The Future We Wish We Had

vineyards were nu-homes these days, and of course there were no more imports from France or Spain. This wine was, needless to say, from Italy. It had probably cost more than I earned in a month, with having to be transported across Asia.

I ate. There was no point in panic. Yet. Anyway, I have always been quite practical. I’d rather panic on a full stomach. The food was… sublime. Taste buds that I had never even known I had woke from their twenty-five year slumber and came to the party, and drank more of the wine than they ought to. Around me the livvy played the Italian hillsides and olive groves. The view, all the way to the jagged Ligurian coastline, was breathtaking.

A part of me said: “If this is prison, bring it on. I could get used to this.”

But deep inside another Andrea was saying, “You have to get out of here, now,” and threatening to start screaming. Not all of the livvy programming in the world has yet managed to do away with the need of humans to sometimes see and touch and speak to other real humans. They used to think that we’d all just disappear into virtual worlds and die there, but well, something about humanity just doesn’t work like that. We are social animals, I guess. I had to get out. But I wasn’t entirely sure just what I could do. I was trapped inside a conformational sphere. The highly plastic material of a nu-home would, according to the adverts, stop just about anything short of a thermonuclear explosion. It was a big selling point. I wasn’t going to kick or cut my way out. I had to somehow get its cooperation, or at least fool the Harry’s Bar unit. Computer logic and bot programming had never been my strong subjects. OK, maybe better than math. I never tried looking up “boys” on those modules. Well, after the math experience it didn’t seem worthwhile. I thought as I ate, and drank another glass of that classy wine. I mopped the last of the juices up with the crouton, and the bot took the plate.

“And did the Signorina enjoy her meal?” said the bot.

I decided to try humoring it. I didn’t have to lie, at least. “It was the tastiest and tenderest synthasteak I’ve ever eaten, Giovanni.”

The lights actually flickered right off and the broken Roman colonnade began to be resorbed into the walls. Had I given it a conflict seizure somehow? Could I just say “reset,” give my code and get back to my life, without the Harry’s Bar unit?

Then the livvy reset and the colonnade began to reform. “Signorna Andrea! As if I would ever give you synthasteak!” said the Harry’s Bar unit in a tone of utter horror. “That was the finest Japanese beef.”

I nearly threw up on the table. Meat. Dead animal. Not textured vat protein. I’d put dead animal into my mouth. “Need to brush my teeth,” I said desperately, getting to my feet, trying not to retch. It was what you were used to, I suppose. But I was going to get out of here before I had to get used to it. Somehow I had to get out of here. The house was already forming a basin with an electrobrush. The water had to go somewhere. Could I follow it out? Or send a message? I already realized that the crazy bot wouldn’t let me call anyone.

I suppose I let the situation get on top of me. I sat down and started crying.

“Cara mia! The toothbrush it is not your liking?” asked the ever-solicitous bot.

“No!” I said fiercely “It’s not the toothbrush. I want to go out.”

“But Signorina!” protested the bot tragically. If it had hair it would have pulled it out. “It is not safe. The contessa never went out, and I could not do for her what I can do for you, because her house it was of bricks and mortar. But the nu-home is wonderful. I can make it appear to be anywhere. I can change it into a wondrous palace. I can make it like a tropical island paradise. I just cannot open the portal.”

And I am still stuck inside a sphere, I thought, no matter how you contort the walls and show pretty pictures on the inside. Stuck and eating meat. Growing old- perfectly cared for, of course. And drinking too much, without ever seeing another real human or touching one. And I couldn’t even beat the Harry’s Bar unit to death with a frying pan, because in a nu-home there were no frying pans. Just the structure of the building, which my “protector” controlled. A hollow shell to keep me safe inside until I went mad or died of old age. Already I was longing for people. I didn’t think before that they meant much to me, but now I wanted to talk to, to look at, to touch other humans. Not livvies or a crazy bot. Livvies are fine when you have a choice. I wanted someone human, real. Marcus, so I could act all twentieth-century and fling myself on his chest and make it his problem, not that he’d have been any use. Or one of my girlfriends so we could at least go livvy-shopping together. Even one of the boys I’d chased as a hormonally challenged schoolgirl.

Boys…

Boys and mathematics. Search that sometime.

I did. There was a mathematician called Werner Boy who gave his name to a weird topological thing called a Boy’s surface. My mind groped through a fug of wine and cocktails for the details. The math module had showed me pictures, if not quite the ones I’d had in mind. It had also shown me an inky-footed computer ant… crawling around. I hadn’t really understood it, but the Mobius strip I had managed to get. And the little computer ant had run around the loop first and only come back to its own footsteps on the inside of the loop. And with the twist that made it into the Mobius strip on both sides. Inside and outside. The math article had said something about making a model of a Boy’s surface by “cutting” the top off a sphere and by sewing three rolled Mobius strips onto it… Well, something like that. I didn’t understand one word in ten.

