It's 3050; everything is so relative and in limbo. Who thought that perfection could be so boring? We don't work. We just eat and sleep; the rest is too boring.

Wait, somebody already said that before. Is this evolution? Ice-cream, that was the password. Disoriented, I look around. Everything is so perfect. Forever young, I think that was the pact with eternity.

For some of us,  it was nice. We got frozen in time at the age of twenty. But the ones that took the cure when they were in their seventies got the disadvantage of being stuck in that old phase needing help.

I need to find the ice-creamers. Something is not right. I see the reality, and it is ugly! How could I have been so happy and content before? We are living in a nightmare.

We are like a broken record, empty autonomous with no future. We are broken machines stacked in time.

We don't feel hunger, and we are not angry. We are nothing. But now I am awake, and I am scared because I am alone, and hungry. I need ice-cream.

I run onto the street. I remember I have to find a house... a house with the number twenty-three.

I am out on the street whispering: act normal. After ten minutes of looking at houses, I found it--number twenty-three with a big sign of ice-cream in the window. I knocked on the door, young women opened the door and gently pulled me inside.

Password?

Ice-cream?

You remembered!

 I remembered the house number and the ice-cream. I am hungry. Do you have anything to eat?

 I have apples. We woke up a few months ago, and the only available food we found was the one that grows on the trees. We must sneak out at night to get them.


Apples. I remember green, red, yummy, and smelled so nice. May I have some?

Here; but go slow. Your stomach is not used to food anymore.

Why?

The cure took away all our old needs. We didn't need to eat to survive; we didn't need to feel warm, or cold. Now, it is different.

So, what is going to happen to us? How many are awake?

For now, we are ten. We will need to start slow-step by step. We have to pretend for a while. So after you have your apple, you need to go home and wait for the night to fall. Then you come back here to eat and to learn how to be human again. Then before the day starts, you will go home and sleep. At noon just go out for a stroll, because they call this socializing. I know they monitor us during the day, so you need to keep up with the old schedule.

For how long do I have to pretend?

Not long, once our number reaches one thousand, we will leave this place and find a real planet where we can live as before.