Curses and crude jokes filled the polluted air of NYC.  Stanley brushed past the tall men in trench coats, his own too long and collecting specks of mud as he ran.  A police ship flew overhead, scanning the scene below.  The dirty fumes that blasted from it to keep it in the air filled Stanley’s lungs, causing him to bend over and cough.  It was 2093, a time when many of the Earth’s once plentiful resources were gone.  Many had expected this period to be the one when science fiction items become reality.  They would be disappointed.
   Another police ship flew above the crowd.  These ships were one of the few technological improvements this generation had made.  “HEY! Watch it, kid!”  A fat businessman shoved Stanley and other pedestrians away with his bulging stomach.  The giant air conditioners hastily shoved to the sides of streets kept everyone cool from the blazing sun.  Stanley remembered things his great-grandmother, before she was sent away by the government, had told him.  She had told him of how it was like when she was his age, when people had things like fried chicken, personal computers, and paper made from wood.  Nowadays wood was so scarce that if a tree was found, the president would send a squadron of American troops to guard it.  They had made a new type of gas.  It was supposed to be similar to oxygen.  The scientists who spent all their time in labs and never once stepped out their doors to see sunlight, these were the same people who suggested sending people to outer space in search of an inhabitable planet.  Stanley’s mind flashed, and he saw the day his cousin had been chosen to go on the mission.  He remembered when his family was devastated when they found out that Mark had blown up with the others when the spacecraft’s controls malfunctioned.
   Entering the library, he was temporarily blinded by the number of screens in there.  He closed the door behind him and removed his Glucan helmet, which released the replicated oxygen that helped him breathe.  Stanley remembered his grandmother’s stories of old libraries with paper books, not the tablets that the new libraries had installed so the librarians wouldn’t have to help people.
Settling down in a corner, Stanley searched the early 2000s and was fascinated by the images that appeared on the screen.  A selection of images popped up, of Apple phones, the kind that you could fit in your pocket, not the tablet-sized ones Apple so desperately tried to sell these days.  There were also pictures of people with different hair and skin colors, all smiling and laughing, as if the summer sun that beat down on their backs shone joy into their souls.  Scrolling through photos of people with black, brown and blonde hair.  Stanley ran his hand through his own hair, which was a sort of gold in color.  The corrupt government had genetically changed everyone’s hair color to this, and their skin color to a very light brown.  This was meant to take away racial issues, but instead led to American citizens lacking unique traits.  More memories flew through Stanley’s head.  He remembered the Dinfengs, a family that had lived in his old neighborhood, had a baby who grew up with a DNA defect.  She was born with brown hair and pale skin.  A few weeks later the family was taking a walk when a mob rushed and tore the brown hair from the baby’s scalp and ran off with it, to sell on the black market or to marvel by themselves, Stanley didn’t care.  He had vomited when he heard.  He had attended the baby’s funeral the week after.  He had passed the Dinfengs a few weeks ago, but ignored them.  There was no way he would look them in the eye ever again.
   Stanley leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.  He dreamed of times with forests, and books, times of uniqueness, times when you didn’t have to sleep in a bedroom with twenty other people.  Stanley sighed and kept imagining, trying to escape the cruel reality of his world.