My dad’s so twentieth century. F’real, though, he tries to be cool, but everything he does makes him stick out like a total noob. “Jake,” he says, patting my shoulder in what he hopes is a fatherly way, “the world hasn’t changed. People have all the same hopes and fears they ever had, no matter what the calendar says.” This from the guy who still pines for his old computer keyboard. Mom threw that out years ago, back when pretty much all of Western civilization went forty-gig universal WiFi. Poor old Pops still hasn’t figured out how to talk to the web through his implants.

“Dad,” I remind him, “we don’t use calendars anymore. We have nanos for that. Join the planet you live on.” I think Dad might be the last surviving Alzheimer’s patient. He’s adorable, I swear, even when he slumps around the house bitching under his breath about living in the goddamn Matrix. The Matrix was an old two-D sim for kids. Like I said, he’s a fossil; but, you know, he’s my dad and, like, what can you do.