The Fading Hearts

Chapter 3: The Fading Hearts

CHAPTER 3: The Fading Hearts

Kids. If I may be quite honest; I never wanted to have kids. Even you Huru, I never planned on having you.

"Well, what did you want to be if not a mother?" Huru asks.

"A journalist," I sigh dreamily "I wanted to travel to the very ends of the earth and see everything the world has to offer."

"Jesus mother!" you face palm so hard I'm worried you'll jumble up that macrowit brain installation thingy "you can't say that word. It's demeaning towards people with no desire to vourney. Like bots!"

God. I'd forgotten about that stupid rule. It's against the law to physically travel to other parts of the world. The Bots-in-command jealously guard their innovations and would do anything to hide it from the rest of Bot world until the first of May which is the Bot independence day. Hence the travel ban on humans who could be acting as spies for the Bots.

Now travelling has been replaced with vourneying which literally means virtual journeying. All a person requires is the vourney system that connects them to any part of the world and allows them to virtually experience the place they are visiting. It's like being there, but not actually being there. It's a weird experience, is all I can say. Except for that time I rode on a tiger. That one was fun.

"Hey, by the way, do you know 1st May used to be Labour day?" I smile. It is always fun to be the one impacting history on this new generation.

"I know, mum, you've told me like a billion times about it. And it never gets any less boring."

"Oh," is all I can say.

If I'd spoken to my mother that rudely I'd have gotten a very thorough hiding. Now it's a crime for one human to punish another. Children should be allowed to express their thoughts freely, and if they do anything deemed wrong it's the Bot court that should punish them. Jesus. We've become as lenient as Western parents.

It's sad how dependent we've become on bots. Even our governments are simply there for show, to comfort us that at least we do still have some power left. They are however fooling no one. We know they're all puppets of the Bots-in-command, starting with the presidents.

That is something Bot-news; the only system allowed to broadcast news in the entire world, would never tell us. Whatever happened to good old fashioned journalism where a reporter would tell it like it is, and describe the situation (albeit with some bias) as they deemed best. Now all the news we get from Bot-news is unbiased real time facts. It's even worse that these Bot-age audio visual systems now allow us to relive the situation as though we were there as it happened. I wish there was Fox News when I was growing up. Mum often describes how 'opinionated' their news was.

One thing I do commend the bots on, however, is bringing an end to all wars and crime. I still wonder how humans could live after committing and witnessing such barbarism.

"Hey, Huru, have I told you about serial killers?" I ask.

"No. not really."

"Well, they were people who enjoyed killing other people."

"What! Why?" oh. So now you're interested?

"I don't really know. Their psychopathic brains just got high off killing. Some even ate the body parts of the people they killed. Like there was this guy who liked eating young boys. He'd cut their arms off..."

"Jesus mother! I don't want to know any of that!"

I watch him run out of the sitting room covering his ears in horror. Hunh. And I thought I was being interesting. I walk over to the window and watch the rising sun. Its colour morphs from a dark shade of pink then orange and finally to a bright yellow. Thank God for small mercies. Nature is still as beautiful as it was millenniums ago. Not even bots can rectify nature.