Dear Jane,

I just met a nice group of friends, accidentally actually. I was on the sky train to my mothers villa. When they hopped in the train, they just created small talk. Like... "What brand of robots that I liked best?” At first I thought nothing of it until they got off at the same plat as me. The girl with long blonde hair was doing most of the talking of the four. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her I was visiting my mother to set up the new machine she just bought.

The girls and I exchanged numbers, and as we were aparting one girl who was mostly quiet the whole time, asked me “Have you ever thought about what it might have been like having independence? Like being able to do things fully for yourself? No computers and robots doing literally everything for you and no one to tell you what was good and bad. Literally just being able to make choices for yourself. Before now, what it was like?"

The other girls remained silent as she spoke, but when she was done the girls resumed with their lives, as if nothing happened. I thought it was weird, but tried to brush it off. The rest of the day all I could think about was "before?" what was it really like not having a robot follow us around to make sure we did everything perfect in their eyes? Before us?