In April, I took a masterclass by Leone Ross (who is so wonderful. I highly recommend her class to other writers. I met such talented writers and felt like I was part of the most beautiful, supportive community). Please check out Leone's work. If you are interested in her masterclass as well, please reach out. Anyway, back to flash fiction. In the class, we had a week where we had to write flash fiction based on daily prompts. In one prompt, there was a photo of a lady with a big afro. Somehow, it led me to write this story here. It's a first draft (errors are mine alone).
THE TP
Anna Kiranja, social score 5.135, did not know what to do when the algorithm delivered the wrong toilet paper to her door. She panicked. Is this a test? What was she supposed to do with TP made for a 9? Anna paced in the bathroom. She decided to call Aisha, her big-afro off-logarithm friend.
'Use it girl! Shit is shit!' Aisha said carelessly, laughing at Anna's anxious call.
'Easy for you to say, you are an X.' An X was an unpredictable entity, a menace. Aisha became an X when she was 10 years old after choosing a staring cat video in her career assessment. Their ancestors had designed an indulgent digital pleasure, the perfect way to arouse and capture human interest. They called it a me-me. In history, cat memes had been designed to distract young people from the early third millennial generation. They had been dangerous then since they weren't optimized to bring out the best in humanity. Armed with artificial intelligence, videos of cats doing different vocations were used to predict children’s future careers. Anna was lucky to pick a cat with a stethoscope. Rightly, she became a nurse, which boosted her social point by exactly 0.635.
'I don't know what's wrong with the algorithm today.'
'The algorithm is fake!' Aisha complained. 'Why can't I be a poet, or a dancer?' It was no secret that Aisha hated the algorithm. She called it the tyrant, 'We are human babe, not robots.'
'But-'
'No buts. Use it!' She hung up.
Anna was a conformist. The only unconventional thing she did was befriending Aisha, which dropped her social score by exactly 0.5. She didn’t mind. Still, the thought of breaking TP rules made her stomach jump. But there was something about the TP that beckoned to her. She opened the shiny golden wrapper and was greeted by an ultra-soft white, 3-ply, and scented TP. Her usual TP was a dull tan, thin and coarse, she’d wet it to soften it. She felt wanton as she rubbed the soft material on her face, letting it caress her skin.
Okay, I’ll use it! She lowered her pants cautiously.
The loud shrill of her bell interrupted her. The delivery robot had come to collect the wrong TP pack.
'Sorry m'aam. It appears there was a glitch.'
Anna would never know what it would feel like to wipe her bum like a 9.
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