A day in 2118

Montréal, November 18, 2018

The light turns on. My pillow starts to vibrate, and I wake up. My robot, Friend, is standing right beside my bed looking at me with her beautiful smile. She has a glass of water in her hand. She brings the glass toward me and says:

– “Good morning. Here you are. You have a hologram * meeting with your doctor in 20 minutes.”

– “Why?”

– “You had a peak in your blood pressure last night.”

– “How does she know that? I didn’t wear my wristband last night.”

– “The nano-chips that you ate last week reported everything about your health to her.”

– “Ok. Could you fill up the bath with warm water and prepare your choice of breakfast for me?”

– “Sure!”

I adopted Friend as an infant 70 years ago. She is one of the oldest, but smartest robots here on Mars. I enter the bathroom; my bathtub is filling up. I take my smart toothbrush which is more intelligent than me. It does the routine dental check up every time I brush my teeth and transfers the reports to my dentist. It can even fill my dental cavities. After brushing my teeth, I take the bath and go to my kitchen. Friend has already prepared baked toasts with cream and eggs. She winks at me and says:

– “You’ll love it.”

– “Thanks. I’m sure I will.”

I finish my breakfast. Friend says:

– “Your doctor wants to connect. Shall we start the meeting?”

The hologram of Julie appears. After a usual check up, she says:

– “You should have a heart surgery as soon as possible, which I’m sure is not going to be painful. A Robosurgeon will come over tomorrow morning to first run a multispectral medical imaging, and then you’ll have a heart operation.”

She smiles and says:

– “No wine this evening! I have to fly or I will miss my next virtual meeting with another patient on Moon.”

Her hologram disappeared. I used to be in love with Julie. She is super smart, and she is the seventh person to have arrived in Mars, while I was the 2018th. Before coming here, we were both living in an underwater city on earth. At that time, I was working in a company that was doing 3D printings of houses and human organs. We collaborated on a project in which she was part of the team who managed to grow human brain in the laboratory, did the first brain implant on earth and decoded the puzzle of human consciousness. Julie and her team were also the first on Mars who managed to simulate cell and molecular dynamics using quantum computing * and defeated all types of cancers using drugs that had been tested on simulations of human biology. Some people say that she decided she doesn’t want to be immortal, and not have a brain that is fused with an artificial intelligence. Well, she is already 150 and still working.

A part of my daily routine is to take my personal flying machine and go to my vertical farm and have my biological lunch there. I used to go to my company, founded on Mars 50 years ago, after lunch and stay there for the rest of the day. We design and print self-cleaning clothes. Now that we use the same global currency worldwide, I can sell my designs to inhabitants of different planets. Therefore, we are very busy these days, and I’m sure this hectic life style is too much for an old man like me who has just turned 133, although I look like a 33-year-old man. That’s why, these days, I stay on the farm and work remotely from there for the rest of the day.

Today is Sunday and I don’t work. Me and Friend are going to play some music with our band during the morning. Then, we will go to a small planet we have never visited, where will stay until afternoon. After that, we are going to come back to Mars. We are invited to have dinner at the farm of my best friend, Nitis *. Friend is dating with his new assistant. They meet in person every Sunday and most of the time play Go * game. Me and Nitis play chess, eat exotic foods and drink wine. Today, he wants me to taste his new home-made wine and give my opinion about it to him. It’s too bad that I can’t drink because of my tomorrow’s operation 🙂

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* Hologram is an image made with a laser beam, in which the objects shown look like they have depth rather than appearing flat and can seem to move (Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press).

* Quantum computing is the area of study focused on developing computer technology based on the principles of quantum theory, which explains the nature and behavior of energy and matter on the quantum (atomic and subatomic) level.

* Nitis is a Native American name.

* Go is an abstract strategy board game. In October 2015, Google DeepMind’s program AlphaGo beat the European Go champion.