The Future Quickie

Once upon a time in the future, there was a guy who had a magic paperclip that could turn pictures of things into real versions of things. All he had to do was find a picture of, say, a delicious coffee cake in a magazine, touch it with the paperclip, and after a few seconds, a real live coffee cake would be sitting there.

Needless to say, this made the guy very happy.

In order to feed himself, all he had to do was buy a copy of a cookbook. Sometimes the food turned out to be fake, but that was alright too. It did kind of intrigue him how the paperclip knew that the picture was of fake wax food, but he did not think too hard about it. He sold the wax food to stupid people, and they put it in the backseat of their flying cars, where it melted all over their neutrino drives.

Because this is the future, mind you.

The guy had seven flying Ferraris because all he had to do was touch his magic paperclip to a picture of one in a brochure or magazine and after a couple of seconds, a full-sized flying Ferrari was parked in his driveway. The first time he tried this, he ruined a perfectly good bathroom and made a mental note to do it outside next time. Of course, this is no longer an issue, because he made himself a house with a much bigger bathroom out of a copy of Future Good Housekeeping.

He ended up making a couple of scale model cars too, because some brochure people were too cheap to photograph the real thing. He sold the models to stupid people, who left them in the backseats of their flying cars.

One day he decided to try making himself some company. A lot of people around at the time were clones, since it was the future, but he had never considered what would happen if he touched his magic paperclip to a picture of a person.

The guy set out to find a suitable picture. He had an extensive collection of cookbooks, and briefly considered turning a picture of a cook real. That way, he or she could make him all sorts of goodies. But of course it would be easier just to turn the goody pictures real.

He found a Victoria's Future Secret catalog, containing pictures of computer-generated women wearing ridiculous strappy underpinnings, but the thought of turning one of them real was a little creepy. After he invited her to the backseat of his flying car, then what? Besides, if she was a famous model, people would notice. It was hard enough to convince his friends that he was able to afford his lifestyle as it was. All that future lobster and futuresteak didn't come cheap, unless you had a magic paperclip.

And what would happen to the original people once the picture of them came to life? Did they disappear? Did they know they'd been copied? It was rumored that these new holographic gigapixel cameras actually did steal your soul. If that were true, then the copy he made with his magic paperclip would be more real than the real person.

Finally, he settled on an ancient copy of Entertainment Magazine (now called Future Entertainment Magazine) with a picture of Batman on the cover.

"Ah ha! Now we're talkin'!"

So that's how this guy ended up hanging out with Batman and flying around town in a chrome school bus and fighting crime.

In the future.