“There are plenty of snuggly things, Sarah; we just don’t depend on them to keep warm. Tell me, do you like soft toys?”
Sarah nodded.
“Let me show you my spare room, then you can decide if you think the future isn’t snuggly enough for your tastes.” He took her hand again and led her back down the steps. Across the sitting room, the other side of the wall-to-wall window, they went up another short set of steps into a room that also had half-height walls and no door. Sarah was amazed by this room, too. There were two large cuddly animals that looked like giant white foxes, and a soft fluffy area rug in front of the bed, which had a fleecy towel on it. Like Ral’s bed, this one was also sunk into the floor slightly.
“How can you have all this stuff? You’re too big for it all!” she exclaimed, looking up at him.
“I’m not too big to make sure my guestroom is cozy and welcoming,” Ral countered. Sarah nodded; it made sense that these were for decoration. It had been too much to hope that maybe he liked to play with toys sometimes too. What he said next took her completely by surprise.
“Of course, if you wanted to play with them, I would be a bad host if I didn’t join in and make sure you got to do as much playing as you wanted. And to make sure you had someone to play with. That’s what daddies do.”
Sarah just stared at him then shook her head.
“No, this is all wrong, this can’t be happening! I don’t understand why this is happening!” She sat heavily on the bed and began to cry again, and somehow, she couldn’t stop this time. She hugged her towel and sobbed as her brain tried to make sense of the day’s events so far. For some reason, she had been cryogenically frozen, but she couldn’t remember why. Then she woke up and it seemed like the same day, but it was actually three hundred years later. Everything here was weird and different. Then, there was this gigantic elf; Ral. She’d never been more attracted to anyone in her life, physically or emotionally. Something about him just called to her. He told her he wanted to take care of her, and wanted her to call him Daddy, and had a room full of snuggly things and a glimmering rainbow floor. They were on a different planet, where there were terrifying-looking tentacle monsters that only ate fish and plants. Sarah had reached her limit and couldn’t take anything else in.
To her surprise, Ral swept her up into a big hug, rearranging her easily in his arms so she was on his knee while he sat on the guest bed. He rocked her back and forth and rubbed her back gently. It was unbelievably comforting, and soon, Sarah cried herself out.
“I’m sorry, I’m still having trouble with everything,” she said, embarrassed at having another big show of emotion in front of him. He merely held her and soothed her until her turmoiled thoughts seemed to clear. This was a very nice place to be; wrapped in the huge elf’s arms, on his knee, while he carefully calmed her down.
“It’s all right, little one,” he said at length, in his comforting baritone voice. “You need to relax more and go with the flow. Things are very different here, and the most important thing is for you to tell me when you get scared or uncertain about things, so I can help you. I can’t explain things to you if you don’t tell me you have a problem. Do we have a deal?”
Sarah nodded. She nestled her head into his shoulder and her heartrate slowed down until it was no longer pounding in her ears, as she let him hold her and comfort her.
“I think you’ve had far too much excitement for one day; you should have a nap while I make you something to eat.”
“How will you know what food I can eat?” Sarah asked, scared he might feed her a plate of horrible wriggly worms or something equally weird.
“Don’t you worry about that; I know exactly what to feed to little girls like you.” Ral laid her gently on the bed and stroked her hair. Sarah felt strange and exposed trying to slumber without a comforter, but as he soothed her, she found her eyes getting heavy and soon she was fast asleep.
Chapter Four
“Wake up, little one, I’ve made you some food.” Ral shook Sarah’s shoulder gently. He had half a mind to let her stay sleeping; she looked so adorable curled up with her eyes closed and her blonde hair falling over some of her face. He knew she needed to eat, so he shook her again, then he leaned forward to brush her hair away. Before he knew it, he was kissing her softly on the lips. What was he doing? She was a guest! He pulled away as she stirred.
“Huh?” She rubbed her eyes then peered blearily around the room. “Oh, no, it wasn’t a dream.” He wondered how long it would take for her to stop being disappointed with life in the future.
“Time to get up and eat,” Ral said, carefully moving her into a sitting position.
“‘M not hungry.” Sarah glared at her legs. Ral knew she hadn’t eaten since her revival.
“Your last meal was three hundred years ago. Come on, you need food. Will you walk to the living room or do I have to carry you?” he asked.
“‘M pretty sure you can’t pick me up and walk anywhere. In case you hadn’t noticed, I weigh about two hundred pounds.” Before Ral proved her wrong, Sarah hurried off the bed and stared at the floor as she walked slightly ahead of Ral. The rainbow mosaic tiles seemed to entrance her, and his heart glowed slightly at the idea that she took so much delight in such a small detail.
He hoped she would like the meal he’d made for her, and when she sat at the counter between the kitchen and living room, he was pleased that she didn’t crinkle her nose at the bowls of steaming food that he’d set out.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s called sketti, little lady. It’s made from Anassian cornseed.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a special plant that comes from a planet called Anassia. They’re famous for two things; first, their food is renowned throughout the galaxy, and second, they have a huge sculpture made of sparkling crystals, called the Anassian Snowflake. When their sun shines through the snowflake, the light is split into millions of dazzling rainbows.”
“Is the sculpture in their capital city?” Sarah wondered, as she picked up her spoon.
Ral chuckled. “No, it’s in space, just beyond where the planet’s moons used to be.” He remembered how, when the sculpture had first been planned, the Anassians had wanted to situate the masterpiece so it orbited the planet, but it was a Prime planet, and imported nearly everything, with the exception of haute cuisine recipes. The space traffic controllers had complained that a gigantic reflective object was the stupidest thing anyone had ever tried to float through a shipping lane, and when nobody listened, they had gone on strike. About eighty thousand ships per eighteen-hour day arrived or departed from Anassia, bringing and removing travelers, consumer goods, natural resources, and in the case of the small-but-significant data ships, huge amounts of digital information that would take too much bandwidth to be moved on the Information Superhighway. A ten-minute strike of the space traffic controllers around the planet had been enough to convince everyone to give in to their demands, and the Anassian Snowflake was situated elsewhere.
“Is Anassia an important planet?”
Ral frowned. “It sure likes to think so. See, there are a hundred and twelve planets that people can live on in the galaxy of Andromeda. Those planets are divided into two types; there are twelve Prime planets, which think they’re really important because they have an Emperor-Paramount on Nidia, and they collect taxes and start wars and such, and then there’s the Outer planets, which pay taxes and don’t really get a lot in return. Minos Kerala is one of the Outer planets.”
“Why do they pay their taxes then?”
“Because if they didn’t, the Prime planets would declare war on them. And they’d have nearly a hundred Outer planets to back them up.”
“But if all the Outer planets did it…”
He decided to put it into a context she might understand. “It’s the same reason that low-paid workers on Earth never refused to do what they were told. They don’t know that they can count on each other to all fight to the end. And t
“It sounds like Days of Our Lives,” Sarah remarked. Ral looked at her quizzically. “It was a TV show,” she explained.
“What’s a TV show?” Ral had to ask.
“Do you still have movies?” Sarah asked. Ral nodded. “It’s like a short movie only you watch it on a special device called a TV set, and you can only watch the TV show when the network decides to broadcast it. Unless you have a TiVo… uh… never mind.”
Ral’s interest was piqued. He wanted to know all about twenty-first century technology.
“Tell me about TiVo,” he prompted.
“It was a special device that recorded TV for people. Or something. I haven’t really watched TV since I was in high school. I preferred video games and coding programs. Guess I haven’t done any of that for three hundred years, either. But hey, at least I picked the most future-proof career, right?” She looked up at him. “Which software companies are the best to work for? Ohmigosh, is everything on the Cloud now? You said there’s pan-galactic internet now, right? How do they get the data to travel between planets? I can’t wait to see how modern computers look!”
“Let’s talk about that after you’ve eaten your dinner, young lady; I don’t want it getting cold before you’ve tasted it.” He pointed to her bowl with his spoon and watched her dip her spoon into the orangey-red sauce. Maybe he could spare her the disappointment of talking about a career in computing for a few minutes longer.
“They’re all star-shaped!” she exclaimed, before putting the spoon in her mouth. Ral’s heart soared. He’d always wanted someone to tuck into bed for naps, and someone to cook sketti for. She looked so adorable while she tasted the alien food for the first time, and he was so proud that she’d tried it without any cajoling. In fact, she seemed to be remarkably open to trying new things.
When the bowls were empty and he’d cleared them away, he got Sarah to sit down on one of the beanbags around his coffee table. This was going to be a tough conversation.
“Sarah, do you see this device?” He pointed to his tablet. She nodded.
“Looks like an iPad,” she remarked.
“This runs my entire life.” He paused to let that sink in. She giggled.
“Sounds like an iPad, too.”
“I don’t think you understand. Everything in the house is wirelessly connected to the server microchip in this tablet, which controls it all. I can be on a different planet and turn my lights on and off if I choose to. This device can hail a flying car, by sending a signal to it. It could operate a flying car, if the car’s driverless robotics failed. This device doesn’t just let me check my accounts, it finds optimal places for my salary to be invested, and it invests it around the clock so I am constantly getting a good rate of return, and when I need to pay a bill, it automatically un-invests that amount of money and it pays the bill for me. I can control it by voice if I want, but that’s become a bit obsolete because it’s easy for voice-controlled tablets to pick up on someone else’s conversation and there were a few accidents.”
“Accidents?”
“For example, if I was waiting in line for something, and I turned on the voice recognition, and the person behind me chose that moment to say, ‘I want to book tickets on a first-class ship to Nidia,’ my tablet could action that. And my money would get spent. So people don’t really use that feature any more. Except old people. They sorta got used to it, before the Speakeasy chip made everyone sound similar.”
“So who makes all the software for this stuff?” Sarah asked. Ral was uneasy. The poor girl had had enough shocks for one day, and he didn’t want to add to her stress but she obviously wasn’t going to let this go.
