TV ANNOUNCER: Coming to you live from Globo-1 Broadcasting, this is “Antiques Roadshow.” Today, we travel to the northeastern region of Sector 7, where young citizens are gathered in the Javits Center to have their ancestors’ belongings appraised. Let’s listen in on one of those conversations:
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: So my great-great-grandmother was a writer in what used to be New York City, in the twenty-twenties.
HOST: Do you like her stuff?
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: It’s not really for me.
HOST: O.K. What have you brought in today?
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: Well, she left behind a truly shocking number of skin-care products, and I noticed some were still unopened, so I thought they might have some value.
HOST: Back in the twenty-twenties, in the country that was formerly known as the United States of America, skin care really had a hold on people. They genuinely believed that putting expensive creams on their faces would make them look young forever.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: So bizarre.
HOST: It was. And now, as you know, the State simply executes you once you reach a certain age.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: Right.
HOST: This is quite the collection. She must have spent a lot of money on these. Conservatively, at auction, I would say that it would go for between thirty thousand and forty thousand globocoins.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: Wow, that’s amazing. Now I can buy more freshwater tokens. Thank you. What about—
HOST: No. Not another Le Creuset Dutch oven. I’m sorry, they’re utterly worthless.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: But it’s never been used! I have the original purchase receipt.
HOST: Precisely. This receipt is dated to 2020, a year when Le Creuset Dutch ovens flooded the market. Every millennial thought they would be baking sourdough bread—a multiday process— in their studio apartments. It was American delusion on a massive scale.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: What should I do with it?
HOST: You can throw it on the Le Creuset discard pile, over there. We’re melting them down to make more helmets.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: O.K., I will.
HOST: I see you brought one last thing for me.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: I wasn’t sure what that was.
HOST: This was called an iPhone. Usually, the screens are cracked, but by the look of this one I’d guess it was your great-great-grandmother’s most prized possession. From around 2007 until The Great Mistake, in 2075, many people spent more than eight hours a day looking at these things.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: That must have been bad for them.
HOST: It certainly was! Though, if you can believe it, they still chose to do this, even though they were allowed to go outside back then. They were even allowed to touch grass.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: What’s grass?
HOST: It was vegetation that grew low to the ground, covering vast amounts of space. It looked pretty nice. But it all burned in the twenty-eighties.
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: I see.
HOST: Do you know the passcode?
MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER: Yeah, she wrote it down. Here.
HOST: 1-2-3-4? Astonishing. ♦
