Goodbye 2014
GOODBYE 2014… by the way what is next?
In spite of a few more aches and pains 2014 has been a very good year. Living in it together with my husband of 68 years, has been fun and brought us many surprises. How can 2015 compete I wonder?
Perhaps it doesn’t really have to, for just living it is worth the effort. The Pacific Ocean is still full of beautiful, rolling waves of water and the sky above it is unpredictably, variable as always. A fifteenth Great-grand child joined the family party. Will 2015 compete with that? Probably.
But that is Real Life and this is Fiction. Fiction does whatever it does. It is not bound by rules in the same way as Reality. Fiction travels beyond everything and finds things that Reality hasn’t even dared to dream about yet. All inventions that make it into Reality lived in Fiction first.
Today I will go into the Fictional World just to see if I can trip over and accidently discover something the Real World here has yet to meet.
Maybe it isn’t due to be here in 2015. Maybe it is far beyond in a number no one knows. Does that matter? Not to me. Let me see it and judge it’s eventual usefulness.
I learned early that what man can predict is almost here. I have to go back to Kindergarten for the first time I heard that:
“Someday a man will walk on the moon.” When I was five that sounded like an impossibility, but as the grown-up who said it was our School Teacher, I could only believe it and wait as the years went by until it came true.
Then the surprise! When our man walked on that distant moon, I sat in front of my television and watched him, I was not surprised that he did it, I had been told by an older very believable person that it would occur. But I was simply awe struck by something that believable person did not say.
Even in her imagination she had been unable to explain to us, way back then, that I would be able to see that man hopping across that moon landscape, even while he did it, on a miracle invention even the teacher of our class could not predict… a view in our own home on something no one even mentioned, as it was too beyond belief, called Television. As an adult I was most impressed by that wonderful invention my Teacher could not for-see.
So to try to expect to find something that will impress me in 2015 is difficult. What might happen in this new, close upon me future, even I will call so beyond belief that it is still only Fictional?
I can only walk there and try to let it find me. Goodbye 2014! I must visit that Fictional World to learn about what might be in our future’s Real World.
I think if I want to go there quickly and a long way, my best bet is to call The Bubble. In case you missed it The Bubble had the best abilities I knew about to go fast and far. It took Andrew and Stephanie all over the place. Read “The Bubble” if you don’t believe me.
There it is now! See what I mean?
I stepped inside of the huge bright pink Bubble and seated myself by the current Driver and asked.
“What’s new out there?”
“I haven’t gone to see for myself, but I hear that there is a lot of action out there on a new Comet. It seems that An Asian Country landed a test space vehicle on the odd new double Comet. From what I hear they were surprised to find that it was not an ordinary Comet but had formed in flight, either by being bombarded by a series of meteors wearing down the waist on one side, or had simply crashed into a smaller Comet which stuck tight, creating a rather lop-sided dumb-bell. I saw a picture of it. So my vote is a second Comet got connected.
Meanwhile the senders of the Space Craft were so disappointed as they have a long line of test capsules each to sample and report back a different content of this Comet, but they cannot use even one, as the well made lander was built to drive its feet into the body of the Comet with a tiny explosion for several inches making it fast to the thing.
They worked perfectly and it is immovable now. And without moving it just far enough from the cliff to let the sunlight in, their test craft will not do its jobs. So they are out of business unless the solar panel can get power. It took them twenty weeks to meet this Comet in its travels, so I could probably get there in half of that. But by that time, the camera batteries will also be dead and they are needed to send the info to the scientists.
Maybe they will get lucky and a meteor will knock it over so the solar panel is facing
the light. The entire unit is traveling toward the sun and away from us at Comet speed.”
“But you say the cameras are working now, as you have seen pictures.”
“Right. Didn’t you see them on the T.V. News, It just can’t make those special tests. It won’t be a total waste. So what are you looking for, that you asked for me to take you fast and far.”
“Well, with the end of the year approaching, I began to think of the future. What I would like to find is the next, you know, “Big Thing!”
What is ahead for Earth and it’s people that is beyond our present imagination. What will appear and take hold, changing life as we know it a hundred years from now, the way television did to my generation. Is there a Planet that has it now? “
“Everything moves faster now. What once took a hundred years to catch on now only requires fifty… like Computers. But unless you want a very long trip, we must stay in our Galaxy.”
“ Oh I hope so, I don’t want to miss next year completely. Just the rest of this year.”
“On a small Planet going around the double suns of G-74 they have a few new inventions.”
“Is that the one we call, “Idaho”, after the discoverer’s Home State?”
“You’re right. I had forgotten the name.”
“How long will it take me to go and return?”
