[ WP ] It 's the year 2064 . Describe yourself engaged in your favorite everyday activity .

I watch my tiny daughter's face as she gurgles and drools with thoughtless enthusiasm. Her skin is nearly flawless now; no sign of the rash she bore at birth remains. My sinuses are blocked ( I remember, it's summer and the hay-fever is a bitch ) but through the reverberations of my skull I hear myself coo at her. I grin so hard it nearly splits my face when she shows me her toothless, joyous smile. 
 
 It was too rarely this way. 
 
 I turn to her mother and we share this moment. She has on my favorite dress ( I stop myself- hers, and not mine ) but she is strangely inanimate, not quite there. There is no curl to the edge of her lips; no frizz in her hair. 
 
 It was never like this. 
 
 The strap on the back of my head is stiff. It's meant to be auto-adjusting, but I have an old model and I had to jury-rig a buckle when it stopped working so many years ago. It snaps open suddenly, too suddenly, and my headset falls to the floor with a clatter that brings me back to the now with the abrupt savagery of a slap. 
 
 The digital photographs have all been fed in. The system has every video I have in the archive. I know I need to go back further, and dig out the scanner, give it all the photos from when my wife was young, when the sparkle that's missing was most profound. They are spread all around my feet, piles and frozen cascades of memory. I know I should have scanned them years ago, but I was always told myself I was too busy. 
 
 I reach over with more difficultly than I'd like and start to pick through them. Our first few birthdays together, our holiday in Egypt, our poker games. I freeze when I see her. 
 
 She has a pout like a fish. I'm hugging her a bit too tight- one of her eyes is squashed to my chest. Her hair is a violent storm of static, and one of my shirt buttons has popped where her hand has slid inside it. We're both a little drunk and simply, wistfully I think, happy. 
 
 This is how it was, I think, as I pull myself up with a grunt and try and remember where I put the scanner.
