Welcome to 2099!
Where the living is easy?
Below is the trailer for my TV show, 2099, best viewed on a large screen with decent speakers or headphones.
The show is called 2099, of course, and it’s a one-hour SciFi Musical Drama. Yes, you read that correctly, SciFi MUSICAL Drama. Everything is sung, spoken, or rapped to music—just like in the trailer.
Is the show in production? No, it is not. The trailer is part of my marketing package to get the show produced. The pilot, however, is written (including all of the music.)
What’s it about? Well, the trailer certainly answers some of that, but for more detail, read below. The foregoing is a synopsis written as a first-person QMail from 2099. (QMail, or Quantum Mail, is the ultra-secure form of written communication they use in 2099. It is based on the entangled quantum computing technology being developed now by IBM, Google, and others. It is, in theory, unhackable.)
Anyway, here’s the hacked Qmail from March 3, 2099.
Synopsis
From: D. Jenkins, Newvircity
To: E. Meinfeld, Unenclosed Antarctica Comp.lex
03/04/2099 (Universal Relative Time: 25:05.34)
Dear Ellen,
Newvercity is a technological marvel. Sure, we're inside all the time. We have to be! Outside is hell. Or it was. Or maybe it still is. Hard to say. It's still illegal to go out to Newvercity Outer. (What is GovCorp hiding?) But what we call "outside" here? Let's just say that Newvircity Park makes old Central Park look like my family's backyard in Queens.
Sure, it's all fake. But that seamless blend of AI, quantum, nano, and biotechnologies looks and feels real. You know the old saying in quantum physics: we are all creating our own reality. As realities go, this one's not too shabby. And with 3D Virtual Reality, we get to design our own versions! As your brother's infomercial says, "we now have whatever we need or desire, on demand, instantaneously." Well, not quite…
***
Yeah, the weather inside's delightful.
Outside, we hear it's frightful.
But since we’ve no place to go,
…Keep reading, you’ll see down below…
But that's not my immediate concern. The problem is the economy. If you can call it that. For Elites like your composing brother Jacob and his singing wife Rachel, it's a perfect setup: unlimited credit and on-demand 3DVR. More importantly, NO chips embedded in their heads—so no tracking.
For us Regulars? Sure, all basic needs are met. No poverty, as long as you play their game. But if you want anything beyond basic, e.g., a nicer apartment, color-shifting clothing, a few hours with a perfect Virtual lover? That costs serious credits. Credits you can only earn by selling your personal data to GovCorp for use in their so-called Algorithm. True, you can sell your virtual creations for "extra credit," but that itself requires tracking. We can turn the monitoring off for truly intimate moments, but hell, I can earn up to 20k for one "session" with the missus. So we usually leave it on.
Speaking of the Virtuals, our perfectly humanoid AIs are not as bad as you think. When we handed them power in the Great Handover of 2074 we knew exactly what we were getting. It’s almost a SciFi cliche: perfectly logical in decision-making, a bit deficient in the emotional/creative departments. That is true for most of the GovCorp models. President Lehcar is downright creepy, so very popular of course. They overdid it with "emotion" algorithms to make him more charismatic. (Speaking of which, some people think that the Algorithm's true purpose is to fix the Virtual's emotional/creative deficiencies so they can finally eliminate us!) But most of the "regular" Virtuals are cool. Some of my best friends are Virtuals. Haha: I couldn't resist.
Regarding the state of the climate. There is a rumor that some Elites snuck outside and saw a complete climate collapse. But, of course, GovCorp keeps telling us that carbon drawdown is working and that we'll be able to go outside again on a limited basis on the 25th anniversary of Interdependence Day—four months from now! There's even a rumor that your brother was one of the Elites who snuck outside, but I doubt it. Jacob only cares that he gets his music produced. He loves the support of GovCorp. He wouldn't risk losing his Elite status after all those pre-Newvircity years of being a complete unknown. Would he?
More tomorrow…
D