Unruly mokopuna tumble into the room, all multitasking giggles and secret silently exchanged RapidMojis flashing from ret-I-na to ret-I-na at refresh rates far in excess of my flimsy percept.
"Grandpa Ptoothfish, quick! Pass us the charging mat! Our phone's on ten percent!"
"Ten percent?!," I cry. "Ten percent!! Why, in my day ten percent was enough to take the bus into Coopersfield, watch TWO movies, and still have enough battery to split an ice cream cone with Rosie McGee on the way home!"
The mokopuna screech like modems of delight and ramble off jerkily, only ever half conscious of their actual surroundings, in search of other StimDults to torment for delicious random input. This game of prompt and story with Grandpa P grows shorter and sweeter every day as they grow into their new PreDult neurodermal stimplants: triggering my old man chatter gives them drastically diminishing dopamine returns.
It is certain that they don't know what a phone is, much less a battery or a charging mat. All of their derms, motor-sensory and network-informational, are stimmed continuously by the EverHum EMF transmitters that blanket the NeighbourHood in a soothing crackle.
As for me, in my advancing decrepitude, I am no longer sure that I ever really knew someone named Rosie McGee, or split an ice cream cone with them. (Or anyone. How would that have worked? Did we alternate licks? That doesn't sound right. Wait. How *did* we eat ice cream?) I try to make a Me-monic to look up "ice cream" later but my left visual field collapses in a jarring cascade of brightly coloured reminders that my mem augments are full and I need to delete some memories or buy an upgrade SOON.
I manage to wave away enough of these pop-ins to restore a less emesis-inducing awareness of the room around me. Now where was I? Lost between an ice cream cone and the Rosie McGee from the stories I terrorise the mokopuna with. Was she even real? God, I hope I didn't delete her to make room for that last Kanye album.