2027: my coworker asks me why i won’t wear the headset. i briefly consider giving some sort of excuse, but i just sigh and say i’m afraid of the training data being used against us. he laughs but tries to keep his head still because the straps aren’t very good. we’re in america. this is the land of the free. come on.
///
2030: my son comes home in tears. he got an f on his math test. the headset flagged him for looking at his classmate’s test. he claims he never looked. the teacher says to bring it up with the school board. the school board ridicules us for suggesting that my “cheater of a son” is some sort of false-positive martyr.
///
2035: i’m at airport security, catching the last flight home from the conference. i take off my shoes and walk through the metal detector, then do the quick mind check. i feel silly, but the little light takes longer than usual to flash green and i try to suppress my nervousness to avoid it flagging me. i don’t want to spend another night at the conference hotel. finally, the light flashes, i exhale, and reclaim my bags from the conveyor belt.
///
2050: i’m in the supermarket when i get a ping that my social credit is down 0.5%. it must have happened when i looked at the empty shelf where the hummus usually is and wondered if it had to do with yet another war in the middle east. “yet another” got flagged, i’m certain of it. as i’m now slightly over allowance, i put the rice back on the shelf and pick up a smaller pack. maybe it was the rice, i did briefly wonder about travelling to china next year. well, whatever. i need to lose a few pounds anyway, and i can never quite figure out how to get all of the starch rinsed off.