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A Personal Impersonal World

  • Writer: Renesa SVNIT
    Renesa SVNIT
  • Jun 7
  • 5 min read

Updated: 7 days ago

Written by Rachita Mohan

Illustration by - Rishika Vohra
Illustration by - Rishika Vohra

Janet awakes from her slumber, her eyes adjusting to the faint glow of 1500 HOURS in the top left corner of her vision. A text flashes: Your UTOPIA STANDARD subscription ends in 48 hours. Upgrade to Premium, tap to learn more. She hesitates before dismissing the message with a shake of her head. Premium? I’d be lucky to be able to afford Basic this time around. 

In the year 2099, the Basic Plan isn’t the norm. Bland avatars, no ambience and non-customisable air filtration– who’d want that? The lifeless landscapes, smoggy skies, and iridescent remains of the once-flowing water bodies on Earth favour no one. The Mars Habitat, however, isn’t exactly an affordable escape. 

Most, thus, live in a world of their delusions on Earth. Using ART, UTOPIA’s acronym for their patented Augmented Reality Technology, users obtain varying degrees of control over their senses and virtual appearance– crafting both unique environments and identities. 

She scrolls through her options. Only three outfit presets? What am I, a plebeian? An ad flashes before her eyes: PREMIUM: THE NEWEST IN FASHION! She brushes it away with a huff. 

UTOPIA isn’t exactly new to the market—they are the market. Their ART lenses and Clear O2 air purifiers have already become “must-haves” for anyone belonging to Gen Epsilon and Gen Zeta. Their plans tie it all together, effectively trapping their users in a perpetual state of hyper-stimulation.

Janet, like her fellow Earth-dwellers, is no exception.

She gets up, moving through the motions of a life delicately curated for herself. Her pot of coffee is already at her preferred temperature in the kitchen. The rich aroma drifts through the air—one of the few natural scents she has chosen to enable on her purifier. Everything else is filtered out, deemed unnecessary. 

The day’s weather report is projected onto the kitchen counter. 48 Degrees Celsius. She sighs. What use is that information for her? It's not like anyone experiences “weather” in this day and age. The only time it matters to her is when it rains.

She grabs her supplements off the kitchen counter and washes them down with her coffee, vacantly staring at the projection on the smooth marble. She figures she should return to the piece she had begun working on three days ago.

Janet is a painter. The arts, competitive sports, medicine, and some forms of engineering comprise the job market at the moment. If there is one thing the government’s done right, it’s the ban on AI in creative fields. Most agreed that it took away from the integrity of art to have no human behind it. However, Janet is one of many artists, and the number of commissions she’s getting is at an all-time low. The struggling artist trope never rests. She returns to her base sketch, picking her favourite ‘Rain in the City’ simulation from the limited AR presets at her disposal. 

The purifier hums to life as she squints, aligning her vision with the simulation unfolding through her lenses. Her room shifts into the setting she desires: rain hitting the asphalt, a tin shed sheltering her as she sits before her canvas. Cool mist surrounds her, and the air is filled with the artificially produced smell of petrichor. 

She takes a deep breath, letting the familiarity wash over her while pushing aside the faint unease that creeps in; the feeling that something is amiss.    

The weather projection reads Heavy rains, staying indoors is advised. The clouds thunder and people retreat indoors. Janet, however, takes a trip. Going outdoors is no easy task. She dons her second skin—an acid-proof cloak—along with her face mask, and steps out. She walks the eerily pristine streets, her anti-slip shoes steadying her on the slick pavement. Beneath open skies, she takes the glove off her right hand to briefly feel the rain. It stings. One breath without her mask, and she's coughing violently.

Back home, her exposed hand is raw from the damage, her lungs still tinged with the chemical bite of the rain. The experience she longs to relive is never as pure as she craves. Her memories fail her now, the untainted petrichor but a distant mirage.

As she works on her canvas, the humming of the Clear O2 quietens, and the silence presses in. The constant ads in her periphery disappear. She feels her airway constrict. That’s the third outage this month

Being evicted from her world, even temporarily, sends her spiralling. It always comes back, she tells herself. It always does. But her growing panic barely fades. Her limbs feel heavy, her breath is quick and her eyes are wide, straining to make sense of the emptiness.

Just as she feels herself sinking further, the telltale seeping of colour begins. The godawful ads re-enter her vision. Her world snaps back into place, and she breathes a sigh of relief. It’s not real; none of it is. But it’ll have to be enough. 

Janet suspects the glitches are intentional, programmed to increase toward the end of a subscription, as if to leave the user disoriented, craving more. She gets it– the over-dependency, the unhealthiness of it all– but no matter how much she wants to distance herself from the simulations, no part of her is ready to let them go. 

24 hours before the expiry of her subscription, a countdown commences in the bottom right of her vision. The UPGRADE NOW! ads have become more frequent. She dismisses them over and over, wanting to focus on the canvas in front of her. As the hours go by, her dread rises, palms sweating, canvas bare of anything new. 

What even am I without my world? she asks herself. She does not have an answer. It’s not real, she reiterates. Her heart sinks. This world is her refuge– how is she to go on without it? A voice at the back of her mind asks, does it even matter? She’s not sure if it’s apathy or surrender, but the distinction feels meaningless. 

Her ears ring.

She shuts off the purifier– it’s hindering her thoughts. The eerie silence presses. This time, she welcomes it, hoping it will stir an emotion, any emotion, in her. Impulsively, she logs off. 

The bleak white walls of her studio seem to glare at her. Her hands tremble as she moves to the window, sliding it open with difficulty. The sky is a bruised, sulfuric yellow, the sun’s light dimmed behind the layers of smog. With the soundproofing of the window no longer shielding her, the city’s cacophony crashes over her, loud and unrelenting. 

Her gaze lingers on the picture-perfect cityscape, a stark contrast to the fractures in her mind.

Eyes tearing up and violently coughing, she looks through the haze with a sense of liberation. For the first time in what feels like forever, she feels awake.


 
 
 

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