Tomorrow’s World (2 page)

I longed to join one of the groups sitting under the parasols that lined Avenida Atlantica, but there was no point approaching them because they were pixels rather than people. I couldn't talk to them, make music with them or partner them in a dance. Still, I drew comfort from the sound of their laughter on the summer evening breeze. Watching them, I wondered what they'd be talking about if they were really there. Maybe they'd be discussing the latest Chaplin movie,
Modern Times,
little realizing the future would be far more frightening than the most nightmarish predictions in any film or book.

The time I'd picked for my virtual trip was 1936, almost 70 years before Calum Tait visited the city. In my imagination it was a golden age. The war to end all wars had been fought and won, and the next one hadn't yet begun. The worst of the Great Depression was over, and the Lost Generation was finding itself. It was the age of grand ocean liners and propeller-driven aeroplanes; art deco and film noir; jazz and cocktail parties. Technology had shrunk the world, making it safer and more comfortable, but hadn't yet taken all the mystery and adventure out of it. The planet hadn't been homogenized, polluted and finally poisoned to the extent plants and animals and people could barely survive Outside. It was a time when people could do for real what I can only do in a timesphere, in dreams or my imagination—gaze at a far horizon made of a romantic meeting of sky with land or sea rather than the desolation of ruined buildings shrouded in a choking haze.

I don't know how long I gazed at the make-believe horizon, but it was long enough to wonder what lands lay beyond it, what people walked its distant shores.

It was long enough to wonder what ships floated upon the ocean, where they'd come from and where they were going; and what lay beneath the surface—ancient wrecks and sunken treasure chests; coral reefs of amazing colors, and bottomless chasms that swallowed light and harbored mystery.

I thought about whales that sang haunting songs of love and loneliness, dolphins leaping from the water with joy unconfined, and seahorses drifting on the tide with their tails entwined like lovers.

Then I walked down to the ocean, and the movements of the little world around me were so synchronous with my own I felt I really was on the beach.

But, when I reached the water's edge and looked back, there weren't any footprints in the sand. I could only imagine what the warmth and give of the beach would be like beneath my feet, and what it would feel like to let the cool water wash over my toes.

All I could do was stand there looking and listening. But even that was better by far than anything I could do for real in the community. Gazing out at the far horizon I found myself thinking again about what Calum Tait wrote all those years ago. I'd read the article so many times I knew it word for word:

Ipanema and Copacabana are beaches as long as a day. You can spend a morning walking along them, and an afternoon just standing there with nothing in front of you but waves that have traveled a third of the way around the globe to break at your feet. The height and sound of the surf leaves you in no doubt you're at the edge of not a sea but an ocean. You feel small as you stand there, but not diminished; quite the opposite. For all the restless, roaring power there's something seductive about the sight and soothing about the sound, so that soon your heartbeat slows, your breathing deepens and your thoughts drift with the tide, carried away as vague notions and brought back as something more by the ocean. It's as if you've had the chance to talk with Mother Nature, listen to Father Time, and they've answered questions you weren't aware you'd asked.

Listen hard enough and you hear not only the roar but a whisper that seems to be telling the secrets of time and tide: where the wind and waves come from, where they're going and why they want to get there. You hear a wealth of knowledge, the wisdom of ages, and for a little while you feel you understand.

But only for a little while. For about as long as your footprints last in the sand.

Somehow not all the wealth is lost with the knowledge, though. You remember the roar if not the whisper, the feeling if not the thoughts. Like the tide that carried it, the richness you gain from leaving your footprints in the sand is never wholly spent.

I was in the middle of a wistful sigh, thinking about far horizons, lost worlds in the mountains and footprints in the sand when I got the call that changed my life forever.

And everyone else's.

L
IKE ALL CITIZENS
I
WEAR A HEAR-RING IN MY EAR
and an i-band around my wrist, and they're not fashion accessories. The ring is a microspeaker and the i-band is, among other things, a voice-activated transmitter. Together they take the place of the clumsy cell phones people slavishly carried everywhere sixty or seventy years ago.

It was a voice from the hear-ring that interrupted me in mid-sigh as I looked out across the ocean of my dreams. The Voice of Reason, saying, “Flatliner in apartment 331. Respond ASAP.”

My sigh, which started wistfully, finished up as one of resignation because the Ecosystem was telling me somebody had just become some body.

Not the best start to the day, but I'm used to it. I'm a LogiPol Blue, the equivalent of a police officer from the Old Days. My beat is the apartment block known as Haven Nine. It's where I used to love and laugh, but now it's just where I live and work. It's by no means an unpleasant place, but it's too confined, colorless and predictable to be my whole world. I can escape it for a little while in the timesphere, or by donning a filtermask and going Outside, but before long the credit on my card ran out or the filter in my mask choked up and I ended up right back in the place I longed to leave.

My hear-ring crackled into life again: “Flatliner in 331. Respond ASAP.”

As well as a tiny transmitter, the smartfabric i-bands are laced with sensors which monitor all your physiological signs and relay them to the Ecosystem. Just as the flatline from the i-band in 331 had caused the Ecosystem to call me, so my own biometric relay would have betrayed my lack of movement and brought about the reminder. Even though the voice was system-generated, there was a hint of irritation in it now; the only time there's any trace of emotion in the voice is when it's repeating a message you haven't acted on. The Voice of Reason has been scientifically calculated to make it difficult to ignore, to command obedience and respect. In short, to be so
reasonable
you'll want to do what it tells you. That's the theory, but it falls down somewhere because I often deliberately ignore directives first time around. I know the resulting irritation in the Voice of Reason is nothing more than a sound effect, but I derive a perverse sense of satisfaction from hearing it.

