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

pleasures—the intellectual experience of integrating the world outside the brain with the information and knowledge inside. By color teleprojection, Scott and Hella mutually share their experiences and feelings—often hourly when something exciting is happening.

It has been many decades since Hella has visited Corcen and the North American Cybernated Industrial Complex. When she was five years old, she visited these centers that play a primary role in providing a good life. She knows that returning now would give her a heightened perception and a depth of meaning that was not available to her as a young child. For a number of years, she has been thinking how worthwhile it would be to visit Corcen, but other activities have always clamored louder for her attention. Now a group of men and women who have been enjoying the city in the sea is headed in this direction, and Hella decides to go with them.

One of the nicest things about living in the twenty-first century is the enormous range of choices. It is far greater than any other civilization was able to offer its citizens. Although Hella and her friends are in a relatively isolated area, they have the choice of a sailboat such as Scott used or an automatically powered seacraft. They could call for a variety of aircraft, depending upon their needs and how far they want to go. They could board a submarine freighter that services island communities, or they could use the GEM (Ground Effect Machine).

Since they want to spend a day roaming through the islands of the Bahamas, they choose the GEM. It can travel above a more or less flat surface at speeds up to 200 miles-per-hour. This machine skims at a height of about four feet above any surface. Whether water or land, a paved road or a rough field—it doesn’t matter. It is supported in the air by three circular jets of air directed downward toward the ground. With relatively little energy this “ground effect” is able to lift a heavy craft in the air just far enough for the air to escape around the edges of the three ring vortices. As long ago as 1950, the British developed a GEM that skimmed the English Channel between Britain and France.

For a day Hella and her friends use the GEM to cruise around the Bahama Islands. The clear water and colorful coral banks are still engaging. They skim by Eleuthera, Abaco, Nassau, Andros, the Berry Islands, and, finally, Bimini at sunset. Then off they go across the Gulf Stream to Miami.

Hella and her friends leave the GEM at the South Florida terminal the next morning and board the linear-acceleration train that will take them to Corcen in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. Within the gleaming metal walls of these enormous trains, attractive living areas permit a continuation of the living patterns of one’s home. This train travels in a large tube with a partial vacuum. It has no engine and no wheels. It is electrodynamically supported above a V-shaped rail that electromagnetically propels each car of the train. The negative charge on the probe projecting from the front repels moisture and dust particles in the tube ahead. This diminishes resistance and allows the train to develop a 2,000 mile-per-hour speed. Yet, even when accelerating or stopping, it feels as steady as a concrete building.

As Hella’s train speeds through Florida, it passes through a cybernated farm over 200 miles long and 50 miles wide. Tracks 100 feet wide run the entire length of the farm. Large cybernated mechanisms slowly travel up and down these tracks to prepare the land for planting, to place seeds, fertilize, and water them. On a return trip several days later, these plants will be watered and cultivated, if needed. At the right time the vegetables will be picked, quick-frozen, and packaged by the enormous farming machines. Weather control eliminates all losses from freezing, drought, or floods. The cybernated Florida farm complex supplying food for one-fourth of a continent does not need a single human in attendance. Corcen coordinates the actual operation through a local cybernator programmed for scientific farming. The one-hour journey passes rapidly as Hella and her friends enjoy a wide range of cybernated entertainment.

The World Correlation Center

Corcen is housed 2,000 feet below the top of a large mountain to give it protection from any meteorite that might survive the fall into the earth’s atmosphere. Many thousands of years ago a large meteorite plowed into Arizona and left a crater 3,870 feet wide by 560 feet deep. Radar stations throughout the globe constantly scan space for large meteors. On the rare occasion when a dangerous meteor is detected, missiles are sent out to pulverize it while it is still thousands of miles from earth.

Hella, standing at the entrance to the mountain, surveys the countryside below. She thinks briefly of today’s missile technology and is glad it is used to protect mankind from remote dangers instead of threatening and killing.

A combination of high-speed elevators and escalator-type sidewalks convey Hella and her friends to the underground Corcen complex. Hella enters a large room where a six-foot sphere is electrodynamically suspended ten feet above the floor. Hella looks at this sphere with a feeling of awe and appreciation.

This is Corcen—the master computer that correlates the interactions of all people and all automated machines throughout the entire world.

In the time it takes her to draw one breath, this remarkable servant of man has probably made ten billion decisions based on the scanning of trillions of bits of information. If everyone on earth were superbly organized into a tremendous bureaucratic complex, it would be impossible to do in a year what this computer can perform in a second. Corcen does a zillion times more for each individual than any government of the past could possibly have done.

A teleprojection of a human guide now speaks to the visitors to Corcen. “This computer that we call ‘Corcen’ is our servant, not our master although it is