Future Friend

As ever, it was hard for Pip@256X#YY.3_7’s mum to get her out of bed. This was because Pip@256X#YY.3_7 was eleven and eleven-year-olds often are hard to get out of bed. But it was also because Pip@256X#YY.3_7 slept in a pod that had a built-in DreamSet, and last night she had programmed it for a Scoring the Winning Goal in the World League Final dream.

At the point at which her mum started knocking on the window of her BedPod, Pip@256X#YY.3_7 had, in fact, scored that goal, and celebrated by whooshing round the ground in her GravityLess Boots. But there was still the Great Slide down from the Stadium Above the Clouds to do, and she wasn’t going to miss that: it always looked like such fun when the winning team zoomed down the giant slide, holding up the trophy. So she just let the DreamSet reframe her mum’s Knock! Knock! Knock! so that it became the crowd chanting, ‘Pip! Pip! Pip!’

The Great Slide down from the Stadium Above the Clouds was great. The tallest in the solar system, the slide was made from Graphite42, a metal that was completely friction-free, and Pip whooshed down it at what felt like over a thousand kilostrands a minute! And the view, as she approached the City from above, was fantastic! She was nearly at the bottom when …

BUMP!

Her progress was halted by the GravityLess Boots of someone hovering in the way.

‘HEY!’ shouted Pip, rubbing her face. ‘You can’t be here!’

‘I can,’ said the person hovering in the way. ‘I’m your mum.’

‘I know!’ said Pip. ‘But this is my dream!

‘Yes,’ said Nina@256X#YY.3_7, ‘but I’m your mum!’

‘You just said that!’

‘Yes, but you seem to be forgetting it. And also that I have one of these!’

Nina took from the pocket of her ImageSuit a small crystal inscribed with the words: DreamSet: Override Control.

‘Oh no …’ said Pip. ‘Mum …’

Nina rotated the crystal. Instantly, everything – the Great Slide, the view up to the Stadium Above the Clouds, the view down to the City – dissolved like tears in rain. And was replaced by Pip in her BedPod, looking up at her mum standing outside the window of her pod. Nina’s ImageSuit was now set to StandardMum. She had her arms crossed.

‘Now what’s going on?’ said Pip. ‘I thought your Dream Override could only change my dream – not actually wake me up?’

‘You’re not awake,’ said her mum. ‘I just changed your dream to this.’

‘What … I’m now dreaming that I’m at home in my pod?’

‘Yes.’

‘What a rubbish dream!’

‘Yes. Which is why you might as well wake up.’

Pip sighed. She blinked three times, and woke up. She stretched, yawned, and pressed the button by the side of her AirMattress. The window of her pod opened with a smooth hiss. She frowned.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘have I woken up? Because this looks exactly the same as my dream.’

‘Yes,’ said her mum. ‘Good morning – time for school!’

Luckily for Pip, who felt quite tired after all the dream confusion, school in 3020 was not somewhere you went. She did still have to get dressed, and eat breakfast, but it helped that these things didn’t involve a lot of effort.

Pip, like everyone in 3020, had a small wireless chip implanted in her brain called a MindLink. The MindLink synced up to some of the items in her HouseUnit. So, when she wanted to get dressed, all she had to do was picture herself wearing her ImageSuit, and immediately it flew out of the cupboard and – once she stuck her arms out – fitted itself round her.

The same with her boots: she lay down on the floor, stuck her legs up, wiggled her feet, then thought about them with boots on, and they – the boots – hovered from the side of the pod (where she’d left them yesterday) and slid themselves on to those very same feet.

Pip’s breakfast didn’t take much in the way of effort either. Not because the pots and pans and food flew on to the CookStation when she went into the FoodSpace and thought about them via MindLink – although she could have done that – but because it was made by someone else. Not her mum or dad: they were already busy working in the LabSpace. No, Pip’s breakfast was made by Pip 2.

You’ll meet it – no, let’s be nice and call it her – in a minute.

This morning’s breakfast was Pip’s favourite: boiled egg and soldiers. (Not a boiled-egg-and-soldiers pill, but real boiled egg and soldiers; just because this is the future doesn’t mean everything’s going to be like you expect it to be from films. Although obviously the egg had been made from chicken cells, not laid by an actual chicken. Actual chickens lived in Zone X, where they had formed a very anti-human army, and refused to lay eggs any more.)

Once Pip had dressed and eaten breakfast, it was indeed time for school. Or, as you would call it if you lived in 3020, the Learning Matrix. TLM was, as you might have guessed, an online school.