It doesn't pay to make the voice repeat itself more than once, however. It's not just that it gets incrementally strop-pier, it also starts deducting credit from your card. So I took a last look at the far horizon, the ocean waves and the fabulous mountains. Then, speaking to the faceless Ecosystem that's everywhere and nowhere, controlling all aspects of my life and everyone else's for The Common Good, I said, “Exit.”

Nothing happened for a second or two. As always in such moments I had the heart-stoppingly wonderful thought that maybe the beautiful scene around me wasn't an idyllic re-creation of the past, but rather the community was a nightmarish vision of the future.

Then the golden colors of the sky dimmed, and so did my hope. The mountains faded into darkness and the breaking waves receded into a silence broken only by the hum of electro-magnetic energy. Within seconds the blackness was even more complete than when I first entered the sphere. I tried to brace myself for the drop of a couple of centimeters that would follow, but as usual I had to throw my hands out for balance when the force field dissipated. It's the most disconcerting feeling, like when you're going down a flight of stairs and misplace a foot and know you're about to stumble but can't stop yourself. Maybe it isn't possible to make the timesphere lower you that couple of centimeters gradually. Maybe the energy field forming the sphere is either strong enough to completely support you, or not strong enough to support you at all. However I have a sneaking suspicion the Ecosystem, with the same flawless logic it applies to every other aspect of existence, has engineered the end of timesphere trips in a way that literally jolts virtual travelers back to reality.

Whatever, the timesphere always brings me back to earth with a bang.

The darkness slowly faded, allowing my eyes to adjust to the light levels of the haven at large, so that when the chamber opened I left it without blinking.

There was someone waiting to use the timesphere. We studied each other, and I knew he was asking himself the same thing I was. It's the first question people in communities everywhere ask themselves when they encounter a stranger:
us or them? Name or Number?
Somehow
we
can answer the question almost as soon as it's asked, and the thinly veiled contempt I see in their eyes tells me
they
can, too.

The man in front of me had crew-cut white-blond hair, cold and knowing pale blue eyes, and the slightest hint of a sardonic smile about his thin-lipped mouth. He was a shade under 190cm, neither light enough to lack strength nor heavy enough to be muscle-bound. Although he wasn't
that much
taller than me, he managed to give the impression of looking down on me from a great height.

I was tempted to bang into him as I passed, and ashamed of myself for wanting to. As a LogiPol Blue, I should be preventing that sort of behavior, not indulging in it.

Having said all that, I couldn't walk by without doing something to upset him. So I said, “Have a nice trip,” enjoying the confusion my unnecessary words caused. Pleasantries and spontaneous conversational gambits always bewilder
them.

I smiled at his confusion, and knew he was glad when the Voice of Reason said, “Welcome, Citizen 320978,” and engaged him in the sort of formal exchange he could understand.

His kind feel more of an affinity with machines and computers than they do with people like me,
I thought as I walked away.

“Please state the time and place of your desired destination,” the disembodied Voice of Reason said to the man standing on the threshold of the timesphere.

Putting words into his mouth, I said to myself, “You choose.”

I smiled moments later when the Number said those very words.

Numbers always say ‘You choose' when they're about to enter a timesphere, because they lack the imagination to pick a time and place for themselves.

I automatically headed for the stairs from the basement to level three, then remembered why I was going there and made my way to the elevator instead. Usually it pays to take the stairs. The credit card which gives you pleasure points for every act that enhances The Common Good also debits you for each action detrimental to society—like using power by taking the elevator rather than the stairs. But, given the nature of my business, the Ecosystem wouldn't debit me for this elevator ride. It knew where I was going, and why.

It knows everything.

“Come on, come on,” I said as I waited for the elevator doors to open. I have to admit my haste to get to apartment 331 wasn't a reflection of any great dedication to duty, but rather a childish desire to get there before my partner, Perfect Paula. That's not her real name. Well, not the Perfect bit. Perfect describes her much better than Paula, though. Like the man who'd taken my place in the timesphere, Perfect Paula brings out the worst in me, and I want to beat her in some way, in every way I can. Except for physically—though there are times when only the fact she's a woman stops me wanting to do that. The fact I rarely manage to put one over on her makes me try all the harder. I hate myself for being so childish, and I hate Perfect Paula and those like her even more for making me hate myself. My one consolation is that I'm not alone in being this way. Ask any Name how they feel about a Number and, whatever words they use, they'll say pretty much the same thing. Unless they're the most pathetic kind of Name—the sort who want to be Numbers, who dress and talk and act like
them
but don't fool anybody except themselves.

Waiting for the lift, I weighed up the odds of getting to apartment 331 ahead of Paula. She'd have been deep in a dreamless sleep, but would stir at the first crackle of the hear-ring and be wide awake by the time the Voice of Reason finished speaking. She wouldn't waste a moment or a movement, but she'd still have to get dressed and make her way down from her apartment on level six.

The odds seemed slightly in my favor, but then Paula is, well, Paula.

It's pathetic, I know, but we can't help trying to score points against each other. Or, at least, I can't help trying to score points against her. She doesn't have to try, but I know she keeps count. I can tell from the hint of a sneer that's never far from her perfectly proportioned mouth and from those coldly beautiful silver-blue eyes that are slightly upswept at the corners. The sneer constantly challenges me—and mocks my efforts when I attempt to meet the challenge and match the impossibly high standards she sets. If I had to characterize our relationship, I'd say the word ‘competitors' is closer to the mark than ‘partners.' Except it's not really much of a competition, because Paula always wins.

“Come on,” I said again, willing the lift to reach me.

At last there was a soft
Bing!
and the doors opened. I stepped inside and said, “Level three, please.” I could imagine Paula's expression if she'd been at my side—a mildly bemused and contemptuous look that asked the unspoken question:
Why are you saying ‘please' to a machine?