Day 18

I remember, when I was small, reading with wonder a magazine article about the future, when personal television stations would beam our faces into distant rooms, and we would look back at our correspondents, too, as if we were in the room together. In stories like that, and in illustrations, the people were always playing long-distance chess on their view screens.

Now that we have such screens in our pockets and on our laps, there's still this nostalgic pretense that we'll get around to that chess game sometime. We never will. We don't even use our fancy wooden chessboards for chess. Fancy chessboards are for spilling wine on. Futuristic electronic tele-screens are for awkward pauses brought on by unnatural timing. They're for watching a man in middle management fruitlessly mouth the words "Can you hear me?" while you, just as fruitlessly, say into your microphone that he needs to push his headset jack in just a little further. Eventually you make a sign. Most especially they're for seeing your face in the least flattering way it could possibly be shown, from below, looking into your nostrils, while you bend over a computer, chin tucked so your neck looks like a hippopotamus wallow. From that angle, foreheads stretch on like the Sahara. Facial hair looks paradoxically thin and overgrown. Mouths are cavernous maws. Eyes are little watery marbles, red around the edges, wrapped in wrinkled yellow newspaper.

I've learned to be dubious about the future. If you look forward to a future like the deck of a starship, with a full-spectrum glow emanating from everywhere, be wary. I've seen the future. The lighting is terrible.