Millennium

Silas raised his right hand and clenched his fist. It was a little painful, but something which he did not find too unpleasant and which he was happy to endure. He opened his hand and stretched his fingers. He repeated the action and smiled to himself. That was enough exercise for today.

He looked across to the window of his room and out to the searing heat of the summer. Should he go outside? His thought caused a mobibot to come from its home in the cupboard to the right of the window, but he instantly dismissed it and mentally commanded all his bots to leave him in peace. The machine retreated into its home. No, he wouldn’t chance the outside today, even though he would be perfectly safe with the mobibot to bring him back inside if anything untoward should occur. No, today he would concentrate on his poetry.

He lay back on his couch and searched for a subject. What about “winter”? He closed his eyes and thought:

“As I lay on my soft couch in the scorching heat of another summer
My thoughts turned to...”

No, that was no good — his thoughts didn’t turn to anything. And with that as an opening it would never even be accepted by the Poetry Academy for this year’s Compendium. How about:

“The softness of my couch touches me...”

No, he didn’t even bother to go any further; that was even worse. Silas wasn’t really in the mood.

A mobile medibot wheeled itself into his room, causing him to start. Damn machine! Why couldn’t it announce itself first. An apology from the medibot was transmitted into his mind; the machine had been confused by his command for peace and its separately acquired order to process him. Silas’s anger subsided a little. The machine had come to give him his monthly blood test. He let it approach him, insert a small syringe into his abdomen and draw off some blood. Its job done, it retracted the syringe, sprayed a colourless liquid onto the spot to stop any bleeding and to disinfect his skin, and retired.

Silas wondered why he had to be tested. But it was a decision that wasn’t his. These bloody bots seem to control everything; but that was the best thing, wasn’t it? In his most private thoughts, when they weren’t being monitored by the constant presence of the bots, he wondered if the human race was able or indeed capable of determining its own destiny. But he was in charge: if he ordered a bot to give him food, or information, or even sexual pleasure, his command was law.

Wasn’t it?

But when had he last had the pleasure of talking — yes, talking — to another human being? Sure, he had discussed his poetry with someone only last year. But it was only through the intermediary of a bot, not face to face.

But even the idea of contact with another human caused Silas to shudder. He preferred to communicate through the intermediary of the bots. Talking face-to-face with someone had never been a pleasure, surely! Now he wanted a distraction. What news was there? Infobot?

A holographic image of a woman appeared in front of him, commanded by his thought. She was one of the newscasters of the Global Information Network. He trusted her, though he hadn’t summoned her or any of her colleagues for nearly a year now — his poetry had been too important to be interrupted.

 
 
Continued at the top of the next column

 
From the bottom of the previous column
 

“This news bulletin is brought to you, Silas...” she said in a warm mellow voice that Silas might have called ‘sexy’ if he had been familiar with the word. She continued when his attention, interrupted by musing about her voice, drifted back to her: “...by the GIN News Team, and is dated December 28^th twenty-nine ninety-nine, one fifty Universal Time.”

The end of the year! The century! The millennium! The passage of time had not been one of Silas’s concerns, though now it somehow seemed important.

“My name is Rutha,” the announcer went on, though it was unnecessary for her to identify herself as he had remembered her and her name. “First, some general global news for you, Silas... The planned earthquake at Sanfrisko in Kaliforn has been postponed two weeks to allow remaining citizens there to celebrate the new millennium in comfort before being evacuated to safe locations elsewhere in the region. Central Bot scientists have determined that any further delay could result in an unplanned quake, though there was a sufficient safety margin.” Silas sighed at the thought that although earthquakes could be controlled, they couldn’t be eliminated. That was something seismibots at the Central Bot Corporation were surely working on right now. Give me more about that, Rutha. “The planned quake will be 9.56 on the Richter scale and will now happen at two thirty UT on January 13^th. Most of the citizens of Sanfrisko have already been evacuated, though some sixty-four people remain in the city.”

But Silas’ attention span was short and he was getting bored with this. A gust of hot wind blew against his Austral home and he wondered when it was likely to get cooler. Prompted by this, Rutha told him: “Central Bot meteobots predict that temperatures in Kambra are likely to drop to fifty-five Celsius early next week, though there could be wind gusts up to force 16 on the Beaufort Scale.” Argghh! Fifty-five! Still too hot! When would he be able to go outside in comfort? “Meteobots inform us that the global cooling that started in the mid-2900s will accelerate rapidly and winter temperatures as low as thirty Celsius are possible within fifty years, with summers in eastern Austral being commensurately cooler.”

What did that mean? Sounded like bot talk!

“‘Commensurately’ is an adverb that means ‘of an equivalent measure’,” Rutha tried helpfully to explain. But Silas was bored again. He wondered what the world was like when the last millennium was commemorated. Rutha switched to his new subject: “In the year 2000 there were over six thousand million people living on this planet.” Silas shuddered at the thought of so many; things were infinitely better now, though he had heard that the world population would soon reach two million. “That, of course, was before the Great Death of the early twenty-second century. Since then, with almost the entire race having been wiped out, human breeding has been strictly controlled to ensure that the deadly virus can never be passed on.”

Another hot gust of wind shook his home. Anticipating his question, Rutha went on: “In 2000 the average global temperature was only twenty degrees, though the population then was beginning to get worried about the possible melting of the polar ice caps — there were two then — and other bad effects of industrialisation and man’s greed.

“There were no bots then, though the first real experiments started soon afterwards.” No bots! What did all the work then? “Work was almost exclusively done by human labour, though the development of machines and computers had already begun.” Silas shuddered once more at such an absurd and obscene idea. He had had enough of this, so Rutha stopped until Silas was ready to learn more. Tell me about the foundation of the World Poetry Academy, he commanded her, back now onto a subject he felt he could cope with...