Hat Futures

I hit the vape. I’m in the reception of Dallas Venture Capital Inc., about to pitch a new product. An assistant waves at me to stop vaping before beckoning me through into a meeting room. Around a table sit twelve investors, some of the richest people in Texas. The CEO had hired Matthew McConaughey to play him, receiving decisions via ear piece but then acting as a flamboyant alpha male business mogul otherwise. For these appearances, Matt only charged seventy five bucks an hour, as well as unlimited usage of every golf course in Texas, and the corporation got there moneys worth. As I quietly set up my apparatus, he sat with angled legs at the head of the table, his middle and index finger on his lips as he looked out of the window. I clap for attention.

I had stayed up the night before constructing the device. Every time the program crashed, I did a line of coke, managing to extinguish all bugs in the software in just a few hours. The fitting of cables, the soldering, I did everything by the hotel window, watching the sun rise in Dallas. 

"This is one hell of a city." I say to myself, leaning the chair back on two legs and lighting a cigarette. It was ready.

Five hours later it now rested on the board room table. It was basically an aluminium box stood on four half-ping-pong balls I had secured from a vending machine.

I was wearing a disguise. The cop that wore a mask of my face had struck again just the day before, this time caught on multiple security cameras, plastered over news networks in 4K. To avoid any confusion, I bleached my hair white and had used some temporary piercings in my cheeks to change the shape of my face slightly. On my neck an insect had bit me and had swollen to the size of a grape. I also wore a fake moustache made from actual human hair, it kept tickling my top lip when I spoke. 

“Gentlemen. I don’t wanna waste any time pullin’ on your dicks. I invented the greatest thing the world has ever seen.” I say, pressing a button. The side of the aluminium box opened up, revealing a cowboy hat. All the investors leaned forward.

“I don’t give a shit about the climate crisis, okay. What I do give a shit about is getting sunburnt. And I think we can all agree, its been pretty hot in Texas the last few summers.”

“Let me see that.” Says McConaughey. I take the hat from the box and throw it to him, frisbee style. He catches it.

“Welcome to the future of hats. Particularly the cowboy hat. I’ve modified the rim with AI. It tracks the movement of the sun and makes sure your head is protected.” I say, demonstrating by shining a daylight bulb towards the hat. As if by magic (but entirely by technology), the rim of the hat begins to shift around. McConaughey laughs, putting it on. I give further demonstrations of how the hat adapts to the light around it.

“Alright, I kinda like it.” Says McConaughey.

“Its not just limited to cowboy hats either. We can do baseball, we can do bucket, whatever you want. We’re talking about the future of hats, gentlemen. You remember pictures from the good ol’ days? Everyone wore a hat. If you have a head, you need a hat.”

“If you have a head, you need a hat…” says McConaughey, trying it on. I give a long technical description how it works as McConaughey approaches the door to the meeting room balcony.

“I look good in it, right?” he says to the investors. They all nod in unison. McConaughey looks at his reflection in the glass of the door before stepping outside.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet tested the hat in the daylight, having built it the night before and only using artificial UVs from lamps. As soon as McConaughey stepped outside, the hat malfunctions and brings the brim down around his face. It had clamped down hard, making him stumble backwards into the boardroom. The investors all ran to him, trying to yank the hat off his head.

“It’s just a prototype. It’s just an idea. A proof of concept.” I say.

“Will you get this goddamn contraption off our boss?” says one of the investors. I go over and start pulling at the hat along with the other millionaires. After much heaving, sweating and some temper tantrums, we finally get the hat off the head of McConaughey. Somehow, it has turned his head into a perfect cylinder. It has stretched his head out like a 3D model from the 90s. He staggers around the room, trying to speak. I hit the vape and my fake moustache peels off my face in one go, landing glue-side down on the carpet.

I apologise for the fiasco, as well as my Interstellar review, and bid the board goodbye. It wasn’t everyday that I made a mistake, but when I did, turns out it was kind of a big deal. I supposed that this in itself was actually a good thing. What I did mattered. The higher you might try to attain success, the more opportunity there was for you to fail. The worst repercussions hinted at the potential for the best successes. Though it didn’t turn out in my favour this time around, I knew that if I just kept trying, the world would be a better place.

