An idea that is still waiting for a practical implementation is the telepathic quantum entangled connection (TQEC) technology. Living through the early 2000’s when majority of people walking in downtown Boston and New York were talking on their phones and through 2010’s when everybody’s attention and eyeballs are glued on their smartphone screens even when having a family dinner - it is not difficult to anticipate how in 2020’s a technology similar to TQEC could adopted by consumers. For today’s people it would be an odd experience: similar to talking to a person with schizophrenia, who is having conversations with imaginary people. When majority of population would adopt a new way to communicate, this would be the new normal.
Another emerging idea is to use DNA to build computers. In 1994, University of Southern California computer scientist Leonard Adelman suggested that DNA could be used to solve complex mathematical problems. After that many other research groups have shown that we can indeed build molecular size computing components, even ones that can be embedded inside living cells. Extrapolating from the current ‘state of the art’ I have assumed that by 2035 (and with some help from our extraterrestrial friends) we would have powerful DNA computing devices. I have also assumed that we need still a piece of software called ‘bootstrap code’ to load the software into these novel devices. A software bug in this code and a human error led to the death of one of the supporting characters in the story.
What should you do when the person you love the most suffers a painful death due to a software bug in your code? Unfortunately there is no reset button in human DNA and ctrl-alt-del won’t stop the DNA replication. Well, to keep the universe in balance, we introduce a new character. Aurora is the first human baby born with this kind of embedded DNA computer as part of her genome, giving her new superpowers that even her mother doesn’t know about yet. We will learn more about Aurora and her skills in the upcoming book #3 of the series.
The idea of intelligent giant squids came from my scuba diving trips. I have seen a few squids and octopus species live in my dives and snorkeling trips and I find these creatures truly fascinating. Based on many studies they are very intelligent and have been swimming in the oceans much longer than humanity has existed. We know very little about these creatures. What would happen if 4 billion alien giant squids would suddenly arrive as refugees to planet Earth? I hope you can still enjoy fried calamari after reading about Chukkas.
Finally, the reader might wonder of the prominent role of politicians in the overall story. Building spaceships and habitats in space is an activity mostly financed by governments, though private companies like SpaceX are actively pushing re-usable rocket technology and driving the costs down. We have seen how politics can both enable (Apollo program in 1960’s) and disable (several failed programs, such as Constellation, Ares rockets, etc.) space technology development. Any attempt to build space habitats at the scale proposed in this book will be science fiction in the foreseeable future.
Given the presidential election campaigns in the United States during 2016 we can only hope that somebody like Alexa would be around to provide some sanity for the rest of us.
Rarotonga, June 4, 2016
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