Other Worlds Ink has a new near-future sci-fi anthology out: Earth 2100.
Earth on the Cusp of the Twenty-Second Century
How the world has changed in the last seventy-six years. In 1948, scientists ran the first computer program, and “the Ultimate Car of the Future,” the futuristic, three wheeled Davis Divan, debuted. Since then, a succession of inventions—the personal computer, the internet, the World Wide Web, smart phones and social media—have transformed every aspect of our lives.
The next seventy-six years will change things too, in ways we can barely even begin to imagine. Culture, climate change, politics and technology will continue to reshape the world. Earth in 2100 will be as unrecognizable to us as today would be to someone from 1948.
Eighteen writers tackled this challenge, creating an amazing array of sci-fi possibilities. From emotional AI’s to photosynthetic children, from virtual worlds to a post-urban society, our writers serve up compelling slices of life from an Earth that’s just around the corner.
So dive in and take a wild ride into these amazing visions of our collective future.
Tin Lizzy
Gail Brown
Chaos filled several of the workshop tables. Material overflowed a table with a sewing machine. Some heavy duty, water proof beige fabrics had drifted to the floor.
A thick vegetable and meat soup simmered on the stove in the tiny central kitchen area. Next to the stove was a table set for two. Without any chairs.
Celina rode her power chair over to the counter top stove to stir the soup. The counter was a few inches higher than was comfortable. Today she needed to cook more than her usual single serving. Maybe her height measurements had been off. The counter could be an inch shorter, and not be in her lap.
It was challenging to figure out how to build it low enough to see into a pan, and stir the food, while tall and sturdy enough to not knock it over when Lizzy slid under it.
There was only about a foot of space to work with, if she didn’t want the pan higher than her face, and not able to stir without her elbow at maximum height. Which risked boiling food splashing on her face.
Figuring out how to make furniture the correct height, so she could slip her non-functioning legs under it had consumed her waking hours, and even sleeping hours, for the last year.
The stainless steel pan reflected her face. Down to the pointed lines above her eyebrows. Even the eyebrow she had singed an hour before.
She turned the power chair back to her wood and metal design workstation. Another stainless steel surface. Covered with scars from the many experiments needed to build lowered objects, with a glimpse of personal beauty in their functionality.
What would Henril and Trinkle think of her newest achievement? Her former hiking partners no longer walked the trails as much without her.
Certainly not on the narrow bluff overlooking the river. Henril had avoided out of concern for Trinkle’s safety. Or so he said.
Hopefully, they would soon all be hiking together.
The Authors
- Tim Newton Anderson
- nathan bowen
- Elizabeth Broadbent
- Gail Brown
- J. Scott Coatsworth
- Monica Joyce Evans
- Isaiah Hunt
- Blake Jessop
- E.E. King & Richard Lau
- Morgan Melhuish
- Eve Morton
- Christopher R. Muscato
- Jennifer R. Povey
- D.M. Rasch
- Joseph Sidari
- Mike Jack Stoumbos
- Joseph Welch
- KB Willson
Earth 2100 Excerpt: The Last Human Heart
I run the lipstick over my still-human lips, staring at myself in the creased metal gas station bathroom mirror. The protective balm is a titanium blue, a radiant silver flecked with colors of the rainbow that accents the metallic skin of my cheekbones. Wrinkles line the edge of my lips where skin meets metal. You’re fucking perfect. Like a goddamned Monet.
I snort. I used to care about such things once. Matching my clothes for a night at the clubs with Erik. Choosing our elaborate costumes with care—exposing a bit of muscled stomach or a flash of ass with our tight, waist-hugging jeans. Sometimes bringing another guy home with us for a threesome.
The memories are cracked and faded around the edges. The upload to my quantum brain did something to me, changed me into this Frankenstein of man and machine.
I would have made a hell of a scene on the club circuit.
Crash.
What the hell? Wary, I slip the little jar of the moisturizing lipstick, snagged from an old department store, back into my satchel and swing it over my shoulder. Inside my titanium rib cage, my human heart beats faster—too fast.
I grasp the sides of the old porcelain sink and breathe slowly, calming myself until my heart slows again. Then, silent as a cat, I pull the door open and peer outside through eyes I wasn’t born with.
It’s almost dark, the last bits of evening fleeing across the empty countryside.
Another noise, this time a long, drawn out squeal. My eyes whir and focus. There by the gas pumps.
I breathe a sigh of relief. Just a scavenger bot. Their kind rule the world now, traveling through the rubble and recovering materials on a schedule only they know, stockpiling them for humanity’s return. I laugh bitterly at the thought.
I slip out of the bathroom to watch the little thing. It’s a third the size of my own cyborg body, and it’s working away at one of the old gas pumps, using a laser torch to cut it into pieces.
“They’re not coming back.” It’s a whisper, and an admission. Something I don’t like to think about for too long. You’re being morbid. Erik would tell me that with a flash of his bleached white smile, before leaping at me and pinning me to the bed for a kiss.
I bite my lip with metallic teeth and sigh.
The scavenger stops and turns as if to look at me. I can feel it scanning me for parts. Then it whirs, a disappointed sigh, and turns back to its work.
I’m worthless. I laugh ruefully, a sound more like pistons firing than a human laugh. Even this little metallic vulture has no use for the likes of me.
I consult my map, painstakingly put together from bits and clues found on the neural web. Fifty years after the last human upload, it’s a miracle the network survives at all. It’s a broken, feeble thing, limited to small nodes here and there, but still… a testament to the Remainers like me who maintain it, the humans and machines who survived the climate and the last wars.
Like many of them, I wasn’t “suitable for upload.” One hazard of being an early adopter. I laugh harshly, pistons firing in my throat.
This insignificant speck of humanity’s great accomplishments where I stand was once called Turlock, a tiny town in California’s Central Valley. I wince. I know that name—a friend of mine once lived here. Did she upload, before the end?
The Sacramento trading station is less than a hundred miles away, if it still exists. The last time I’d been there was two decades ago. With luck, I’ll be there in another day or so, and if I’m really lucky, they’ll be able to replace my worn-out ticker with a new one.
My heart beats faster. I close my eyes and urge it to be calm, hoping they will have what I need. Otherwise this might be the end of the line. Still, I’m ready to go, if it comes to that. Erik, I miss you.
