2030 – Sienna Tales – Saved by CASPR

Sienna tales give you futuristic insight on how things pan out for us in 2030. Can the TV filter out ads and personalize them for your context? Can the fridge tell you whether you have what you need to address a hangover? Read on to find out the answers…

episode 1  |  episode 2  |  episode 3  |  episode 4  |  episode 5

Sienna woke up this morning with a headache. The party last night was rocking but she had mixed champagne & whiskey and not eaten enough.

“Good morning Sienna. You were sleeping soundly and since you didn’t have anything planned for today, I didn’t wake you. I can sense you are in pain. I think it’s a hangover since you were pretty buzzed last night. Can I help you with that?” Her constant ubiquitous voice companion, Sheila, chimed up. She was using her soft matter of fact tone instead of her informal banter to minimize Sienna’s discomfort.

“My head is buzzing right now. Can you see if I have everything I need for the hangover smoothie?”

“You have fresh yoghurt in the yellow bowl, strawberries in a punnet, they look sweet. You will need orange juice. Should I order OJ, it should reach in the next 20 minutes? Or should I just order the smoothie from Flip? They have a similar combo and should deliver in the next 30 minutes.”

“No, just order the orange juice. I need more than a glass. By the way, that cutie we saw yesterday. Could you find his mobile number?”

“Order placed. Yes, but first should I call Surekha, the maid? She’ll come and prepare the smoothie and give you a massage?”

“Yup. Call surekha…” Sheila called surekha with a message to request her to come over. Surekha lived nearby and could walk across in 5 mins.

Sienna got up and took the coffee from the coffee maker. Sheila had switched it on when Sienna was about to wake up by sensing her pulse rate. A cup of brazilian coffee could make any day better than it was. And this one was getting better already.

Shiela calls Siddharth and his companion tells her that he’s still sleeping. Sienna freshens up and relaxes in the living room. She looks at the TV for a couple of moments and it blinks to life. She’s offered the choice of completing the movie she watched on her flight home over the weekend from mumbai or watching something new altogether. She asks for a new episode of Califirnication. The show comes on, but before that the TV shows her a message. “This show is 40 minutes long. Please eat something while the orange juice arrives else with pre-diabetes your sugar levels will fall.”

The next ad is for a brand of multi grain bread that she has in her fridge. The icon ‘Available in your kitchen’ is blinking while it tells her that it contains more than 6 nutrients that she needs and will help attain her daily quota of arginine that she requires to meet her vitamin needs.

Sienna trudges up to the kitchen and dunks some in her toaster as Sheila announces that Surekha is at the door. She says ‘ok’ and the door opens as she settles down to watch her series.

In a little while siddharth calls..

“Hey Sienna, last night was fun.. Want to check out F bar again tonight? They have a great band coming since is friday…”

“Let me find out..” Sienna asks Sheila…” how crowded will F bar be?”

Not very crowded.’ Sheila answers, ‘But you are very likely to run into the brat pack.’ with a little dramatic musical tone on the word ‘Brat pack’.

Siddharth laughs, ‘Who’s the Brat Pack?’

The brat pack was Sienna’s cousins. All boys, much younger, but much crazier than her. And very likely to tell grandad about her fraternizing with the ‘loose boys’ again.

Grandad, Abhijit Sirkar, was 93 years and still going strong. Being a forward thinker, he had jumped on the genetic medicine bandwagon long time ago, when he was 60 and CASPR, the genetic insurance company, came out. He had insured his healthy genes, and now the company had to fix everything that gave way. He was a prostate cancer survivor, thanks to CASPR. Abhijeet, approaching 100, ruled the Sirkar business and family with an iron fist. Although sienna was old enough to live on her her own, her granddad’s fist could reach anywhere thanks to the Brat Pack. They loved their dadu to no end and he lovingly mentored each of them on their way to adulthood. He did the same for Sienna, but didn’t quite agree with her choice of career as a painter. When she said she wanted to be one, it reminded him of his son, her father, who also wanted to be an artist and ended up going crazy just painting. He approached psychoses and would not sell or show his art to anyone. So her mom ran away and left Sienna to be brought up by her family. So the word ‘Science’ got a smile from him, and ‘Art’ got a pretty violent reaction. Science was the harbinger of the future, and art was, well, art. Not a future, but a hobby. Sienna, gently drew away from her grandfather, the one man that she completely idolized. But his views on everything from what she should do and who she should see and be seen with were too much for her to take. She moved into her own apartment at the other side of town and surrounded herself in her dad’s paintings. Now they were at war silently. Both extremely strong willed and very headstrong. He let her be but spied on her through the Brat Pack who partied in the same places mostly.

‘My band of brothers. We should keep away from them, because they will be transmitting in real time to my Dadu, and he will do a KGB enquiry on your profile. They’re very protective. Should we go to Attitude instead? The manager had a fight with my youngest brother Han, and they are not likely to go there. I know the band also, and we’ll get some backstage party time. What do you say?’

‘Oooh! After party!! Girl, you are connected AND beautiful. Lets go!’

‘Done Deal. See you later!’ Sienna smiled as he complimented her.

‘Oooh! Connected AND beautiful! Girl you’re on a roll!’ Sheila chirped up once Sienna disconnected. She laughed a tinkling, happy laugh. The day just got better.

