The Future Is Short (7 page)
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13.
Andy Lake
Hector sighed. He set the intruder alarms one last time and went out into the cool, dark night. Taking a final look at the building, he set the locks and began to walk home. So this is how his life’s work ended. Not with a bang or a whimper, but with gritted teeth and much evasive action. But there’s only so much dodging you can do. The inevitable is just that—inevitable.
He had kept the presses rolling and the fabrication facilities going full tilt for more than a month, to leave as little as possible for the bailiffs when they moved in. And he’d been shipping everything movable out to obscure places, for retrieval later. Now he carried in his satchel three prized possessions.
The last print-on-demand book to be commercially printed. The last e-reader to roll off a production line anywhere in the world. And his first edition of Little Dorrit, from the display case in the lobby.
As he walked home, Hector reflected on how the world had been so different forty-something years ago when he’d first sunk his and Miriam’s savings into the business. They hit those first waves of electronic books and print-on-demand at the prescient moment. They worked with the giants of the industry, and fought with them too. They did well out of it.
But the world moves on. New hydrid animated books, film/books or ‘drooks’–dramatized books–changed the market. They were survivable. Sadly, the last decade was not. New brain interface technologies were the game-changer. People could just download a book straight into their head. Writers and writer-animateurs could devise and upload everything online. The big two cyberpublishers had the market sewn up. And Hector’s company had always produced the physical things that supported reading and the book trade. Books-as-a-cerebroservice was an area where he knew he couldn’t compete.
Now his market for ‘knowledge accessories’ was gone forever. Sure, there’d be some diehards and hobbyists.
But a market from which to make a living?
Miriam hugged him extra close as he came in and dropped his satchel. She gently stroked back into position the lock of grey hair that flopped over his weary forehead. With a last affectionate clasp of his shoulders, she said, ‘I’ve cooked us something extra special.’
‘The books, I hope,’ said Hector in a world-weary tone.
‘Oh, no one cooks those better than I do.’
Hector knew that was true. Without Miriam’s creative accounting, the business would have gone down years before.
‘Crooks, creditors, and Philistines,’ she continued, ‘I’ve been swatting the blood-sucking parasites away right up to the last moment. Bought us the time we need, and kept as much out of their hands as I can.
Spun a web of financial obfuscation that will keep us out of the debtors’ prison. But are you sure you want to go through with this? I mean, I’m no spring chicken. Too long in the tooth by far to start anything new.’
Hector looked at her, and the twinkle returned to his eye. ‘Oh, not true. For “thy eternal summer shall not fade /
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st …”’
‘You old fraud,’ said Miriam, as she took out a large dish from the oven. He’d been charming her with poetry for more than four decades–and it still worked. He’s a romantic old fool, she would think, but
he’s my romantic old fool. Well, apart from sharing him with the entire literary history of the world, that is.
‘I’ve wound up the company and set up the Trust,’ she said, as they sat down to eat. ‘And our apartment on the top floor of the Book Museum is furnished now. Did you get all the books you want for the Museum?
And the reading devices?’
‘Yep,’ said Hector. Then began singing, almost in tune, ‘We took all the books, put ’em in a Book Museum. And we’ll charge the people a hundred bucks just to see ’em
….’
‘You never stop dreaming, do you Hector!’
He smiled. ‘Even when dreams fail, sometimes you can carry on living in them. And from tomorrow when we’re in the Museum, that’s just what we’ll be doing. Literally, I think you could say.’
Andy Lake’s day job is researching, writing, and advising companies and governments about the future of work. When he takes his suit off, he writes about the future of anything. His futures are full of many opportunities which we subvert through our ignorance, recklessness, and idiosyncrasies. In short, “the future is something other than what is intended.”
www.andylake.co.uk
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14.
Jeremy Lichtman
It is nearly apsis in Ephis, The City on a Rock, the City that Almost Never Entirely Sleeps. We have traveled as far as we ever get from our little sun.
The Bright Side is on mood lighting now, and soon the light-siders will be flitting on over to the Night Side to play.
“You sure you can fix her in time?” Samir asks me. He plays gently with the keys of his piano, not pressing hard enough even to make a tone.
I’m standing in front of
him, fedora tucked under one arm, my small toolkit under the other. Most of my tools live in my head, but at times one must get physical in this trade.
