MILLENNIUM

You find yourself in a massive, sprawling city, its streets pristine and white. The sky is a clear blue--not a cloud to be seen, and the sun is at its midday peak. Crowds of people rush past in opposing directions, each individual occupied by separate idle tasks; chatty businessmen argue with distant colleagues on bulky Nokia cell phones, antisocials in all black bob their heads to loud angry music blasted through behind-the-neck eaphones, two men walk into an alley and only one walks out, NEETs that look like they just rolled out of bed stumble into and out of corner shops without purchasing anything.

Amongst all the humans, you notice, are machines of all sorts--and lots of them. Robotic auto-sweepers dust dirt, debris, and litter into trash bins where it belongs; a particularly rowdy group of teens playing hooky kick one of them on its side and laugh at its lackluster attempts to right itself again. Intermixed in the hustle and bustle of the crowds are androids that nearly fooled you into thinking they were just more humans--but rather than skin of any human color, their outer casing is a plain, unpainted white. They all wear similar sleek-looking uniforms and have the same black hair--albeit, all with different styles and textures. The majority of them seem devoid of any complex facial expression beyond "neutral-content", "neutral-neutral", or "neutral-upset".

CRT screens in the front window display of a nearby electronics shop alternate between PSAs warning about the danger of jailbroken androids and how to report them, flickering subliminal frames featuring a glitching butterfly with rainbow wings over text that reads "Happy New Year!", and flashy advertisements for some energy drink you've never heard of.

The year is 1999. The future is nearly upon us, and you have no idea how you got here.

What would you like to do?

BLEND INTO THE CROWD
WATCH THE TVS IN THE DISPLAY
Sorry, what was that about the men in the alley?
END EXPLORATION