Chapter 1

“And you know, I’ve seen this crap all over the Ridics and Holograms, but I don’t believe it” Edom stood up from the table frustrated, and walked out of the room. Overwhelmed with all the news about the end of Moore’s Law he just wanted to have a day, or even an hour, where he didn’t have to be bothered over and over about it. But as he entered the living area, the touch sensors on the floor recognized him and activated the wall screen.
“And now, Dr. Rian Vundor” Edom’s wall screen showed a short, light haired European man sitting in a leather chair across from his least favorite talk show host, Woebi Tallic. Rian Vundor continued to speak “Now my opinion on the end of Moore’s Law is basically the same as most physicists” Edom shouted at his wall screen “Turn off!” but immediately after shouting the command an alert appeared in front of him, “cannot complete command”. Frustrated once again he walked to the small opening where the wall screen corners met and walked through it. Faintly behind him he heard Rian Vundor say “We all saw this coming, and its happening as we speak.” Unnoticeably he rolled his eyes as he entered the narrow hallway leading up to his room.
Edom tried to relieve his mind from the very thing that is causing chaos throughout the country. When he reached his room he was able to drown out the noise of the wall screen in his living area.
Edom entered his seemingly empty room to find that his sister had been terrorizing it once again. He breathed in deeply for a moment and then stormed over to his sisters room.
“Niva, what were you doing in my room?” Edom spoke in a rude tone.
Non caring Niva looked up at him from her floor and said “I was looking for your iContacts” she then went back to rummaging through her self for stuff to entertain herself.
“You can not go through my stuff without asking” Edom looked angry but only showed a little of it. “Those iContacts cost a lot of money and I don't want you using them.” Niva just ignored him and went back to rummaging. Edom walked back to his room. His floor was messy, yet at the same time it was clean.
Edom walked up to his wall small one-wall wall screen and tapped it. Immediately his wallpaper shifted into a set of buttons controlling different parts of his room. Edom reached over to a far right one that displayed a picture of a bed and selected it. Edom’s bed rose up from the floor. He was always amazed how it floated in mid air using magnets and superconductors. But for now he just wanted to lay down.
He sat down on the edge of his bed and leaned backwards. He felt a sharp pain as he set his head on his out-of-date prism. He picked it up and uttered the command “On,” the prism lit up and displayed his customized home screen. Edom selected the network circle on the top left side of the holographic screen. A network of people using prisms appeared in front of him. Edom saw that one of his friends was using her prism as well, so he selected her. The top of the screen displayed the message “reaching” and then “connecting.” It happened almost instantly. Her image appeared on Edom’s prism that was laying beside him, but the hologram off of it was directly in front of him.
“Hello, Sona”
“Thats odd, I was just about to call you” Sona looked closely at Edom. “Are you wearing your iContacts?”
“No, not now”
“Why, isn't that the reason you bought them, to use them?”
“Yes, haha very funny, wait for a nanosecond”
“What are you doing now?” Sona always thought that Edom was doing crazy things. Edom stood up from his bed and accidentally dropped his prism on the floor, yet the hologram coming off of it stayed level to him. Edom reached down and picked it up.
“Wall screen hologram on” Edom’s prism connected to the wall screen and created a three dimensional hologram of Sona.
“Now you are a life-size hologram” Edom was happy that after much effort he had finally built his own three dimensional projector that connected to his wall screen.
“Wow, how long did it take you to build that?” Sona already knew the answer but she thought she would ask anyway.
“Three months” Edom responded as if it was a triumph of science. Sona looked at Edom and then away from him.
“You know that Moore’s law is a problem don’t you?”
“Don’t even bring that up” at that moment he could hear the living area wall screen, he shouted out the door “Mute!”
“You know what” he had lost all of his irritation and anger “You’re right, it is a problem”
“Finally you realize”
“I knew it was a problem, but I still think we can get around it”
“What if it does happen? There could be economic collapse in the world, millions of people would lose their jobs”
“I know, but…” Edom stopped in the middle of his thought. “Lets not talk about this anymore”
“Okay, sounds good” Sona was still interested in seeing Edom’s iContacts. “Hey, can I see your iContacts?”
“Sure” Edom grabbed a box laying on the top of his desk with the iContact Lens logo displayed on the top. “Here they are”. Edom held at the top of his pointer finger, a small contact lens. There appeared to be nothing special about it, but once he put it on, he was able to do anything his prism could do, but it was the size of a contact.
Edom glanced at the time displayed on his wall screen.
“Oh no! I need to go” Edom quickly said goodbye to Sona and told his wall screen and prism to shut down, then he rushed out the door.
