Looking Forward by Kenneth Jr. (snow like ashes .txt) 📗

Their measurements are stored in the Correlation Center. Whenever they need a garment, the cybernated machines tailor a unique one for them in the style and material they select.

The clothing is extremely thin and soft, yet it has great strength and flexibility. The material lives, breathes, and reflects or absorbs light and heat as needed to keep the body temperature even. Through energy generated from light, the material obtains electrical potential required to operate the garment’s electromechanical responses. It has no bulging surfaces or tension-producing areas of stress. In any scuff contact a flow of electro-migratory materials maintains the garment in constant repair. The material can assume any color or become transparent. The clothes clean themselves and usually do not need attention during their expected ten-year life.

Delicate shoes that flex coordinately with the movement of the musculature of the foot are entirely free of local pressures or undesirable friction. They breathe as the wearer walks about. The feet are maintained at the most comfortable temperature, regardless of the weather. A membranous material will migrate to any part of the shoe to enhance movement, comfort, durability, and wear. They are also self-cleaning.

Snack on the Balcony

Scott and Hella often eat on the balcony that overlooks the naturally lovely wooded areas of the twenty-first-century cities. Over 83 per cent of the land in the cities is maintained as park and recreation areas. For the past forty-two years all the cities have had full weather control. The Correlation Center arranges for the degree of variation from season to season that people find most pleasant. Rain, snow, and windstorms no longer inconvenience people in urban communities.

Scott and Hella live in a circular, multi-story apartment building that is over a mile in diameter. It contains 300,000 living-units designed to meet human needs in every possible way. All walls, doors, and windows are soundproof. The nearest building they can see from their balcony is about a half-mile away. Few suburban homes of the past, even if built on forty acres of land, offered the absence of distractions they are able to enjoy.

As they make themselves comfortable on the balcony, they give vocal commands to the cybernator which produces the food they have ordered in five seconds. As a part of their training to live in the twenty-first-century world, Scott and Hella have become familiar with 325 selections of food. These selections seem to encompass fairly well the entire range of taste, smell, and texture combinations that most people enjoy. It has been found that three basic food mixtures can be electronically altered in one second’s time to give variations in color, taste, and texture that make up any desired menu.

In an experiment several years ago some twentieth-century foods, as prepared by gourmet restaurants in various cities of the world were offered to a group of twenty-first-century people. They found the twentieth-century food lacking in taste depth, nutritionally insufficient, and actually harmful in some ways.

Scott and Hella do not use the primitive knife, fork, and spoon of former times. Their exotic foods are picked up by a glass-like rod that is charged electrostatically so that portions of food adhere to it. They do not have to penetrate the food; they simply bring the glass rod near it. There is no dripping or dropping of food. By varying the charge at the tip, even liquids adhere. When they complete their meal, the implements and dishes are lowered into the table, where they are automatically cleaned and sterilized.

The Dynamic Living Area

After breakfast Scott and Hella go to the largest room in their apartment. Half of this room is devoted to a teleprojection area large enough for life-sized, three-dimensional figures. An index scanner enables Scott and Hella to select whatever they enjoy most—concerts, plays, current events, informative subjects. The world’s forests are no longer being chewed up to make newspapers. All past or present news is available on the telescreen, and reusable electrostatic copies can be made if desired. The cybernator in their apartment has already made a list of the programs of the day. It has put a red dot beside the type of program that Scott prefers and a yellow dot beside the type that Hella usually selects.

Scott and Hella nestle in a contour chair as they activate the three-dimensional teleprojection area. This contour chair acts as a living support that produces a comfort previously unknown. If Hella raises her arm, the chair will extend itself upon command to support the arm in any position desired. Whenever the legs are moved, it grows to support them with balloon-like softness. It gives them a physical freedom when sitting or reclining. The furniture of previous times tended to force people to sit in predetermined ways. In the new world of the twenty-first century, the individual has the freedom to select.

Most of the mechanisms that free Scott and Hella from drudgery and permit them to be served as guests in their own home operate automatically. Push buttons, dials, and levers are seldom used. Almost every machine in the new world is voice-actuated and responds instantly to spoken orders.

The interior of the living room has a large, dome-shaped ceiling with soft, colorful lighting flowing without any visible source from all portions of the wall. All of the electronic mechanisms that control the interior of their apartment are built into the walls. There are no gadgets bulging out here and there. The eye meets only pleasing contours of an organically designed interior. The walls of the twenty-first-century living-units are capable of infinite variety. At times they appear transparent. At other times they seem opaque. Often they reflect color or combinations of color in pleasing blends and designs. Teleprojected pictures, sculpture, and flowers are tastefully distributed through the apartment. They automatically change each day. There are no locks on any doors. In a world of abundance and sanity, they have no function. Almost everything in the apartment is fireproof and free from deterioration and will remain so for the long life of the building.

The entire