Glimmers of the Future (eBook)

Hale McCaffley (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-2117-5 (ISBN)

Infos

This is a short story collection with as its general theme a look into the future. There are many futures here - contact with extraterrestrials, time travel and the introduction of higher forms of artificial intelligence. The author is a human and is doing his best to look into the future from the early twenty first century

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Twenty four stories are told here, with most of them set in a future in which artificial intelligence has come to play a major role in human life. Several of the stories are about humanity's encounters with extraterrestrial life. There are many different heroes and heroines in our futures. But really, they are just us blundering our way through life with human aspirations maintained in the face of staggering technological accomplishments. The accomplishments are accepted without question, after all earth's future inhabitants will have known nothing else. People remain people and any changes to our basic blueprint will come very slowly and will be as opaque to us today as they were to the people we used to be, all those hundreds and thousands of years ago. Aeroplanes, televisions and computers - does anyone need any more evidence of the fact that our future will be very different from our present. Artificial intelligence and the banishment of pain and suffering will hopefully improve all our lives. Feeding the world is an immediate and obvious goal and population growth will slow naturally on achievement of this goal. The time at our disposal to read and enjoy stories will increase. One past, one present, many futures!

Textauszug

The Joke

Peter Wood set his gaze on the approaching shore. It had been a wonderful trip to the corn fields out on the Pacific Ocean. Pollination had been effected by the floating wind turbines and the ears would be ready to harvest in a couple of months. Then the combine boats would go out to fetch in the crop. Peter's boat inched slowly to shore. Soon he would be in his capsule on the way to his home.

Peter lived out in the country in a modern house that had been built on the site of a farmhouse, long since demolished. The surrounding farmland had been left to return to its natural state. Now he was living in a prairie. Most of his neighbors were similarly situated but his closest neighbor was stubbornly maintaining fifty acres of farmland. Those Harrises! Still driving tractors in this day and age and working from morning to night planting seed, tending and harvesting their crops, feeding their few cattle and pigs and cooking their own food. So primitive. They’d still be driving cars if Central let them but now capsules were the only legal form of personal transport, thank goodness. He didn’t have to worry about one of the Harrises driving into him.

Peter’s thoughts turned to his personal robot waiting for him at home. When he arrived there she would feed him a delicious pre-prepared (frozen) dinner and run that series he was watching on his entertainment screen as he ate. Later, she would service his sexual needs. He thought his robot was beautiful. She had a slim, lithe figure, long, slightly muscular legs and small pert breasts. He had imagined and then ordered a kind face for her that was, at the same time, quite glamorous. He might change the face in a couple of years when he got tired of its present iteration. She was always delighted to see him and was ever ready to attend to his every whim. She could even simulate emotions like pride, fear or shame if he so desired. Her default setting was perpetual amiability.

Peter cast his mind over his trip. The sight of the heaving fields cresting the ever forming and re-forming ocean swells had been inspiring. Water and sun, present in limitless quantities, and fertilizer supplied by algal blooms were all that the sea-born corn plants needed. For wheat, barley and oats different algal blooms were required. Yields were always spectacular for all the salt tolerant crops except when storms disrupted the maritime constructs. And even storms were becoming more manageable thanks to the air movement technology being developed by a world-wide research consortium. It had taken mankind a hundred years to realize that environmental factors affecting the planet were most effectively addressed by empowered international agencies. The competitive instinct here had died a slow death.

Life in his parent’s day had just been so primitive. He could hardly believe they had lived through it. Of course, almost all of them had enough food but they still competed for mates. He laughed at himself for using such an archaic word. Mates! These days everyone used robots for sex. Babies were still produced to fill the replacement demands of the distressingly still mortal population. But babies these days were produced by bringing together screened gametes, eggs and sperm, stored in the cryobanks. The fertilized eggs were then grown to full-term in receivers (artificial wombs) and then consigned to the full-time care of robot nurses. This was how all new people were introduced to the world nowadays without exception.

Peter himself, however, had been brought up by his biological parents. His was the last generation when anyone had been brought up this way. He’d been in his early teens when in vitro fertilization and gestation followed by robot rearing had been introduced. And now, of course, there were robots to meet every human need. Interestingly, people preferred a single partner, someone they could bond with. And now the scientists were busy working on personality matching to refine this ancient echo of human development.

