Richard Jones

Cleaning his great grandfathers pistol, Richard enjoyed thinking about the past. He still wasn’t comfortable with any technology and had spent extra to have his home fitted with what he considered a “normal” door, as well as removing all of the OLED displays from his apartment. It was a long and difficult series of modifications, but it made him feel more like he was living in the cottage that he had to sell a few years ago, rather than always having something buzzing, beeping or blinking at him.

The owner of the building wasn’t too impressed with the changes, but Richard made a deal to trade his repair skills for a blind eye. Richard was a skilled technician and was well known as one of the few people in charge of maintaining the parliament museum, a set of buildings in the old downtown core that used to be used for various government functions. Today, the buildings were not only a reminder of days gone by, but a well trafficked museum that focused on the creation of Canada, its government, and the various people, both political and not that made the country what it is today.

Grabbing a pad of paper, Richard looked at his task list for the day. It included going downtown and fixing some pipes in an office tower. The tower required his services because Richard was one of the few people trained in classic plumbing, with very few buildings having water distribution systems, and even fewer still using copper pipes as his task today would include. The building had been renovated, but the old pipes were kept and changed over to the BTW fluid product that was piped into nearly every home, for a nominal fee each month.

Grabbing his glasses, and overcoat, Richard cracked his fingers and opened his door. Turning around to lock it with a small metal key, Richard smiled. He knew his grandfather, a man who had raised him after his own fathers death when he was only four years old, would be proud of his anti-technology stance.

In the ever accelerating world of technology, Richard was seen as a dinosaur and a technophobe, but the forty year old man liked to think of himself as a bit of an eccentric, and that technology hadn’t brought very much good to the average persons’ daily life.

Moving towards the elevator, Richard saw a few other people that lived on the same floor as him. He nodded, or waved, to be polite, but all of them were far too consumed with communicating online, as well as dealing with various technology either embedded in their clothing, skin or otherwise. Ronald sometimes wondered if the obsession with technology would be the downfall of culture.

Arriving at the tower, he immediately went to work. He had to take the stairs down because the elevator systems didn’t go to the basement, and the service elevator had long since been taken out to provide extra storage space for each floor. The sub dermal implant he had received as a child took note of his short burst of exercise, as he dropped three stories below ground. Richard tried to make a conscious effort not to think about the implant, but a recent visit to his doctor reminded him that he was in the bottom twenty percent for overall health and that if he didn’t work harder on exercise, eating right and drinking more of the so-called “Better Than Water”, he’d only live ten years past one hundred. With a few beads of sweat dripping from his brow, his health was at the forefront of his mind.