He passed through his living area and exited through his kitchen. Edom lived in a skyplex that was positioned over a magnetic train stop. He often used it to get to where he needed to be. Rushed for time, Edom sprinted to the end of the hallway where the glass elevator was. As soon as he got to it, the doors opened from motion sensors positioned in front of the doors. As soon as Edom entered the elevator he searched for the button with his floor on it. He tapped the glass screen, and the elevator began to move.
Edom realized halfway down the building that he was wearing his iContacts. He activated them by thought and then began to surf the internet. When the contacts turned on he saw a screen, the contact lenses were directly in front of Edom’s eyes, but it appeared as though there was a computer screen two feet in front of him.
The Elevator reached the bottom floor and opened. Edom walked out still using his iContacts and browsing the internet.
Edom entered the main lobby at the bottom of the skyplex. There was no one in the room besides him. Edom continued to walk towards the front door to exit the building. Across the room, as the doors slid diagonally upwards, a hologram appeared at the front desk. It was a woman who appeared every time someone entered or exited the building in case someone needed assistance.
Edom ignored the hologram and continued to walk out the door. As he exited the lobby, the air grew cold. Edom glanced at the clock displayed in the corner of his contacts. It was late at night, the sun had already set and it was time for one of his classes. Before Edom walked down to the magnetic train, he took a look at the city that surrounded him.
The noise of the city was faint but noticeable, the sound of people and vehicles surrounded Edom. The cold air continued to blow. Edom lived in a city, so he was surrounded by building after building. Each one constructed from glass or metal seemed to disappear at night, faintly visible, the red lights that lined the tops and appeared down the sides stood out.
Edom noticed the vehicles in the sky, floating above a thin tract and moving without friction. He began to walk down to the magnetic train station before he was late.
To the left of the building was an entrance that lead down to the boarding area. Edom began to climb down the stairs as fast as he could. At one moment he almost tripped over a small can that lay on one of the stairs.
The staircase extended down about three hundred feet until it reached the bottom. He rushed to get to the bottom so that he was not late. At the bottom there was a small crowd of people waiting for the train to arrive, when Edom reached the bottom he joined the crowd. Along the bottom of the spotless tunnel was a long metal bar that extended down the tunnel until it was no longer visible.
While waiting for the train to arrive, Edom activated his contacts and pulled up the ridics. The latest news had finally changed to the newest space travel expedition. He began to read about it, the article was not that interesting sense he had already read about  the same expedition a few weeks earlier and this was just an update. Space programs had colonized multiple moons, including one of their planets own, and other planets. The article explained about how the journey to Zidek 8, a planet that orbited just outside of their own solar system. The planetary properties were close to their own planets, but still needed to be adjusted to make it fully livable.
Just as Edom finished reading the article the train slowly came to a stop in front of him. It made no noise because it levitated in a magnetic field using quantum displacement, the same concept as his bed and the car rails.
He walked to the entrance of the train as the doors slid open. As Edom entered he noticed that no one else in the crowd had gotten onto the train with him, he wondered why as the doors closed. Edom glanced at the train number and notice that he had got onto the wrong train, before he could exit, the train began to move very fast.
It took off, forcing Edom backwards onto the ground, the train had gone from zero to one hundred and fifty miles in five seconds. The take off was usually smooth, but for some reason it was sudden that time. Edom got up off the floor and took a seat. He was mad that he was going to be late to one of his classes.
The time was 7:44 and his class started at eight o’clock. Edom’s school was about twenty miles away and it usually took eight minutes to get there. Edom found out that he was heading towards his destination, but to a completely different place. He found that there was another train heading to his school from where he was arriving.
After about three minutes the train came to a slow stop. Edom ran out and found the area where the next train was boarding and made it onto it just as it was leaving.
Luckily the train was made to be fast and he would not be too late. Edom stood on the train in the middle of the aisle as the train took off, this time it was smooth and did not jerk him around.
After a few minutes, the train started to slow down until it was at a complete stop. The doors swiftly opened and Edom ran out. Now in a hurry, he tried to get to his class as fast as he could. The school was not far away from the train stop, but by now he was late. As Edom turned the corner around the exit to the train stop, he could see the front of his school in the distance.
His school had a large center cylindrical building with cube shaped buildings extending out of the sides, and a dark black fence in the front. The main building was composed of yellow-tan bricks and regular tan-white bricks. Along the sides, front, and top there were mirrors that reflected the dark night sky. Edom came closer to his school, he continued to run until he was at the gate of the school. A small camera at the top of the gate entrance captured and recognized his face, and marked him present for the day on the class list. The gate opened and he continued to run to his class trying not to be any later.
Edom ran up to the door of his class and opened in, not realizing that his supervisor was speaking. Everyone in his class stopped and looked at him.
