The Ballet, unhealthy Part 3

The walk to the train station was the last quiet moment of the day. She breathed deeply to take in the crisp, clean morning air, to listen to the sounds of the birds, of children leaving their homes for school, of couples saying goodbye for the day. Once on the train, she’d be bombarded with advertising on the large screens where windows used to be, so she walked deliberately, focused on the glory of nature.

To pay for the global mass transit system, the city, along with other major cities around the world, had recently retrofitted all the glass windows in their trains and buses with a new, electro-synthetic technology that allowed the panels to be transparent to the outside, or display advertising. If you paid extra, you could access the Net and use the windows as touch screens, but very few people could afford the fee. Occasionally, the video would be turned off so you could see outside (and you could always pay for this privilege as well), but normally, the ride was a bombastic assault to the senses, mind, and spirit.

Today, Miriam’s entire hour-long commute was completely dominated by advertising for bleach, expensive cars, expensive houses, a variety of self-help schemes (which always seemed to benefit only the person who came up with the scheme), new and legal designer drugs for everything from enhanced reality perception to completely altered reality perception (it’s good to keep the masses in a glazed stupor, she thought), the ubiquitous political advertisements for politicians who over-promised and under-delivered every single election, various ways to change your appearance (always for the better, of course), and superstar athletes and actors urging her people to join the state religion, iGod. The calming effects of Miriam’s morning were already wearing off, and she’d only been out of the house for half an hour.