This is a promotional entry for @pennsif's writing challenge.
As a sponsor of the event, I do not intend to be part of the voting, but I felt like getting my fiction feet wet again and had some time to type today, so here we go!
The shot moves unsteadily as the cameraman exits the vehicle and moves toward the front door. Panning up to look at the huge house. A gorgeous brick, glass, and steel structure standing on a hill overlooking the city.
A slight hum can be heard, and the camera zooms in to a smaller building off to the side. Large conduits run from the side of the building, down to where they disappear at ground level, only to reemerge at the side of the house, where they come up and enter the side of the building.
The cameraman moves to the door and we see a hand reach out to knock on the door. A few moments pass, then the door opens to the view of a young man in simple trousers and a sweater. A great gleaming smile on his face.
"Welcome!" The young man exclaims, "I'm so glad to have you here! No one has asked to visit in so long! We almost forget there is civilization outside our doors, what with everything being delivered by drone and all." He pauses "But come in! Come in! Listen to me going on while you stand at the doorway!"
The young man opens the door wide, and the camera passes through the entryway, panning around a wide welcoming foyer.
"You have the newest upgrades don't you?" the young man asks, staring right into the camera, "The total eye replacement gives it away! The older models, they just didn't have the storage of the total ocular implant did they?" he pauses, waiting a moment, before he slaps his forehead "Oh! How silly of me. You aren't allowed to talk. These interviews are supposed to be stream of conscious right? Pretend I am talking to the audience, not to you!"
the camera moves up and down, as the camera man nods the affirmative.
Okay. Well... I apologize. I have never done one of these before. But I'll get the hang of it." He stares into the camera again "Hi everyone!" he nearly yells at the camera, over emphasizing each syllable. The camera pulls back, startled. We see the hands of the camera man give a patting down motion, as though to say settle down. The young man blushes and looks apologetic as his gaze moves around the camera.
"Right, right! How silly of me. You wouldn't have the ocular upgrade without the audio as well. So sorry everybody!"
He calms down a bit and gives a waving motion. "Well, come on in. We can go ahead and get started. I know everyone wants to know about our family!" He turns and walks down a hallway, the camera follows from about three paces back.
The young man stops at a large door, turning back to the camera "Now, you may want to turn the microphone down for this first part of the tour. This is where the children spend their days. None of them have been modified yet. We let them play and holler to their heart's content."
The camera man nods again, shaking the vision at home. The young man opens the door, and sure enough, the sound that escapes is a racket. Entering the room the camera pans around to what is essentially an indoor playground that would entertain any child. In fact, around 50 children ranging in age from toddlers to pre-teens are scattered around the room engaged in various activities. The room is so large, they do not seem crammed in, and everyone seems to be having a great time.
"So I know one of the questions everyone asks is how we treat the children. Well, as a product of our own work, and having spent my days here myself until I was old enough to move up, I can assure you. The children want for nothing. Everything they could need is provided." He points to one side of the room, which is lined with doors "The bunk houses are spacious and full of enriching activities as well. I can't show you those, as the First shift is sleeping right now."
He turns back to the camera "Oh, yeah. We get everyone used to the shift life early on. Eight hours on, sixteen off. This way when they grow old enough to begin working they are already familiar with the process. The transition is seamless."
They have continued walking through the room as the young man spoke. The path they took was not straight, seeming to meander to allow the camera to take in all of the sites. And yet, at no point did any of the children even come close to running in to them. It may be chaos, but it was an organized chaos, with a flow that defied what one would expect from children.
They reached another door and the young man stopped with his hand on the handle.
"Okay. Last chance with the kids before we head to the teenage wing." He let his gaze flow around the room, and the camera followed suit. Panning around to give the viewers another wide angle look at the place where dozens of children were being raised, without a parent in sight.
Nodding with satisfaction, the young man opened the door and moved into a small corridor. This was a plain hall with just the door behind them, and a door in front of them. "This hallway acts as a sound buffer. Every door, as I am sure you noticed, is sound proof. But when we move from room to room, we do not want the noise of one to interfere with the activity in the other. Much like space ships have airlocks, we have sound locks." He chuckled at his own joke before moving to open the next door.
"The teens are quieter" he said simply "but they do enjoy music. Depending on who's turn it is, it could be Mozart or it could be punk rock from the 2020's. Just wanted to give you fair warning." He flashed that white grin again and opened the door. The sound that emerged was not offensive to the ear, but it was not exactly Mozart either. "Oh!" the young man exclaimed "Punkalicious! Did you know that the three people who make up that group are the children of the two guys who made up Daft Punk? Yeah, the girl bot and the cyclops bot belong to one, and the terrabot is the son of the other. Pretty cool right?"
