Pawn Shop Dystopia

Disgruntled with his government-provided equipment, the Ready Player Pawn Shop owner glares at a piece of seemingly silver jewellery lying upon the surface of faulty technology. An oil painting hung up behind the counter, a hologram label before it reading that it was originally created in 2013 by an unidentified author (crippling its value), pictures a gorgeous woman who is seemingly middle-aged, though she looks no older than her twenties. Her cat-like eyes gaze upon the strangely shaped object as freakish lime lights dance across its beaten surface. Out of nowhere, a booming sneeze erupts from the store owner, leaving no time to bring his arm to catch it. To the painted woman’s dismay, snot dangles from her styled, auburn hair. His eyes don’t change from their resting position of constant ferocity but the gentle exhalation from his nose explain his current thoughts plentiful. He sighs. First, he checks the left pocket of the vintage cotton jacket, where the label annoyingly poking out from the collar reads ‘MADE IN CHINA - 2032’, before jerking his hand back to the polluted air with no form of tissue in his possession. Some brief contemplation takes place before he takes the cheaply framed portrait from the wall and slots it beneath the counter crafted out of LED screens. A few minutes pass before he moves again to scratch his bristled jaw before being brought back to life by a melodious pinging from the machine beside him.

Information flies into the air in the form of high quality hologram lettering. The pale green hue makes the emerald tint surrounding his lifeless pupils pop as his eyes follow the words along at a slow pace. He reads:

JEWELLERY PIECE - COIN SILVER ‘LOCKET’

SHAPE - HEART SHAPED - LAST USED 2040 BEFORE MORE ACCURATE HEART SHAPE CAME INTO USE

TIME OF ORIGIN - UNKNOWN

QUALITY - POOR

IMAGE [INSIDE] - YOUNG MALE

IMAGE TIME ORIGIN - 2010 - 2014

IMAGE QUALITY - MINT

More emotions that come over the pawn store owner in a week overcome him whilst reading the projected text. Curiosity begins at the mention of a ‘locket’, a jewellery item that has never crossed paths with him before. This moves into disgust as he looks at the strange, angular shape of a ‘heart’ that existed in the past since he grew up with the newer, accurate illustration of the heart that is within commercial use for virtual greeting cards, printed on shirts and mascots Valentine’s Day where it still exists within the world. However, the curiosity that shortly slipped before comes back, and only stronger. Somewhere, inside the tiny, inaccurately shaped ‘locket’ is an image of a young man from almost a century ago. In a sudden urge to investigate, the nosey store owner slides his index and middle fingers across each side of his head, tracing his upper ears. As his fingers come in front of him, his eyesight is magnified, bringing the locket piece of the necklace fully into vision. With this help, a thin hinge is clear to see on the left side of the so-called heart, with an even smaller handle on the right side. Using the same motion, now in reverse, his vision is unmagnified, but his curiosity has peaked.

Moving from the government-issued identification machine to the aluminium door on the far side of the room, the owner passes antique and ageing items being held in the air by hologram technology that seemed more advanced than possible when introduced to the public in 2028. Engrossed in their green hue are vacuum cleaners ranging from wired to cordless and even handheld, the wispy dust and floor item remnants inside them valuing more than the vacuums themselves. Coin collections are kept spread around the store as materials and age separate their worth drastically, with a named rabbit on some hexagon coins paying the pawn shop’s rent for a month. Reaching the aluminium door, the owner puts his emerald eyes up to the scanner beside it, preparing himself for the rays to cripple his vision as they identify his access to what lies on the other side. Swiftly, the door glides from the floor to the ceiling, and the owner walks in.

On the other side of the carbon-plated walls sit a narrow office made up of a LED screen desk, a sloppily set up virtual reality headset and bodysuit, all connected to the hulking PC attached to the wall and the 40 inch monitor then plugged into that. Unlike most offices, all the wires are concealed for this setup, leaving the environment clean. From the wall-mounted monitor a compartment is released, revealing a group of ports, drives and crimson lights, blinking periodically. For some reason, the store owner takes care when laying the locket in front of him as it is caught in a lime hologram, taking shape around it protruding from the desk. With just his pinky finger, the store owner pivots the necklace to have the ill-looking heart face him. Looking at it, his lips curling at a new opportunity, he takes his skinny hands to the clasp and opens it. The strangely shaped door flies open. The aforementioned young man looks back at the pawn store owner. A large, pearly smile covers a majority of the young man’s face as kind eyes stare out from the grubby, silver frame. Perhaps the most defining feature at a first glance is the brunette hair which impressively travels downwards and outwards at the same time. There is nothing else inside the locket besides the image of the unidentified man, and so his curiosity fails to be squandered. Reaching beside the PC, the store owner grabs a button attached to a handheld device. Positioning his eyes directly in front of the entrapped image, he presses the button down with his thumb and, almost instantaneously, a microSD is deployed from the previously retracted tray. In a quick motion, the store owner snaps the card from the device and places it onto the surface of the desk. Illumination expands from the microSD and a full profile appears having tracked the face within the photograph taken from his eyes and found the identity: Harry Styles.

Having cured his curiosity, the store owner returns to Ready Player Pawn Shop from his office. The short amount of emotional attachment to his work has depleted and he is reminded of the reality he lives in. Just one glance out of the bulletproof window shows the towering concrete walls that surround the town, with harsh deserts on the other side filled with raging sandstorms, not a single drop of water and violent people. Inside the walls are bleak lives controlled entirely by the government, all questioning if they are truly living beings. As well as old-fashioned, heart-shaped lockets with Harry Styles inside.