The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella (21 page)

*

EPILOGUE

One hundred years later...

The alarm buzzed inside Louis Santino's
apartment at 6:37 am. Santino had not set the alarm as humans had
to do in the past. The Network automatically calculated his wake-up
time based on data stored in his individual profile. Using his
expected commute time including adjustments for real-time weather
or traffic conditions; the amount of time he took for breakfast;
and his grooming and morning exercise routine, The Network
determined how many minutes he would take from rising out of bed to
arriving at work.

Picking up his com, a palm-sized,
flat-screen plastic electronic device the size of a playing card
with a velcro-like adhesive attachable to any type of clothing,
Santino fell back onto the bed to view his daily schedule. All
communication devices, or electronic tools with similar features,
were called a com, the abbreviated term replacing a range of
recognizable words like phone, radio, television, camera, or
personal electronic device. Although a com could be any size or
shape, and manufactured to operate within almost any device, all
had one shared function, wireless connectivity to The Network.
After selecting an icon on the device, a daily calendar image
opened as a transparent screen suspended in the air in front of
Santino's eyes and displayed his activities for his day. Santino
rarely checked his schedule, but the action was a convenient delay
tactic to avoid instantly getting out of bed.

His schedule was automatically adjusted and
updated using factors from his life, work and habits. The Network
accounted for every minute of Santino's day except bathroom breaks.
No technology had yet been developed to predict exactly when an
individual would require a bowel movement. Although Santino looked
at the activities on his schedule, his gesture bordered on
indifference, he would not be deviating from any instruction sent
by The Network, he never had. Standing up, he performed a few quick
stretching exercises and went to the bathroom. In the shower, he
selected the 'water on' button. The Network had warmed the water to
his desired temperature and when the stream came out, the nozzle
provided exactly the pulse and intensity he desired before
automatically shutting off to allow him to soap up. He hit 'on'
again when he was ready to rinse off. By holding down the button
for an extra three seconds, he could override the automatic water
conservation features. Santino lived in northern Canada where water
shortages were not an issue. In the southern U.S. states, prolonged
drought forced people to ration supply, and water-control showers
were mandatory in every installation. In those areas, The Network
maintained control over how long water ran during each shower
use.

The Network had several other manual
overrides and options for humans to retake control of activities
the system was programmed to manage. But most humans allowed the
system to default their life actions for them. With the exception
of profoundly underdeveloped areas, every human born on earth, or
in outer space, received a Network profile with the generation of a
birth certificate. From that day forward The Network populated the
profile with data about the individual and used the data to
generate life instructions for those willing to accept the
convenience. The Network continuously scanned servers, even those
not exposed to the public Internet to retrieve, cross-reference,
and integrate data inputted as official government records,
generated education results, consultations, food consumption, text
and voice communications, videos and photos, and employment
reports. In public areas, recorded movements from cameras and
sensors tracking all manner of human activity were automatically
stored on servers too and retrieved when facial recognition and
body movement software was used to identify suspicious individuals.
The mass of data files was aggregated through a variety of
government or business software applications to create and send
appropriate daily life instructions, specifically prepared for each
individual's com. The Network provided access to millions of
programs and applications designed to continuously repurpose data
to feed a human's com, and the human reacted accordingly.

Santino dried off, dressed and wandered
towards the kitchen. He lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in
one of the few mid-sized high-rises built along the main road in
the small hydroelectric power station town of Grand Rapids. In
major cities, population densities prompted urban planners to build
all spaces vertically, and the population lived, worked and played
within inter-connected high rises. But small towns maintained
separate buildings unconnected by tunnels or subways or people
movers or mass transit stations. Santino could look out his window
and see rows of bungalows and two-story houses with driveways and
backyards. In the cities only the wealthy and the highest-paid
professionals lived in individual family houses in suburban
residential areas. No one else could afford the maintenance costs
for private utilities that the neighborhoods had to pay to remain
connected to The Network controlled electricity, water and
sanitation systems. Approaching his mid-forties, Santino would have
preferred to be in a house, he enjoyed the idea of space and access
to private land. But he was hoping to find a wife first, and move
into a house with children. Most days, he devoted a few hours to
online dating. But although women enjoyed speaking with him, they
were reluctant to travel to a small town in the cold Canadian north
to spend time with a man, when the amusements and options in the
city were readily accessible. Still he hoped one day he could
entice a woman to at least visit him. If only he could convince a
woman to try, he could demonstrate his ability to offer a family a
comfortable life, including vacations in warm weather locations,
and all the amenities and conveniences available in advanced
societies.

Maybe this weekend he would receive a
positive response, Santino thought as he entered the kitchen.
Lights illuminated and the coffee maker automatically began brewing
when he passed by sensors in the doorframe at the kitchen's
entryway, which cross-referenced his presence to the time of day.
From his fridge, he extracted two eggs, bread, butter, and orange
juice. He preferred his own cooking to the processed options
available to order or buy in a store, especially since The Network
monitored eating as part of creating health alerts. The system
cross-referenced the food items with his medical records and
recommended changes if his vital signs showed any signs of stress.
But too many alerts led to an increase in health insurance
premiums, which healthy people always tried to avoid. A sensor
recorded the items removed and replaced from the fridge, and an
electronic grocery list on the fridge door flashed a message if any
product was running low. A similar list appeared on his pantry
door. Santino could add or delete items as desired, but he never
actually read the grocery list. His fridge was never empty, he
never went grocery shopping, and he was never without his preferred
food on any given day. The grocery lists indicated the current
amount of each item and noted when replenishment items would be
automatically ordered for delivery by a commercial drone. The
kitchen list information was connected to the closest grocery
store, which delivered replenishments every week without
prompting.

