A Timeless Journey (16 page)

Luna turned the shield to ‘foggy white’ mode using the remote control so no one could see inside and invited me in. We walked through the shield into an empty but already warmer space inside. Luna pulled out of the rest of the camping kit made of a small see-through material. She then pressed a little button in one of the corners and the material inflated into a double airbed. Two chairs and a table were inflated next. The wonders of the 26
th
century technology never ceased to surprise me.

In no time at all, I found myself standing in a warm, improvised square room on top of the highest mountain in the middle of winter, astonished and speechless. The protective shield had a soft mode so we could walk through it and a hard mode which turned the shield impenetrable and Luna set one of the four walls in soft mode for us to use as an entrance. The camping kit had everything we needed in it and more. I can’t explain what kind of material expanded like this or how it was possible to put every object around me in a small box. Camping remote control was linked only to that specific camping kit and had no connection with Link or Holo. This feature was important to protect the privacy of users as it couldn’t get hacked.

The future never failed to amaze me and after the initial surprise for what I had witnessed, we decided to go for a walk around the holiday resort. The place was the size of a small 21
st
century town, but with very tall buildings and this is why there were a lot of people walking about. It was especially crowded at the edge of the resort, on the opposite side of the mountain. There was a giant see-through balcony from which we could see way down. In the horizon there were several floating air cities hovering between the winter clouds in the horizon. It was a breath-taking view. If you looked across for long enough, you may convince yourself that it is possible to jump onto the white clouds underneath and run towards the air cities.

A floating gravity-free cube transported us upwards to the floating restaurant building above the edge of the platform where we had made plans to have lunch. We waited for more than half an hour in the restaurant lobby with a drink in hand, until an eating booth became available. Although the restaurant was a ten story floating building of a unique architecture with plenty of space, it was still very busy due to the end of the year holidays. The prices during the end of year holidays were a lot more expensive than usual for a meal due to the high demand. We managed to order whilst we were waiting and as soon as we sat in the booth and turned on the outside view, our meal arrived.

Suddenly, I found myself floating in air as the floor turned invisible together with the rest of the booth. My vertigo suddenly returned violently when I looked down at thousands of feet void between me, the clouds and the ground below. I took my time between the deep breaths to recover and come to terms with the invisible floor beneath my feet. It felt like I was walking in the air, just like taking that imaginary famous ‘leap of faith’ and it didn’t feel comfortable at all.

It took me some time to get used to the height and the fact there was a floor under my feet. Once I did, I enjoyed every moment of this unique dining experience. The snowy mountain peak above our heads, the view of the floating cities in the horizon, the experience of dining above the clouds and the feeling of freefalling from the top of the highest mountain was truly a breath-taking one. When the fear of heights has eased, I felt really glad to have taken the decision to visit different places around the world with Luna instead of spending the whole week there. As amazing as this place was, my fears got the better of me.

The night in the camping tent felt literally like living in a bubble. It was intimate and yet so close to other people. Being from a world where privacy means hiding from the prying eyes and ears, I found difficult to accept the fact that no one could hear or see us from outside.

In the morning we had some breakfast pills and prepared for the next trip. I don’t know if it was Luna who had chosen truly brilliant places to visit or every place in the future was like the two I had visit up to that moment. I couldn’t wait to fly southwards towards Australian continent and Antarctica and find out if these placed would live up to my high expectations.

20

The days were flying by quickly while we travelled from one place to another. On our fourth and fifth day, we visited the huge vertical floating farms of middle Australia and the Antarctic continent which in the 26
th
century had three cities and a population of nearly three hundred million. The vertical floating farms were a common feature in the future, but those of Australia were the largest in the world, occupying the whole of inland what used to be the Australian outback. The deserted land of 21
st
century was now a gigantic farmland itself due to the shade created by the hanging farms and the water that came down from the plant irrigation.

There were thousands of several hundred meters high planted walls that hang across the Australian heartland covering mile upon mile. We flew with our Emze above the hanging farms and as I looked down at the vegetation, I was under the impression that it must have taken hundreds of years to build this type of miracle farming.

We landed in a small holiday resort near Lake Mackay in the Gibson Desert and went for a walk under the floating farm. Imagine hundreds and hundreds of miles of gravity-defying, self-made vertical farmland hovering above your head like paper files hang in a cabinet draw as the sun penetrates in between the sheets of land to create line after line of giant shadows on the hilly surface of middle Australia. It was there where the gravity defying technology made perfect sense and justified its existence.

