A Backpack, a Gun and a Codex

Chapter 7 - Day in the Life of a Hero

-          Hi, can you finish fixing this code line by tonight? And this part is bugged, hopefully, you can check it after that.

-          Yes, Mr., I will check through it and send you the completed version as soon as possible. Thanks for choosing me for your project.

  It is midday, and I am sitting at my desk, meticulously doing the project I am hired for. The room is filled with a sense of silence and concentration. All that is left are the typing sounds of my mechanical keyboard, the beeping of the system, and maybe the air-conditioning system cooling my room. Besides that, there are rows and rows of neatly arranged books about programming and different stuff sitting on the shelf behind my back, as if they are supervising me. The clock continues ticking, but the important thing now is that I have only a few hours left to send out the files for checking by the customer.

  In another room, there gives out a more professional vibe. Mirai is carefully analysing the samples we brought back from the storage. The central processing unit inside her is working at full efficiency, as her delicate fingers type on the laptop, which is also synchronised with her archive and the tablet. Maybe the laptop is for aesthetic purposes. Her deep blue eyes also act as a sensor and scanner, looking carefully at the samples with beams of ultrasound waves recognising and helping re-sketching them onto the laptop. Chains of numbers and loads of graphs on the screen track every statistic of the samples, and produce a detailed report of each of them. The atmosphere, and the serious aura from that humanoid face, seems to even out-shadow me here. Perhaps, the only thing that soothes the mood is the good lavender smell from her synthetic, but very silky and long hair. Although being just a robot, her memories from human time still make her stick to the daily routine of a normal female, taking care of her physical body.

  After finishing my work, I make a good yawn. After every file has been fool-proofed and sent to the customer successfully, I put on my jacket and my tracker, and go out for a walk.

  Living in an urban environment is surely convenient, because everything is interconnected, literally. Since the construction of express pedestrian links was commenced in 2040 as a national effort to cut down on private transportation and encourage walking, hundreds to thousands of such links have been established, connecting uncountable buildings and roads. Set at about twenty to fifty metres above the ground, people can access public elevators to enter the links, either in leisure links or commuter links. The leisure link is for people wanting a short exercise, while the commuter link is for people travelling to work or school, by installing conveyor belts instead of normal roads. I choose the leisure link.

  The links are very long, transparent tubes, connecting in a very complicated system, with proper ventilation, so they can be used even in rainy or snowy weather. The view outside is also magnificent, the typical urban type. Lots of tall buildings are neatly erected, added with rows of green trees, like a pattern, thanks to the good urban planning of the government. The sky is always clear, and it has a clean tone of blue, thanks to the extremely minimised pollution level. Below me, on the roads, there are very few cars or motorbikes. Public transportation and bicycles dominate every road and corner. The roads are always clean and free of litter. The drainage system is also so delicately designed, that a heavy drain would also be useless in trying to flood the streets.

  And everything is simply built within ten or at most twenty years, which is admirable. This is the dream of any individual living in the middle of the twenty-first century. Sadly, they do not know what awaits them at the end of it. I must protect the happiness of the people living here.

  After about half an hour of marvelling at the beauty of the city, the link leads me to a shopping centre. It is a ten-storey building, and as any shopping centre will have, there are a plethora of stores here for one to spend his whole day. I just want to buy some mechanic components, so I go straight to the fifth floor, where the heaven of science in a market setting majestically sits, waiting for tech-savvy customers like me to pay a visit.

  The store is the biggest and the most attractive one on the fifth floor, with anything that one can ever find. I enter the store after scanning my identity card at the entrance. Then, I go to the mechanical component aisle.

  The aisle is physical, but to access the product, customers will wear a pair of virtual reality goggles provided by the store, and wear a pair of provided gloves. After I wear the goggles on, I flick my fingers to scroll down the item lists. I click on an item with a simple pointing hand gesture, and from my view, the virtual version of the item will appear. The gloves act like a touch sensor, so it recreates the authentic feeling of touching the real item, although there is nothing there. In cases of cosmetics and consumables, the smell and taste sensor is also enabled. After choosing the wanted item, I show a thumbs-up gesture, and it will be put into my virtual cart.

  This technology is a leap in consumer experience technology, but due to its exorbitant implementation cost, only very rich households can afford them. Middle-class individuals like me will still go to stores or supermarkets to buy the items. Even if that is the case, one's shopping experience is still tremendously improved.

  Not every time one would get his free time in a busy city, where even pedestrians walk at a faster pace to blend in with how fast time goes. I go to a small restaurant located on another floor. After checking in and registering a single seat, I settle down in a cocoon-like booth and order my food through the interface on the table. After a few minutes, on that same interface, a bowl of noodles materialises, as well as a pair of chopsticks. I can access the spice menu to add pepper or chilli, but it just depends on my taste for that particular moment in time.

  After indulging in the deliciousness of a meal different from the pre-cooked and fast food I always have, I order another takeaway meal and set the delivery time at one hour later. Then, I walk home.

  The azure, crystal-clear sky, and the sun up there blessing everyone with the warmth of sunlight, blend in with the peaceful atmosphere spreading to every corner of the city. There is a sense of tranquillity, here and there, a sense of weird tranquillity that happens to derive from the quietness of the streets and roads. People are still working diligently to make ends meet in their offices, and here I am, enjoying the luxury of a quiet atmosphere. Well, a freelancer is not tied to any contract, so I have no reason to feel guilty. Everyone has their way of life.

  I reach home at three o'clock. The box of noodles is already delivered to the exact coordinates of Mirai's working table, and the fragrance overwhelms my sense of smell. Mirai also just finishes her analysis, and the pile of papers (hopefully for aesthetic purposes only) containing tons of numbers and graphs sits neatly on the table, waiting to torture my brain again. Well, that will always be how I end a day, tired from work, and then saving the world.

_______________________

  2050, Counter-Extraterrestrial Association, New York City

  Lieutenant Colonel receives another report about an abnormal heat point, along with the coordinates showing a cluster of islands. Without a second thought, his pressing the button sends the signal to the units nearby, and an assembly of nearly three hundred soldiers, medics, and military technicians, fully armed to the brim, set their feet on the island. As a habit, a piece of half-burnt cigarette is in his mouth, as he closely watches the live footage from the big screen in the office. Lieutenant Colonel has a wife and two precious kids. Every day that he devotes himself to such meticulous tasks, he gets to protect their smiles another day.

  The units approach an artificial structure resembling some kind of storage. The outer walls have been damaged and partially melted due to the heat, leaving the steel frames standing like a skeleton. Most of the items have been damaged, but a thorough two-hour search does not leave any of them disappointed. Scattering around the whole area, there are traces of unburnt documents in fire-resistant safes and one or two pieces of material from some kind of machine. Everything is sealed into packages, which will be stealthily transferred to the headquarter via underground services.

  After careful inspections, the Lieutenant Colonel sends a command to ask every unit to retreat. A smile of satisfaction blossoms on his scarred face. The long, long secrets haunting the Counter-Extraterrestrial Association for decades are slowly unveiling.