He walks in to the room, and the camera follows. This room is just as big, but divided into two areas. The one side is what looks like a sports arena, several youth are playing football, basketball, running on a short oval track, and conducting other various activities. On the other side of the room is what looks like a library. Scattered chairs and couches are occupied by young men and women who are engaged in reading, or chatting, or some other intellectual endeavor.
"Once the children become teenagers they have specialized into athletic or intellectual endeavors." The young man begins as the camera pans back to him. "At this stage we begin to separate them in to those fields. There will be some cross over from one group to the next. But for the most part, the two groups are set, these are the paths that will take them through their adult lives. We don't interfere with that development, but it still manages to turn out to be about half and half." the young man shrugs "Darwinism maybe. Who knows." He laughs as they walk.
"By this time, each of the children have received their first implant. Nothing overt, the typical initial implant is a simple monitor and health guage. Most people have these nowadays anyway, and it is easy enough to do. Some of the older children have received their first functional implant and are beginning to contribute to the family. But we don't push them. When they are ready, they tell us. Once they get their third implant, they are ready to move on to the adult wing."
They reach another door. The camera once again pans around to take a last look. Children studying, children at play, a wall lined with dorm rooms, much like in the previous room.
Once again the young man leads the camera through a sound lock, this one in an L shape. Following the same procedure as the previous doors, the young man stops and turns back to the camera.
"Alright. So this is the work floor. I'll be able to talk, but it will be in a whisper, so you may want to turn up the microphone input. I'll give you some of the information out here though. There are currently two hundred and fifty workers per shift, over three shifts. We have the capacity to go up to six hundred workers per shift, but it will be years before we are able to reproduce at that rate. We don't force any of the workers into relationships, which is probably bad for efficiency, but we prefer to allow the gene pool to spread naturally. Or as naturally as it can in our field."
He gives a bit of a shrug and opens the door. Again the large room is split in two. On one side of the room, athletic looking men and women are running on treadmills, riding stationary bikes, and engaging in other physical activities. Each of these people have dozens of wires running from various parts of their bodies up to the ceiling far above them. Aside from the wires it looks like a gym anyone would go to in the city.
"The workers" The Young man begins, as he notes which direction the camera is pointed. "We found early on that the human body is capable of producing more energy through exercise than any other fuel known to man. I don't know. Maybe someone got the idea from that movie back in the nineties, where all the people were batteries in pools of goo." he made a face of disgust. "We found a way to make it work better than goo. As you can see, no one is in baths of jelly or anything. Although we do provide saunas, whirlpools and steam rooms for relaxation after shift."
The camera pans across to the other side of the room, where dozens, maybe hundreds of large screens are playing various video streams. Anything from popular movies, to ancient black and white TV shows, to simple videos of random colors, and even one crackling fireplace are playing along the wall.
"This side is where the magic happens!"
The young man grins as he whispers excitedly. He points to the floor in front of the screens where couches, recliners, arm chairs, floor mats, and even park benches fill the floor. People are reclining, sitting, standing, or doing Yoga poses throughout the room. Each of them hooked to as many wires as the athletes, but these all connected directly to the heads of the people scattered around the room.
"Not only did we figure out how to harness the energy that the human body could put out. But we also recognized that the brain is one of the fastest processors ever conceived. Back in the 2010's we were operating in terms of giga and terahash rates. One mind alone can process in the hundreds of zetahash. Each person in this room is mining more crypto per second than the largest mining farms in China were able to do in a month in the old days!"
He turns to take in the room, pointing down to one of the couches where a young woman is currently focused on one of the screens showing an old 80's movie. "That is my spot during third shift. I'm in my free shift now, which is why I was chosen to speak to you, once second shift finishes up, I will take my place there and plug in and start mining. I have twenty three GPU implants." He says this proudly as he lifts some of his hair to show a collection of several ports where the wires will connect. "I mine, on average, seventeen million Bitcoin a day. Of course we don't mine bitcoin anymore. That's not profitable, so we mine all sorts of other coin that we can convert down to Bitcoin if and when we need to use it. I've been working on VolcanoToken myself. I think there is a big future in that, and I really like that the science behind it will hopefully save lives when volcanoes are threatening to erupt."
