Uncouth was how you were to describe his hair.
It had been a personal tangent that led to it being two days since his last visit to the barbers. Life in its current rendition was placid, there was no real burden for people and so the tasks of old which were monthly became daily. Daily tasks to keep people busy and content. A particularly performative and personally hated task was getting his hair cut. He mainly hated it as it was one of the few tasks that still required leaving his Compendium.
The ever shifting sands of style and taste only became quicker as the demand for people’s attention lessened. Rather than a buff to ones image, getting your hair cut became a unforgiving necessity to be accepted by your sedentary peers. A way that society unconsciously managed to differentiate your commitment to the zeitgeist was through ever increasing iteration. Trends came and passed within days now.
He removed several vials from a cache in the kitchenette. It was the morning so it was fitting that they were all labeled “breakfast”, although as to the taste he was lost to really understand what differentiated the various meals. One of the tinctures was a viscous brown that matched his hair colour. He wished he didn’t have to take this particular tonic, feeling envy towards men of the past who went bald and forsook the decision paralysis he knew lay ahead. But, if he was going to meet the calibre set by his peers, the tonic was the only way to give the barbers a medium in which to perform as his hair was currently a passé buzz cut. A fad from last week.
Once his stomach settled, he set course for the barbers. His only safe haven on earth began to shrink in the rear monitor display. The journey, like everything in the present, was a short affair. He barely had time to prepare himself when, slinking through the door like a cautious vampire, he was instantly dazzled by the options menu that floated in front of him. The screen outlined the latest trend in an infinite scrolling feed, accompanied by counters of likes and impressions. Today’s attention leaderboard was topped by an innovative take on a mohawk, inverted so that where the model’s parting would have been was instead a bare scalp imitating Moses’ parting of the red sea.
“That’ll do” he resigned, selecting the style at one of the booths lined up against the far wall. A cup vended moments after, containing thousands of miniature robots. Squirming around, their tiny mechanical legs scratched against each other. He was repulsed. Despite knowing they had undertook an anti-bacterial bath prior, he couldn’t shake an unease. His sapien brain had, for this scenario unhelpfully, evolved a repulsion to maggots which these things uncannily emulated.
He tipped the cup onto his scalp and at once felt the jolt of intentional movement from machines that had found sudden purpose to their existence. Each traversed like a spider monkey in a jungle of trees, swinging using their many legs through his hair. Once they had found their target, a quick fold manoeuvred the hair through their central hole and they descended to the height designated in the style schema.
In unison, they all activated the cigar cutter like blades wrapped around the interior of their doughnut bodies. His hair now liberated, remained in-situ thanks to a free arm on each robot. “A job well done” must have been the line of code that wizzed through their circuits, but time didn’t stand still. Now being the proud owner of a single hair each, they dropped to the floor and started scurrying away, dragging behind them their cutting like the trunk of a felled tree, leaving behind a forrest which was now that bit lighter and uninhabited by the swarm of marauding thieves.
The protocol now in place at barbers had its benefits. Dispensed were the pre-wash to degrease and the stray clippings post-wash had been made redundant as well. He didn’t have to spend time making awkward small talk with strangers, nor find somewhere to inoffensively direct his gaze. If it wasn’t for his lack of appreciation for this week’s taste, he would have taken pleasure from the whole experience.