The future was already here. She should know, seeing as it was her job to design it. Whenever someone needed to illustrate an apartment complex or make a new building feel real, she would be the one they called in to show how this project was a part of the future. The ingredients were almost always the same. Green transportation, green areas (but not too much, it had to look neat), modernistic glass buildings, bicycles and people playing with their dogs and their kids in the sunshine. Architecture firms would design the big, important buildings, and then someone would call her, so that their clients could see how these big, important buildings were obviously far ahead of their time. As she lay in the grass, watching kids and dogs playing in the sunshine, she thought about the fact that this future was basically here already. She felt a bit worried that maybe people would soon realise this and start demanding new futures, and she had no idea what they would look like. But she did not get far along this track of thoughts, before she was disrupted by the sound of screams.

She spotted commotion at the nearby rapid rail tracks, and pulled up her newsfeed to find out what was going on. People on the rail platform were reporting how a man had jumped unto the rail tracks just as the train pulled into the platform, and how he had slowly been crushed under the train, much to the distress of the onlookers. Several news reporters had already started to speculate on the background for the suicide, and the man’s ragged haircut and his unfitted suit - or what could be seen of it, from beneath the train - led them to conclude that he might have been an escapee from the banana purge. She realised that she did not know what the banana purge was, but that she probably ought to. The name had been popping up in her newsfeed some time ago, but she could never really be bothered to read up on it, until now. Looking up the information, she learned that the banana purge was a recent move by the government to reduce state expenses by eradicating everything outside of the capital city, from crumbling infrastructure to welfare-dependent citizens. She vaguely remembered hearing some politicians talk about it, but hadn’t been paying much attention because her favourite shows where on in another stream, and besides, politicians never managed to come through on any of their promises. Well, it seemed that they had this time. A 75% savings on the country’s financial budget!

It had seemed a bit quiet lately, now that she thought about it. In her newsfeed, people had managed to discover that the dead man’s name was John and they were busy speculating that he had managed to escape the purge, only to realise that there were no jobs and no support for anyone with a bad accent and a tacky suit. After all, he didn’t fit this vision of the future, and frankly, he would just make the big important buildings look bad. She felt slightly nauseous, maybe because high-res pictures of John’s blood, smeared across the high-shine white of the polycarbonate train had started appearing. Maybe because she just found out that most of her country’s population had been exterminated. The dirt and liquid-repellant coating on the train was making sure that the blood was already running off the front cart slowly. Not even here would the man be allowed to leave a mark.

A new kind of feeling was starting to stir in her, even as she lay in the grass, feeling the sun on her face. A quiet breeze couldn’t help dismiss this feeling of… wrong? That maybe someone should be doing something other than just going along with it. In an incredible effort of will, she forced her attention outwards, away from her shows and her newsfeed full of celebrities and diets, and to her amazement discovered that she could find other kinds of information. Like factual information about things not happening right at this moment, and about politicians and businesses and their decisions. She decided to examine who was in charge of everything, and confront the person about these new feelings. A quick look around not only led to the information of the man in charge, but his personal page, terminally starved for hits, even let her book an appointment.

She got up and brushed the grass of her pants. A couple of minutes had passed since the man named John jumped in front of the train, and she was on her way to meet the man in control of everything. In her newsfeed John was no longer the biggest story; someone had posted a picture of a dog that looked like a celebrity. She arrived at a big but nondescript building in the centre of the city, and were guided to an small office overlooking a back alley. From behind his desk, a man got up and shook her hand “Hi there, I’m happy that you have shown an interest in the governance of our country! Now, what did you want to talk to me about?” “Are you the man in charge of the world?” She asked. “Haha!” the man laughed heartily, “Young miss, we are a democracy, as I am sure you are well aware! I do, however have a big influence on our state finances, and I am in charge of the big decisions when it comes to the economy and governance, so you could say that I am quite important!” he said, looking quite pleased with himself.

She wasn’t listening any more, having first decided that he was the man she was looking for, and having then become bored with his endless talking. Instead she had turned her personal stream to live casting, so that people could follow what she was about to do as it happened. She had already picked up quite a viewer count as well. Her channel was something new and different from what people was used to: The man talking in the stream sounded important, but he was not one people was used to seeing in their news, or least, not used to noticing. Meanwhile, the man was still talking: “I did help reduce our state expenses, and if not for my deal with national business leaders, our country would not have been able to benefit from the synergy that came out of…”

She took a step closer to the man, breaching his personal space in a way that caused him to stop in his tracks. And all over the world, viewers who had turned in because they were finally seeing something really novel, were gathering around their screens, and feeling a peculiar kind of anticipation, as if something amazing was about to happen. And in that moment, people all over the world felt a connection as they watched her stream, and as one, old and young, foreigner and local, they broke out in a simultaneous, world-wide celebration, as she kicked the man in the balls.