March 2017 – Shadow

Fashion

The people here look very normal, but I suppose we have to define what ‘normal’ is.

We used to have four seasons. There were times of the year where the weather would be scorching hot and we would all have to wear light clothing to stop ourselves from burning up into a crispy hotdog, and then there are times when it’s so cold you wear layers of jackets to make you look like the big round snowballs you throw around.

But our world has progressed so much since then. I don’t know if it’s a good thing. Our weather is controlled now – there is no summer or winter. We have perfect weather and climate that fits our needs. It’s never too warm or too cold, so now everybody wears what they like.

It rains on fixed days – every Monday and Thursday now, so I always wear my nylon clothing on those days. Some of my friends like to be hipsters though – they customize their clothes with special fibre that can give off light. Some are even rich enough to buy IMA shirts. IMA is one of the top fasion brands here. Their shirts have the best quality and they have special nanobots weaved into the fabric that allow the shirt to change colour. You could be wearing a red shirt now and then have it turn blue in a split second. It’s easy to dress up for events now.

I would want to have one of those. I’d wear a different coloured shirt each day. You can even install modules into these shirts to have them display customized words or images, modifying each nanobot to display a certain colour or word on the shirt, just like how you would modify pixels of an image. You could literally have your clothing look like anything you want it to. You can even save your favourite designs so you can switch to them anytime you want. Rather than having 50 sets of clothing, we just need one set of clothing that can turn itself into 50 different designs. Just pray it doesn’t get dirty though.

I guess the only thing that’s left to invent is a shirt that turns you invisible. I heard that IMA actually developed a prototype, but what fashion sense is there when nobody can see you?

Now it looks like the clothes here aren’t that ‘normal’ after all.

Authority

Dashing up the flight of stairs, the mysterious figure slid past the guards unnoticed.

Having broken into the world’s most secure vault and, he now had to get out alive. He had evaded the security drones on his tail with ease. The lasers were almost too easy for him to disable.

He had been planning for this impossible mission for ten years, and he had no intention of getting caught now.

The jewel was in his hands now and it seemed that no one could stop him. With the power hidden inside the Ancient Jewel of Thanathos, he could retrieve anyone’s memories at his will.

That was until she appeared from the shadows.

Home

They said that this would be the epic finale to the end of our 4 month-long journey. Everyone around me was hyped up about it. But I saw it as something else, something meaningless, and something utterly pointless.

I never understood why we had to go through the 24km route march as a recruit. Carrying a heavy bag of accessories and equipment, we had to march on for 24 kilometres, a journey that would take over 8 hours. I dreaded it.

There I was, dragging my feet across the concrete path that stretched on and on. There didn’t seem to be an end. I would daydream as I marched on, thinking about the things I could have been doing. I looked at the people around me, the people who could not care less about the soldiers marching past them. I wanted to swap places with them. I continued my daydream. Hours passed just like this.

Then it came down to the last 10% of the journey. We had less than 3km before we reached our final destination. Then, we all stopped. I looked ahead. It was a view of the city skyline of Singapore. It was an amazing view that had me mesmerized. Standing in front, our commander pointed into the heart of the city and said, “this is why we serve national service, to protect our home”.

He was right. This is where our families are. This is where we find all our favourite food, local delicacies, and the impeccable memories associated with this place.

And this was why we were doing all of this. However pointless or meaningless things may have seemed, we were doing this to protect the people we love, and the place we call home.

(I wrote this before officially being added by add/drop into the class and missed the first lesson so I did not know that the post had to be linked to the world so I wrote it thinking it could be about anything, but I thought I should just post it anyway since I had already written it.)

My World

Memories… what if we could manipulate our own memories?

It is the year 2030.

The tech world has been constantly evolving, with newer technology and better inventions surfacing every year. This year though, something revolutionary had been created. The scientists had discovered a way to change one’s memories.

It all started with the study of dreams, a phenomenon that was not completely understood by the scientific community. It was already known that as one goes to sleep and has dreams, the events that have occurred that day or recently are stored in memory in a phase known as REM sleep. This is how we remember things better.

By interfering with the brain’s micro signals, we found out that we could not only change what the brain remembers, but manipulate what it already remembers, injecting memories or experiences that may have never happened before to that person. One could learn just by going to sleep, without having to even go to school to sit through lessons.

The applications were endless.

Peoples’ memories could be loaded into cartridges, just like thumbdrives. You could access your own memories, or others’ memories long after they die. It’s as though they were right here with you… or at least there is the remains of what they remember. Most people use this technology for good, keeping cartridges of their loved ones to remember them by. Most consider this to be a great invention.

However, there are those who use this technology for evil, exploiting it to change the memories of others without them knowing. This technology allows a person’s memories to be willingly deleted or replaced with something else.