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“Costore called Aid-Mart, leaving me with Adam and Zoe

We check out the Frosty Foaurt shop, except that it sells sticks with foareen tea to bacon to cupcake Signs all over the place proclaim that it’s a fun, low-fat treat, but it looks like a weird, frothy mess to me

The woht-purple foam sticks, but there’s no one else inside Instead of a counter with a cash register and someone to take your order, there’s just a wall of screens with athe neith a headline about supply proble your pets The date and ti our suspicions We’re exactly thirty years in the future, even down to the day

For ait all in, absorbing that this is really happening I set my mother’s watch to match the current ti his head “And there’s a colony on Mars noesos,” Zoe says She taps the screen for a coffee-flavored stick, but it flashes an error ain with no success “A?”

“Maybe that one is broken,” Ada a few buttons, and the screen reads, “Thank you” Part of the wall opens up, and a light-brown foa it The wall closes back up again aat her lips “It’s good! But weird at the sa flavored bubbles”

Ada was “This place must be all automated”

“What about the food?” I ask “Soht?”

He finds a breakfast menu on the screen and orders some hash browns They pop out of the ithin seconds “Doesn’t look like it”

I grab one and take a bite Tastes normal “How did you pay for these?”

“I’m not really sure” Ada Just said ‘coe”

We leave Frosty Foaear This place does have people working here, each with one of those facial tattoos The salespeople stand around display cases while videos play on the walls behind the that looks like a clear Band-Aid to her teear!” a eoear in twinkling white lights “Can I help you?”

“Um, yeah” I stare past hi on the woman’s face morphs into one of those tattoos The screen reads Fully Custo shape and color Ahh, thatink all over their faces

Zoe is silent except for the scratch of her pencil against her sketchbook as she captures the store on paper Besideopen “We want to see one of those,” he says to the sales guy

“Certainly This is the newest estures to the table next to hih patches are displayed on little stands “We’ve iration with household objects from the previous version”

“Oh Great” I have no idea what he’s talking about He picks one up from the display and hands it to me The patch is flexible and curved to fit on the temple around the eye It’s completely clear and feels like slue all over my hands as a kid and would peel it off I pass the patch to Adam

“How do they work?” he asks while he examines it

“They’re simple Flexis haveyou to access the Internet using only lasses or heavy tablets to carry around And the flexis are so thin and light, you won’t even know you’re wearing one They reat fashion statement too” As he says this last line, the tattoo on his face—the flexi—changes colors from blue to purple “See?”