FutureTech World 02: Explorations

by Unknown Subject

Having a magic wishing stone wasn't enough. Karyn and Jon explore an alternate reality where tomorrow's technology exists today.

Start at the beginning: FutureTech World 01.

Thanks go to Hikaru, who contributed the last segment about Karyn's epiphany to this chapter.

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Karyn suddenly remembered something. "Oh! Oh! Hairstyle machine! I gotta see this!" and with that, she was up and out the door. Jon followed her.

Jon followed her down the hall, but he paused to look at the family portraits and pictures. There were a lot more than he remembered. He saw pictures of himself, his parents, and other family members. He saw strangers in some of the family pictures. Do I have more relatives in this reality? Jon could spot the family resemblence in many of the strangers' faces. The strangers appeared in some of the single portraits as well. Jon spotted Karyn in a few of the casual get-together shots. He found at least one picture that showed him visiting with Karyn's family. He found another one of Karyn with her family and some other people that did not have him in it. Odd, that last one.

He was starting to try to catalog what relationship these strangers might have to him when Karyn called to him from the bathroom. "Jon, the Replomat was only the beginning. Check this out!" He left the mystery of the pictures for later and joined her in the bathroom.

The bathroom itself was laid out and still decorated the same, but the only fixtures they recognized as unchanged were the mirror, cabinets, counter, towel racks, and sink. Everything else was different. The bathroom was spotlessly clean. There were unfamiliar gadgets sitting on the counter, and mounted to the walls in various places. The bathtub was huge, and instead of the shower curtain, the tub was now fully enclosed with a clear sliding glass door. There were fancy shower heads at all 4 corners of the tub-shower enclosure. There was a huge air vent directly over the tub. There was something that might be the toilet, but it was only recognizable because it had a place to sit with a hole at the appropriate spot.

"I think this is it." Karyn was fiddling with what had to be the hairstyle machine. Its label proclaimed it to be an Avonâ„¢ Hair Genie ®. It looked something like a giant helmet-type hair dryer from a beauty salon. It was in a corner, suspended from the ceiling with cables and springs. Karyn found she could easily adjust its height just by nudging it up and down. "I wonder if this can give me my red wavy hair back?"

Jon examined the device. "It looks promising," he said.

The Hair Genie had just one big power button, and no other controls. It did not have anything that looked like a video screen. Karyn turned it on. Its only sign of activation was the lit LED in the power button. It made no noise that they could hear at all. Karyn wondered out loud, "Is this like the Replomat?"

Jon said, "Well, let's see if it listens or talks. Hair Genie, activate voice mode!" It didn't respond. "Avon Hair Genie, speak your system status!" It remained silent. "Hmm. Well, either its voice commands aren't as obvious, or it can't speak. It might not have a voice interface at all."

Karyn was willing to gamble. "Let me try to actually use the thing before we give up on it." She carefully positioned herself under its dome, and she lowered it onto her head. "Here goes nothing! Hair Genie! Red wavy hair, please!" Nothing happened. She extricated herself from the helmet and scowled at it. "Well, poop."

Jon had an initial impulse to make a scatalogical response to that, but he gamely managed to suppress it. He was seventeen now, not twelve. By the time Karyn turned around back to face him, he had even managed to wipe the smirk off his face.

Karyn decided she should use one of the other facilities in this room. "Could you please excuse me? I gotta go."

"Oh, sure." He beat a hasty retreat from the bathroom.

She closed the door behind him, and turned to face the intimidating-looking toilet. OK, I hope this is easier, she thought.

-~*~-

When Karyn emerged from the bathroom, she found Jon still right outside in the hall. He was perusing the wall covered with portraits and other photographs. She stood by his side and faced the array. "So, what can we tell about this world from the pics?"

Jon waved his hand to encompass the pictures before them. "This wall, it's supposed to be the one reserved for our family pictures. Almost all of them are totally different than those at Home, but the people in them are familiar... most of them, anyway. I think I've got at least one new aunt, one new uncle, and three new cousins, and that's just by blood. I'm up to at least four new people related by marriage, I think. That's harder to tell for sure. Of course, Mom never bothered labelling any of these. That would be too easy. And there are other weird things going on." Jon pointed to a wedding picture. "This one here, is the most telling. I remember one like this from our Home reality, but it's changed. It's supposed to be a 'blood relatives' portrait of my mom and dad's wedding."