After having lunch in the resort, we flew towards the east coast to visit the megacity of Gold Coast. Living up to its name, most of the building and the surroundings in this megacity were covered in a gold colour and this unique feature was the main reason why people visited the megacity. It made an amazing view seeing the effects the gold colour reflecting from the buildings created while blending with the natural light.

We managed to find a guest space in the megacity and spent the night there before our next trip in the morning. Thanks to the time difference, we had a few extra hours in the morning. Luna and I used the extra time to relax in the guest space.

Later in the day we travelled to Antarctica which had a very special feature that I will never forget. I had the opportunity of travelling beneath the thick layer of ice through a route which was opened some hundred years ago from human and interplanetary scientists. On the other side of the ice I could see frozen plants and animals from the time when the planet was at the nearest point to the Sun and Antarctica was covered by vegetation instead of ice.

All three cities in Antarctica had the same protective dome as the one in the Intergalactic City. Inside this shield, it was as warm as in the megacity of New York during springtime. We managed to visit two out of three cities during our stay there. The one that we didn’t visit was more of a research town inhabited mostly by scientists and family members of past scientists, rather than a city.

On New Year’s Eve, Luna and I had planned to travel to New York. According to her, New York was the best place on the planet to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. Billions of people from around the world gathered in the megacity each year to experience what was considered the best New Year party in the world. During the festive season, the protective shield was activated to serve as a giant sky screen for the visual effects and also to keep the megacity warm and dry.

The only time the protective shields were used over the cities and megacities around the world, was during the celebrations at the turn of the year and in the event of extreme and ‘uncontrolled’ weather. I say uncontrolled, because in the future they were able to control the weather up to a point.

They had this sophisticated network of satellites in Earth’s orbit which monitored the global vaporisation and calculated the cloud formation around the planet and sent the data to a specialised computer system. After being analysed, the data was sent back to the network of satellites together with the command where to send the precipitations. The satellites executed the command by bombarding the mapped areas with some kind of frequency waves which affected the clouds in molecular level and redirected their formation. The science behind this technology was a lot more complicated and with my level of knowledge I have, it’s impossible to explain.

This weather system explained why I had never seen any rainfall during my stay in the Laguna City. Anything less than a storm was diverted onto the farmland or directed over the ocean, depending on the needs of the farmers. If there was a threat of a hurricane or a monster storm, they would put the protective shields up in the cities and megacities in its path. Apparently the network of satellites was too weak to redirect a large gathering of clouds the size of a hurricane.

Lastly, I have to mention that only the Global Government AI system had the power to activate the shields once it identified an event and all the Local Government AI system could do was follow orders and apply to the main system when the shield wasn’t needed. Everything worked like clockwork in the future. The local and global AI systems were programmed to the smallest detail possible and with the passing of time, the court cases and the planetary vote to better the rules, had made these virtual government systems even more unfaultable.

Luna and I returned to our apartment at the Laguna City and spend most of the New Year’s Eve day inside recovering from our five day trip around the globe. When evening arrived, we travelled to New York and parked the Emze in Luna’s workplace since there were no spaces left in the public parking buildings around the megacity centre. We walked outside and stood for a while on the space between moving lanes and Luna’s office observing the crowds passing by.

The moving lanes were full of visitors wandering around the megacity in search for the perfect place where to witness the New Year sky show. Thirty minutes before midnight the local AI system announced through each individual Link connected to the event that everything would be brought to a halt in fifteen minutes time. Every moving lane in the megacity was going to stop fifteen minutes before midnight while everyone was going to wait impatiently for the countdown.

It was getting really busy around. Suddenly, Luna developed a suspicious smile.

“Scott, you have access to your office in the Institute, right?” She asked.

I released a prolonged ‘yes’. I had a feeling that she was going to come up with a strange request I couldn’t fulfil.

“I have never seen the display from the roof of the institute.”

“Actually, this is not a bad idea. Why didn’t I think of this before?”

“Can we?” She asked impatiently.

“I have no idea, but it’s worth trying. Come on, let’s go!”

I took her hand and moved swiftly between the moving lanes until we reached the Institute of World History. The scanners on both side of the door didn’t allow me to walk in. I panicked. Link felt my panic and guided me to a side entrance. From there I could bypass the museum and travel up directly to my office. I guided the cube to the roof instead. The cube didn’t refuse and Luna and I, found ourselves inside the tip of one of the chards. From that height we were able to see everything around us.

“Luna, come and lay down with me.”

“Apologies Scott, I forgot you’re scared of heights.”

“No I’m fine, as long as I don’t look down. I just think it is more romantic, that’s all.”

Luna obeyed and lay next to me. I had worked there for a while now and this was the first time I had been on the roof. It was so peaceful.

