FutureBlog by Pete Nicholls, chapter 1
FutureBlog by Pete Nicholls, chapter 1
Guess what it's about!
Hey there, kind reader! What follows is the first chapter of a book I have started called FutureBlog. It takes place—you guessed it! IN THE FUTURE. Two hundred years into the future, to be exact. The main character is a young reporter named Sato who works for the state news agency in one of the biggest cities on Earth—New Angel City. It’s a city built upon centuries of cities and no one is supposed to be living below the levels everyone is supposed to live on. Only maintenance robots can survive in the areas that keep the city moving. And yet, Sato spotted one below the “M” levels while investigating a story… now say hello to Sato:
22220719 posted by Sato Nakamoto
Hi, my name is Sato Nakamoto and, yes, you read it right—these words are coming to you from the year 2222! This is happening thanks to my college buddy who has, for the last ten years, been experimenting with implementing practical applications using recent discoveries in temporal wave theory. In other words, he thinks he's made a time machine for data. Since I’m a reporter and have a few unpublished novels my buddy really likes he asked me if I’d like to write something that probably won’t be seen by anyone—just like my novels. :)
“OR,” Arif added, “they could make you famous throughout time!”
I’ll believe that when I see it.
Regardless, I do enjoy reporting almost as much as I do writing fiction, so, hopefully, you’ll enjoy reading the blog of a man in the future.
What's the future like? It's likely the paradise many of you would imagine. We've done just about all of the things you'd probably expect us to have done in a couple hundred years. I'm no history expert but I have an idea that things were pretty primitive back in your day and quite the more primitive two hundred years before that. So, I suppose you'd have to imagine what a man in 1822 would think of the world in 2022 to begin to imagine what life in 2222 is like.
I'm not even certain you had cars in 1822, but of course, in 2222, we have cars that fly—well, the vast majority of the time. We've eliminated world hunger, cured most major diseases and there are no more wars. Things are quite tranquil and our science marches forward at an almost daily measure. Not every person in our society is happy, I suppose. There are the Nogoodnicks, a sort of rebellious group that blow up random public places in the interest of furthering their own agenda. What is their agenda? That's hard to say. Then again, the Governance isn't reading this, are they? Or maybe they are. Arif just told me that if any devices are picking up these words in the past, they could be part of the historical record.
Hm.
Well, as a reporter for the State News Agency, or the SNA as they're usually called, I tend to know more than most about what goes on. The Nogoodnicks don't like the things the United State Governance has done to protect us and keep us safe from diseases and the ravages of the natural universe. They've tried to blow holes in the Saviordome that protects the city I live in--New Angels. They seem to think that the harmful rays from the sun and the extreme atmospheric temperatures out there (that the Saviordome protects us from) won't actually harm us and that the various diseases in the wilds won't kill us either, despite that even the S-Dome can't keep all nature-related diseases from infecting citizens at alarming rates.
On the other hand, I sometimes think about alternatives. How nice it would be to travel freely outside the S-Dome. The wilds are just beyond the horizon and from people in-the-know that I've spoken with, the beautiful but rough. So, while I have yet to experience what original nature has in store for me, I sometimes explore the M Levels below the city when ever I can. It's illegal without justification, of course, but a press pass gets me out of most altercations with M level security. Though the same pass helps me less with the health officials who seem quite upset whenever I spend too much time down there.
Ah, yes, that's another danger--Germ Syndrome. It afflicts people who have been exposed to germs from outside the Saviordome. How do they get exposed to germs from outside the Saviordome? Well, they say you can get it by going down to the M Levels. When I asked my health official about it they explained that there were germs from outside the city left over from when New Angels was first built.
The one problem I have with this explanation is that on my last excursion to the M's I saw a man that, based on his demeanor and appearance, let me with the impression that he had been down there for quite a long time. I tried to talk to him, but a maintenance robot stopped me. When I shoved past the 'bot, the man I saw had vanished.
I'm investigating some unusual power outages tomorrow. I know a security computer system that is easily hacked, I should hope to get some answers from its camera logs. I'll blog more on this tomorrow.
It's nice not having the Governance reading over my shoulder for once... not that I mind them doing it, of course, it’s just a different experience, you know?
Oh, and let me know what you think in the comments--but will I even be able to read them? Arif just told me that if he can find this blog post someplace in the historical record it would mean you could post comments and I could read them and I could reply! Oh and it also means his tech was actually able to send my words back in time. That's exciting, too!
Thanks for reading! The next chapter will be out next week, assuming I can edit it in time! Please consider a paid membership so you never miss a chapter! Each chapter after this one will be partially behind a paywall. Don’t worry—it’s just $5 a month to get around it! That’s cheap considering how inflation just added $20 to my cat food bill. Or was that Amazon? Anyway, please help me keep writing! Thanks so much!
My original header image for this post:
