Prologue 5, Transport
“And that ends today’s lesson.” the doctor announced with finality. “Regrettably, I have no more time, and so any further questions will have to be directed to the university.” she concluded as she turned towards the virtual lecture hall's exit.
And Alexander reflected, it was indeed regrettable. Getting to ask a real specialist questions and having those questions be immediately answered without blatant AI intervention or predictive algorithms has been a real treat. He wondered if this was the experience of a university lecture hall before virtual environments completely took over.
But the other party knew that without the time compression, someone like Amelia Harper would absolutely not be spending her precious time with university students. At least not for several decades yet.
As the doctor steps through the exit, the virtual instance shifts, and the lecture hall melts in a flash of data and light, changing back to the previous lobby. Alexander hears a familiar voice from his left.
“See, wasn’t that just the best?” Mike said smugly, "Worthy of a legend, wouldn’t you say?"
Alexander briefly shuts his eyes; he knows that Mike is trying to get a reaction from him and decides to ignore it.
“It was. I hadn’t considered that base-line humans wouldn’t be able to handle a modern cyberdeck. That does mean that the purists are really going to fall behind though.” Alexander responds, “Do you think they realise they’re just going to fade away and be forgotten?” he adds.
“Considering historical data, I believe that most reactionaries do not consider long-term consequences. They’re just trying to cling to ‘the good old days'," Emily answers in disdain. “If they love biological and cybernetic purity so much, they should just move to the Middle East; both are illegal over there. But they won’t, because the area is mostly an economical dead zone since Earth moved on from oil.”
“Let’s not drag that dead horse into this… Maybe they just don’t care? The Amish are still going strong but can’t be called reactionary.” Mike adds this clarification before another argument can start.
Alexander shakes his head and says, “As intriguing as this discussion is, I need to go. I’ll see you guys at the evening lecture.”
“Sure, see you then.” “Good luck at the clinic.” they respond.
With his friends' voices now echoing in the background, he turns his attention to leaving. With the university instance idling once more, he didn’t need a virtual door; he could simply leave.
The lobby melts away, his friends' avatars flashing brightly in complex data streams. In moments he is back in his apartment's virtual lobby.
Immediately he accesses his apartment's data feed and orders it to access the mega-tower networks, checking to make sure that his transportation booking is still on time.
Underground Network Pod
Fully Booked
Departure Time
1030
Departure Location
Basement 50,
Platform 4
Destination
Tower 05, Birmingham City Centre
Ticket Price
£1
Payment Status
Complete
Seeing nothing wrong, Alexander goes to the virtual representation of his full-dive pod and lies down.
Instantly, he opens his eyes to the physical world; the sound and sensation of the full-dive pod are already registering in his ears. Alexander smiles to himself wryly; configuring the virtual and physical pods so that lying in the virtual pod would immediately activate the shutdown sequence in the physical world took a few hours and ultimately only saves him a few valuable split seconds.
But to him, it at least demonstrates that he is more aware of the connection between hardware and software than most people.
The door to his pod opens, and he gets up, stretching the hours of lying down out of his muscles.
“Well, let's get to this then." he says to himself, eager to get the final gene treatments underway.
As he moves towards his apartment door, he sends a ping to the apartment and tower networks, informing them that he is leaving on his planned journey. The apartment system sends back an acknowledgement, and just before he arrives, the door automatically opens.
Instantly he is through the door and out into the spine of the mega-tower he lives in; behind him he feels his door automatically register that he has left the apartment, and the door closes. An imperceptible mechanical sound echoes behind him as his apartment physically locks itself.
Without his encryption key, built into the read-only partition of his current cyberdeck, there is no getting in.
Someone would have to physically remove his cyberware to gain access to the key without his permission. Some of the apartments around here could be hacked into by someone with enough processing resources but considering the level of encryption that Alexander had purchased and subsequently modified, it would be easier to break into the towers' administration areas and gain access to their own unique key code than trying to do that.
Alexander takes a moment to glance around the tower floor, and as he usually does when leaving his apartment, he cannot help but feel amazed at what he sees. His past self, from before he moved into this apartment, would never have believed the feeling of community prevalent in this mega-tower.
Around him, he sees the dozens of people moving around the floor, talking to each other; laughter echoes through the floor as children physically play with each other in the floor's open spaces.
According to reputation, a mega-tower like this should be a modern edifice to isolation and misery, the occupants locked away in their rooms, interacting with the outside world through virtual networks only. Gangs should be controlling separate floors and fighting for dominance.
Alexander remembers when he had reluctantly moved to this tower; he had been shocked to find out that this reputation, created and perpetuated by media, was a lie.