At midnight, after the countdown, the celebrations began and it was truly magical seeing the dome providing a giant light display, if you could call it that, because it was so much more than a light display as billions of people celebrated in the spaces between the buildings in every corner of the megacity.

Music played softly inside our heads thanks to the Link synchronizing with the main event system. The dome lit up and we admired in silence the festive display all around us above our heads. Luna and I looked at each other and then we kissed under the light display.

“Thank you Scott! This is the best New Year I’ve ever had.”

“Ditto,” I replied. “This is my first New Year here and with this light display and you by my side, I don’t think I will ever have a better one.”

There was a moment when my mind drifted back to Sophie and my family. My immense joy for being with the one I loved awoke the guilt for being selfishly happy while the people I had known all my life were probably still suffering my loss.

I wondered what was going through their minds on this very special night 560 years ago. I had been missing for more than six months in the old reality. I wished they knew I was safe and enjoying every moment of my new life in the future, although I was aware that it was impossible for them to know. My parents must have gone through hell not knowing what happened to me and probably were still looking for answers. As for Sophie, I truly believed she had already moved on.

After the celebrations, Luna and I travelled back to our apartment to spend the remainder of the night in the privacy room. In the morning, we had to return to our travel schedule. The wonders I had seen in the last week gave me hope for the rest of our travels. The future never stopped to amaze me. Every day I learned something new and saw remarkable things. My wish to return to the 21
st
century was slowly turning into a nightmare. I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life and had no idea what I was going to decide if the anomaly returned someday.

Our next destination was the Aztec pyramids in Mexico region, where the ancient interplanetaries had first landed on Earth. Together with the Incas ruins in Machu Picchu and the Mayans in Guatemala in the two days that followed, made for an interesting fact-learning journey for me in relation with the early presence of interplanetaries in our planet and the real purpose of the pyramids.

After the Aztecs and the Mayans, the next journey took us to mount Nyiragongo volcano between Congo and Rwanda in the heart of the African continent. This region was a completely different place compare to the one that it used to be in the 21
st
century. Not that I had ever been in Africa in the 21
st
century, but I am sure the cities and the megacities with skyscrapers and advanced civilisation didn’t exist back then.

We managed to find a guest space in the megacity of Goma and travelled to the lava lake in the mount’s main crater. This without a doubt was the scariest experience of this holiday as we travelled through a see-through passage inside the volcano.

The structure, which ran through deep inside the crater into the heart of the volcano, was made of a resistant transparent-looking material not available on Earth. After noticing the lack of confidence I showed followed by my refusal to travel through this dangerous-looking passage, Luna assured me that it was safe. The technology and the material of this passage had come from another galaxy, she explained. No one knew the science behind this technology, but the existence of it had helped scientists make huge progress in understanding earth’s core.

Although not entirely convinced, I accepted to travel down the pipe. We descended deep in the heart of the volcano as I scarily stared at the molten fluid rock moving slowly around us. Strangely there was no heat coming from the walls around, despite the fact that lava was only inches away. Looking at the hot lava so close up from inside a volcano was a unique experience. Nevertheless, there was this fear in me urging not to try this again if I had another chance.

Amongst other places we visited, was a subaquatic city at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean between the Japanese and the French Polynesian islands. We reached the bottom of the ocean by travelling down a huge pipe-shaped protective shield which started above the ocean surface and finished inside the city’s protective dome. The resort looked like a giant shining air bubble at the bottom of the ocean.

The best feature of this city was an exploring transparent tunnel similar to the one in Antarctica. The tunnel stretched around the ocean bed for miles. During our stay here, we travelled through this tunnel in our Emze at a low speed, something at the rate of twenty miles per hour, enabling us to observe different species of fish and the wilderness on the ocean bed, as far as the artificial light illumination was able to unveil.

Before we returned home, we stopped on our last day at the site that used to be Area 51. Since there were no more secrets in the future, this place had turned into the Museum of Manmade Machines. Every civilian and military machine ever made mostly from the 19
th
century until the present day, including space shuttles, planes and helicopters, was exhibited here. The whole exhibition was of great interest to a generation who never knew the experience of riding in a petrol fuelled vehicle. It was the most visited site on the planet and for this reason the museum had won year after year the most popular destination award.

With the discovery of how to capture zero-point energy and a better understanding of the science behind the magnetic field, the use of a fuel engine had fallen out of favour until it was outlawed completely. Most people in the 26
th
century could not understand how primitive and desperate humanity had been in the past to use dangerous burning materials for travel purposes. For someone born in the future this museum was one of the top interests to visit, for me instead, was a different feeling entirely.