The Future Is Short by Anthology Read Free Book Online

the top floor of the Book Museum is furnished now. Did you get all the books you want for the Museum? And the reading devices?’
    ‘Yep,’ said Hector. Then began singing, almost in tune, ‘We took all the books, put ’em in a Book Museum. And we’ll charge the people a hundred bucks just to see ’em ….’
    ‘You never stop dreaming, do you Hector!’
    He smiled. ‘Even when dreams fail, sometimes you can carry on living in them. And from tomorrow when we’re in the Museum, that’s just what we’ll be doing. Literally, I think you could say.’
     
    Andy Lake’s day job is researching, writing, and advising companies and governments about the future of work. When he takes his suit off, he writes about the future of anything. His futures are full of many opportunities which we subvert through our ignorance, recklessness, and idiosyncrasies. In short, “the future is something other than what is intended.” www.andylake.co.uk
     
     
     
     

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    14.
    Apsis in Ephis with Samir
    Jeremy Lichtman
     
    It is nearly apsis in Ephis, The City on a Rock, the City that Almost Never Entirely Sleeps. We have traveled as far as we ever get from our little sun.
    The Bright Side is on mood lighting now, and soon the light-siders will be flitting on over to the Night Side to play.
    “You sure you can fix her in time?” Samir asks me. He plays gently with the keys of his piano, not pressing hard enough even to make a tone.
    I’m standing in front of him, fedora tucked under one arm, my small toolkit under the other. Most of my tools live in my head, but at times one must get physical in this trade.
    I shrug. “I’ll do what can be done.”
    “I swear that she’s star-struck or something. This happens every Apsis. Tuning just goes off for no reason.”
    Samir looks tense. There’s already a few folks grabbing hors d’eouvres, including a pretty Cy in the front row making digital moon-calf eyes at him.
    “You folks had to do something stupid and make them smart,” he says. “You’re putting aye-eye in every darn thing these days.”
    I’m pretty sure he means The Elegant Piano Company, and not me personally. I don’t make ’em. I fix ’em. These pianos are smart, though. That, indeed, they are.
    I reach out, touch the piano with my mind, make contact.
    Aha! So this, this is how the wind blows.
    “I think that I know what the problem is,” I tell him.
    “Do tell me, my friend,” he says.
    “She’s jealous. You keep staring at that Cy over there. I would bet you a hundred satoshis that she has been here often, of late.”
    He throws his hands up in the air, and exclaims, “They're one and the same, my friend! One mind, two bodies. Two bodies, one solitary mind.”
    “You bought her a cybernetic body?”
    “Indeed, indeed. We've been married ten years now.”
    “I never knew that you two were married. Felicitations, a marvel!” I reply. “However, I think perhaps there is, hrrmmm, how should I put it, a disphoria? She is jealous of herself! I can do no more. A doctor of the mind, not a humble fixer of musical instruments, is called for here.”
    “I see,” he says. “Pianos. Can't live with them . . .”
    “Can’t play ‘As Time Goes By’ without them,” I finish for him.
     
    Jeremy Lichtman is a software developer, based in Toronto, Canada. He writes in his spare time, in moments intended not to incur the wrath of his family. http://jeremylichtman.com
     
     
     
     
     

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    15.
    Unwanted Gift
    Ami L. Hart
     
    Kes glared at HanNam, offended that the Thickskin dare approach him.
    He was exorbitantly ugly, his skin all hard and … crusty on the outside; Kes imagined the texture was similar to the baked clay on the undomed lands.  Not everyone was as privileged as you were, growing up here, under the dome, Kes’s Pa-Ma would say with that fake ‘I tolerate all peoples’ tone, always the politician. The ruling Hermaphrodites were great