He’d given his robot partner the name Celeste. And that was who he was thinking of as he headed home. The capsule was approaching the bend in the track just prior to turning into the long, straight stretch leading directly to his house when it happened. He heard a distinct thud, the capsule quivered slightly, slowed and then stopped. He twisted around angrily, searching for the cause of the intrusion. A large, black, ancient automobile appeared in front of his capsule and began slowly to back up. The Harrises! He flipped up the lid of the capsule and climbed out. An elderly man with a bushy beard clambered wearily out of the car.

“You’re not supposed to be driving that!” Peter shouted at the man.

“Didn’t see you coming,” the man replied, laconically. “Thought you were away.”

This was old Henry Harris, still stubbornly pursuing the life of a land bound, primitive farmer. There weren’t many left like him now, but there were some.

“I’m going to have to report it,” said Peter. “Sorry.”

The old man waved a hand in acquiescence. “That’s all right, young man. Do what you gotta do.”

Peter returned to his capsule intent on filing an incident report, getting clearance, and then completing his journey home. Old man Harris would be receiving a visit from the Vehicle Enforcement Agency and his car would be taken away. No more traffic incidents for him! Peter was just about to pull up the Incident Report screen when he saw a young woman climb out of the passenger’s side of the old black car. She waved a friendly hand in his direction and started towards the capsule. Peter climbed back out to meet her.

“So sorry, Mr. Wood,” she called out as she approached. “It was really my fault. I distracted my father at precisely the wrong time. I’m Ashley Harris by the way.”

Peter looked carefully at her. She had soft, shoulder length blonde hair, a fresh, clear complexion and a kind smile.

“How did you distract him?” he heard himself asking. And then immediately asked himself: ‘What the hell am I doing? I shouldn’t even be talking to these people.’

“I told him a joke,” she shrugged, apologetically. “He just burst out laughing and then, unfortunately, drove straight into you.

“I’m your neighbor, Peter Wood,” said Peter, surprising himself again with his continuing display of civility.

She smiled at him. “If you report this my Dad will lose his car,” she said, matter of factly.

“Get yourself a capsule,” Peter commanded. “Much more efficient and a lot safer, too.”

She shook her head. “My Daddy doesn’t believe in capsules. He just likes to drive around in his old car.” The old man smiled hopefully at him.

Peter drew himself up, about to deliver a fusillade of political correctness to the two humble people watching him. He knew what he ought to say. There was no place in the modern world for this antiquated behavior. It was even criminal. They would just have to change with the times. But he paused and then the words simply refused to come. He waved a hand and climbed back into his capsule. He gazed thoughtfully at the screen in front of him. A number of options were being presented to him. There was ‘Mechanical Problem’, ‘Power Failure’, ‘Passenger Problem’, ‘Trouble on Track’, and ‘Incident Report’. He looked out at the young woman and old man watching him from the track. His forefinger hovered over ‘Incident Report’ but as he moved it to touch the screen, it moved, seemingly of its own volition, to ‘Passenger Problem’ and touched that instead. Then he entered ‘Problem Resolved’ which was an option that had popped up in response to his touch and the capsule slowly started forward and carried him away from his neighbors. He exchanged a friendly, parting wave with them.

Celeste was waiting for him, sitting upright on the couch in the living room (robots sat rather than stood because falling was much less likely from a sitting position, and upright was the default position when sitting). He’d had no contact with her for the three months he’d been away until yesterday when he’d told her to adjust the temperature in the house to 240 (it had been set at 150). As he came through the front door he called out, out of habit, “Celeste”. She promptly stood and walked gracefully across to him, draped her arms around his neck and offered her lips for a kiss. He obliged with a quick peck and Celeste then walked back to the couch and resumed an upright sitting position. Her gaze followed him as he moved about his house. He didn’t say, as he sometimes did when he’d been away for a while, ‘Celeste, get naked’ or ‘Celeste, go to my bedroom and prepare for sex’. He didn’t say anything. Celeste sat on, her eyes recording his movements, her face calm and pleasant.

He looked at her as she sat there, waiting. She’s not waiting, he corrected himself, she’s not anything. All he could...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.12.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-10: 1-5439-2117-5 / 1543921175
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5439-2117-5 / 9781543921175