You wake up, rubbing your eyes. Look around.
Stand up. Walk. Enormous glass windows of 200 storey skyscrapers reflecting sunlight, directing into your eyes. Those buildings are like soldiers, matching silently right in front of you. They have the same height, same tone, same clothes, same smiling face that makes you feel unease.
You walk in one of them. It looks like a shopping mall. Wait — aren’t e-shopping supposed to be very popular these days? You remember, when you were young, Amazon and eBay was a thing. You can’t imagine a futuristic city with physical shops.
You look closer to the stores. There are no names. No brands.
“Restaurant”
“Boutique”
“Cafe”
You continue walking. You see the same shops, every, everywhere. Same decoration, same settings, except that the people inside was different (or else it would have been a horror story).
But when you look closer, the people inside was not THAT different. They are all in casual wear, T shirts and jeans. You begin to wonder if there are some high tech features inside these seemingly simple outfits. But what catches your attention the most is that they don’t seem alive. The exact same shirt they are wearing, the exact same smile they are carrying with, the calm and careful look. Is there something wrong?
An old man finished his lunch. You approached him, “Sir, why is everything wearing the same thing here?”
The old man smiles, “Well, we used to have different clothes, different shops, and more importantly, different kind of people. But it is no longer true now. 50 years ago, wealthy large organizations started to gain more and more power, and small businesses closed down one after one. People like to follow trends, the big trends. And we don’t need diversity anymore.”