Along with the lights, a monitor screen had
lit up and was displaying the broadcast from a sports channel.
Santino listened to the commenters talking about football. Today
was Sunday and he would have professional games on all day while at
work. Another screen was projected above the sports, and displayed
the temperature and news headlines. Trying to remain engaged with
the broader world, Santino checked news every morning to ensure he
was not missing any important world events. In general, he was
interested in other regions still experiencing civil unrest or
threats from hostile neighbors or violent crime. These stories were
always intriguing since global surveillance using cameras and
sensors made criminal activity difficult to plan and execute
outside the vision of official electronic eyes. Still, a large
segment of the population, more than the government cared to admit,
were diligently working to avoid The Network. Some were vocal and
public about their activities, living in rural towns and remote
areas and encouraging the broader populace to join them; others
were hiding from law enforcement or seeking to sabotage The
Network's control of personal information. Santino was never really
sure what to make of these people. He could not imagine functioning
without The Network, the whole world ran on the inter-connection of
electronic devices. Still he sometimes felt he should do more on
his own volition, but often he could not imagine exactly what
'more' would mean.

Besides the international news, he glanced
at domestic headlines, but he was less engaged in the
pronouncements of governments who claimed to have appealing ideas
aimed at creating a more productive life. The national government
used The Network to set all its policies and to calculate taxes to
pay for its pronounced plans. Since The Network could predict
government revenues to the minute, taxpayers fought for stricter
fiscal spending and less debt. Depending on the administration, the
response was action or indifference. Either way, Santino avoided
listening to government excuses. His life, he determined, was
sufficient, although not ideal, but the missing pieces were hardly
the purview of any government to satisfy, at least not yet.

Finishing breakfast, he placed his dishes in
the dishwasher. The machine determined the capacity, but did not
start since a cycle had run two days earlier and the pieces inside
were not enough to indicate Santino would soon run out of clean
dishes. As he walked out of the kitchen, the coffee, lights and TV
monitor turned off. With his com attached to a strap on his belt,
he took a look in the mirror and walked out. The Network locked his
door and turned down the heat in his apartment.

Arriving in the lobby of his apartment
building, Santino greeted his neighbors who were waiting for their
transports, driverless vehicles with the functionality to hover
through the air forward, backward and sideways, or to move with
wheels on bare floor, carpet, gravel, grass, cement, ice, snow and
heated terrain. Through the building's glass front doors, Santino
could see the snow and ice covering the town's landscape, but
neither he nor any of his neighbors wore coats, boots or other cold
weather gear. Instead they waited as each transport came directly
to the door. Since only one transport could fit in the lobby's
vestibule at a time, they patiently allowed each other to proceed
in the order of the transport's arrival. Humans owned personal
transports or hired the vehicles on a usage basis. Either way each
trip was programmed and automatically controlled via The Network
and average commute times were calculated for each distance
traveled, for every trip ever taken. The Network would also know
weather and traffic conditions for the day. Despite transports
flying flexibility, to avoid disturbing people in their residences
or disrupting the tranquility of parks and public areas, all
vehicles were programmed to travel on or above the routes laid out
by paved roads. No significant traffic congestion resulted from
this directive, transports automatically adjusted to other
transports, drones, birds, and other objects in the air to avoid
collisions. However speed concessions were made when more vehicles
were moving at the same time, and snow or heavy rain could
interfere with the controls and force slower, more cautious
routings.

Santino traveled to work in his own private
transport, which permitted him to keep the vehicle stocked with his
favorite drinks and snacks. On arrival, the lobby door opened at
the same time the transport door opened and he climbed in without
feeling a blast of cold air. As the transport door closed, the
vehicle's sensors read data from Santino's com, and a monitor
screen popped up to display the same sports channel he had been
viewing over breakfast. He reclined in his chair, which was set to
his height and comfort levels, and lay back to watch the show as
the vehicle rose off the ground and pointed in the direction of his
workplace.

Less than half of the employed population
physically went to work each day, but Santino was a technician in
the hydroelectric power station. His job, which was to monitor the
operations for issues, required his presence inside the facility.
Built at the top of two lakes in Manitoba, a province in the middle
of Canada, the power station was one point of a multi-billion
dollar interlocking grid of clean energy plants, reservoirs,
sub-stations, and thousands of miles of transmission lines
stretching across North and Central America for 6,000 miles from
the Arctic mining towns at the furthest northern end to south of
the Panama Canal. The grid was a significant source of electrical
power for a dependent population of over seven hundred million
people, and a vital distributor of water for the agricultural
centers of the continent. To ensure continuous production, the
Grand Rapids complex had more than 10,000 cameras and sensors,
dozens of operational drones, and one human employee on site per
shift.

Upon arrival at the plant, a garage-like
door automatically opened as the transport carried Santino into the
facility. The departing overnight employee was already waiting
inside his own transport to leave as soon as Santino arrived. His
colleague immediately passed by with a brief nod of greeting before
the garage door rolled back down again. Santino climbed out of the
transport. Sensors registered his arrival by locking on the signal
from his com. The Network automatically noted his arrival time,
which was within three minutes of the time determined from the
moment Santino had woken up at the sound of his alarm.