Surekha walked in with the smoothie to calm her head and a plate of boiled eggs. She sighed as she came and stood behind her and started to gently oil her hair as she ate. Just then the phone rang and Shiela answered. ‘Sienna’s phone, who’s calling?’. It was Han, her youngest brother.

‘Dadu is ill, he’s just had a stroke and been taken to the hospital. Dad asked you to be at Manipal Hospital. Come soon.’

Sienna’s heart did a flip-flop. Dadu? Ill? What happened? His genes are perfectly healthy apparently. Dadu had received corrective genetic therapy for everything from tuberculosis which he had a case of to diabetes which he developed a precursor to and was treated for immediately. The same pre-diabetes as hers. She shuddered at the number of times dadu had tried to convince her to take corrective therapy.

She immediately drained the smoothie glass and rushed to leave for the hospital.

Sheila had identified her clothes for the day, a green tunic, as it was hot and muggy, and it was already brought to the front of her wardrobe on automatic rails controleed by Sheila. Sienna was glad that she had invested in this bit of home automation, else she’d have spent an hour looking for something to wear.

When Sienna sat in the car, Shiela had already sent the destination coordinates as Manipal hospital to it. It announced the destination and opened Sienna’s email for her to check out the 3 new emails that it had marked as important. The digital panel swivelled up but Sienna keyed into the analytics dashboard for Abhijit Sirkar’s health monitor first. She was glad to see that she was still registered as a ‘HIPAA Certified Guardian’ and still had access to his personal EHR and real time updates. She could see that he was stable but not conscious. It struck dread in her heart. She called up the CASPR helpline and was informed that his blood samples had already been taken for a recalibration.

In minutes she was at the hospital since the car had taken a back ‘hospital corridor’ which was meant for people to get to the hospital quickly. She jumped off at the hospital gate and was beeped since it read her digital signature and recognized her as one of the HIPAA guardians of Abhijit Sirkar, a patient. Her phone beeped with the right room number and the doctor on duty as well as the nurses’ face profile. She was able to get to Dadu’s room in 30 mins after getting Han’s call.

As she burst into the room, she stopped short of the bed. Her eyes widened at seeing Abhijit on the bed with his eyes closed. A silent tear trickled down her cheek and she wished as hard as she could, prayed with all her might.

‘Let him be OK please god, I need him to know that I’m right now selling my ‘Art’ for a scientific purpose. O please, let him be OK, and I will never party with ‘loose boys’ again.’ She sent up a silent prayer up to god and sat down next to her chachu. He held her hand and patted it slowly. They were waiting for the the corrective genetic sequencing sent from CASPR to be printed in the 3D printing lab upstairs. Thankfully they could reverse the effects of a stroke.

Meanwhile, the monitors started beeping, alerting the nurses that the patient was about to wake up. Sienna stood up and touched dadu’s arm, while Han and Sameer sat around this legs, pressing gently. Abhijit opened his eyes slowly and smiled.

‘So this is what takes for me to see your face Sienna? Why this emotional atyachar for dadu?’

Sienna sobbed. ‘Nothing Dadu, just needed to be alone for a while…’

‘To paint huh? I saw that you are now painting in 3 dimensional reality for autistic kids. And that your musical 3D renderings of colors through the magic glasses are helping them concentrate better . I’m proud of you beta. You are the harbinger of a better tomorrow. Sorry.”

This made Sienna beam with pride. Dadu knows, of course, just like he knows everything.

‘Good job ladki, now when will my medicine be done? I’m feeling faint’

Just then the nurse walked in with her tray of vials and asked everyone to leave the room. They all exited slowly, Sienna looking back guardedly at the nurse who was preparing the injection for Ahijit. The doctor entered and closed the room behind him.

It took 15 minutes. 15 heart stopping minutes for the doctor to open the door again.

Dadu was laughing and joking with the nurse.

‘We’ll give him a nutrient chelation drip today to clean his blood of toxin build up and keep him under observation for 24 hours. Then you can take him home tomorrow morning. You do know that CASPR gives the corrective therapy, but the hospital bill is chargeable?’ All of them nodded.

The boys cheered, high fived and gave everyone hugs. Chachu was all business again. He asked all of them to head home and start their days. Sienna was already free for the day and ready so she offered to stay and take care of him while everyone freshened up. Everyone said goodbye to Dadu and left.

Abhijit was checking out her ‘Magic Glasses’ as she spun around the room painting varied different soothing colors that made music. He beaming with pride. Abhijit wanted to know everything. The whys and hows and he was cheering like a child as he discovered more. Sienna’s band started vibrating and she got stopped to see what it was. It was a call from Sidharth. She walked out to take the call since she didn’t want Dadu to see his picture and especially not the smiley from Sheila that danced and winked on her wrist. She rolled up her eyes and headed for the door.

‘So, I’ll pick you up around 7? Send me your location…’

‘Sure Sid, let’s party tonight. I have many reasons….’

Sienna saw herself mirrored in the large picture windows in the hallway and winked to herself. What Dadu didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him!!

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Thank you Anindo Ghosh for your mentorship & editing. Anindo is an ace writer who’s working extensively in the Bollywood underground to mentor scriptwriters on writing for the web. He is also a futurist who believes in technology and the role it will play in socio-economic status and attitudes of the coming generations.

Story also published on

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2030-data-driven-life-episode-1-ekta-rohra-jafri/

https://www.facebook.com/notes/ekta-rohra-jafri/2030-a-data-driven-life-episode-1/10155947344285345/