Moderno : The Ever Changing City

They left Moderno for a couple of months. When they returned fashions had changed. More women were wearing trousers, but hair was getting longer, and they were leaving their arms bare, at least in the summer. Men were actually wearing the same fashions they had been following for a few seasons, basic and conservative, but hair was being dyed more and hair length allowed for small straggly unruly bits of hair. It was noticeable that after a few years of mobile phones getting smaller and smaller, while they did more and more, now there was a sudden resurgence of larger phones so that they could be noticed more. The recognised in crowds of all the major cultural choices all seemed to be together on this one. Whether you were a trance dance techno cool or a laid back r-n-b vocal warble appreciator, a punch guitar killer or an independ art weirdo they all seemed to like the big phone look. Resurgent rockers wore them on their belts, trance dancers wore them on their chests, the laid backs wore them in zip pockets down their pants, and indarts insisted on putting them in the bags they carried about with them all the time so they weren’t visible.

A new generation of office software, no better than the previous one, was now the in purchase. Many people had made the change to the new software, replacing the old software, and if it was incompatible with their ‘old’ computers of a couple of years before they would update to new computers.

Moderno was a beautiful place, but it was never the same again once you left it. Each time they left they would return to see the city somewhat changed. Sometimes it was easy to see what the change was – a new taller skyscraper or a new type of tram or high speed train, or perhaps a new evolution of road systems; a ring road requiring the demolition of certain longstanding or short standing structures, or a new decree by the city’s representative bodies banning or unbanning the use of motor vehicles within a certain radius. Ted begun to wonder whether it was the same city they returned to each time or whether it was merely yet another version of that city, like saved computer files, which have been upgraded in different ways to make a myriad of different versions of the same. Perhaps the phenomenon was an effect of time travel or stepping into a variety of different alternative realities.