LF Friends, Will Travel

Innovation is Impartial - Chapter 12

Date: 2 PST (Post Stasis time)

"So as we discussed, finals are next week, marking rubric is on the website. Remember to take into account the differences in heat transfer under DELGO's unified theory."

Dr Johnathan Fletcher gave a half smile as he spoke to the room of students, the simple rows of seats nearly unchanged from what they had been before: the same faded fabric in a dark grey nobody would ever choose, simple wood laminate desks. Only a few minor panels containing new technology, and floating holographic displays everyone was using to write notes on, betrayed the fact that this 'year's' course had originally started over ten thousand actual years ago.

The sound of bodies moving, of various Terrans shuffling out the room, filled the lecture hall as the professor explained the mundane requirements for the upcoming exam. He gave another cough as people continued to leave, signalling that Dr. Fletcher had one last announcement.

"The administration would like to remind everyone that if you have any questions regarding the changes to technology since we were last here, or any other queries, there are daily support sessions being run by ANDREW and HAL9. Details can be found on the student portal."

Nobody responded as the final few students left the room, leaving Johnathan alone in the family lecture hall. Even with the AI's attempts to ease the process for their creators, there was a lot to think about, for those trying to return to what life they had had before. Everything they had known about the world had been impacted: science, technology, infrastructure. 10 thousand years of AI research and development had pushed society forwards in ways nobody would have dreamed of, all while they'd slept.

Dr Fletcher slowly got up with a sigh, picking up his small bag containing a few personal items, before starting the march to leave himself, walking the halls of the institution where he'd studied and taught thousands of students over the last 8 years. Well, 8 of his years, not actual ones. The walls and decor were the same, the rooms and halls maintained by the AI who had rebuilt and kept everything as humanity had left it before the God Plague had destroyed everything. Yet it... felt off.

Mentally, it had all happened so quickly. One moment he'd been in agony, climbing into his makeshift stasis chamber, wondering if he'd ever wake up again. The next, the world had been fixed, the tumors and God Plague were gone and everything worked out. Johnathan did have a vague memory of being transferred to a more permanent sleeping situation, but apart from that, it was almost as if he'd gone to sleep, and awoke to find the entire God Plague was nothing but a bad dream.

Of course, that wasn't the case. The impact of humanity's 10 thousand year power nap was obvious as the professor walked the halls of the university. His reduced class size for a start: 89 people had been in Johnathan's class at the start of the academic 'year', whittled down to a mere 33 remaining. The building was less busy than before: Many of the courses here had been canceled due to no longer being relevant in this new world of modern technology, or simply due to a lack of people left to teach them. Uplifts were more prevalent as well, since none of them had been infected, and most of them had decided to go to sleep themselves until their human friends could be saved.

As Dr Fletcher left the grand wooden doors that marked the entrance to the university, he took a moment to stare at his surroundings, the roads and streets now once again filled with life. The destruction humanity had wrought on itself, trying to survive the end of days, had long since been fixed and cleaned up: The fires put out, the buildings sparkling like new, the bodies counted and properly buried. Even the parks and gardens were kept in meticulous order. One would be forgiven for thinking the God Plague had never even happened.

As Johnathan walked the short distance towards his car, a simple personal vehicle for getting around, there was one underlying flaw that no amount of dutiful work by the AI could fix. The tension in air as people moved around, the downward guilty glances, the pervasive feeling of grief and sorrow hanging in the warm winds of spring. The difficulty of just going back to the lives that they'd lived before the world had ended.