The business consultancy firm commissioned the creatives at the advertising agency World Wide Wholesale (WWW) to come up with a new name for the country, as well as a new image, new icons, and a new culture. In short: a new country identity. After a considerable amount of time and even more money, after suggestions and countersuggestions, everyone involved finally agreed upon the now world-famous name: QualityLand. Can you imagine any name more perfectly suited for appearing after “made in” on products? The parliament voted in favor by a large majority. Or rather, by the “largest” majority, because the new country identity strictly forbids the use of the positive or comparative in connection with QualityLand. Only the superlative is allowed. So be careful. If someone asks you what you think of QualityLand, don’t just say that QualityLand is a wonderful country. It’s not a wonderful country. It’s the wonderfullest country there is!
Even the towns you are likely to visit on your travels used to have other, insignificant-sounding names. Now they have newer, better names, or as one would say in QualityLand, the newest and best names. Growth, the industrial center, expands and prospers in the south, while the university city of Progress pulsates in the north and the old trade capital Profit thrives in the country’s heartland. And then, of course, at the forefront of them all, there’s the undisputed capital of the free world: QualityCity!
Even QualityLand’s inhabitants were renamed. They couldn’t just be ordinary people, after all; they had to be QualityPeople. Their surnames in particular sounded very medieval and didn’t fit with the new progress-oriented country identity. A land of Millers, Smiths, and Taylors isn’t exactly a high-tech investor’s wet dream. And so the advertising agency decided that, from that moment on, every boy would be given his father’s occupation as a surname and every girl the occupation of her mother. The deciding factor would be the job held at the time of conception.
We wish you an unforgettable stay in the land of Sabrina Mechatronics-Engineer and Jason Cleaner, the most popular middle-class rap duo of the decade. The land of Scarlett Prisoner and her twin brother Robert Warden, the undefeated BattleBot jockeys of the century. The land of Claudia Superstar, the Sexiest Woman of All Time. The land of Henryk Engineer, the richest person in the world.
Welcome to the land of the superlative. Welcome to QualityLand.
A KISS
Peter Jobless has had enough.
“Nobody,” he says.
“Yes, Peter?” asks Nobody.
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Okay,” says Nobody.
Nobody is Peter’s personal digital assistant. Peter picked out the name himself, because he often feels as though Nobody is there for him. Nobody helps him. Nobody listens to him. Nobody speaks to him. Nobody pays attention to him. Nobody makes decisions for him. Peter has even convinced himself that Nobody likes him. Peter is a WINNER, because Nobody is his WIN assistant. WIN, an abbreviation for “What I Need,” was once a search engine, into which you had to enter questions—very laboriously—by speech command, and before that by typing by hand! In essence, WIN is still a search engine, but you no longer need to ask it questions. WIN knows what you want to know. Peter no longer has to go to the effort of finding the relevant information, because the relevant information goes to the effort of finding Peter.
Nobody has selected the restaurant Peter and his friends are sitting in according to their calculated preferences. He has also ordered the appropriate burger for Peter. The “best recycled meat burger in QualityCity” reads the paper napkin in front of him. Nevertheless, Peter doesn’t like it, perhaps because the restaurant selection had to correspond not just to his tastes, but also to his bank balance.
“It’s getting late, guys,” says Peter to his friends. “I’m going to head off.”
A few indeterminate grunts come by way of response.
Peter likes his friends. Nobody found them for him. But sometimes, and he’s not sure why, his mood turns sour when he hangs out with them. Peter pushes aside his plate, which still contains more than half of the recycled burger, and pulls on his jacket. Nobody asks for the bill. It comes immediately. The waiter, as in most restaurants, is a human being, not an android. Machines can do so many things nowadays, but they still can’t quite manage to carry a full cup from A to B without spilling it. Besides, humans are cheaper; they don’t have any acquisition or maintenance costs. And there aren’t any wages in the gastronomy industry either; you work for tips. Androids don’t work for tips.
“How would you like to pay?” asks the waiter.
“TouchKiss,” says Peter.
“Certainly,” says the waiter. He swipes around on his QualityPad, then Peter’s tablet vibrates.
Since its launch, TouchKiss has rapidly established itself as a leading payment method. Researchers from QualityCorp—“The company that makes your life better”—have discovered that lips are far more forge-proof than fingerprints. Critics claim, however, that it has nothing to do with that, but instead with the fact that QualityCorp wants to achieve an even higher emotional connection between its customers and products. But if that really was the goal, it certainly hasn’t worked with Peter. He gives his QualityPad a dispassionate kiss. With a second kiss, he adds the standard 32 percent tip. After eight seconds of inactivity, the display goes black, and his dark mirror image stares back at him blearily. An unremarkable, pale face. Not ugly, but unremarkable. So unremarkable that Peter sometimes thinks he might have confused himself with someone else. On those occasions, such as now, he feels like a stranger is staring back at him out of the display.
Outside of the restaurant, a self-driven car is already waiting for him. Nobody called it.
“Hello, Peter,” says the car. “Do you want to go home?”
“Yes,” says Peter, getting in.
Without any further questions about the route or address, the car sets off. They know each other. Or the car knows Peter, at least. The car’s name is shown on a display: Carl.
“Lovely weather, don’t you think?” says Carl.
“Small talk off,” says Peter.
“Then let me play you, in accordance with your tastes, the greatest soft rock hits of all time,” says the car, turning on the music.
Peter has listened to soft rock for twenty-three years: his entire life.
“Turn it off, please,” he says.
“With pleasure,” says the car. “It’s not to my taste anyway.”
“Oh no?” asks Peter. “So what do you like?”
“Well, when I’m driving around by myself, I usually listen to industrial,” says the car.
“Put some on.”
The “song” which immediately drones out from the speakers suits Peter’s bad mood perfectly.
“The music’s okay,” he says to Carl after a while. “But could you please stop singing along?”
“Oh yes, of course,” said the car. “My apologies. The rhythm got to me.”
Peter stretches out. The car is spacious and comfortable. That’s because Peter treats himself to a flat rate mobility plan in a vehicle category which he can’t actually afford to be treating himself to. One of his friends even mockingly commented today that Peter must be experiencing a quarter-life crisis. From the way he was going on, anyone would think Peter had bought himself a car. And yet only the super-rich, plebs, and pimps have their own wheels. Everyone else relies upon the mobility service providers’ huge, self-driven fleets. “The best thing about self-driven cars,” Peter’s father always used to say, “is that you don’t have to look for a parking space anymore.” As soon as you reach your destination, you just get out. The car drives on and does whatever it is that cars do when they feel like no one’s watching. In all likelihood it goes off and gets tanked up somewhere.