A girl who had no privacy

This is a three part series of a futuristic dystopian world, where everything is public. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G. 

It’s been a while since I have enjoyed writing in privacy like today. It’s not that I do not get time, the problem is that I get no privacy. I cannot write with a hundred eyes pouring over me.
The world has changed drastically over the last few years. Nothing is the same anymore. Many things may be changing even as I write this. You never can quite tell how, what you do now, will affect your tomorrow.
Anyway, the thing is, you see, now we are entitled to only 2 hours of ‘Me-Time’ every day. Yeah! That’s what they refer to the private time allocated to us every day. Right now, my watch tells me that I have 45 minutes left. Enough for me to vent myself here and go to sleep. I had to restrict all my private tasks of the entire day within an hour & 15 minutes. And let me tell you that is nothing less than a herculean task. There have been so many times when I’ve been a defaulter for not maintaining my ‘Me-Hours’. There is a penalty for that. We have to compensate for the deficit hours at the end of the month, in double. Previous month, I ran short by 2 ‘Me-Hours’, which meant, on the last two days of the month, I got no privacy at all.  Not even for a minute. God! I don’t want that to happen again. So no straying away from my schedules for me.
Life is always hectic for a celebrity fitness coach, and today it was more so, as I had plans to write in my private time. Which means, I had to literally skip the morning shower, freshening up, change of clothes, restroom breaks, and my lunch time – when I get to hog butter laden parathas in private.

Also Read: Shriya

To give you a deeper insight into my woes, me being a celebrity coach means I have thousands of eyes on me all the time. Everyone wishes to learn the secrets of celebrity fitness, which is why I usually get my maximum audience during my sessions. And when I’m on my Me-Time, my viewers get to watch the repeats of the day’s previously recorded activities.
I agree, the technology behind this is simply mind blowing. But I do not appreciate it. I’d like to go back to the past where we controlled what we wanted the world to know about us. Imagine yourself in my place. Imagine how you would feel, if you had just two hours for yourself – the only time when no one is looking at you. Can you fit your complete day into those two hours? No, right.
You want to know how they make it possible? You thought they have cameras everywhere? Hah! Guess they are smarter than that. The magic is in the watch that I’m wearing right now. It is an incredible device that uses real time location tracking, sensor signals and what not! So what it does is, it identifies and reconstructs my surroundings and projects it automatically to others. So say, I am sitting in a restaurant – the watch identifies my posture, my movements, my appearance and also identifies my surroundings, i.e the people and the things around me based on the location tracking, sensor tags, artificial intelligence blah blah.. So in short, I don’t have to go live manually anymore – the way it used to happen in the old times. The watch sends my live feeds to the app where anyone who is my follower gets to access it.
Pssst… I’ll tell you something. There is no escaping this! All taxpayers are chained to the watch. We are not allowed to take it off for two reasons:
  1. It’s bound too hard (removing it is as difficult as cutting off your hand)
  2. Also, if we do not comply, we are ostracised from the society (and seriously, I wouldn’t want that)
Hey! I can hear the watch ticker getting louder. Time for me to switch off my ‘Me-Time’. Few of my friends are attending a party tonight. Let me take a look at what’s happening and go to sleep (Yes! My followers will see me while I lie down and stalk others. My loud snores are not a secret anymore).
Next week, I’ll tell you what brought about this change and why it was made compulsory. We brought it upon ourselves mainly.
(PART 2 coming sooooon)

 

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