Ficlets

The Hardware Age

Children in a class huddled together, murmuring and pointing at the item inside the glass vault. They were fascinated by the bizarre appearance of this object, and they had never seen something like it before.
“This, ladies and gentlemen,” the tour guide said, gesturing to the vitrine, “Is a primitive ISDN box, which actually helped primordial humans achieve slow, sixty-four kilobyte Internet.”

A chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ echoed around the spacious room, and cameras clicked in excitement, flashes making the gleaming walls sparkle even more.
“How did they ever survive with such a slow connection?” a little girl asked the tour guide, and the man chuckled.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures—without them, we would never have the connected status we have today,” the tour guide said, and mutters erupted again in the crowd.

Just as the tour guide turned to show something else, Jen awoke in her bedroom, sweating from the slightly scary nightmare, only to find it was two AM on an early Monday morning.

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