Melinda's Dreams (The Advent of the Stars)

by Paul Harm

  When they arrived, Lucia’s fury had already vanished, maybe it was the twenty minutes bike drive or the fresh air, Mike did not know but most importantly - he did not care that much. There it was, the Science Convention! The banner was hung over the gates of what must have been an old harbor hall. Not only was the building huge, there was a giant crowd too. Right after the doorway, there was a map outlining the locations of the various disciplines. There was Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, and countless others. “Oh my God!” John could not help himself when he inspected the details of the Computer Science closer and he found that they had an actual Liquid-6k. “They have a Liquid-6k here!” It was strange to see John like that. All of a sudden, the boy had strength and clarity in his voice and a fire that at least reached Mike. “A what?” Joseph did not even remotely follow, for him it could have meant anything, a biomarker, a new chemical that liquefied stuff, or, for all he knew, a rocket ship. “It’s a robot!” As it turned out, robots along with all electric-based technologies had a major setback sometime in the year of 2189. The sun entered a phase of incredible intense solar activity and the mass ejection that followed, hit Earth hard, rendering almost every electric-based system entirely useless. You can imagine how catastrophic that had been. At first it threw mankind back to the stone age, or at least almost. Fortunately, scientists and technicians were able to rebuild most of the infrastructure within weeks to avoid the worst. However the majority of research data, computer programs and artificial intelligence, which relied almost always on the magnetic principle, were lost forever. It was a devastating week for mankind but a catastrophe for science, and of course the financial market, which never fully recovered from it. They had to start from scratch, well maybe not from scratch, but somewhere around scratch. The solar mass ejection of 2189 made its way into the history books as the Great Magnetic Storm. In order to avoid such outages in the future scientists were forced to invent a more advanced computer system that was not rendered useless the next time an electromagnetic pulse hit earth.

  “It’s a robot.” John stated again proudly. “A robot, hm...?” Robots failed to fascinate Mathilda. She was much more interested n the different materials used to make them and everything else. Soft, hard, elastic and rigid, unbreakable or transparent. materials grabbed Lucia. “See you guys later.” Lucia and Mathilde waved goodbye without looking back and were gone. “You guys wanna check out the robot?” John asked. “Of course!” Mike and Joseph declared simultaneously. The Liquid-6k was not how Joseph and Mike expected it to be from movies, books and comics. It was a rather tiny piece of some strange slime. A man with a lab coat, freckles and red hair appeared in front of them. “Hello, children!” If the three by three centimeters of slime in a petri dish was not disappointing enough, the scientist approaching them fulfilled every stereotype one could ever have about scientists, and he had an overbite. You would think that humanity should have been able to fix something like that by now, but there it was, hovering above the lower lip, a big, shiny, white row of teeth. The man started to explain all the interesting facts about what seemed to be an actual robot. Joseph and Mike barely paid any attention, but John hung on to every word, when suddenly a group of bullies came around the corner.

  This age was very different than the past in a grand variety of ways but there was one thing that seemed true for as far as you knew the entirety of human evolution. Boys who were big and simple-minded hated and wanted to hurt boys who were small and possessed a sharp mind. Joseph and Mike simultaneously took a casual step back, so they did not appear to be standing next to John, who of course did not notice the approaching group of troublemakers at all. They spotted their favorite victim instantly. “Hello there, Johnny boy! How are you doing?” It was Rick Berners, Joseph knew him from school. It was the self-proclaimed leader of the troublemakers. When he had his first week at school Rick Berners grabbed another random kid, just like John, and humiliated them in front of the whole school, except the teachers of course. Children feared this bully and he was never alone, he always had his two best simple-minded buddies with him, Bill and George. Rick’s grin was smug as he punched John on the shoulder affectionately, pushing him back several steps. John sighed, he had not seen them coming at all. To Joseph’s surprise, John ignored them, and took some steps back towards the scientist. “How, did you say, does the primary calculation mechanism work?” John asked. The scientist looked at John and continued his speech about the advantages of light computation with a non-electric processor and how it outdid the electromagnetic disturbances caused by their home star.

  Rick’s smug smile vanished and as he tried to push John again, the boy dodged him, looked down and shook his head in disbelief. Joseph and Mike felt bad about not being brave enough to assist John while they were pretending to read a sign at the next stall. But the scientist helped John out. “Excuse me Mr. …?” He stretched the "Mr.", so that Rick understood he wanted to know his name. “Ah, never mind.” Rick snapped at him and waved him off: “See you at school, geek!” They trotted off. John was visibly shaking. The scientist noticed and tried to reach out to John by patting him on the shoulder, but John dodged him as well, still looking at the floor. “I’m sorry, but I have to go now.” John’s voice was clear and calm, whatever that shaking of his body was, it did not reach his mind. When he looked up and saw Mike and Joseph standing a safe distance from him, it hit him so hard that he teetered back a step before he regained his composure. It was not only the humiliation caused by those idiots, it was the fact that he would never make a friend as long as he endangered them socially and physically. He did not take it personally, after all, they barely knew each other. “Sorry, John.” Mike’s voice rose above Joseph’s shame. “But those guys scare me. I’m sorry for not stepping in.” Joseph was surprised to see that the shaking was not caused by fear or panic but by pure and unfiltered anger. “I’m going to make them pay for what they did to me. Picking on a smaller opponent shows that they do lack character and resolve, but I don’t.” “Uhm... okay, and how exactly do you plan to take three bigger, older and stronger boys down?” Unfortunately, Joseph had a point. Even if they teamed up, which he did not intend, they were no match for them. “I’ll figure something out.” John’s confidence was impressive. Clearly outnumbered, in a way worse position and short on reliable allies, Joseph could not help but admire John’s attitude.

