Mia3008. Rough Draft Novel by Royce Barber. 11-13-2008. Written in the form of a diary.
Setting: Space Stations and Earth Gardens.
Time: The year 3008.
I'm writing in a new digital journal
today. The old built-in one was broadcasting my personal entries to
public radios. This journal entry is dated the 11th month, 13th day,
of the year 3008. I'm aboard a malfunctioning transportation space
ship. The ship is headed from a mechanical moon colony, to Earth.
Earth is a beautiful garden planet where no one lives. People are
only allowed on Earth as tourists on vacation. The entire Earth is a
lush green wildlife preservation. Everyone lives on space ships and
scraps of tattered, tangled junk storage-tanks floating through
space, tethered by magnetics to the Earth's moon. The moon itself is
stained multiple colors by humanities sprawling mountain of floating
junk. I like the blue stripe from a series of chemical explosions a
year ago, attempting to outline a runway project for presidential
ships. The runway was sabotaged, like everything else around here.
Now the president must ride in a transport ship like anyone else. The
various levels of society all must ride the same junk transport ships
to get from the moon to earth. There are many security guards aboard
the transport ship. I'm a security guard, writing you this letter
from within my armored suit. This suit is completely automated with
Artificial Intelligence, so I generally watch TV and help direct
traffic. It's my job to keep the suit functioning, as it's quite
broken most of the time. Little blinky lights, steam, and gears are
always blinking, wheezing, and spazing about like robotics do. I just
swat at my arm battery pack and the suit pauses for a moment to make
sure it's not under attack. This is the peaceful time when I write my
journal entries. Often the screen flickers and I see the view
perspective of other guard suits. Interesting things I see. I saw
someone I knew today from another guards camera, but the image
scrambled as the suit battery died. I touched the recharging pad on
the wall, and my suit started administering shocks of electricity,
thinking my heart had stopped. I managed to leap away from the wall
and let my suit die again. Someone came along an hour later and let
me out of the very heavy suit, into one that worked a bit less. To an
onlooker, I was apparently leaping about the place doing some sort of
musical that the suit was picking out of the airwaves. I'm going to
bed.
This entry is dated 11thMonth, 14thDay,
3008.
Something interesting happened to me
this morning. I was stationed outside the ship as a less fortunate
family was making their way to my elaborate transport ship. I
mentioned in an earlier entry that I saw someone I knew. Well this is
that someone, stepping right in front of me. His name is Brian, and
he complimented me on a nice clean entrance way. He brought his wife,
sons, and daughter Mia who I used to babysit before becoming a “royal
guard”. The ship we are all now standing in, had been cleaned last
night by a window breaking, causing air to escape into the vacuum in
space. Many apartments were destroyed as a wall of the ship was torn
off. I hope no one was sucked out into space. Normal thing around
here. I have a tracking device on my rather heavy lunch pale, so I
later watched a video of it being torn through a window and crunched
up against some ones expensive looking shuttle pod. Thankfully money
is no big deal at this day and age, but that family may just hold a
grudge against me for my lunch breaking their vehicle. I was joking
with Brian about the smooshed vehicle, and he told me a dirty secret.
He was renting that vehicle from an art collector who loved it. Small
universe. Brian was in the area because he picked up on my lunch
pales tracking signal right after I saw him on my guard suit screen.
Apparently there was some data feedback loop from my suit and the
suit who saw Brian. Maybe that suit somehow recognized Brian's face
as a medical contact for my suit? When the ship wall blew apart,
Brian's car automatically headed straight for the signal in my lunch
pale. No more car. Brian's family was safely inside their bunker,
bank vault, or whatever they live in. Not so much a bank vault, only
the rich live in those. When they emerged from their programmed
slumber, they were a bit confused. I'll try to help them replace the
car. I asked how he could haggle a fancy ride like that, and Brian
said he helped design it. Car designers really aren't needed much
these days. This wasn't just any old shuttle pod, car, or whatever it
is...was. This was really high tech and had a navigation system
independent from the horribly flawed system my guard suit uses. This
car had a clear smooth windshield, squishy foam seats, elegant wooden
control console. This car had it all. Real wood is impossible to come
by in space. Everything here is simulated. I invited Brian and his
family to my new apartment, due to my old one being destroyed by
space.
This entry is dated 11thMonth, 15thDay,
3008.
It so happens that it was my lunch pale
that cracked the window and tore the side of the ship off. I got the
damage report this morning. The same lunch pale that smashed Brian's
car. The car he designed. It wasn't a very good ship anyway. I found
out he was about to enter it in a contest, and would have won by a
long shot. This would have been his moment to make it big. You never
know what you have until you never had it.
This entry is dated 11thMonth, 16thDay,
3008.
It turns out my lunch pale had flown
through the ship window, because it was lodged inside an air vent.
What was it doing in there?
This entry is dated 11thMonth, 17thDay,
3008.
It turns out my lunch pale, which was
lodged inside the air vent, was put there by Brian's daughter Mia as
a joke. How did she have it in the first place?
This entry is dated 11thMonth, 18thDay,
3008.
It turns out that the contest Brian was
going to enter with his spiffy car, was rigged. He would have won,
been promoted to a presidential art group, and never again seen the
light of day.
This entry is dated 11thMonth, 19thDay,
3008.
It turns out that Brian's wife had
wanted Brian to enter his fancy car into the contest, in which he
would have become leader of a presidential art crew. She needed the
status to gain medical equipment for her son and for Mia who both
have some kind of moderate illness that gives them dreams when they
sleep. No one dreams these days. It's said that dreams happen when
the brain is leaking information. Data, to be specific. Each human
for the last two hundred years is part of a large information storage
network. A backup of our Internet. My brain is crammed with technical
schematics for this ship, so I don't have room to store Internet
files, unless I wanted to risk damaging my memories. Information can
be imported and exported from the human brain, but not memories.
Memories are one of our most prized pieces of humanity we have left.
