Curtains raise..

Year 2035.

Its a bright sunny day in Hyderabad, the largest technology hub of  the modern world as Gloria Benny, MAD-Hyd President, sets out on her routine visit to Forum for Street Children (FSC) near to the bullet train tracks in Musheerabad.  She gets into the back seat of her robot driven Ferrari and whispers “FSC”. The bot reponds with “Yes, Madam. Please fasten your seat belt. We’ll be there in 2 minutes.”

As the hydrogen powered air-car starts to gain speed, a buffallo crosses the runway and the robot responds with a skillful manoeuvre to avoid a crash. Elated about his achievement, the robot looks back and requests a “High Five” to which Gloria responds and then says “Ouch!! that hurt again”.

It is exactly 1 minute and 58 seconds after that incident when the air-car lands on the roof of the 10 storied FSC building. “Some things just don’t change” mutters Gloria as she sees tamarind dried in a dirty plastic sheet in one corner of the roof and a pile of construction materials for the proposed 11th floor at the other.

She gets into a glass elevator donated by “Fanindra Group” and whispers ‘G’. As she descends she finds MAD teachers in every floor and waves to the ones who notice her. Anusha in Floor 8 is sitting with a group of students in the virtual classroom. Floor 7 is the computer floor and is buzzing with activity. Floor 5 is the dance hall where Jr. Aditya is teaching the kids “Dance On” from Unit 5 Lesson 14b. He is seen referring to the syllabus in his pseudo-phone as he dances. Melvin is demonstrating push-ups with one hand as a warm up activity in Floor 3 and he waves with his other hand. The inside of Floor 1 and 2 cannot be viewed from within the elevator, but one is able to hear Venkatesh scream “L is for LION, not Lalit Modi !!”.

The elevator comes to a halt at the ground floor and opens. As she walks out, Gloria gets a reminder message from her robot in her pseudo-phone that reads “Rainbow School in 10 minutes”. The ground floor has a few Level 1 kids sitting idle and watching T10 cricket world cup on a palmtop TV.

“Heyy!!, Where’s your advanced english teacher?” she asks the kids.

One of them says “Krishna sir texted us to say his scooter tyre was punctured. What’s a scooter Golra madam?”.

Gloria is annoyed and opens MADapp in her pseudo by touching an image on the touchscreen. She whispers “Krishna, Credit, -2, Close”. MAD just had launched its intelligent substitute-finder helpline beta. Gloria decides to give it a try. She whispers “MAD Helpline” and the pseudo-phone dials the helpline.

The call is answered.

“Hello and welcome to the MAD helpline..”

“Please select one of the 3 choices anytime during this message…”

“If you are already mad, say 1 ..”

“If you want to be mad, say 2 ..”

“If you want to speak to a real mad officer, say 9..”

Gloria whispers “9″..and immediately gets a reply..

“All our mad officers are in mad classes at this moment. Please try again later.”

“Some things just don’t change”, she mutters again as the curtains fall and the sound of a scooter horn is heard in the background.