Verum I: The Awakening

10: The Bridge to the Robotic Era

Oh? So you actually have returned, huh? Well, welcome to the year 2093! And oh boy do I have news for you... And they're not fucking good... But before we get into that, let's talk about...

Medicine

There aren't actually that many incredible news right now. Sure, medicine has been better than ever before, but that's about it.

When you walk around on the streets, it isn't that rare to occasionally see a person with a neuroprosthetic. Most common are prosthetics inside the body. Might that be a mechanical organ or a chip enhancing the performance of an organic organ. The only mechanical organ that doesn't exist yet is the brain. Thanks to this, many other fatal ailments are now easily taken care of.
The current human lifespan lies somewhere between 140 and 170 years. Wondering why the gap is getting bigger? That's because the longer you live, the greater the chance of getting murdered or dying in an accident is. Medicine can't heal everything yet.

We'll get back to something that is related to medicine later, but for now let's travel to...

Space

Remember Europa, the Jupiter moon with an ocean 100 kilometers beneath its surface? A probe has finally dug its way through the crust and found a world full of alien life. But this time it's not just microbes, it is actual marine-like life, ranging from smaller than one centimeter to almost the size of a blue whale. This remarkable event in history transpired in 2086, changing humanity's view on the existence of alien life forever. Not only was there proof now that microbiological life is probably very common in the universe, but that animal-like aliens aren't that rare either, possibly. The only kind of life that isn't in the picture yet is intelligent life.

Let's move onto a new topic. Have you ever heard of solar sails?
If not, solar sails use the pressure of light radiation to move forward in space, just like how wind pushes a sailboat. But solar sails aren't anything new, their idea has existed since over 100 years and have been used for many space probes. So why am I telling you about them? Because they have become faster than ever. Thanks to further development, a solar sail can now reach up to one percent the speed of light. That is eleven million kilometers per hour, which is 0.0735 astronomical units. The distance between the earth and the sun is one astronomical unit. It would take a solar sail at maximum speed about 13.5 hours to reach the sun. Which is obviously rather quick, but in this case, not possible, since solar sails can only go in the opposite direction.
Let's say that Jupiter is currently five astronomical units from the earth (the number can vary between 4.2 and 6.2), that means it will take the solar sail five times as long, which is about 67.5 hours, not even three days. Neptune is at a distance of 30 astronomical units, that would be about 17 days for the solar sail to get there. Last but not least the edge of the solar system at an estimated 100'000 astronomical units. It would take it 154 years to get there. A long time, but maybe we already got some space probes on their way?

I'm telling you all this mathematical bullshit to make you see that we are starting to thrive as an interplanetary species. And yes, solar sails ain't that small anymore either. They're not huge, but they can transport few handfuls of people inside a ship. It's still gonna take us a while to make big cities on other planets and moons, terraforming ain't an easy task. But we are slowly getting there.

How about we'll get to the biggest topic of today now?

Technology

Let's start with the topics that are easier to digest. Actually, this topic is about sails too, how funny.
We probably all know that ships are the biggest sinners to nature. So humanity found a way to be more eco-friendly. Many of today's cargo ships come with huge sails, but they are also hybrids. The ships use wind as energy, but also still have motors in case of an emergency.