  John spotted the girls first and his gloom lifted instantly. “Not a word to the girls, it’s bad enough as it is.” John’s voice was friendly and more bidding than commanding. ‘I guess he wants to stay in this group’, Joseph thought, still not very proud of himself. He wondered what would have happened if they had picked on Mike. Would he just leave him to it? Would Mike leave him if their places were switched? Mike would not, and as far as he could tell he was a part of John’s plan already - which sounded really stupid in his mind, since John obviously did not have a plan at all. The burden of empathy, he thought, once you got it you could not shake it off any more, like a bad habit. “Did you know that they invented a material that’s both invisible and light as a feather as well as being stronger than diamond?” Mathilda’s glow was for real. “They’re going to build the new space station in orbit with it and it’ll probably solve the dome problem on Mars too!” Mathilda really was exceptionally smart and interested in those things. Sure she lacked basic knowledge of literature, but she knew everything about material design and advanced construction. Even her teachers had to be on top of their game to not be embarrassed by their 12 year old pupil. Her enthusiasm lifted the group’s spirit and the terror from a moment ago vanished.

  While John, Lucia and Mike tried to avoid any more nano material stories, John seemed to be very interested and could not get enough of Mathilda’s detailed description of the dome problem on Mars, which seemed to be caused by corrosion. “I think she found a friend today.” Mike smiled, looking at the two. Mathilda, like the leader she was and next to her
John, constantly nodding and looking at her. “Let’s hope after tomorrow there will be something left of him.” Joseph did not joke. He just had experienced those guys and as they complied every prejudice bullies ever accumulated over the centuries, they were not idiots. At least Rick wasn’t, he was just a sadist. Joseph’s worries about John’s next encounter with the bullies did not subside, but he guessed it meant he made a friend that day, probably one that would not be around much longer, but still.

  III. Rainy Night

  When Joseph woke from his slumber, the fresh memories of his childhood adventures lingering around in his mind made him feel a certain nostalgia. He rubbed his eyes for a second, looked at his watch and found himself in his office on a Friday evening. Damn it, he thought. “Eva. Opacity to ten.” When the walls changed from opaque to transparent, he saw that the city lights shimmered through heavy rain. “Eva. Soundproof to zero.” The calming sound of rain together with a comforting rumbling of thunder in the distance always gave him as much peace of mind as a clear summer day. As he stood at the wall, his palm touching the now transparent wall, he gazed upon the achievements of humanity and he could not help himself but feel at peace - at least until he remembered his appointment.

  It was the 23rd of September in the year 2482. His daughter’s 20th birthday. He had to make haste if he did not want to show up late. Melinda had always been his last appointment of the week and he made a habit of relaxing after his last patient left. He found himself taking a slumber almost every time after the appointment with her, maybe it was because of her calming but somehow also energy-draining nature. No, that did not make sense. He took out his communicator and requested a connection to his wife. “Hey honey, I’m going to be a little late, but I’m on my way. I was just…” But Joseph wasn’t able to finish his sentence “You better be here on time, Joseph!” Claire sounded kind of pissed. “Will be! See you soon, love you honey!” Joseph replied. “I love you too, but if you disappoint Mia today, I don’t know what I’m going to do to you!”, she sighed “Understood.” She dropped the connection. That was a close one, Joseph thought, as long as he made it in time he should be fine. He grabbed his bag and headed for the cascade system.

  He arrived at the cascade-station at the bottom of his building. Every middle-sized building in the city was connected to the waterway network, also known as the cascade system. It was a rather genius construction. Since in 2169, a couple of years before the blackout, humanity had finally found an energy source that had the capacity to basically outmatch every other source of energy by multiple orders of magnitude, and the funny thing was that it did not go down when the magnetic storm hit Earth, forcing every single other electronic power plant from the grid. It was also the same thing that was responsible for not throwing them back in the dark ages, after the Great Magnetic Storm rendered technology useless, but allowed them to gently bounce back within a couple of weeks. The point was that mankind had an inexhaustible energy source at their command now. This simple fact had major implications in the engineering world, while most of the time engineers tried to build energy-efficient systems, because energy was a scarce resource, now there was an inexhaustible amount of it.

