The year is 2068. At least, you're pretty sure it is. You float on patched-up dinghy through the desolate swampland that was once TRIBECA, scanning for signs of life, though you've long since given up hope of finding any. Returning home to the fifth floor of an abandoned skyscraper, you set about starting a fire. You pluck a hat at random off the top of garbage bin brim-full of them -- this one reads "MAKE KANYE GREAT AGAIN." You wish you knew why they'd made so many of these things, what they meant to the people who'd made them. They must have had some sort of tribal significance. You're thankful for the abundant source of kindling, anyway... The year is 2024, and you've spent the past hour at a bridal boutique browsing shoe styles with an associate. Having settled on one, you produce a small baggie containing a lock of your grandmother's hair. The shop will extract DNA from this sample and use it to produce leather that will become the shoes you'll wear on your wedding day. While you're filling out paperwork, the associate explains that the technique was first used by a fashion student named TINA GORJAC, whose "Pure Human" collection was born from ALEXANDER MCQUEEN's genetic material. There's an interesting bioethics debate to be had here, but you've seen a documentary about MCQUEEN, and you're pretty sure he'd have been amused... The year is 2016. You wake up, make coffee and begin scanning your RSS feed. You see headline after headline suggesting that POKÉMON GO and the slew of augmented reality apps that will surely follow will usher in a new era of retail and restore the American shopping mall to its former glory. You stare into the middle distance, trying to convince yourself that ABERCROMBIE will be able to convince budding POKEMON trainers that they also need to catch a bunch of polos, and by catch, you mean purchase with legal tender. You think about this long enough that you begin to wonder if you actually know anything at all about retail, about shopping, about desire, about being a human in the world. You shake your head, dump out your french press and brew a second batch, because the first wasn't nearly strong enough... The year is 1935. You are ALBERT EINSTEIN, and if someone told you that in 2016 LEVI'S will buy your leather jacket for $147,000, you would tell that it's more likely that someone will detect the gravitational waves posited by your general theory of relativity.