E-cig review

Like many other smokers I can't help but begin to feel the adverse effects smoking has had to my health. I struggle to run up the stairs, I cough in the morning, I sometimes don't like it and generally wonder what I'm trying to achieve in life. After trying to quit a handful of times with various methods in the style of Wile E. Coyote, I have decided that smoking is going to be a lifelong habit for me. But what if I could smoke a robot? Or maybe look like I was from the future? All of this could be achieved through smoking. But not in the sense of burning plants, but electricity and liquid. Smoking for the new millennium has arrived with the advent of electronic cigarette machines, or e-cigs for short.

The process of smoke delivery is quite simple. A lithium ion battery cylinder is attached to a short cartomiser in which a mixture of Propylene Glycol and flavouring is ignited through a heated lattice, vaporising the e-liquid and delivering a lungful of cloud gently into the body. This vapour is itself made up of hydrogen, oxygen and nicotine, a much more benign substance than the old fashioned cigarette or cigar. It dissipates quickly in the air and remains odourless, allowing e-smokers to puff away happily anywhere in the world. Now that sciencey bit is out of the way I'll get on with the reviews! I have chosen a collection of starter kits from a variety of suppliers and spent the afternoon trying them out.

JACVAPOUR V1P PCC STARTER KIT

This e-cig is a handy little device. It's just a little bigger than your average cigarette and when you puff away it feels like a genuine smoke! The end of mine has a blue LED in it, which is cool. Makes me feel like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. I often smoke my V1P quite happily at work, at home or relaxing by the sea. The 'juice' or PPG liquid is quite tasty. I got watermelon, bubblegum and mocha flavour. I can mix and match the various liquid in the style of a kind of alchemist. This is more steam-punk than cyber-punk! I have tested this kit to great extent and highly recommend it to the casual e-smoker.

E-LITES E-PRO 4 E-CIGARETTE KIT

What more can I say, this is a fantastic starter kit. It comes with a USB charger, not one but two battery packs, 32MB of disk space and a special black cloth to clean your e-cig. Sadly the flavours I received turned out blank, so taking a hit was like washing my mouth with diluted milk. Still, this e-cig really packs a punch! It can deliver over 23mg of smoke in each puff, making this little thing into seeming like something better than it first appeared! I rate this kit 3/5.

APOLLO SMART LITES 4400 ELECTRO-CIG KIT

The 4400 is the ultimate in vapour tech, infusing each bauble of liquid with a tiny hint of flavour amongst the great lungfuls of black vapour. I tried making a cocaine tincture by dissolving 2g of the white stuff in a VG based liquid over a two day period. This thing was like smoking crack, and quickly ruined the small bauble that came with the kit. Still, I highly rate this experience.

NU-SMOKE 60/40: THE REVENGE STARTER KIT

Nu-smoke 60/40: The Revenge starter kit is a surprisingly unsatisfying piece of mechanical engineering. American boffins have been tinkering away at this new type of e-cig for the last few years, creating an energy efficient vape that delivers both satisfying hits and versatility. Customisation is key in the 60/40, with different cases coming with the kit as if they were important. It comes with several different mouth pieces, batteries and half a metre of ethernet cable, although I'm unsure why. I smoked this e-cig underwater whilst searching for scrap metal and found it held up, though didn't work after a major car accident. A poor show by the Nu-smoke team, though shows great promise. Might be worth purchasing this one for the ipadness of early adoption.

LIBERTY FLIGHT LITE XP PRO KIT

What more can I say, this is a fantastic starter kit. I took a toke of this sweet smoke and thought I had reached Nirvana. I imagined the great Ganesh covered from head to toe in the finest golden finery, his red skin seeming to glow from within like the underside of a finger covering the sun. With one tusk broken and the other proud, he speaks to me in Hindi.
"I don't understand." I say. The vision dissipates. I am alone.
I give this starter kit 5/5.