I know you might think that you do a lot of things online. But, in 3020, everything happens online. This is partly because in the future computers are more advanced, but also because almost no one goes outside in 3020. It’s too hot or, in some places, too flooded, and also there are some very nasty bugs floating about, some of which come from the mutant animals that have taken over a lot of the Earth, and some of which were produced by humans as weapons, in the various wars between now and then.

This is why Pip’s family name was @256X#YY.3_7. With nearly all communication outside the HouseUnit happening by computer, normal surnames had been replaced, a long time before, with an online address. Obviously, with twenty-four billion people in the world – and a whole section of the animal kingdom, particularly the chimps, now online as well – this meant that everyone had to have a long, complicated address.

To start today’s lesson, Pip sat in her HouseUnit’s MainSpace, and reached for her G-Glasses. Before she put them on though, she looked over to Block 5. Pip and her family – which was just her and her mum and dad, as the Population Police only allowed one child per family – lived in HouseUnit 72. This was about halfway up Block 4, one of twenty enormous skyscrapers in Zone J, one of the poorer zones of the City.

Pip saw that the sky was very red, like it was most of the time, and she could hear – as you could most of the time – the distant sound of thunder. But, across the way, Pip could see the boy in the window of his HouseUnit. He was just about to put on his G-Glasses as well. As he sometimes did, the boy looked up – they both knew what time they were meant to start school – smiled and waved. Pip smiled and waved back. He turned away and put his G-Glasses on.

Pip frowned. She wished she knew him better, but though she could see him clearly – and liked his nice face and friendly smile – he was too far away for her to ImageSearch for his name.

Pip sighed and put on her G-Glasses. At first, these just looked like ordinary glasses, but, after a second, the lenses went dark. They bleeped, and a series of lights went on around the edges of the lenses. In Pip’s vision, a schoolroom appeared, although she was the only pupil.

Miss Lucy was waiting for her.

‘Hello, Pip,’ she said.

‘Hello, Miss Lucy,’ said Pip.

‘I’ll be your teacher today.’

‘You’re my teacher every day,’ said Pip.

Miss Lucy frowned, and the edges of her body froze for a second, then unfroze.

‘I have processed that statement, and found it to be a little bit rude,’ she said. ‘Part of your learning is politeness.’

‘Sorry, Miss Lucy.’

‘Just because I don’t exist is no reason to make fun of me.’

‘You do exist,’ said Pip.

‘Not in the real world,’ said Miss Lucy, looking a bit sad. Her body froze and unfroze again. ‘Sorry, that was a Human Emotion glitch. Anyway,’ she said, ‘today we’re going to be doing history.’

‘Oh good,’ said Pip. ‘Which period?’

‘Your favourite. The twenty-first century.’

‘Hey,’ said a voice to Pip’s left, ‘no one’s fed me my Kitty Chunks.’

‘Hold on, Miss L,’ said Pip.

‘Is that Squeezy-Paws@256X#YY.3_7?’ she replied.

‘Yes,’ said Pip, taking the G-Glasses off and looking down at a large – really, an absolute unit, a total chonk of a – cat. ‘Are you telling the truth?’

‘How dare you!’ said the cat in a slow, rather posh drawl. ‘I always tell the truth.’

‘No, she doesn’t,’ said a high-pitched – a better word would be squawky – voice.

Pip looked over at the BirdCube. Dag – the family’s green parrot, who lived in a see-through cube, which hovered below the middle of the ceiling – was staring in a bored way at Squeezy-Paws.

‘Shut up, parrot.’

‘You shut up, cat.’

‘No, you shut up. Fat idiot.’

‘Oh, I know you are. But what am I?’

‘Guys,’ said Pip, ‘stop arguing. What’s the point of animals evolving speech if that’s all you’re going to do?’

‘I’ve told you before, Pip,’ said Dag, ‘saying that is offensive to parrots. We could speak centuries ago! And then, after years of lagging behind, the other animals caught up. But now people forget how we parrots led the way!’

‘Well, the truth is, Dag,’ said Miss Lucy, appearing as a full-size hologram in the middle of the room, ‘that all that parrots used to say, in the olden days, was Pretty Polly! Pretty Polly! over and over again.’

‘That’s all you thought we were saying,’ muttered Dag darkly.

‘This is all fascinating,’ said Squeezy-Paws, ‘but meanwhile who’s going to feed me?’

‘Not me,’ said Dag. ‘I can’t leave this cube, can I? It’s a prison, I tell you, for a bird. I should be allowed to fly! That’s what birds do!’

‘Dag,’ said Pip with a sigh, ‘you know it wouldn’t be safe. The air filters would suck you in and you’d be—’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Dag.

‘Um,