«This wreck?» with disdain Margaret looked at the ruins of a two-story building, incredibly preserved in the center of a huge metropolis.
«In photos of the beginning of the twenty-first century it looks much more sympathetic», Mansour pleaded. «However, it doesn’t matter. Let me tell you about the book. Once I learned that my great great great… anyway, my distant ancestor was a writer».
«So this little puddle is all that is left from the ancient Patriarchal ponds. It is a historical monument now precisely thanks to the most popular of his books. I became interested in plunging into that era and joined the reconstruction club. Artificial Intelligence even likes to mess with our club because we create requests for the production of unique objects. Imagine – it took AI several days to bring to life my proposal».
«Wow!» said Margaret. «I can’t even imagine what you might have wanted?»
«A ball pen and a pack of sheets of white paper», Mansour laughed.
«The AI even hung when it accepted a request to make such an irrational thing as a „ball pen“ – and eventually offered me a rapidograph. According to reviews from the twentieth century, the rapidograph is more pleasant to use, and now it turned out to be easier to produce».
Margaret’s merry laughter spread in the void over the pond’s dark water.
«So you hacked the system?» she couldn’t stop laughing. «Amazing! I met a man who managed to hang the AI system!»
«Well, it’s not that I’m proud of it», Mansour said in confusion and tried to change the subject. «If you believe the photos, once upon a time there were trees here. They’ve been gone for a long time, but you can see the sky from here right now. Generally, in the past, all the ponds were different – for sure, you saw them on holograms. People came here to distance themselves from the fuss, to talk on a bench under the shadow of branches, and to feed ducks. It was very romantic here».
They stood near the concrete fence, looking at the dark body of water.
«It’s romantic here now as well», Margaret said, raising her eyes to the sky.
Two stars were glowing high at the top of the night sky. Without a doubt, they were real stars, not glitches of holograms – they glittered in the middle of a strictly faceted skyscraper piece of heaven that topped the pole of empty space above an ancient pond.
«I look into this bottomless sky, and even the air seems sweet», Margaret spoke quietly. «Tell me about your book!»
«It wasn’t easy to learn how to write letters on paper», Mansour sighed. «It is more difficult than any quest – and if I show AI this ability, my level will be immediately raised. But I didn’t learn to write so I can eat more delicious food and have a higher access level in entertainment. I was just wondering – would I be able to succeed?»
«So, did it work out?» Margaret asked.
«Yes», Mansour nodded. «I wrote a novel about a man living in the twentieth century. He only dreams of a future, in which robots will free people of the need to do hard work. At the same time, he tries to figure out what people will do so as not to degrade from boredom. Gradually, step by step, he invents and logically justifies what our civilization has come to – the gray level of today’s well-being everyone has. And those, for whom it’s not enough to have a bed in a small room and minimal nutrients from protein bars – engage in quests and receive rewards. Scientists who have been able to invent something that AI has not thought of, or those who have set interesting tasks for it, receive the gold level. You want to eat delicious feed – develop yourself. Yet, the essence of the novel is not in that; I just stated the obvious. The essence for me is in the everyday scenes; in which way my characters travel to work using the transport of that era, in how they walk near ponds – real, not holographic… how they are taking pictures of scary wild birds ready to fly at any moment. How many of the people do not believe that the golden age will one day come».