Letter from the past (not spam!)

Dear FutureMe, I wish the email-writing thing would also work the other way around so that you could tell me what to say when someone asks “Where do you picture yourself in ten years?“ in a job interview. But obviously this would tear up the fabric of time and space, the world would explode and the apocalyptic riders would come and bring death, famine, pestilence and war among us ... except for the fact that the latter already happened. As I am left without the means to destroy the universe as we know it, I will try to keep you entertained by telling you what I think will happen in ten years from 2003. [job interview version] In ten years from now I picture myself in a high management position abroad. After working for a couple of years, I completed my dissertation in less than a year, so that people had to call me doctor and to respect me even though I am young and a woman. I have a loving family with an overly bright kid which does calculus while watching Sesame Street and a husband that supports my career, i.e. cooks and does the laundry. By marrying I got rid of my unpronounceable family name which made introductions a terrible ordeal. Combined with the fact that I changed my first name so that my correspondence isn’t addressed to “Mr. X” all the time, I will have the positive side-effect that none of the people that I knew in the past can track me down and beg for money because they chose to be poor scientists or artists. [/job interview version] And now the “What I really think will happen” version: [real version] In ten years emails will be obsolete. Therefore you, FutureMe ,will never get this little letter. You however will not be bothered by never receiving this email because there will be a lot of robots which serve your every need and desire (... well, maybe not every desire...). Moreover, robots also do all the thinking for mankinf so that you can just hang out in your massage chair and do nothing more than to exist. Lucky bastard. [/real version] Yours faithfully, Annie