Pancakes

Saturday Morning.

You wake up. You're not sleepy. For some reason, you feel rested enough.

Ah! It must be the new circadian plugin in your brain implants. Developed by BryCorp(tm), your new brain implants help you regulated your circadian rhythm so that you won't get tired and are productive enough for your exhausting job at Prometheus Enterprises (tm). "Bringing the future... today!"

It's kind of a blessing that you can barely remember what you did at Prometheus this month. The terms of employment mandated that your hippocampus be subject to a memory encryption proxy that prevented you from accessing the memories of whatever you did at Prometheus without a key. All you can remember is complex fractal-like patterns in your mind that somehow must mean... something.

(The bad news is that the amygdala does NOT go through the same process, so you DO remember having been reprimanded for your low performance.)

But you decide not to worry about that. Yesterday was your pay day, and you earned it! After a month of working there, the doctors have finally finished adjusting your implants' neural router, which means you're 100% operational now.

Ready to work? Not today; it's Saturday.

Time to enjoy a good breakfast and you're already smelling the meals. Two fried eggs with bacon, pancakes, and orange juice. You start salivating.

"Breakfast's ready!" sings a female voice. Oh, yes.

Wait. You don't remember hiring a robo cook.

"What the..."

Is this some kind of prank?

You quickly get up and go to the kitchen. Indeed, there is no food in there. But the smell is more intense.

"Oh, you're awake!" A hologram of a beautiful cook wearing a branded apron smiles at you. "Would you like some pancakes? Pancake Castle(tm) has the best breakfast you can ever taste!"

"No..."

"Are you sure?" the hologram asks. "It's 15% discount for first time buyers!"

"What? NO! Get out!"

The holographic cook vanishes and the smells fade away.

"What the hell was that?"

Suddenly you remember that there was a contract with your new brain implants. You use your brain implants to open a holo window in front of you, open your mail and re-read the contract.

"[x] I accept a 50% discount on my implants if I agree to receive periodic advertisements from our commercial partners, starting 28 days after the purchase."

In short: It's ad-supported and it can't be turned off.

"Shit."

This is a snapshot of a world where rampant capitalism and advertising supremacy are the bread and butter of people's daily life in a futuristic world.

If you'd like to read more, please support my work on "Pandora Downloaded", the first volume of the "Midoria Files" trilogy (coming soon).