Standards OF Living

    Here you are in 2084, and you wonder, what is my life like.  You might need to know, seeing as you need to live it.  This first Paragraph has nothing.

Clothing:  Most fabrics are synthetic, although natural fibers are cloned for the rich, and grown naturally for the very rich.  The main style that prevails is of lose fitting clothes made of Light weight, cheap Syn-Fibers.  Layers are worn for insulation.  Patches are a huge element of style.  It is too expensive to replace clothes just because an article becomes worn out, so various types of patches are made.  The most common are metallic or dull gray patches that wrap around the area worn out, such as knees and elbows.  The more money, the more natural your fabrics will be.

High fashion, the type you'd wear to impress someone, to a high society Gala event, or a trendy club, tend to be close fitting highly insulated clothing.  The outfits tend to be skimpy and revealing, and are not for most of society.  (Do you really want to see anyone's grandpa in shinny black leotards?)  Many outfits have cosmetic prosthetics built in, so the wearer doesn't have to fill out the outfit.  It takes a very attractive human being to make these clothes look good.  But when they work, they work damn well.

Food:  Bad news; your average meal is Syn-Paste, synthetic proteins, sugar, carbo-hydrates, and fats mashed together.  There's a lot of people to feed.  If you're willing to pay about twice as much for a meal, cloned food becomes available.  Unfortunately, even with preservatives it rots faster.  Some rich enough to eat natural food all the time swear they can taste the difference between it and cloned fare, but to most it's usually just that it costs ten times more than syn-paste.

Hygiene:  Water is not common.  It is kind of expensive, and needed for drinking.  Enter the air shower.  Highly pressurized gas, usually atmospheric mix, but sometime something else if that is too valuable, is sprayed all over your body.  It hurts, and often leaves small red welts.  Public Bath houses are common, and not too expensive, maybe about CR. 10 per visit.  Showers and private bath are luxuries many never see.

Medicine: First aid kits aren't that much different, except for some higher quality drugs, and plasti-skin, instant application synthetic skin that works far better than a bandage.  Anti-radation injections are included, as is Hyper coagulant, a drug that causes blood to clot.  Be careful, too many doses can congeal blood to much, and stop the heart.

Limb replacement is most commonly done with bionics.  Although some convenience implants are included, war Cybernetics aren't really around.  Those who wish to retain full usage of nerves, and don't want to be metal limbed weirdo's often used cloned parts.  A clone part can be force grown in a few days to a week, depending on size.  A full clone can be grown in six months and cyro-frozen until needed.  Clone parts are as old as the tissue taken as a sample for the cloning, and age about twice as fast.  Entire Brain transplants into a clone are possible, but far from common.  They are expensive, and brain tissue continues to decay, as gray matter does not replace itself.  MedCon carefully monitors all cloning and operates most facilities. 1