bank where it will be kept frozen until a compatible surrogate mother is found. After the baby is born, it will be delivered to you by a self-driving Uber cab. You won’t have to talk to and even see anybody during the whole process. Everything can be arranged online.” Wayne thought about it for a while, and eventually forgot about it completely.

Since everything is monitored, Wayne doesn’t have to go to the supermarket or grocery store. When something is missing in his fridge or pantry, even toothpaste and toilet paper, it is delivered to him automatically. All his shopping is done online and most of the stuff that he buys is delivered in his backyard by drones. The problem with drones is that they scare the birds. You don’t see birds anymore. It’s sad! Wayne remembers years ago when he would sit in his backyard with a cup of coffee and watch the birds. Now, with all the drones, it’s too noisy. He goes to timmies for his morning coffee. He stands in front of the machine that can recognize his face because he’s a regular. The machine says to him, “Good morning Wayne! You usually have a medium coffee with two creams and one sugar. If that’s what you want, say ‘yes’, if not, just say ‘no’ and tell me what you want.”

There are no more cashiers in the stores and no more waiters and waitresses in restaurants. They were all replaced years ago by frigging robots. Owners don’t have to worry about the minimum wage going up. Even the pharmacists are robots! Machines have started replacing the employees who check out your books at the public library forty years ago. You need a new suit? You just stand in front of your computer for a few seconds. A program will take your measurement, choose the best colour for your complexion, and your suit will be delivered within a few days. I'm teling you, you can go for weeks without talking to anybody.

At age fifty, Wayne Doucet is a sad and lonely man. He has a few friends from high school and university with whom he still has contacts on LinkedIn or Facebook, but he never sees them in person. It’s been so long that he hasn’t been touched by anybody. A few months ago, he went for a massage hoping that he would feel the warm touch of another human being on his body. To his dismay, it was a big machine with three sets of hands coming out of the ceiling that gave him the massage. The machine can massage you for as long as you want or are willing to pay without ever getting tired.

Last night, in a desperate attempt to find some kind of human comfort, Wayne called an escort (which is a more respectable way to call a prostitute). She came to his house by herself in a self-driving Uber cab. Her name was Sophie. They didn’t have sex. She looked at him in the eyes and gently touched his face with her fingers. He started to cry, and he could not stop crying. When he could finally get a hold of himself, he said to her, “I’m sorry! You must think I’m crazy.” She said, “Don’t worry! I’m used to it. Most of our clients don’t need sex. They just need someone to touch their souls and make them feel like human beings again.”