“Honey, I hate to have to tell you this, but nobody makes software any more. It’s all done automatically by self-designing programs. Organic brains simply couldn’t keep up with the complexity or the underlying mathematical theory that needed to be developed to meet the growing demands for better, faster apps. I’m sorry, Sarah, but programming is completely obsolete. They teach algorithm design in elementary school to children, to help them with organizational and time management skills. That’s all it’s good for, really.” Computer programmers were as obsolete as apothecarists or people who repaired thatched roofs.
“Didn’t people get implants to help them?” Sarah asked.
“For a while. It got banned under interplanetary laws. People realized that their ancestors had started using tools and building houses to make life easier. And then technology was making life harder. So people took a step away from that whole area of invention, and a few decades later, self-designing programs were perfected.” He hoped she wouldn’t take the news too hard.
“How does a program exist that designs other programs? Who decides what it makes? It’s ridiculous! How can a computer control which programs exist and which don’t?”
“I don’t know, Sarah. I’m sorry. I’m an astro-archaeologist.”
“So… there aren’t any computer programmers at all? What can I do then? I’m going to need a job! What job can I do? Are there still waitresses?”
Ral nodded. Maybe she’d minored in something relevant? “Waitresses have to study customer service and food hygiene in school. Did you study those things?”
“No! I studied computers! I minored in chemistry! It was supposed to be a dependable career path!” Sarah seemed to be getting angry and Ral wanted to draw a line.
“Young lady, I understand that you’re upset about the fact that you don’t have a career at the moment, but you need to change your tone. It’s not my fault that you didn’t study something useful at school, like history or art.”
“You have to be kidding me! How are those useful?” Her tone was full of so much derision that he was a little annoyed, but attempted to remain patient.
“History is all about inference. That requires judgement and understanding of the complexity of humanity. We don’t have any computers that can be historians. Art is pure creativity. A few computers can mimic it, but true art requires an intention behind it. Computers have no intentions, no deeper meaning to the pictures they make, and collectors can tell the difference, so artists can make a good living.”
Sarah stared at the tablet.
“Who fixes it when it breaks?” she asked at length.
“Fix? I just buy a new one and it scans my chip for a data transfer.”
“What’s a chip?” Sarah seemed to pick up that he wasn’t talking about any old chip.
“It’s the thing I told you about before; it can make payments from my account, for example in shops, and it has a complete record of my work history and it’s proof of my social security number and identity. We will get you one tomorrow morning, then I think you should enroll in school.” It would be the best place for her, until she was qualified to do something.
“School? But I’m thirty-one!” Sarah protested.
“Technically, you’re three hundred and twenty-eight in universal standard years,” Ral corrected her. “But you’ve been actively living for twenty-eight of those years. The Minos Kerala Academy is designed for adults who have arrived on this planet from other worlds, who need extra education to meet basic employability standards. I think you would benefit from looking on my tablet and reading about the different programs they offer, then choosing one, before I take you to enroll tomorrow afternoon.”
“Great, so we’ve gone straight from ‘I think you should enroll’ to ‘I’m taking you to enroll.’ Don’t I get a choice?”
“Think about this logically. You must be good at that if you’ve studied computers in depth, right?”
Sarah nodded.
“Then think about it like this; you don’t have the skills to get the sort of job you want. Or possibly any job. The Minos Kerala academy is offering you a chance to learn those skills. There’s no entrance test and the fees are nominal; I’ll pay them so you won’t have to worry about a thing. I’m offering to let you stay here for free until you find a job, at the very least. What reason do you have to not accept this very sensible course of action?”
“I’m too old to go to school. I’m too old to go to college! I’m too old to go to grad school! I wouldn’t fit in and everyone would know I was older and different. So I won’t make any friends. And then I’ll be lonely.” She started to cry, and Ral leaned over and lifted her onto his knee, where he rocked her back and forth as she let him reassure her. When she stopped crying, she jumped up as if she’d been bitten, then went back to her beanbag looking awkward.
“Sweetheart, it’s okay to be scared about things. Everything’s new and scary right now. But you already have one friend at the academy.”
Sarah looked up at him.
“Don’t tell me, you teach archaeology?” she asked. Ral tried not to laugh at the idea of trying to explain archaeological theory to anyone without a degree.
“That’s a grad program. It’s far too big to teach to people who aren’t even at college yet. Think of archaeology as a sort of quantum science version of history. Archaeology is every single thing that exists now; every type of science and every hypothesis, every way of looking at the universe, every idea about how people behave and why they do what they do… and it’s applied to the whole past. Which keeps getting bigger. More than that, it’s everything that could exist, too. It’s pretty complex, and I wouldn’t begin to know how to teach it; I’m far too busy trying to stay on top of it all, even after specializing in astro-archaeology. No, I was talking about Laila.”
“Laila goes there too?” She looked surprised. Ral nodded. He’d thought she might cheer up at the idea of seeing her new friend every day.
“She may be in different classes to you, I guess it depends on what job she wants when she finishes, but she’s been there for a few months. I often see my cousin Flin collecting her from school on my way home from the office.” He didn’t add that Laila would probably still be at the academy long after Sarah had finished.
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