Dreamt last night that I was living in this world at some point in the somewhat distant future. Interstellar space travel was possible, and most people on Earth were living in very small apartments (that's the future in a nutshell for you).

I had a job as an actor in ads. I was the irritating person who popped open cans of soda, sipped from them on hot days in the sun, and then said, "Aaaahhhhhhhhhh" in a way that nobody with any self respect ever would.

My job typically involved travel around our solar system, going from exotic location to exotic location, but an order came in one day for me to travel to a water-world circling a distant star to get a shot that wouldn't be possible anywhere on Earth (apparently, CG isn't going to be a big thing in the future).

I was talking to my agent about it...

Me: How far away is this place?

Agent: About ten light years, but we can get you there faster.

Me: Faster? Well, never mind. I won't worry about the details. I do have a question, though.

Agent: OK - shoot.

Me: All this traveling at extremely high speeds - isn't it going to mean that I'm going to age much more slowly than the rest of you? You know - all that relativity stuff.

Agent: Something like that.

Me: So, when I get back from the job, my family and everyone I know will be dead.

Agent: Basically, yeah.

Me: It was nice knowing you.

With that, I put down the can of soda I had been "Aaaaahhhhh"ing over and walked away. I found it appalling that a company was so desperate to make the ad they wanted that they'd be willing to ask someone to give up his life for it.

It also dawned on me then that there were probably some other actors who did engage in this sort of travel, and that they not only didn't ever have a chance to have families, but that they also probably had new agents each time they returned to Earth to get new jobs. I thought that was interesting - the talent agency persisted over the eons, but the agents were switched out as they died of old age, meaning that the actor's relationship was really just with the agency, and that the agent was a sort of faceless representative that acted as a liaison only during his or her lifetime.

Weird stuff, the future.