Five and a Quarter: Hard Science Fiction, page 1
FIVE AND A QUARTER
Hard Science Fiction
BRANDON Q. MORRIS
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Around the campfire
Also by Brandon Q. Morris
Are we living in a simulation?
Chapter One
West End Girls—doodahdoodoo, West End Girls—doodahdoodoo. Too many ... What? Too many scarves? John grimaced. Couldn’t the Pet Shop Boys mumble a little less when they sang? And now the presenter was talking over the song by his favorite band that had just woken him up.
“Good morning, friends! You’re listening to Nostalgia Radio—the best hits of the eighties and...”
John hit the big button on the alarm clock. He couldn’t stand cheerful people first thing in the morning, especially those who were in-your-face about it.
The alarm clock screen showed 6:32 a.m. He’d been lying in bed two minutes too long. John pulled the blanket aside. It fell onto the bed next to him, where the pillows and blanket were perfectly placed. Optimus insisted on making both sides of the double bed fresh every day. John might have visitors. Not that this danger was real, but it was virtually impossible to talk Optimus out of something he had calculated as a possibility in his internal simulations. A few years ago, John could have ordered him to change his mind, but since robots had been recognized as semi-conscious beings, they also had a right to their own opinions.
John sat up. The soles of his bare feet grounded him. The laminate floor was pleasantly cool. The same hot, summer weather they’d had last week was forecast for today. The clattering of dishes could be heard from the kitchen. John got up, went to the door, and walked through it into the hallway. The kitchen was on the left. This door had a frosted glass insert through which he could see Optimus’ silhouette. The robot was moving back and forth between the Thermomat and the dining table.
John pushed the door open.
“You have seven minutes left,” Optimus called out.
“Good morning, Opti.”
“Good morning, Johnny.
“You have seven minutes left.”
“I know.”
John went to the bathroom to take a shower.
The scrambled eggs were perfect. And the vegetarian ham was delicious.
“You’ve done a great job again,” John praised him.
Optimus made his cheeks blush artificially and waved his hand dismissively. “It’s not my doing. Thank the Thermomat.”
The Thermomat was the automatic stove. Household objects had no rights, but John waved to the machine anyway. He was a friendly person, and as the saying went: What goes around comes around.
He brought the cup to his mouth and took a sip. The coffee was the perfect temperature, but a little weak. John hadn’t yet managed to teach the Thermomat that it didn’t have to worry about the prescribed maximum caffeine content. He put the cup back down. John always left a little bit in it. It was his favorite cup. He had chosen it because of the saying on it: “An admin never sleeps.” But the manufacturer had printed a smiley face on the bottom of the cup, and he couldn’t handle that in the morning. He pushed the cup with the leftover coffee to the middle of the table.
“You have to leave the house in twelve minutes,” Optimus announced.
John nodded. “I know.”
Optimus furrowed his eyebrows but said nothing. What was wrong with him?
“Thanks for pointing that out,” John added, and the robot’s face returned to its default configuration.
“Please don’t forget to warn me if you’re bringing someone with you.” Every morning, Optimus walked with him to the front door, where he handed his owner a small container of food. John corrected his thinking. Semi-conscious beings didn’t have owners, they had clients.
“I’m not bringing anyone home with me.”
“But weren’t you going to talk to Nathalie from accounting?”
John sighed. He didn’t stand a chance with Nathalie. Who wanted to date someone from the basement? He shrugged.
“I see you’re undecided,” said Optimus. “Should I book an hour with the psychomodule for 7 p.m.?”
“No, please, that’s not necessary. I’m doing just fine on my own.”
Optimus shook his head. “Humans are social creatures, Johnny. You should socialize with other people. But now you have to go, or you’ll miss the subway.”
The last thing John saw in his apartment was the blue floor covering directly behind the front door. It was an ugly color. Otherwise, the apartment building, which must have been built sometime in the mid-twentieth century, was in pretty good shape; after all, it had been completely renovated just ten years ago.
The train pulled into platform B at exactly 7:53 a.m. John sat down. There was always a free window seat at the front of car three. It probably stayed free even when the subway was full because it sat facing opposite the direction of travel. Or maybe everyone knew that it was John’s seat.
He grinned. As if! With a flick to his earlobe, he started the audio player. The Pet Shop Boys continued their song, which the announcer had interrupted at 6:32 a.m. with his stupid announcement.
The journey took seventeen minutes. As the radio played “It’s a Sin,” John looked around. It was peaceful. The noise of the subway drowned out the few words exchanged between the other passengers. John tried to read their lips. It was probably nothing more than pleasantries. Only a little boy seemed to want to tell his mother a never-ending story; she looked annoyed, but he didn’t notice. Two elderly ladies had brought their robots with them and leaned on their shoulders as they hobbled to the seats reserved for those who needed them. The robots swung themselves deftly into a compartment at head height so as not to waste any space.
