I
3025 AD, Mars. Prof. Liam
I teach
history at the Greendoor University, named for the fact that all its doors are
green. My family moved to Mars in the year 2099, when the Earth was no longer
habitable for us. This colony has been around for quite some time though and to
be frank, there is enough material here for me to do a thesis on.
I’m
currently headed to the library, because one of my classes got cancelled, so I
figured I’d kill the time reading up. I have taken quite an interest in the 21st
Century, particularly about the years 2010-2045.
I had to use
the fingerprint scanner to gain entry to the library which is also a library
card of sorts, because it’s linked to the databases in the library and allows
the people with proper levels of clearance to access the necessary books. I am
a researcher, so I head off to the research wing and pick up one of the free
tablets there.
I’m
currently in the year 2011. Apparently
in the year 2007, an e-reader called a Kindle was discovered and since then many
iterations of the device have been used. Our ancestors used these Kindle
devices to store and read books on the fly. You could store far fewer books
than now of course, because the tablet I am holding contains an entire library
in it.
This is not
what interests me. What is a “book”? Digging a few years back, say about a
century- I came across a word- “novel” and through the ages these “novels” were
categorized as “books”. They had physical form, you could open them and you’d
have to turn the pages physically in order to progress with the story. I find
this fascinating. These “books” could be what led to the current tablet devices
being used here on Mars! The possibilities are endless, but this will need more
research.
I‘ll have to
upload this to Urmi back at home and see if she can help with it more. Urmi has
been a capable AI enabled robot who came shipped of course with firmware
allowing her to work also as a super computer. Urmi can definitely help me
gather more data on “Novels”, “Books”, “Tolstoy” and “Wilde”.
*****
II
3055 AD - Neil
This is the
last thing that my father wrote before his sudden death on 4th June
3025. I’m told his heart guard (pacemaker in the 21st century)
exploded because it somehow overheated. My father died an untimely death and
had I stumbled across this research before, instead of quite accidentally while
giving Urmi a tune up, maybe I would have been able to help him finish it.
Naturally, since nearly 30 years have passed since this data was uploaded to
Urmi, I had to do some deep root scanning to find it.
I find my
father’s research to be quite fascinating to tell you the truth. “Books”, “Novels”.
What are these things? What is a “Tolstoy”?
******
III
3055 AD- Neil
I have
delved deeper into my father’s research and I have found that in the previous millennia
there existed devices called printing presses which were used to manufacture
these “books”. Apparently, just as my father said, a “book” was a construct
that you could hold in your hand, like our readers today, but you’d have to physically
turn the pages. The story was something to find, rather than the reader you
were holding finding what you want. “Books” did not have search engines like
readers in this era do.
I have also
come across the following names- Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, Twain and Oscar
Wilde. Apparently these individuals were great authors of the time and
apparently an “author” is someone who writes “books”.
The more I
delve in, the more complex this data seems. What is “writing”? We use styluses
to trace alphabets on our Noters. Is it possible that, just as “books” existed,
something called “writing” related directly to a “book” existed?
I have also
come across the words “word processor”. Apparently, these were primitive
programs in which you had to physically press alphabets to form words. Over
here, that is done by voice or else the AI is pre pre-programmed rendering such
activity null and void. I can command my light to turn on by just saying “On” I
can turn on my Viewer in a similar fashion. I do not understand how to operate
a device that has a “switch”
I wonder
what life was like in the 21st century. I think I could use a new
pair of eyes on this. I’ll invite Sam and Bran to dinner and we can discuss all
this.
A
possibility I have recently begun to consider has also been on my mind- was
this a delusion that my father concocted? What if there was no “book”?
IV
Neil Continued
Another new
term in the research I am doing. “Pen”. Apparently these were used to
physically write and they had a fuel called “ink” in them. This is obviously
what preceded styluses.
Sam seems to
think that my father’s work raises many questions about the life in the
previous millennia while Bran thinks my father was senile and refuses to
believe what I am showing him. If only I could get hold of one of these “books”.
I am told the first “novel” was called Pamela.
The people
wrote these “books” using pens to scratch alphabets on “paper” which they
obtained by cutting down trees and synthesizing paper from the wood. The trees
on our world are different. They have wood, but I doubt that we will be able to
make the same paper the research talks about.
At this
point, I am willing to carry this forward. It can teach us something from our
ancestors. We can teach ourselves to write and to read. Maybe one day, I will
physically “write” a physical “book”!
Sam thinks a
few minor modifications to a stylus will be enough to get us a “pen”. As for
the “ink”, I have been able to isolate a chemical formula to create a synthetic
variant of the fuel. All that remains now is the “paper” and here we are unsure
how to proceed.
We do not have the wood to synthesize paper. There are no trees
on Mars like the ones in the 2011 period so we need another alternative. The
pens we have made will not work on our digital devices. We are so close, and
yet we have hit a roadblock.
Sam has a
suggestion. The thermostat in a room at the university can be adjusted and some
of the red clayey soil on Mars itself can be used to grow a tree. It will not
be like the trees from 2011, but it will have to do. We do not have the
resources our ancestors had and they did not have the resources we have. A tree can grow in clayey soil, or so it is
written in a “book” about something called “geography”.
V
3056 AD- Neil and Sam
We have
spent a year trying to reciprocate the materials from the last millennia. We
have pens. All we had to do was sharpen a stylus and add a slot for
the fuel. The paper took us so long, because the trees in the nursery took this
time to grow. We have managed to synthesize a bluish-red hued paper from them.
I am holding
a “pen”, an archaic device from the last millennia. I am staring at “paper”.
Sam has managed to get hold of a sheet of paper from the 2011’s on which is
written “A is for Apple. B is for Ball. C
is for Cat and D is for Dog”
I write
these words on the paper using the pen
A is for Apple
B is for Ball
C is for Cat
D is for Dog
We can write
again. This means we can have books again. We can have shelves of them. We have
managed to remove the cold screen that restricted the reading experience on our
readers.
We will not
need readers in the coming years. We will have books! I hope I live long enough
to see that happen.
A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is
for Cat and D is for Dog.
The Bilge Master
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