2084

What year is it? His mind shunted onto the default question. What year is it? He shook his head – or least fired the nerve impulses which would have, under normal circumstances, resulted in him shaking his head. I don’t know. I don’t know what year it is. That’s a bad sign.

He tried opening his eyes, but only managed to let in a tiny slither of light.

How come I’m not trying to remember what my name is? That’s more important, isn’t it? Okay, what’s my name? Yet, it was as if his mind was negotiating a frictionless surface and he slid back to the first question again: what year is it? He had no choice but to give in to it and churn away at the question, trying to force the answer into his consciousness. If I can work out the year, the rest will follow.

​Suddenly something sparked in his brain and images and understanding flooded in. Ah, it worked. The nano-trojan he had implanted had been activated just as he’d planned, triggered by the impulse question about the year he’d also implanted.

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Praise for "2084"

“Dirk Strasser’s ‘2084’ … speaks of how our own developments might just end up being the death of us… The story is narrated almost completely through flashbacks and ends with a nice twist...  it has a truly relevant message.”
– Prachya Review: Literature and Art without Borders
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Publication History

“2084” was first published in the Greek magazine 9 –  a supplement to the daily newspaper Eleftherotypia with a readership of 200,000 – in 2010, and first published in English in the The World to Come (Spineless Wonders) in July 2014 and republished in May 2018 in Aurealis #110.