100 Futures: Tales of Possibility

.08

2016

I broke my ass. They all think its funny but my family can kiss it and make it better. Little do they know I like my little pillow. For real though I'm going crazy and they only gave me six vicodin. My mom says, "You can get caught up on all your school work." Uh I don't think so. I just read a book about dropping out of high school, getting my GED and starting college work. Once I'm taking college courses I can get student loans and use the money to sign up to go abroad, which is a fancy word for going over seas to another country. I have to get outta here. Mom is not happy because my dad said I could do it. He said that he wished he could have done it when he was my age. Suddenly my entire set of needs has changed. I no longer have to get medicated just to make it through the boring day. I don't have to worry about saving up to buy a car and paying for insurance. Tomorrow I have to purchase a student rail pass for Europe, all because I broke my ass when I slipped on some ice. I told my mom that I didn't want to clear the drive way of snow, so really this is all her fault.

2024

My first degree was political science, that cost me $42,000. I could have just read a lot of books. My second degree was in pharmaceutical science, it cost $68,000, though I did do quite a bit of field studies on those. Finally I just finished a nanoscience degree, and it cost me another $32,000. What can I say I love to travel, and I don't mind so much being called Doc. I hated being a student in k-12, but there is so much freedom in higher education, although while you are free to learn you are also placing yourself in bondage with student loans, so I'm not sure how that all works, sort of a catch 22. Now they want a lot of money from me but they can turn me upside down and shake as hard as they want and the only thing that will come out is Ramen noodles, and honestly I'll fight them for those. I did get to travel a lot thanks to the academic freemason like club, once you get in there are all kinds of secret benefits. For example, I would get asked to give "lectures" on my areas of expertise, and they would pay for the travel costs. Sure I usually ended up staying in an empty dorm room with a sunken bed but I loved it anyway. Going to new places, seeing how different the different parts of the world were. That was until China. I was in China when the Revolution started. That was scary. They didn't much like Americans at that time and I almost didn't go because of that but I was an academic and it was either that or go back home and face the music of an endlessly ringing phone from the debt collectors. Luckily some of those young people that believed in my work helped me stay underground and crossed me into Vietnam and then I was able to get back to the states. I was glad to hear the music then. When I was safely back at UCCS, I suddenly realized that time in China was the most exciting of my life and the safe and secure front range, watched over by the mountain god Pike's Peak, was too comfortable. I could see myself getting fat and domesticated like a cow, heading toward the corporate slaughter. I needed to get back on the road

2035

I was at Jagiellonian University walking in the footsteps of old Copernicus, the man that told us the world goes round, when Russian annexed the northern plain. Seems I'd heard this story before, but there it was happening again. This was their last ditch effort to secure some buffer for the Russian Nation. The Russian population, Russian ethnics that is, riddled with tuberculosis, alcoholism, heroine addiction, and extremely low birth rates, was dying away like the forests infected with Urangy Beetles. While not giving "lectures" at the school, I was working in a Drone factory, making $200,000 a year, add in the sudden wartime inflation, high need wartime loan forgiveness programs, and my student loans were suddenly pennies on the dollar. I never thought I would get out from under that stone, thank you Russia for starting a war. Damn fine investment, that was as long as Russia doesn't start setting off atomic bombs. Its hard to see what they were thinking. With Old man Putin rotting away and on his death bed China was already moving into Siberia. They must have been stuck in the past thinking Poland was an easy target, but this time around the Americans were supporting them. We ramped up production so that the factory was operating 24 hours a day, 8 days a week.

2049

Was it really the Russians that set off the bombs in the Siberia? China blames the United States because it helps their government control their people to blame the evil Americans. We were making steady progress on the easter front, but once those bombs went off the Chinese launched a full blown invasion, and the Russians couldn't withstand a two front war. They collapsed and set off more nukes. They destroyed a few of the larger known oil reserves, large areas of the Siberia that held promising shale reserves, and so on. They were salting the land as they were losing it. The ultimate burning retreat. Whoever did set the first one off, it was a cascade event and the weather started changing. By this time I was back in Colorado, but we had to leave because there was no water. Canada tried to shut its boarder but its 3000 miles long and desperate people are not that easy to keep out. Edmonton gets lots of rain and my wife says its good for her skin. I work as a nano-constructor. We use what money we have left after Canadian immigrant taxes to buy farm land. The short summers make it intense work but we have three Deer's Solar Harvesters and if the North American Union vote goes through our taxes will be cut in half, and we might be able to afford a MacroGreenhouse for year round production. Then I can go full time as a farmer. That would be nice, maybe our son can go to university.

2060

Our home sits in the middle of a diameter of 100 miles, at the center of our giant circular farm that can be seen from space. We grow our very own patented grains and produce. Our son didn't go to university, he stayed home and took courses online. He studied biogenetic engineering and so we have apple, orange, and nut trees he designed to withstand all the harsh realities of our new world. The plants are designed to produce quickly by taking advantage of the endless heat and moisture. Sometimes in the "winter" we can go outside and enjoy a walk around, but mostly were stay inside. In the summer the mosquitos are bigger than the birds I remember from my youth and they will either poison you with some disease or drain so much blood you pass out and their buddies will have free range to drain you out. Our drones work the farm and we just tell them what to do, and really we don't even do that anymore. They can calculate the needs of every seedling, every plant, and tree, ten times, no a thousands times better than I ever could. We are expanding our greenhouse and that allows me to keep my hands in the game, but I really do miss digging in the dirt.

2071

We have one of the continent's largest greenhouses. We named in honor of my late wife. I walk through it everyday, often I'll take one or more of my grand children. We put in a natural earth section, and this is just an indoor garden, and I show my grandchildren that they can get down on their hands and knees and actually put their hands in the dirt, of course we use hand tools, the old school kind, metal hand rakes and shovels, and we plant sunflowers because those are the funnest because they grow so fast and so large. Poor things when they get on my nerves I can't yell at them to go play outside. They have no idea what it means to go outside. The air is so toxic. Instead I have to tell them go put on their head sets, and they go away into their empty digital world. But when they are young they still enjoy getting their hands dirty planting sunflowers.

2084

For years I sent my drones on missions to plant trees and shrubs that would help to clean the air. Over time they had some success. These specially designed plants we planted could withstand the heat, and they soaked up the carbon dioxide and cycled through the radiation. Though it changed them, and usually turned them inside out. But the years went by and the number of drones we sent out increase. Each drone could plant hundreds and over time we reclaimed some land in this area. Eventually the plants themselves started to spread, and in an exponential fashion we eventually cleared the air enough to go back outside. The sunlight on our skin burned us quick so we had to cover up, but we went out, with respirators, and while I loved it and thought about my days in the Colorado sun clearing the driveway of snow, my grandchildren didn't like it at all, and wanted to go back inside. I knew my days were short, and so I packed a bag and walked out into the woods. I walked and walked and I would camp in a tent. I left all my electronics so they couldn't locate me when they noticed I was gone. I was walking south, hoping to make it back to Colorado. I followed the line of the Rocky Mountains, and when I finally saw that glorious Peak, I sat and looked and gazed upon her towering beauty, and then I fell asleep.