“Hello Edom” his supervisor said
“Hello”
“Can you please take a seat”
“Okay” Edom walked over to his seat and sat down. His class was a fairly small white room with six sets of tables and eleven other students. Like all other schools, Edom focused in one area of learning. For Edom and the other students in his class, they were interested and learned about the field of technology, space travel, and physics exploration. The three of them seemed to come together well in the way that they used them.
Edom’s supervisor continued to speak giving them their topic for what they were going to do today. Behind him he activated a wall screen, when this happened everyone knew to take out their devices. Some people in the room took out holographic tablets and some people took out prisms. Edom took out his prism that he had grabbed just before leaving. He set it on the desk in front of him, when he activated the prism it connected to the wall screen and displayed the same information on it.
“Okay, what you are all going to do today is focus on space travel and colonization” his supervisor pulled up a image of an old space station from several decades before anyone in the class was born “We are going to take a look at atricx-5 station” Edom was familiar with the story of what happened to the station, but was not sure what the importance of it was now.
“What you will do is look at the different areas of the station and redesign them to be both better, as well as you will look at the breaking point of the west wing and improve it so the same incident doesn't happen again” his supervisor walked out the door and left. All of the students in the class stood up and congregated in the center.
“Wow Edom, late once again” one of Edom’s classmates spoke rudely and sarcastically towards him.
“Shut up Ossin” Edom shouted back matching Ossin’s rudeness.
“Stop it you guys” Pru stepped into the argument to break it up “Lets start working.” They all began to sit in a general area in the center of the room.
“First let's refresh our memories on what happened to atricx-5 in the first place” a kid in Edom’s class named Viktor said while pulling it up on his prism. He made a video appear on the wall screen and began to play it.
A voice began to speak “What happened to the space station atricx-5 and what was it used for?” The voice continued after a short introduction “The space station atricx-5 was created for further space exploration, and a area for colonized areas to obtain resources that were unavailable to their colony. But after the station was sent into orbit, the research and enhancement of technology lab was stripped of its metal outer coating and broke off of the station leaving the rest to be destroyed. Still today no one knows what caused the station to be vulnerable to such devastation” the video suddenly ended.
“What could we do to improve it?” Ossin blurted out without thinking.
“That is what we are going to try to find out” Edom said it in a sarcastic tone.
“Lets begin by looking at the original plans and continue from there” Pru said as she pulled up the original blueprints.
They all looked around at the blueprints and thought of ways to improve it. Edom turned around and clicked a button in the front of the room that caused all the tables to retract into the walls and all the chairs to collapse into the floor. Then in the center a white glass table rose from the floor.
The top of it was a screen, and it was already displaying the blueprints of atricx-5.
Naturally everyone gathered there and began to use the multi-touch interface to examine the different sections of the station.
All of Edom’s classmates began collaborating and experimenting with different areas on how to improve it with the improvements of the technology today.
However Edom was slightly irritated when one of his classmates brought up Moore’s Law, until he remembered that the was not going to get mad about it anymore.
After about thirty minutes had passed they had all added and improved upon the blueprints and models of atricx-5 to incorporate the technology that they had in their society. As they were working their supervisor came back into the room to check on their progress.
“So, what improvements have you made to the station?” their supervisor asked while looking over the blueprints. Previously they had divided up into groups to focus on different sections to improve on them.
“What was done to improve the structure of the breaking point and the rest of the station?” their supervisor asked
“Well, the structure is and was already very strong to prevent the problems that occurred” one of the kids in the structural improvement groups added. Edom looked closely at the plans himself to find that the structure was built to take impact and not to fall apart.
“However” the kid continued “We added additional support to the bottom of the breaking point as well as an emergency system to prevent the area from breaking off”
“Very good” their supervisor said as he moved on to the next group. After several minutes he got to Edom and his group, the technology advancement group.
“What have you done to improve the technology aboard the station?”
“So far we have implemented many of todays technology to improve communication, security, and research equipment” Edom and his group began to show their supervisor what they had done.
After all the groups showed and explained how they improved the station their supervisor walked to the front of the room and began to speak.
“Okay, now that we are all done with the warm up we can begin the common core learning and then move into todays topic” Edom disliked the common core learning because it took time away from their focus learning, but at the same time common core gave him skills that helped his focus.
“Don’t forget to submit your revised plans of the station” Their supervisor left the room once again. Edom pressed the submit button on his prism and shut it off. All of the chairs lifted back up and the tables emerged from the walls. Edom sat down at his seat and tapped the table. Instantly the screen turned on and the logo for the common core company who created the learning program appeared on the table.
Edom and his partner Jaron, who sat next to him began to use the interactive program. The tables had a multi touch interface and allowed both of them to use it at the same time.
They started the program with chemistry and then literature, learning about history and how things have changed, but Edom was more interested in what is to come in the future.