Paper
For the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge this year, I’m posting a 100 word piece of flash fiction every day. It might be a self-contained story, or a scene–whatever, it’ll be fiction, and it’ll be over in a flash! Today’s story is…
Paper
I glance at the clock. Two hours to go, and I’m not even half-way done. My fingers cramp from holding this pen. I try to work through the pain, but my mind keeps wandering to a place where forms are digital, automated, and take seconds to complete…
… like in the old days… back when we had computers… before the anti-tech revolution.
It was supposed to make life purer. Less complicated. Fifty years on, and the revolutionaries are waiting on their Social Security checks.
Waiting on me finishing these forms…
…. that would have been done weeks ago with computers…
Check back tomorrow for Q…
Clever… I was only talking with friends the other day about how much we missed writing to pen pals, and whether a shop-bought card with a hand written message beat a Moonpig one that was fully customised but with the message printed at source… (my vote goes with Moonpig AND handwritten for best of both!)
Handwritten notes are best–but given my handwriting, I can see the value of printing. 🙂 I think snail mail will have a renaissance in the near future. Not that people will give up technology (as in this story), but people will tire of the cold and clinical nature of digital communication and want to reconnect with these older, more personal ways of doing things.
Ah, the pros and cons of technology….
Madeline @ The Shellshank Redemption
Minion, Capt. Alex’s Ninja Minion Army
The 2014 Blogging from A-Z Challenge
Indeed! And of revolution: be careful what you fight for… 🙂
Ah! I love it. Great, thoughtful piece. Wouldn’t it be great if people could step back like that in some ways?
True Heroes from A to Z
Thanks, Crystal! In some ways it might be good to go back, if only to appreciate what we have now. Having grown up in the 70s and 80s, when the kind of technology we have today was the stuff of sci-fi, I know I have a different perspective on it than my kids do. Though it’s easy even for me to take it all for granted.
Nice. I like the twist with the anti-technology thing going on and the protagonist complaining about it. I didn’t see that coming. You wouldn’t normally thing that “the old days” would be the ones with the computers.
Thank you, Cely! Yes–a little cautionary tale to be careful what you wish for. 🙂
Ha, this is funny because I think most of us sort of wish we didn’t depend on technology so much but without it, holy cow the world would be so different.
It would be very different. But I think we’ll reach a tipping point sometime in the future when people will crave the “old ways.” Not to the extent of revolution (as in the story), but to try to balance digital and analog. 🙂
Clever story.
~Patricia Lynne~
Story Dam
Patricia Lynne, YA Author
Thanks, Patricia! 🙂
I hope this never happens. I don’t I could live without my computer.
I dread to think what many of us would do without our computers, which makes me think they’re here to stay… though maybe not in the form we know now. But that’s another story… 🙂