“If I don’t get an Emergency call from Headquarters, Two days to get there and the same to return. How long will it take you to find your, “Big Thing?”
“I’ll just allow one day there. If they have more than a couple of new ideas, I should be able to choose one in a hurry.”
“Okay. Fasten your seat belt.”
“You have seat belts, now?” I looked around.
“No. I just think it sounds good.” The driver laughed and we were gone.
On the small Planet of Idaho I had allotted one day to find the next Big Thing for Earth. So I left the Bubble waiting and began to simply walk around looking at the residents and analyzing what seemed important to them here on Idaho Planet. Had a new invention gotten a head start here?
They were certainly not doing what Earthlings are doing everywhere you look. That is, they were not attached to a small machine.
On Earth, notice that if a person is not holding a slice of plastic to his ear and speaking as he walks. He moves forward one foot after the other, looking at his fingers as they pranced through the keys.
Not on Idaho. Not a Phone, even an earphone in sight. But they were alone, so there were also no conversations going on either. How did they communicate? Or did that go out of style also?
At first I didn’t try to get any attention to myself. But finally I gave a weak smile and a little hand wave to a lady coming toward me.
She passed on by without noticing my greeting. Well that could happen at home too. So I was vocal next time with a “Good day.” And a smile. No response. I stopped and watched the folks going one at a time to what or where they were headed.
Hmm, Where are the children? They can’t all be in school can they? I didn’t see a single stroller or baby buggy.
I followed a young man who was walking quite fast, so he must have someplace important to get to. It was difficult to keep up with him. Twice I ran for several minutes so as to not lose him. He stopped in front of a tall building and was gone when I arrived thirty seconds later. I looked up and down the street, then opened the door and went in. Where had my fellow gone?
I saw him in a chair in the lobby and just watched from where I stood. When he got up to leave, he had two small boys by their hands, walking beside him.
At least I now knew children existed. They didn’t speak but they defiantly communicated as they nodded and smiled. Just outside he bought two ice cream bars and they continued to walk.
I began to slowly understand that they were all just as tuned in to something as our people were to their small plastic boxes. Only this was straight from the Clouds up in the sky to their brains. It was what I might call mental communication. Or what did I once hear it called…
Mental Telepathy. That was it. The production of High Tech Phones had lead to Cloud Telepathy. Somehow your own brain was connected to the Cloud Communication Center, where you tuned in the ones you mentally accepted and so these people were as tuned out from each other as if they carried the equipment in the shirt pockets. Whether that was good or bad was not my decision to make. I would however report it back on Earth.
That there was also another common event which was straight out of a T.V. Movie. They could beam themselves or someone could beam their children from one place to another and without a monstrous, noisy, machine to enter.
So I now had two things that the next fifty or one hundred years would bring to us on Earth. I could go home.
Please don’t tell me it was my duty to stay and learn how they did these things. When I was told that man would walk on the moon, no one explained how they would get there, only that they would.
And to this day I have no idea how to make a Television Set. And much less about how to make a T.V. show and send it out to the folks. I just know that it can be and is done regularly.
So here I am back on Earth writing my Computer Story called,
THE NEXT BIG THINGS.
I know that there will be those who say, “ridiculous!” Or, “That is not possible and never will be because…!” That is what someone, somewhere always says to new things.
One day I went with Bob to a Convention in Las Vegas of Electrical Engineers.
Not being an Engineer, I was there for the fun later that night at the great Las Vegas Shows and a few Slot Machines while Hubby played at the Dice Table.
Meanwhile stuck in the High Tech Demonstrations, I let my tired feet sit through a young Engineers explanation of his Company’s latest Computers.
I heard gentle laughter from adjacent seats as he said,
“One day there will be a Computer in every home. He showed with his small compact, bread box looking model, that the wife will keep her recipes in the Computer and call them up right in the kitchen for cooking.
The husband will bring some of his work home to relax and work on after dinner. The children will be doing their Home work early, so they will have time for their Computer Games. He then invited a couple to come up and show us all how to play Donkey Kong.
It looked to me as if he was almost saying that there will be three computers in every home. And I heard laughter when he suggested, one.
Oh by the way, today we have five. So much for scoffing at the new stuff.. so go ahead and scoff as I write about the next Big Things I found on the Fictional Planet, Idaho.
You may be around when they happen on Earth and remember me…that I told you so. Or you may recall right now that I did tell you that this is a fictional story and forget I mentioned those ridiculous, impossible, things.
Which will be you?
I WISH YOU A HAPPY 2015 AND ALL THAT YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE FOLLOW.
BEVERLY MOSIER DECEMBER 2014
(All Works Copyright, Please Do Not Reproduce Without Permission)
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