But I did understand the inky-footed ant.

“Will you really turn my nu-home into any shape I want?” I asked with a little sniff.

“But of course, Signorina! It will be my joy. My delight. As long as you do not ask me to open the portal.”

“I won’t ask you to do that. If you promise?”

“For you, I would promise the stars, the moon…”

“Do you promise me that if you really love me you will change the shape into my wildest dream? No opening the portal, of course.”

“I promise. It will be my pleasure,” said the Harry’s Bar unit.

“Well, I’ll try a few,” I said, doing my best to sound interested without betraying the hammering of my heart. “What about a tall, thin tower?”

The walls drew in. Pretty soon there was barely room for a spiral stair going up. I clapped my hands. “Wonderful. You really are in control of it.”

“Ah, that was easy,” said the bot. “What about the Taj Mahal?”

“No. I want a Boy’s surface,” I said calmly.

The bot paused. “A what?”

“A Boy’s surface. Search under mathematics.”

There was a long pause. Long for a bot, anyway. “I can do the immersion…”

“Prove you love me. Show me the real thing,” I said, patting the Harry’s Bar’s upper surface. It hadn’t known what a Boy’s surface was. Perhaps it wouldn’t realize what it implied.

The nu-home began to change. It was obviously taking a lot of the calculating power because the livvy screening went blank and the walls returned to their natural beige. The pictures of the Boy’s surface had looked like a three-legged octopus eating itself. And that inky-footed ant had walked from the outside to the inside… of something born out of a sphere.

“Super,” I said, walking away as nonchalantly as I could. “Fix me a manticore special, would you.”

I hated manticores. But they took even a sophisticated machine like Harry’s Bar a good two minutes to make, and I had slipped my shoes off and was stumbling into one of the octopus arms. With any luck that rolled Mobius would take me out, even if I didn’t have ink on my feet. I ran for my freedom. Ran as fast as I could up the twisting passage. It was closing as I ran. But conformational surfaces take a while to change. Behind me, a despairing “Signorina, your manticore special” echoed.

I could see natural light, and I dived and crawled frantically through the gap to tumble out onto the grass.

Well, I was out. Out into a beautiful late afternoon.

But, well, wherever out was, it wasn’t the Greater United States. Or not as I remembered it. The flag on the flagpole outside the white stucco building had far too few stars. And the hillside was plaited with vines with autumn colors. There was a moment of shock… and then relief. It might not be the Greater United States. But it was out. Free. A life-prisoner is entitled to a bit of post-traumatic stress craziness when they break out. And, well, this looked nicer than home.

Maybe the clear air did something for my head. I remembered seeing something about non-Euclidean space in that math module. Stuff like pinch points and pseudo-Riemannian manifolds and extra dimensions had floated right above me.

But in the meantime, there was a really cute boy staring at me. I’d been half-convinced I’d never see one again.

And I felt I owed my interest in boys something.

Editor’s note: Do a search online for “Boy’s surface mathematics” when you get a chance. It’s fascinating.

TRAINER OF WHALES by Brenda Cooper

Kitha strained to see past the farm’s lights up into the darkness of the sea. Three great blue whales swam overheard, towing white nets full of sea-city products like farmed fish, sponges, and hand-made jewelry. Even harnessed, with the big bulky nets trailing beside them, the whales seemed full of grace and power. Kitha, on the other hand, was heavy in her farming suit, the weights around her waist set to keep her at just the right height to mind the deep-sea kelp that Downbelow Dome farmed. The waving multicolored fronds had once captivated her. She had made games of counting colorful engineered symbiote-fish and checking the great plants for damage and parasites, priding herself on how well she saw every detail of the beds. But now, a year into her new job, the enormity of her lost dreams was heavier than her pressurized and weighted suit.

Her sigh sent a froth of tiny bubbles up from her breather, a trail of precious air leaking along her face. She kicked hard, forcing her eyes down. It was off-harvest season, and all she had to do for the gene-engineered food crop was measure fronds and watch for broken stems.

A familiar attention-code sang into her ear. Kitha tongued her breather away so she could talk. “Jonathan? How was school?” They’d argued this morning, and she wasn’t even sure he’d gone to school.

“Boring, Mom. Can I go to Lincka’s? Her mom is home this shift and she promised to create cookies and set out a game for us.”

Kitha winced. It was good Jonathan wanted to be around an adult. If only he wanted to be around her as much as she wanted to be a good mother. “Sure, honey. But you have to be home by seven.”

“But bedtime’s not until nine!” he protested.

Kitha would be off shift at six, and this meant she’d go home to an empty apartment. She inhaled, biting down on her breather so hard she was afraid to open her