  The fusion reactor fundamentally changed the way mankind used energy. All the systems had been built to run on as little energy as possible to save power. Well since Doctor Noonian Edward had ‘successfully’ tested his adapted fusion reactor he had changed the energy efficiency paradigm. It was no longer necessary to be as energy efficient as possible. When Doctor Edward ‘successfully’ tested his first running reactor, he miscalculated the energy-flow containment field, which resulted in the loss of half of Great Britain. It was lucky it did not blow up the whole eastern hemisphere though. Nevertheless, after figuring out what the fuck was going on, they found a blueprint of the reactor on some cloud storage and fixed the containment field’s flawed math. Ever since mankind had been able to wield an inexhaustible clean power source, it had been the beginning of a new era of technology, in the process fossil fuels became so inefficient they ran out of steam fast.

  In this technological revolution, someone had come up with an idea of a new transportation system, which should be able to transport materials and supply goods and function as a substitute for public and individual transportation. A group of students picked up the idea of a cascade system. Inspired by the rise of civilization in Europe and how Europeans used their rivers to move things quickly and cost efficiently from one place to another. They were building it as a more as a joke at the time. They suggested building a network of tubes filled with water, the water moving constantly at a certain speed. The tubes have an insertion and removal mechanism for tube crafts named waterpods. The pods work on autopilot, making it both very safe and very simple to travel, even kids can use them. In contradiction to every other transportation system, the waterpods travel in a constantly-moving environment, instead of a moving vehicle in a steady environment like a train or an aeroplane. The pods themselves were made of a special plastic-like material, allowing travelers to see the world outside slide by with the option of turning parts of, or the whole waterpod, opaque. The huge advantage of this system was not only that it was very city-inhabitant-friendly, because it makes no loud noises, but it also does not pollute the air city dwellers breathe. It was very efficient thanks to its central Artificial Intelligence and its integrated flow-control system. The waterpods themselves had a comfortable seat with safety belts and airbags, just in case, although there had not been any accidents for decades now.

  So, what basically happens is that your pod is transferred in a constantly flowing water, it has no engine itself, except a fail-safe system, it simply floats in the water. So instead of moving an object through space, you create a constantly-moving zone and pass objects in and out as you wish. Collisions are eradicated by a central Artificial Intelligence managing all pods in the city. There is usually enough oxygen stored in a single pod’s interior, but they have an air filtering system and a backup oxygen converter which extracts oxygen from the surrounding water in case of a system-wide failure, such as an electromagnetic storm. If a system-wide catastrophe should occur, these pods have enough kinetic energy stored to move themselves to the closest exit. The test project in New York worked out so well, the city cascades were soon implemented in most of the Megacities within a decade. Because the system worked out so well in the city soon the first intercity cascade was implemented and by making it an independent water circle with a transitioning tube, the speed limit was increased to 767 miles per hour. This rendered even most airplane routes rather useless since the optimal route was almost always available within the cascade system.

  In addition to the intercity cascade system, they decided to build an intercontinental cascade under the oceans. These cascades had even higher speeds and were an entirely independent system where you had to leave the continental cascades and get into those special pods built to withstand the forces of acceleration, preventing the travelers from having a bumpy ride. Still until traveling speed was reached, you had to use the safety belt. The network of cascade systems conquered Earth faster than the internet did in the late 20th century. And there was one more cascade built and until today there are just two of its kind.

  The space cascades were built to finally get rid of the rockets that were energy inefficient and relied on fossil fuels. First was the Orbital cascade for things that belonged in the Earth’s orbit, as the name suggests. The other one was the last cascade system implemented, the Lunar Cascade. It was mankind’s hunger for expansion that drove this development. Having an easy and environmentally friendly way of shooting stuff to the moon was making some people wonder how hard it can be to build a research facility on the moon. Well curiosity and an insatiable hunger for more built the Lunar Complex. Today about a million people are part-time residents doing research or simply hanging out up there.

  Engineering was not Joseph’s profession, while he saw all those technologies he had always been fa
scinated with, he had always been drawn to the human mind, which scientists figured out by this point in time, in theory. When he walked to the pod, the terminal suggested his three most frequent destinations to choose from, and he entered “Home”. He got into the pod, the mechanical arm of the network grabbed his pod gently and released it into the city cascade. While the pod was gently accelerating, the lucent bubble slowly dimmed the outside world and went from opacity to almost opaque, exactly Joseph’s personal interior settings. When he looked outside the pod, he found himself getting dizzy as well as nauseous. When he arrived a couple of meters from his home complex, the rain had not yet stopped. It was pouring by now so he pulled his jacket over his head and started running. When he arrived at the door, water-soaked, and a gigantic bolt of lightning crackled somewhere nearby as Joseph slipped through the door.

  On the other side of the door the party had already started, and he found himself only slightly late. When Claire saw him, she had an expression of relief as well as anger on her face. She came towards him through the door, hugged him and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Glad you could make it.” “Wouldn’t have missed my little girl’s birthday.” he replied, smiling at her. “She ain’t that little any more, you know.” They chuckled. “No, she isn’t, but to me...” He could not finish his sentence when Mia ran around the corner and jump-hugged her dad. God she really isn’t that little any more, he thought when he struggled to gently catch her without giving in to what his back dictated to him. Although one of his ribs probably needed some medical attention, he pulled his arms around her and caressed her back and hair gently, like he always did. He sighed. Even though she was a grown-up beautiful woman, she would always be his little girl. Some things just never changed.