Day 12 of my 2023 drabble-a-day challenge!

Cleared

Hello! Come in, do take a seat. Nine-thirty? Excellent.

Yes, please come through. Leave your belongings here, they'll be quite safe.

Oh, no. There's no electrode cap, of course not. What do you think this is, the twentieth century? Ha, yeah, I know.

Yes, just there. A little to the left? Comfortable?

Great. Hold still.

That's it, please remember to collect your things.

For our own quality control, a few questions...

Do you feel any guilt? remorse? We have video footage of the event if you need to verify your emotions.

None at all?

Excellent.

Thank you for your custom.

I thought it was time for something a bit more sci-fi. Because sci-fi is definitely not horror, right?

Vaguely terrifying post-script: someone described, recently, a conversation they’d had with their kid. It concerned something that had happened in the 80s, or "as my kids call it, the late 1900s”. Apparently the twentieth century was quite a long time ago. I don’t really understand how this occurred.