The Summoning Stars

Mindscape - The Original Short Story (Part 1)

He resumed his constricted view of the outside world. Normally, all you could see in the tunnels was the very faint glow of the dimly lit bioluminescent walls. The cells were fed a faint trickle of power to keep them alive and glowing, but there had obviously been an interruption in the flow and one side of the tunnel had virtually blacked out casting the lee of the train into deep shadow.

A small maintenance bot flashed past the window, startling him as it scuttled swiftly over the surface of the train on its spidery legs and he automatically followed it with his eyes. Another appeared at the window and appeared to look in at him, its mantis-like sensor array pressed against the plexiglass. Jay looked at it quizzically. It wasn't often you saw the robotic denizens of the City, they were usually very much out of sight and mind, or restricted to the quietly efficient Housebots. But this one seemed intent on him. He looked back at it, focussing on the sensor array at the front of the bot. There was a sudden flash and unconsciousness threw him into darkness.

Fluorescent green on black surrounded him. Gridlines stretched to distant horizons lifting in a 3D cityscape of strange shaped hills and towers. He looked down at his hands, the contours of his fingers shaped similarly in green and black. There was no sound, no life, no heat, no cold. As he watched, a million tiny dots swarmed from his skin, hanging in a cloud around him. 'Nanobots?' he thought.

So, there was thought then. He watched as his nanite cloud took form, the dots mirroring his own features. A smaller cloud took form to one side, the indistinct figure forming into a more female shape as he watched. His contoured hand reached, reached...

- The Module is now fixed, thank you for your patience.

There was a slight clunk and the Module smoothly moved forwards. Jay smacked his head on the small window in surprise as he lifted from his waking dream, wrenching his neck around to get another view of the bot as it skittered away from him.

As it disappeared from view, he shrank back in his seat, stunned, the bruise on his head disappearing as the nanobots in his blood stream repaired the small damage inflicted by his bump.

His brain whirling with thoughts of unknown lands and slender darkened figures, he jolted back to reality as his Pod detached from the main module, seamlessly tracking up through the building until it slid into the recess in the corner of his flat. The door softly 'shooshed' open and he stepped into his spotlessly clean abode.

For some time, he just sat, trying desperately to process what his exhausted mind had seen. For many weeks now, he and others had been working hard on a few problems that the Mind, no matter its incredible computing power and intellect, just couldn't solve. Sometimes even in the age of smart technology and positronic matrices, the dextrous and intuitive leaps that could only be carried out by the human brain were still required.

Jay was among the brightest mathematicians of his generation, and working with people like Helena, a specialist in nano-technology, gave him a fulfilment the majority of others in the City found simply through recreation, hedonism or the arts. Maths was his canvas, his joy, his form of art, and he was a master artist.

Still pondering the day's events, he casually stripped off his clothes, dropping the bamboo shirt and trousers into the recycling unit and stepped into the shower, the pressurised jets playing soap, water and air over his body in rapid succession as he stood in silent contemplation.

A pod bot had hung freshly made coveralls outside the shower and he stepped into them, moving over to the dispenser in the corner. A few seconds later, he sat at the table that had silently exuded from the floor, a mug of juice and a light snack in front of him.

News, he commanded, and the classic picture of a lady lifting the back of her tennis skirt to show a bare bottom faded into the handsome computer generated visage of the current newsreader. He let the words wash over him, deep in thought.