He looked around at the brightly lit floor and at the dozens of apartment doors that ring the edge of a central platform. Support columns rising from the very bottom of the tower hold the floors above them, acting as a distributed spine for the tower's bones.
The central part of the tower is dominated by a platform split into three: at its very centre is the transportation network, and on either side are large community parks. Seemingly natural sunlight shines from nearly invisible LEDs built into the ceiling by the hundred. Alexander remembers his amazement when he realised that, during the night, the light had changed from an artificial sun to a soft, artificial moonlight.
Gazing at the parks, Alexander remembers his first time in this tower and the surprise he felt that each floor had built-in parks for community use.
His previous home had been an older model of mega-tower, much more fitting of the reputation that the media had given such a structure; those older models were built entirely to jam as many people into a small space as possible.
Alexander remembered when he had started to look for answers; he had wanted to find out why there was such a massive discrepancy between older and newer mega-tower models. He wanted to understand why the media had so thoroughly darkened the reputation of newer mega-towers.
He had not found answers, at least not definitive ones, but he had discovered hidden studies related to the issue. Some part of him still felt confused that someone had bothered to commit to a sociological study and then go out of their way to hide the result.
‘Probably some idiot politician not wanting to be blamed for something they didn’t do.’ he thought with disdain.
Alexander breathes out and starts to move to the transportation complex. The dozens of magnetic lifts that service the entire tower's transportation needs are available, but Alexander knows that the several stairwells extend from the underground floors to the very top of the tower. But most people only use them for much shorter journeys.
Alexander will be going to the bottom of the mega-tower, basement floor fifty; nobody that Alexander knows would dedicate themselves to a hundred-floor stair journey, even if it were going down.
He finds himself nodding and greeting the other floor occupants, but Alexander does not stop to talk. Not only is he on a time limit, but also, while he has now lived in the apartment for several months, he still isn’t used to people being so welcoming in one of these towers.
Both family apartments he had previously lived in were first-generation mega-towers, and the occupants of those were practically hostile to each other.
As he moves, Alexander reflects on the studies that he had managed to find. They had shown that there were extremely negative effects caused by such a lack of community functions, such as an increase in social isolation and crime; it was for this reason that newer towers like this one concentrate less population density and more on a much higher quality of life.
Alexander knew that the community parks on every floor largely contributed to that increase in quality of life. There are even all-tower meetings and functions that people can take part in, either physically or virtually.
Alexander guesses that the massive difference between the attitudes of the different tower models is probably definite proof that the studies were on to something.
‘Considering the respective crime rates, it’s a bit of a surprise that no one has updated the older models yet. Each of those towers had multiple criminal gangs present… This tower doesn’t seem to have any.’
He arrives at the magnetic elevator just as its door opens; a glance at the tower's management system tells him that he will be the eighth and thus last person to enter this booked elevator. From here on, it will not stop before reaching the fiftieth basement floor.
“Morning.” he says with a nod, something that the other occupants echo, and enters the elevator, turning to face the already closing door.
The elevator whines as it practically flies down the tower's spine.
While the distance between his floor and the subway floor is far by normal standards, the journey itself is mercifully short. Alexander smiles in amazement as he looks at his virtual overlay, which estimates that it will take a mere thirty seconds to travel the distance of one hundred floors. This speed he knows is outstanding by the standards of older towers.
All of this is made possible not just by the extremely capable magnetic levitation technology built into the elevator but also by the finely managed tower system that ensures that once full, the elevator no longer stops.
Alexander has to concentrate his augmented senses to feel the moment that the elevator arrives at its final stop, and considering his virtual connection to the tower's system, it is highly debatable that he does actually feel it or if it’s a phantom sensation caused by that knowledge.
The door slides open and the occupants all step out.
This floor, Alexander knows, is one of the mega-towers' three subway floors—the ones where travellers and cargo can quickly enter and leave the tower and get straight into the city's integrated transportation network.
The floor looks somewhat like a train station: dozens of platforms with magnetic tracks built in-between them, and pods of varying sizes constantly arrive and leave.
Remembering that he is departing from platform four, he turns to his right and starts to move.
He quickly arrives at the platform to find the bus-sized transport pod he had brought a seat on already to be there, and half of the booked occupants are already at their seats.
The pods' network notices his approach, and he accepts the virtual handshake that confirms he has paid for entry. The door opens as he enters, quickly moving to find his seat.
Over the next minute, the door opens several more times, allowing the other passengers entry until, finally, every seat is occupied and the pod closes one final time.
“Departing for Tower 5, Birmingham Central." the pod intones both verbally and virtually.
He watches as the pod begins to move towards the eastern exit, the tower door opening. Immediately the pod leaves the brightly lit transportation hub and enters the much darker city tunnels.