Here's another prompt that's closely related to sci-fi. Like with the aliens prompt, the idea is to explore something about people, using some sort of technology as an excuse. It's not about predicting the future, but saying something about today by extrapolating one part of our present.

For example, George Orwell's 1984 has surveillance technology as a key part of his story, but he uses that as part of his warning about the dangers of totalitarian states, which was very relevant at the time given both the recent prominence of fascism and the nature of Stalin's Soviet Union. Or, Isaac Asimov's I, Robot thinks about how if robotics and AI technology advance far enough, humans may not be the best governors of humanity, which obviously says something about people and society without the dystopia of Orwell.

Obviously, the future will have a lot of technological differences, not just one, but in a short story, you generally want to limit yourself to 1-2 technologies tops, otherwise the entire "story" is just spent explaining your tech and how it works, or things get to confusing. Your story doesn't have to be sci-fi. It can be near or far future, though the latter is difficult to do well.

Your task is to
1) Choose a technology from the list (I can write a longer description of the technology if you explicitly ask for it, but honestly, just Google it). You can also propose your own technology. If it's good, you can get up to +150 BONUS WORDS. However, if your idea sucks (or is already on the list and you didn't bother to check) you can LOSE up to -200 WORDS!
2) Write a story that involves that technology
3) Say something about people or our present society

Tech List
Feel free to pick anything from this list. Multiple people can pick the same tech.

• Augmented Realty glasses - Think Google Glasses, where you have a screen projected onto your eye. An example might be those phone programs that take a picture of a sign in another langauge and translate the text for you, or overlays displaying information (like you might see in a video game but for real life)
  
• 3D Printing - Lots of varients of this, basically, uses some material to 'print' whatever you need
  
• Miniturzied Nuclear Reactors - Nuclear power is 1 million times more energy dense than chemical power. An abudnance of cheap, room-sized (or suit-case sized if you want to go crazy) reactors could lead to all sorts of things
  
• RFID Chip Implants - Implants that have a code or information (like those credit cards you just wave near a machine or the ones commonly found as quick pay systems for toll bridges) that can be read at a distance, except they're inside people.
  
• Wearable Holograms - Light projections that can change your clothes, face, hair, whatever.
  
• Neural-Interfaced Computers - Technology you can interact with directly using your brain. This could be a cap you put on, or something implanted.
  
• Room Temperature Superconductors - This is a potential breakthrough technology that could lead to a bunch of things, like dealing with energy problems, help create faster computers, allow for novel memory-storage devices, and enable ultra-sensitive sensors, and a bunch of other stuff you can look up if you want.
  
• Intelligence Drugs - A novel drug that can temporarily increase the intellegence of the user. Side effects probable.
  
• Realistic Virtual Reality - Virtual games or environments that are nearly indistinguishable from reality in feel, taste, sight, and possibly smell. Smell is actually the most difficult one to get right.
  
• Cryogenics - People can now be frozen and revived at will.
  
• Household Robots - Semi-intelligent robots that can take care of a varity of chores--and jobs.
  
• Force Fields - Usually depicted as an invisible, solid barrier that can be thrown around.
  
• Quantum Computers - Computers that use a superposition of states, rather than off or on. Hypothetical computers that could solve problems that otherwise would be unsolvable or impractical to solve.
  
• Genetic Algorithms - Not exactly fiction; basically, natural selection applied to machines and programs that could lead interesting places in the future
  
• Limited Emotion/Mind Reading - In the moment brain-scan technology that can show a person's true emotions, act as a reliable lie detector, or get some basic impression of what a person is thinking about
  
• Antigravity- Depending on the magnitude, this could lead from flying cars to cheap, efficient spacecraft zooming across the cosmos.

*****
ToxxTech
Want an added challenge? Choose a MYSTERY TECHNOLOGY by :toxx:ing and saying something in your post about how you want a MYSTERY TECHNOLOGY. Gain a bonus of +250 words, plus the opportunity to uncover more bonus words. Gambling and mysteries are exciting! Try not to use someone else's tech from here.

The usual rules of no erotica, fanfic, rants, etc. apply. No poetry either.