The Good Old Days

1967. I remember it well. It was a very good year. Hover-cars, picture-phones, atomic ovens, robot maids. It all seems so old fashioned now, but at the time those things were considered very modern. Personal teleportation devices, brain transplants, and the like were years in the future. We take them for granted now, of course, but it wasn't so long ago that they were considered the stuff of science fiction. But now, here we are in the year 2007 and they're part of our everyday lives. It's amazing to think of the changes I have seen in my lifetime. So many technological marvels. They've certainly made life easier, but sometimes I wonder if our world is really the better for them. Teleportation is okay, I guess, if you’ve really got to get somewhere in a hurry, but doggone it, I miss the slower pace of life, those leisurely Sunday afternoon flights we used to take down the skyway at a thousand miles per hour. It gave you time to take in the scenery, and think, and relax. I miss that. These days, it's just hurry-hurry-hurry all the time. And, as for brain transplants, well, this new artificial body of mine is nice and all, but there’s something to be said for getting sick once in a while, and growing old. It builds character. And another thing, it was a more interesting world when everybody wasn’t young and didn’t all look the same. I can understand why they made us look the same. It was well intentioned. They gave us green skin because they wanted to get rid of racism. But somehow it just don’t seem right. I wish we were all different colors like it was in the old days. And now I hear they’re going to start taking holographic pictures of our brains and store them in a big brain repository, so if your brain is destroyed in an accident the doctors can use the holograph to make a new one. Which means there’s no possibility of anyone ever dying again. We’ll all be immortal. But what good is being immortal in a world where Nixon is still President of the World? I didn’t like the guy when he was elected in 1960 and I haven’t grown any fonder of him since, far from it. And mark my words, they'll make it a requirement for us to get new brains just like they make it a requirement to get these new bodies. They're already talking about how the new brains will be better than the ones we've got now. They’re going to erase all the bad thoughts, they say, which probably means they’re going to erase all bad thoughts about Nixon. They're going to make us all think alike, just like they made us all look alike. I don't think I want to be immortal in a world like that. Why, it’s enough to make me want to stick my head in an anti-matter trash can and destroy my brain before they can take a holograph of it. But I guess I won’t. I guess I'm just being old fashioned …