At ten past eight, he stepped off in the new city center. As with many other office workers, an escalator carried him up to daylight and spat him out onto a wide sidewalk shaded by mighty lime trees. The audio player was playing “Suburbia,” which didn’t fit at all. John fast-forwarded to “Go West” and had to smile because he was actually walking west.
His employer had set up in a newly built office complex. John could have taken the subway one stop closer, but then he wouldn’t reach his recommended daily step count. That wouldn’t have any consequences except that Optimus would remind him to take care of his health every evening thereafter.
The large clock in the foyer showed exactly 8:30 a.m. as he stepped through the security gate.
“Welcome, John,” said a deep voice. “Today you have,” it paused briefly, “exactly zero appointments.”
John grinned. He hardly ever had appointments. That was the advantage of working in the basement. He walked over to the elevator and pressed the button to go down. The next moment, he felt warm. That perfume—it must be Sonia standing next to him. Sonia with an i, as she called herself.
Sonia was nice. He turned toward her, and she smiled at him.
“Welcome, John,” she imitated the system voice, and she got her voice surprisingly low. “Today you have,” she didn’t forget the pause, “exactly one appointment.” He smiled back. The elevator made a “ping” sound and the door slid open. No one exited. The down arrow lit up. Now it was his turn to get in and go to the basement. John forced himself not to look at the people standing around, who were now surely frowning. It wasn’t him. He hadn’t pressed the down button.
Ding. The down arrow went out, and the up arrow lit up. Relief filled him. John got in with everyone else.
It was quiet in the elevator. Everyone gazed stubbornly ahead, toward the door. Sonia got out on the third floor, and he followed her as if remote-controlled. She looked good in her business suit. Sonia wasn’t a classic beauty. Her hips were a little too wide, her legs a little too short, but she had a great smile that made him want to talk to her.
Unfortunately, she had a boyfriend. The only colleague who openly admitted to being single was Nathalie from accounting. That was why Optimus was always trying to set him up with her. The robot believed that they were genetically perfect for each other after finding a hair from Nathalie on John’s clothes and conducting a genetic analysis. John wasn’t sure if this story was true. But he never asked.
They reached the coffee room. Its industrial-grade Thermomat could prepare eighty or so different hot drinks. Having coffee with Sonia here was a real adventure. They entered together. Of course, the Thermomat knew them both. Could it anticipate what they would do next? In any case, it didn’t offer them a drink. Sonia and John took turns. First, she turned around and he entered a number between 1 and 99. Then it was her turn.
The Thermomat prepared both drinks at the same time. John took the cup intended for him from the dispenser and handed Sonia hers.
“I’m curious to try,” said Sonia, as always.
John nodded, smiled, and sipped his cup. It was a soymilk-based drink, slightly sweetened and ho
“Coconut soymilk latte,” he guessed.
Sonia tried hers too. “Ginger chocolate cold brew,” she guessed.
They’d never had the same drink. John squinted and checked the selection panel. He typed in 39.
“Ginger chocolate cold brew,” he confirmed.
“Coconut almond milk latte,” said Sonia, tilting her head. “You must have confused soy and almond milk.”
“Damn.” He pretended to be annoyed by furrowing his brow.
Sonia laughed briefly. “You look cute when you’re annoyed.”
He liked that sentence. Sometimes she changed it slightly. You look funny when you’re annoyed. You look adorable when you’re annoyed. He liked the “cute” version best.
Nothing further ever happened between them. Everything else hovered like a cloud of possibilities above their heads, promising, but the cloud wasn’t thick enough to make it rain. Besides, when it rained, you got wet, which was no fun. And after the rain, the clouds would disappear along with all their possibilities.
John took his almond milk latte and put a lid on it. He was the first to leave the coffee room. A colleague he knew only by sight squeezed past him and tried to strike up a conversation with Sonia, but she only replied in monosyllables and in a strangely high-pitched voice. It was as if she reserved her bass, or perhaps baritone, voice for John.
Against the flow of newly arriving colleagues, he walked back to the elevator that took him to where he belonged—the basement.
The basement was a hidden magical realm. While people and algorithms made decisions together upstairs, this was the realm of paper. Documents from the company’s early days were stored here; anything older than fifty years was considered world data heritage by law and must be maintained by its owner, just like world cultural and natural heritage.
John was responsible for doing this.
In the early days of his employment here, he had repeatedly tried to recruit more staff. The treasure trove of data stored here was enormous, and it was impossible for one person to manage it all. However, after his employer had firmly refused to support him, John had resorted to simply preserving the data.