I shrug. “I’ll do what can be done.”
“I swear that she’s star-struck or something. This happens every Apsis. Tuning just goes off for no reason.”
Samir looks tense.
There’s already a few folks grabbing hors d’eouvres, including a pretty Cy in the front row making digital moon-calf eyes at him.
“You folks had to do something stupid and make them smart,” he says. “You’re putting aye-eye in every darn thing these days.”
I’m pretty sure he means The Elegant Piano Company, and not me personally. I don’t make ’em. I fix ’em. These pianos are smart, though. That, indeed, they are.
I reach out, touch the piano with my mind,
make contact.
Aha! So this, this is how the wind blows.
“I think that I know what the problem is,” I tell him.
“Do tell me, my friend,” he says.
“She’s jealous. You keep staring at that Cy over there. I would bet you a hundred satoshis that she has been here often, of late.”
He throws his hands up in the air, and exclaims, “They're one and the same, my friend!
One mind, two bodies. Two bodies, one solitary mind.”
“You bought her a cybernetic body?”
“Indeed, indeed. We've been married ten years now.”
“I never knew that you two were married.
Felicitations, a marvel!” I reply. “However, I think perhaps there is, hrrmmm, how should I put it, a disphoria? She is jealous of herself! I can do no more. A doctor of the mind, not a humble fixer of musical instruments, is called for here.”
“I see,” he says.
“Pianos. Can't live with them . . .”
“Can’t play ‘As Time Goes By’ without them,” I finish for him.
Jeremy Lichtman is a software developer, based in Toronto, Canada. He writes in his spare time, in moments intended not to incur the wrath of his family.
http://jeremylichtman.com
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15.
Ami L. Hart
Kes glared at HanNam, offended that the Thickskin dare approach him.
He was exorbitantly ugly, his skin all hard and … crusty on the outside; Kes imagined the texture was similar to the baked clay on the undomed lands. Not everyone was as privileged as you were, growing up here, under the dome, Kes’s Pa-Ma would say with that fake ‘I tolerate all peoples’ tone, always the politician. The ruling Hermaphrodites were great pretenders, but Kes had little patience with such pretence, it took too much effort and he wasn’t a hypocrite.
Kes looked down at the object HanNam was holding up.
A gift? Kes wasn’t going to take a gift from a Thickskin. Gifts bind you to the giver. What was the creature trying to do? Instinctively suspicious, Kes wanted to slap HanNam’s clawed digits away, but that would mean touching. Curse the code.
Kes shifted uncomfortably. “What is it?” Curiosity overrode bigotry for a brief moment.
HanNam turned the object over in clumsy toughened hands. It was small, with a fine metal string. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“It’s a strange shape,” Kes mused, fascinated by the exotic object.
“Sensei Caspin thought you might know what it is.”
“Why?”
“You have access to the knowledge ports.”
So that was why the Thickskin had sought him out. Being the spawn of the Hermaphroditic ruling powers was both a blessing and a curse; one was expected to know everything. Kes loathed to study.
“You think this … thing is a relic? Where did you find it?” Kes demanded.
HanNam shrugged, suddenly vague, his words not forming properly as he stuttered about, talking in mumbling circles.
Lying. Thickskins did not have the mind for it. The hard sun clearly baked their brains as well as their exterior epidermis.
“There's a hinge, but
… I can’t open it.”
Kes stood there as HanNam went through the painful process of trying to prise open the trinket, brown stubby claws sliding uselessly over the smooth metal surface.
Gratefully, Kes saw a solution, and truth be told, anything would be better than watching the awkward creature attempt something that was clearly physically impossible. “Come with me, and bring that.” Kes led him through the bazaar, ignoring surprised glances from rubbernecked onlookers and trying to take the route less travelled, leading him to Kes’s private suite through the twists and turns. Once inside, Kes pointed to the analysis pad. HanNam placed the object down with gentle reverence.
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” Kes hissed, running a smooth hand over the display and beginning the diagnostic. Last thing he needed was someone reading meaning into his actions, especially now that the code had changed. He shivered, not wanting to think about the fate of a sibling who no longer held a lofty place in dome society. She chose the low way, spurning self-fertilisation for a messy interspecies exchange.