‘How do you mean -taking books to school? Did ye actually have real books made of paper in the house and went to a real school building-like we saw in the online museum?’

It’s the month of August in the year 2086. The summer is nearly over, and the temperatures are dropping back to near normality – a cool 36C by night and around 42C in the afternoon. There is great excitement all over the country as the 1986 Census of Ireland returns have just been released. Scholars of the robotic nature and AI-generated university professors have been poring over the statistics and figures trying to get a clearer picture of how people lived long, long ago.

A child of ten is talking to his 125-year-old grandfather and asking him questions generated by the child’s implanted-at-birth mega alternative braiwen. As the middle-aged grandfather steps out of his rocket-propelled lawn mower (an antique! lawns were outlawed in 2047) he recalls his youth of twelve decades earlier. ‘Ah yes, every day we walked to the school -a building with different compartments (rooms) where teachers -ye call ‘em ‘educational relics’ today- came in each day and told us how to learn. You see, back then every child had a brain the size of a walnut (very small) and year after year we ‘learned’ new things and gradually got to know more as we grew up’. The puzzled-looking child doesn’t seem to understand. ‘But that sounds crazy and slow and ancient!’ The old man sighed and shook his shoulders and replied: ‘I know that with years of what they call genetic mechanisation and some sort of engineering that in this so-called ‘modern’ world every child before it’s born gets fitted with an updated, upgraded and alchemistised........

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