JakeWIlls92
Gold Member
- Apr 6, 2014
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In 2007, four friends from a sun-baked Los Angeles suburb piled into a slightly beat-up Toyota Corolla, music blaring. After a wrong turn on a dusty canyon road and an inexplicable shimmer in the air, they found themselves not back at home, but in an L.A. that felt... different. The sky was an impossible, brilliant blue, completely free of the usual smog. The air hummed with the quiet whoosh of sleek, solar-paneled electric vehicles.
"Where are the gas guzzlers?" asked Mia, staring at a passing vehicle that looked straight out of a '60s future concept design. At their high school, a sterile, advanced facility served lunch by silent, articulate AI-controlled robots. The "menu" featured things like sustainably grown, lab-grown chicken satay and fresh vertical farm greens, a stark contrast to the usual mystery meat. "RNA Crops, GMO crops—it all sounds a little too perfect," muttered Alex, eyeing his plate. Their college counterparts, they later learned, could afford the same gourmet meals and only ate instant noodles if they wanted to.
Japanese, Mexican, and Indian cuisine were common sights on lunch trays.
After an unnerving day of subtle shifts, the high school computer lab offered a fresh dose of reality-bending news. A quick search for "Moon landing" brought up a black-and-white newsreel showing a Soviet Soyuz capsule landing on the lunar surface in July 1969. A cosmonaut, friends stared, speechless, Alexei Leonov, planted the hammer-and-sickle flag, his voice tinny and triumphant. "I take this step for my country, for my people, and for the Marxist-Leninist way of life," he proclaimed, "knowing that today is but one small step on a journey that will take us all to the stars." The mission had narrowly beaten Apollo 11 in July 1969.
On the same screen, an article detailed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, following years of economic strain from the continued space race. The West had, in a way, won the Cold War, but the competition had propelled both sides far beyond their 1980s capabilities. Later searches revealed the existence of lunar bases established in the early 70s and a crewed NASA mission landing the first humans on Mars in the mid-80s with a nuclear propelled spacecraft. A joint international Mars base had followed in the 90s.
Continued missions beyond low Earth orbit from the 70s to the end of the 90s apparently accelerated the development of vertical farming, RNA crops, GMO crops, lab grown meat, nuclear power, space based solar power, robotics, and electronics.
On the websites for CNN and Fox News, they saw newsreels playing on infinite loops—giant, clawed asteroid mining vessels, on asteroids in the asteroid belt flown to the asteroids on nuclear powered spacecraft constructed on Mars harvesting precious metals. The friends exchanged glances, the unsettling feeling of being trapped in a history they didn't recognize sinking in deeper. The gleaming, sci-fi world outside was no longer just a curiosity; it was a consequence of a past they were never meant to have.
As a Concorde-like airliner, its sonic boom magically absent, traced a silent arc across the crystal sky, the friends knew they were in for a semester of culture shock in this cleaner, quieter, stranger 2007.
It is not to late to start working toward that future.
Moon Base Would Be Cheap with Help from Private Industry: Report
"Where are the gas guzzlers?" asked Mia, staring at a passing vehicle that looked straight out of a '60s future concept design. At their high school, a sterile, advanced facility served lunch by silent, articulate AI-controlled robots. The "menu" featured things like sustainably grown, lab-grown chicken satay and fresh vertical farm greens, a stark contrast to the usual mystery meat. "RNA Crops, GMO crops—it all sounds a little too perfect," muttered Alex, eyeing his plate. Their college counterparts, they later learned, could afford the same gourmet meals and only ate instant noodles if they wanted to.
Japanese, Mexican, and Indian cuisine were common sights on lunch trays.
After an unnerving day of subtle shifts, the high school computer lab offered a fresh dose of reality-bending news. A quick search for "Moon landing" brought up a black-and-white newsreel showing a Soviet Soyuz capsule landing on the lunar surface in July 1969. A cosmonaut, friends stared, speechless, Alexei Leonov, planted the hammer-and-sickle flag, his voice tinny and triumphant. "I take this step for my country, for my people, and for the Marxist-Leninist way of life," he proclaimed, "knowing that today is but one small step on a journey that will take us all to the stars." The mission had narrowly beaten Apollo 11 in July 1969.
On the same screen, an article detailed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, following years of economic strain from the continued space race. The West had, in a way, won the Cold War, but the competition had propelled both sides far beyond their 1980s capabilities. Later searches revealed the existence of lunar bases established in the early 70s and a crewed NASA mission landing the first humans on Mars in the mid-80s with a nuclear propelled spacecraft. A joint international Mars base had followed in the 90s.
Continued missions beyond low Earth orbit from the 70s to the end of the 90s apparently accelerated the development of vertical farming, RNA crops, GMO crops, lab grown meat, nuclear power, space based solar power, robotics, and electronics.
On the websites for CNN and Fox News, they saw newsreels playing on infinite loops—giant, clawed asteroid mining vessels, on asteroids in the asteroid belt flown to the asteroids on nuclear powered spacecraft constructed on Mars harvesting precious metals. The friends exchanged glances, the unsettling feeling of being trapped in a history they didn't recognize sinking in deeper. The gleaming, sci-fi world outside was no longer just a curiosity; it was a consequence of a past they were never meant to have.
As a Concorde-like airliner, its sonic boom magically absent, traced a silent arc across the crystal sky, the friends knew they were in for a semester of culture shock in this cleaner, quieter, stranger 2007.
It is not to late to start working toward that future.
Moon Base Would Be Cheap with Help from Private Industry: Report
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