Rocket Powered.

They waited in line for the first flying cars. The waiting list had been full for months, but still they came, queuing around the block since 3am for the chance to be one of the special ones, the anointed, the chosen few, to get their faces on TV, for this was An Event. Interviewed by the techno-optimist reporters who spoke with breathless excitement, relaying the hype for their oligarch-owned TV stations: never mind that you don’t have health insurance; you too could one day own a flying car.

It was their boyhood fantasy, after all, a birthright. Rocket-powered thrusters thrusting, masculine energy splitting, tearing a wound in the ground below as they lifted off, escaping the shackles of earthbound laws. One in the eye for gravity. Take that, Newton. Harder, faster, into orbit, untouchable, invincible. And beyond, to the moon, to Mars, that cold, dead rock where the mirage of a promised utopia hovers enticingly for those who believe, who do not question the wisdom of so much power in the hands of so few.

The event, when it came, was just a taste of what was to come, they were promised, they knew, and the investor dollars obediently went “clink, clink, clink” into the bank accounts of the richest men on Earth while the unrelenting sun scorched the fields, crops failed, rivers ran dry and people starved, out of sight.

And we watched in awe and longing around the world and said “Isn’t it a wonder what technology can do?”, and comforted ourselves with the thought that we would be saved, that the clever people were in charge, that we didn’t have to work to question, to change, to build anything together with our neighbours. We opened our screens and devices and let them pipe dopamine directly into our brains. The future awaits.