Realtime | Page 3

shudder.
Robert came back to her with a visible shake. "Sorry, Mom. I've got to go. There's a crisis at the office. Efficiency ratings came in on the half hour on the web." He grimaced. "We came in almost two percent low. Looks like some of the staff's been daydreaming when they should have been working. At least one of the younger women seems to have been storing interactive fantasies in the office Praxcelis. That would be bad enough anywhere, but at Praxcelis Corporation itself.... There's going to be hell to pay." He stooped hurriedly, and kissed his mother on her cheek. "I'll be back next Saturday; Sunday at the latest. You call me if you need anything. Anything at all, you hear me?"
Maggie nodded. "Always."
Robert hesitated at the door. "Mom? Don't let them scare you. Praxcelis is just a machine. You hang tough."
Maggie chuckled, and said again, "Always." She waved a hand at him. "Go already. Take care of this dangerous criminal who's been storing fantasies on you."
"'Bye." He was gone.
"Goodbye, Robert," she said to the closed door. Miss Kitty purred inquiringly. Maggie held the cat up and looked her in the eyes. Miss Kitty's eyes peered back at her, bright blue and inquisitive. "Don't worry, Miss Kitty. Computers. Ha."
Realtime:
To be precise; any processing of data that occurs within sufficiently short duration that the results of the processed data are available in time to influence or alter the system being monitored or controlled.
On the evening of Sunday, March 14, 2033, Maggie Archer turned on her fireplace. A switch activated the holograph that simulated a roaring fire; buried within the holograph, radiant heaters came to life. Maggie would have preferred real wood, and real fire; but like so much else, burning wood was illegal. There had been a joke when Maggie was a little girl; all things that are not mandatory are forbidden.
For Maggie, at least, that phrase was no longer a joke.
There were times when she thought, very seriously, that she had lived too long. Humanity might not be happy, but it was content. Moving her rocker near the fire, she settled in, and was soon lost in reverie. It was hard, sometimes, to trace the exact changes that had led to this joyless, sterile society, where children aged rather than grew. Oh, things were always changing, of course, even when she was very young technology had changed things. But for such a long time the changes had always seemed for the better. Spaceships, and machinery that polluted less, better and clearer musical instruments and equipment, a thousand kitchen and home tools that had made every task infinitely simpler.
She hardly noticed when the timer turned the stereo on, and gentle strains of Bach drifted through the room.
The change, she was certain, had been the dataweb. In one stroke, the dataweb had destroyed money, and privacy, and books. It was the loss of the books that hurt the worst. Nobody had actually taken the books and burned them, not like in Nazi Germany; they just stopped printing them. The books died, and were not replaced. Oh, there were collectors, and private libraries; but the vast majority of the younger generation had never even seen a real book, much less read one.
The train of thought was an old, familiar friend; nothing new. She rose after a while, slowly, and went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. While the water boiled she entered the hallway that led to her study. In the study she turned the lights on; they were incandescents, not glowpaint. The walls of the study were lined with books, several thousands of them, all hardbound. The paperbacks, which had once outnumbered the hardbacks, had disintegrated years ago. Immediately to the right of the study's door, Maggie turned to face one bookshelf whose books were in barely readable condition; her favorites, the books that she re-read most often, and which she read most often to Tia and Mark.
She pulled down one battered, dilapidated volume. Its leather binding was dry, and cracked. On the spine of the book, there were flecks of gold that had once inscribed a title. The absence of the title didn't bother Maggie; she knew her books. This was The Three Musketeers.
Returning to her living room, she placed the book on the stand next to her rocker, and finished making her tea. She gathered Miss Kitty to her, and settled in for the night.
On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the bourg of Meung, in which the author of the "Romance of the Rose" was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second Rochelle of it....
Monday morning, March the fifteenth, Maggie was interrupted by the chiming of the door.