Once again they have reached a door. The young man opens it, and they slip out into the next hallway. Rounding a bend they come to the next door and the young man stops.
"So this is the final room of our trip. There are, of course, parts of the house I cannot take you to, so there will be some things left to the imagination. But this room is my favorite." He flashes his grin "This is where my grandparents live." He states proudly. "Not everyone here is directly related to the founders. But I am. Of course, that doesn't give me any particularly increased status or anything. But I'm proud of it anyway. It's cool to know what your family has accomplished over time you know?"
With that, he opens the door and they move into the smallest room they have been in. This room is simple, and dark. A small desk lamp illuminates the center of the room where four people sit. Each is in a zero gravity style chair, laying back with their faces pointed to the ceiling. But those faces are covered. What looks like old style Virtual Reality goggles cover their eyes. Wires come out of both the people and the headsets, snaking their way to the ceiling above. Each chair is accompanied by a hospital grade sensor suite, and an IV stand. Each IV trails it's cord down to the wrist of the person in the chair.
"World, meet numbers 1 through 4!" the young man exclaims as he nearly dances around the four motionless bodies in their chairs. "Of course, they aren't able to talk to you. They work all the time. The last time any of them got up was" he pauses thinking for a moment "I think one of them got up in 2033. I would have been twelve at the time. Yes! I remember. Number 3 got up and wandered through the house for a little bit before she could be returned to her station. They've been hard at work since then."
He pointed out a computer station in the corner of the room. This was the first quote normal unquote thing that had been seen since entering the house. This looked like a standard work station computer that millions of people around the globe might use.
"See. That's the central computer. One Through Four control that, and that in turn collects everything that goes on over on the work floor. They are the legit brains of the operation! We never know which one is in control at a given moment. They worked all of that out before I was born. But it all works. There's even a process in place where my Ma and Da will be prepared to take over when two and three pass on. It's a great honor to be one of the four! These are the richest people in the world!"
They left the room, passing through another Sound Lock before finding themselves back in the Entry Foyer. The young man went to the front door and opened it. Standing and looking at the camera he smiled
"I hope you enjoyed your tour through our home! We are proud to be the Best Mining Farm in North America! Of course the Chinese still have bigger farms. But theirs is the next best thing to slave labor. The way we run things is so much better, if not as efficient. Oh. I was told to be sure to give you my name for the acknowledgements. I am Number 1742. Thanks so much for coming by! We hope you enjoyed your visit, and have a profitable day!"
The camera faded to black as the young man, 1742 as he called himself, shut the door to the house. The world once again cut off from the mining farm that was for all intents and purposes, the Bank of New York. The literal brain center of all currency that flowed through the North Eastern United States.
I hope you have enjoyed my story as much as I have enjoyed jotting it down. There is still time to join in the writing challenge. Head over to @pennsif's intro post for all the details to write your story about life in the year 2040.
What a really neat story - totally enjoyed reading that.
Thanks for pitching it in here.
One thing bugging me though - I do recall seeing it, but can't recall the name. What film are you referring to with this?
Maybe someone got the idea from that movie back in the nineties, where all the people were batteries in pools of goo.
Was it a Matt Damon film?
Nope. That's the Matrix. Keanu Reeves. Do you want the red pill, or the blue pill?
Ah yes remember now. I need to go watch some more films again.
I ran a community cinema for a year showing 3 different films every week. I got a bit over-movied and haven't watched much for a couple of years now. Need to dust off the blu-ray collection again I think.
I had entered the contest and wrote a story too. But this is so much better, so detailed and it just flows like a river.
Thank you for the kind words! Mine is promotional though, so you don't have to worry about me winning anything. I don't want to take my money back from pennsif. haha
I need to check and see if I have read your entry yet. I have been trying to keep an eye on them.
Yes, thank god :) Hahaha.
Nice. Lots of fresh new concepts presented. A good example of the new breed of content creators here on steemit. I especially like the irony of how you present the 'privilege' of being one of the four.
Thank you! I really enjoyed yours as well.
Yeah, I tried to wrap it around the idea that they really were just a glorified slave labor pool without saying as much. It's all about perspective isn't it? Human brains are built to adapt to most circumstances, even glorified confinement.
what a fun story. as a scifi fan from way back I really enjoyed this. I rarely take the time to read fiction anymore, but I'm glad I read this. Took me back to when I was a kid reading heinlein and aasmiov..... and of course, it took me into a future that's somehow quite familiar!
your talents seem to know no bounds, sir!
nice job.