The problem was technological progress. The holocubes that were part of every computer ten years ago had long since been replaced by DNA storage. But that also meant that the light sources for them were no longer being manufactured, and without these, the holos could not be read. The same applied to silicon-based chips, optical DVDs, and magnetic hard drives.
Fortunately, he had not yet come across any older media than that in the basement rooms. John stepped out of the elevator and took a deep breath. The air was dry. He went into the changing room. There were twelve lockers here, but only one had a name tag on it: JOHN was printed on it in capital letters. John put on the long white coat and the cap.
It was supposed to prevent him from scattering his hair everywhere. He slipped into comfortable shoes that also dissipated static electricity, and finally pulled on blue gloves. Done. A sophisticated air conditioning system cooled the rooms so that the temperature and humidity remained constant throughout the year. John shuffled into the next room.
Here he had a small desk with a computer on which he kept a to-do list. No one told him what to do. That was entirely his decision. For today, he had decided to work on a stack of silver discs, whose polycarbonate base material had been impressed with patterns that were read by a laser. The discs were unprinted, but bore a logo with the letters D, V, and D.
John bent down. Under his desk was a sealed box, delivered by a parcel service yesterday. He picked it up and set it on his desk to unpack it. Inside, he found a large pile of recycled paper with a rectangular box in the middle. He was pleased to see the logo on it too. Dealers who traded in this old-fashioned technology often tried to foist something completely different onto their unsuspecting customers. The main thing was that it look as old as possible. Most fans of old technology simply put these devices in their living rooms and admired them for their clunky design and primitive electronics. Very few devices could be used to converse in natural language.
But that was exactly what challenged John. You had to know exactly how to get these devices to reveal their secrets. He carefully removed the dust from the precious item with a special vacuum cleaner. He had seen a reader for these DVDs before, but it was built into an antique computer. This model here was obviously self-sufficient. First, he identified the power connection, which was made via a cable with two round plugs.
John turned away from the desk. He stored adapters in one of the metal cabinets at the back of the room. He rummaged around for a while until he found the right size. Now all he had to do was connect the old device to the adapter and clip it to one of the wireless charging pads on the wall.
The DVD reader rattled and some numbers lit up. Three characters appeared:
无光盘
John scratched his chin. The device appeared to be from abroad. Was that Chinese? He held his phone over it and the screen translated:
NO DISC.
Good. He reached for the stack on the desk. The silver discs were in transparent plastic packaging. He carefully opened the top one. A small piece of the packaging material broke off. It was clearly not as elastic as it used to be. The disc itself was stuck in the packaging. Oh, was the material stuck together? No. He noticed a raised area in the middle. He pressed it and the DVD came loose. He took it out.
The disc was not labeled. The file folder from which he had taken it described an important insurance claim from 1983. That was long before the invention of the DVD. One of his predecessors must have copied the material at some point. What had been used in 1983? Probably magnetic tapes of some kind.
John pressed the button next to a kind of drawer on the front of the DVD reader. It worked! The tray slid out. He inserted the disc, and the drawer retracted into the device all by itself. Some numbers appeared on the screen. John put his ear close to the device. The disc was spinning. The device was working. It just didn’t have an output channel.
He took a deep breath. He should have thought of that! John turned the device around. He found several circular and two square ports. The latter looked familiar. And sure enough, in tiny letters next to them were the words “HDMI 1” and “HDMI 2.” He had HDMI adapters. John went back to the cabinet and took them out. All he had to do was plug in the adapters. They contained their own streaming server that logged into the company’s internal network. His address was printed on the adapter. John connected his wristwatch to it and projected the image onto the smooth wall behind his desk using the watch’s built-in projector. The sound was a little thin because it came from the watch.
“...you didn’t notify the planning group?”
“It was already late, and there were no clear forecasts from the weather service.”
“And you didn’t even look out the window? The storm must have already been over the city!”
John stopped the playback, which showed a man in his forties wearing a neat suit and another, rather stressed-looking man between fifty and sixty in an interview situation. The interview was apparently about a damage claim. It was not unusual to find such old recordings. The accompanying paperwork had often been destroyed at some point. John redirected the playback to the recording server he set up himself. From there, he could later transfer the recordings to one of the company’s DNA storage banks.
He looked again at the timecode of the paused recording. December 1983. Both the interviewer and the interviewee were dressed strangely by today’s standards. Were those cowboy boots the younger of the two was wearing? And the older man’s jacket was definitely padded at the shoulders. He pressed the play button on the DVD again, but turned off the projector on his watch.
By lunchtime, John had copied five DVDs. He sighed when he looked at the stack on his desk. At this rate, it would take him about a week. But was it really that bad? He had peace and quiet, sat in an air-conditioned office, and wasn’t disturbed by anyone.
