The rocking at first was gentle. It only sent me deeper and deeper into sleep. Then the motion grew aggressive. Finally, I opened my eyes. The wall sought out the point of focus of my eyes and formed the image of a clock there. It was a clock with numbers. I never learnt how to read clock hands. No one expected me to. The world around us changed to our level of perception. Everyone grew up as the birthing tubes made them.
The clock said ten. Reading my mind, the player put out some music. It was soothing. The walls knew what I wanted. The walls always knew my tastes. It was all in the system, desires, thoughts, actions – all appended, calibrated and fine-tuned. It was a super-efficient system that thought for you. Instructions on what I had to do would play in my mind. There was no need to think, no wasting of time. The system thought for me. Life in the thirty-first century was easy.