Tomorrow’s World Read Free

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.
    â€œPlease 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