The Year is 2019. The USA did not fight the Vietnam War, and instead invested money into high speed railways, teletext, and 10-storey modernist carpark-trainstation-airport-mall megaplexes. There's one in every town.
Everybody is an urbanite, all farming is done by agricultural robots with their solar panels glistening under the haze of high-power irrigators.
You can vacation in the countryside, but residing there is illegal. However, penalties being as light as they are (a public spanking during the now-revived festival of Lupercalia), it has become an adolescent rite of passage to play-act as Thoreau.
It is likewise illegal to dress poorly in public. The punishment is a state-funded visit to a public fashion consultant. They have also taken over the role of therapists, with mental illness having been declared radicated a year after polio.
Prisons have been turned into love hotels for the young. The Japanese interior decorator Marie Kondo made millions doing so. People constantly criticize the decoration-industrial complex, voicing their complaints in haikus and sonnets.
The President of the United States is Sebastian Shakur, the son of Tupac and Madonna.
