When was the last time?
Mali was doing a video call with her friend, Geo. They hadn’t had dinner together in a while, so they decided it was time to order some delivery and have their meals together.
“Ah, this is so nice,” Mali said, as she crunched into the fried chicken that she had ordered. Normally, she never ate fried food, knowing that it all went directly to her gut and wreaked havoc with her microbiome. But today being a special occasion, not having seen or hung out with Geo in so long, she decided to indulge.
Not that she didn’t take a dozen precautions beforehand. She had her probiotics supplement early today, she had ordered some really good ones a few days back, and they were working miracles for her little bacteria friends. And then she also decided to take an extra digestive enzyme. She had taken one in the morning with her breakfast. But another one couldn’t hurt, she reasoned with herself.
Finally, she had also taken out her batch of fermented cabbage. She had recently had some fermenting equipment delivered and her first batch of red cabbage garlic sauerkraut was ready to be consumed. All of it should go to placate those little beings in her gut that clamored for attention daily.
So Mali was confident in her ability to digest this delicious fried chicken today. Not that she said all of that to her friend, Geo.
They would have said, “You are so obsessed with your gut biome. I don’t think anyone else, besides scientists who research in this field, would care as much as you do about them. I bet you think more about your gut microbiome than anything else!”
So Mali kept her mouth shut.
“What are you eating, Geo?” Mali asked to keep the focus off the fried chicken. She had already seen Geo raise an eyebrow at her selection. They knew how it affected her belly. They knew she would message them incessantly over the next few days complaining about her inability to poop or her ability to poop a bit too much.
“I got some Nasi Goreng from my fav Indo place. It’s not the same as my mother’s, goddess rest her soul, but it’s good enough. I sometimes have it when I miss my mother a lot. She was a bitch in real life and treated me like a second-grade being, but she was a great cook.”
Geo had never gotten the acceptance they wanted when her mother was alive. And now that their mother was gone, Geo was able to be herself much more.
“Oh, that’s good. I remember you complaining about that last time,” Mali said, as she crunched into her fried drumstick. Ah, the joy of munching chicken bones. It will never get old for Mali.
“By the way, when was the last time you went out?” Geo asked.
“Oh, hmm,” Mali thought to herself. When did she go out last? That’s a good question. “I don’t know… I think it’s been a month. Maybe two. I haven’t had any need to go out.”
“That’s not long. I haven’t been out for almost 6 months!”
“Wow, that’s a record for you! Remember that time, when I didn’t go out for ten months and then went out to get a newspaper and my eyes almost got damaged from the sun’s rays because I wasn’t used to it.”
Geo started guffawing. “Yes! That was hilarious! The eye doctor was like, ‘You should really try going out at least once a month. Ideally, once a week, but once a month would be good as well.’ And you just laughed at him, like she had made a great joke. But she said she was being serious.”
“Ridiculous. The older folks are completely unaware that you don’t need to go out anymore. I mean, why bother with the madness outside, the air pollution, the sun’s UV rays, the sick and dying homeless people bugging you, the stray animals filled with disease, and god knows what else? It’s just better to stay at home and get everything delivered.”
“Yeah, exactly. My friend, OxO was telling me a story the other day about how she went out to pick up some mail and a rabid dog bit her! She hadn’t gone out then in about six months and it was further proof she shouldn’t be going out at all. She had to get these really painful shots. Never again, she told me, never ever again!”
“Oh my god! I hear horror stories like this all the time. It makes me wonder why anyone would think that the outdoors has anything good to offer. If it was up to me, I would make it so everything was delivered by robots or drones and no one ever stepped out of their homes. It would be a much safer and more peaceful world if that were the case. Everything is produced by robots in any case in industries and stuff.”
“Yeah, but I think you would still have to go out at some point to date, get married, and shit like that,” Mali said. It wasn’t something she liked to contemplate. She had heard that a lot of men liked to date women in RL because they were worried about all the enhancements and filters women use to change themselves for the better when on video. But the thought of going out for a date with a random man just for the sake of procreation made her come out in hives. Who cares about her gene pool? There were enough people on this planet, weren’t there?
“Oh, really? That doesn’t sound pleasant at all. I am not interested in that. I think I’m more than enough happy with the family I have created for myself in the metaverse. I don’t care to have children in any case.”
“Yeah, I forgot to ask. How are Dawson and Granist? They doing well?”
“So well! I love them so much. I am so grateful for them. Some days I don’t know how I would get through the madness without their support.”
Granist was the four-year-old Geo had created with Dawson who was a man they had met in the metaverse six years ago. She was the cutest little thing, with turquoise blue pigtails and big black eyes. Also, smart as anything. She could answer any question that an AI chatbot could. They had done well creating her. Which isn’t surprising considering they were both high-calibre programmers well-known in the AI world.
“How’s your job going?” Geo asked, knowing that it was a touchy subject.
“Oh, it’s fine,” Mali said, nonchalantly. She didn’t want to create a big hullabaloo about it. It was hard enough telling folks what she did without them bringing up random aspects of it.
Mali had started her job as a cyber sex operator a few months back, and finally, she had enough cash to start getting lots of stuff delivered to her home without worrying about the cost. It was the first time in her life really that she had felt this way. No matter what people thought of it, she was going to keep going with it. Geo was the only one who supported her without admonition.
Since folks weren’t going out, they had to have sex somehow. Cybersex operators were already popular before this recluse world began, but this field boomed even more since folks wanted to get pleasure but not face-to-face or in RL.
Not wanting to brag, Mali could proudly say that she was one of the top cybersex operators in the world. She charged a pretty penny for her moans, fake orgasms, and online avatar.
The conversation drifted on from there to the foods they had tried from different countries since delivery services had become fast enough for “Earth-wide delivery in 60 minutes or free,” the popular slogan for FoodSuper, the food app that had taken over the world. Its parent company FoodPanda had been popular only in Asia for a long time, and it had in the last few decades incorporated Grab, UberEats, and other food delivery companies to become a monopoly.
No matter how much Amazon tried, it couldn’t get into this market with FoodSuper dominating.
Mali’s alarm started chinging, and she groaned.
“Sorry, darling, I have to get back to work. One of my regulars really needs a session with me today because “he’s backed up,” she put quotes around that last bit and both of them laughed.
“No worries. This was nice. Let’s do it again in a few months, yeah?”
“Yes, absolutely. And don’t forget to send that book over to me.”
“Will do. I’ll send my drone over with it in a minute. She can go ten miles from the house now without any issues. You still living in the same place, right?”
“Yup, still there. Okay, toodless, choop choop, kisses, see you soon!”
And they both rang off.
P.S. The inspiration for this story came from my realization or observation that whenever I go to eat at a restaurant in Bali or whenver I’m travelling somewhere, they are always empty! Some are filled with people, but a lot of them are empty. The only folks coming to visit besides me are the food delivery men/women, who are there to pick up food for UberEats, FoodPanda, ShopeeFood, Gojek, or GrabFood. And that made me wonder about the day when no one ever goes out, and everyone gets everything delivered. EVERYTHING.
