by SASKATCHEWAN KOLONOSCOGRAD, Alternate Reality News Service Philosophy Writer
As if to celebrate last year's scandal, the Future Shoppe© currently has a bigger and better scandal on its slimy tentacles.
I'm not talking about the way patrons of the store are not allowed to choose the seven seconds of their future that they pay exorbitant amounts of money experience. That was a mere controversy (with a hint of lemon).
"It's, uhh, random," said Future Shoppe© spokesperson Hobgoblin Himbo. "Yeah. Sure. We have no control over what part of the future you get to see. Sorry, but it's out of our slimy tentacles."
I'm not talking about how MultiNatCorp, the sole proprietor of the Future Shoppe© ("We do tech stuff that only seems impossible because it is"), acquiesced to the government's desire to put a ClipArt chip into the computer that reads people's futures. (The ClipArt chip allows the government to substitute puppies, kittens, Morticia Addams and other innocuous line art images for future projections that could involve national security.) No, this was a mere bad rinse in the 24 hour news cycle.
"I can understand why people hoping to see if they have been crowned King of America would object to getting soaked for all that money - and, let's be honest, it's great heaping piles of cash even if you use PayPal - for seven seconds of 'It's a Mall World After All,'" said Director of the National Snoopiness Agency Maddox Fred Maddox. "Still - national security. Ha ha."
Last year's scandal was, of course, that the Future Shoppe© was selling very wealthy clients glimpses of extra seconds of their future. "What? Is this Communist Albumeth?" Himbo protested. "What's the point of accumulating vast sums of money if you can't spend it to see more of your future than common people?"
When it was pointed out to him that this undermined the whole rationale behind people being limited to buying only seven seconds, Himbo replied, "Oh. Well. Of course, I meant to say that nobody gets special treatment. I, uhh, can't imagine how that rumour got started..."
This year's scandal is the revelation that the company actually plucks a memory out of its clients' brains and dresses it up to look like the future. One client complained that her "vision of the future" was actually a memory of her school prom with robots instead of adult monitors. The company responded with a press release arguing that it was actually a dance in the old folk's home where she would eventually find herself. And, she was short because people shrink over time. And, she was wearing braces because she...umm...yeah, had really bad teeth or something.
Another client threatened to sue the company when she realized that a scene where she gave birth couldn't be a vision of the future because she had had an ovariesectomy. "Yeah, well," Himbo sniffed, "in the future, in vitro fertilization will be so advanced that women will get pregnant just by walking past a clinic!"
"It was ridiculous!" ridiculed Piotr L3eprechaun. "In the future I saw, I was having a shower. At first, I thought, Okay, when I get older, my sense of personal hygiene will remain intact. Good to know. Only, I realized that I was singing the same song I had been singing in the shower that morning: 'Volare' - the Barry White version, not the David Bowie version, because that's how much I respect the ladies. In the shower I saw at the Future Shoppe©, I even had the same fantasy about...umm, yeah, best not to name names, positions or condiments. Let's just say I needed extra soap at exactly the same moment!"
Himbo pointed out that in L3eprechaun's vision, the shower heads were different.
"Oh, well, yeah, I guess it must have been the future, then," L3eprechaun conceded. Unless he was being sarcastic. It's hard to pick up sarcasm in print.
Himbo argued that the Future Shoppe© was selling the "idea of the future" rather than actual glimpses of the future. When confronted with advertisements that had appeared on television, radio and Internet dolphin mating Web sites that said, "See your future," Himbo bit his upper lip and sheepishly suggested that it was a typo that should have read "Bee an hour's suture." When it was pointed out to him that this made no sense, Himbo argued that, to somebody from 100 years ago, the Random Busby Berkeley Generator would make no sense. We had to concede his point.
Will the latest scandal destroy the Future Shoppe©? If Himbo used the company's technology to see what will happen to it in the years to come, he isn't saying.