Karyn looked over the photo Jon indicated. It was a formally posed standing group shot with the bride and groom in the center. All the people in it were young adults. No one appeared older than 25 or so. The relatives from both sides surrounded the happy couple. Jon's mother's siblings were behind her and to the left, and his father's behind him and to the right. The men on both sides had matching tuxes, and the women were obviously bridesmaids with matching gowns. She recognized many of them; Jon's extended family visited often.

Karyn pointed out a discrepancy. "It's only two new sibs for your parents? I thought I'd met all of your aunts and uncles, but I count six new faces, not two."

"Six? Oh, right, that part isn't as easy for you to spot." Jon pointed to a woman on his father's side of the wedding picture. "She's new." He pointed to a man on his mother's side. "I don't know him either. And the four 'new faces' in the back, right behind Mom and Dad... Well, look at the man behind Mom. Are you sure you haven't seen him before?"

She peered closer, and then her eyes got very wide. "That's your Grandpa! The one who left you the stone! But he's so young! That can't be! He would have been even older than your parents are today, right?"

Jon did the math in his head. "Not that much older, but yeah. That's all four of my grandparents back there. And none of them look any older than they do in their own wedding photos." He pointed up to two older pictures set up above all the rest, near the ceiling.

Karyn got it now; her eyes were shining. "It has to be the technology. Better medical care. Maybe people don't age as fast, or it's rejuvenation. That's... like, wow. Awesome! And Jon, maybe your Grandpa is still alive in this reality! Oh, oh, and maybe the ones I've lost are still here too!"

Jon nodded. "I know for sure two of them lived longer in this reality." He pointed to his father's parents. "In our 'Home' reality, Dad's parents died in a car accident about a year before the wedding."

Karyn beamed at Jon. "Well, here and now, you could meet them!"

Jon frowned. "I'm not sure that's a good idea. This isn't really 'Home'. I wouldn't want to get attached."

That sobered her up. "Oh. Yah, you'll have to be careful, but I don't think you should miss the opportunity."

"Something to think about. I don't know how much longer we'll be staying."

Karyn's eyes wandered back to the wedding picture. She thought of an alternate explanation for the new faces. "Those two new people, maybe they're spouses?"

"Nope. This picture is a 'blood relation only' shot. Look at the family resemblances. They fit in. They're an aunt and uncle I don't remember. And... they're taking the places of an uncle, and an aunt whom I do remember were there at my parents' wedding back 'Home'. Uncle James should be over there by my father, and Aunt Sue by my mother. You've met them."

Karyn studied the new faces, and tried to recall what Sue and James had looked like. Since they weren't her relatives, after all, that wasn't so easy without them being there in the picture to remind her. Then she had a flash of inspiration. "Jon! Could this be the 'butterfly effect'? Just a minor little change, and ping! You get a baby girl instead of a baby boy at conception."

"Oh, that's an interesting idea... but wrong, at least in this case. James and Sue do exist; they just weren't at the wedding." Jon pointed out a shot taken at the Statue of Liberty. "There's Aunt Sue, along with Mom, Dad and me. Yes, that's me in the stroller." He pointed at another shot. "There's me and Dad with Uncle James and Uncle Dean along with their sons. I think we're camping; I don't remember the trip. I look about 10 or so."

Karyn looked at these other pictures, and of course once she saw the pics she placed the faces and she remembered meeting them. She also remembered meeting James's and Dean's kids, who were of course Jon's cousins.

Jon continued on. "So anyway, they're here too in this reality, but they didn't make it to the wedding. I have no clue why."

Karyn took in the other photographs, and started spying out the two new relatives here and there in other shots. Her only reliable guide to the dates of the photos was the age Jon appeared, since the adults in this high tech reality didn't age. "Now that I'm looking, I'm seeing those two all over the place...Oh, here's another aunt for you, Jon."

"Another one? Where? Show me."

Karyn pointed to a shot with a young Jon, his mother, the new aunt, and another stranger. "No question, that's yet another sister for your father." This new one had her hand on Jon's shoulder in the pic.

Jon squinted. "Wow, good eyes. Yes, I can see that now. I just assumed that was a friend or maybe a new spouse. Well, there's another one that didn't make it to the wedding."

Karyn suddenly had an epiphany. "Of course!" she exclaimed. "You're going about this all wrong..."

"I am?" said Jon. "I wasn't doing anything. How could I be not doing something but doing it all wrong?"

"Don't you see? When you said 'make me a girl', the first way the machine interpreted it was to change you into a girl.

"So? I phrased it better the second time and it understood me. It didn't do it, but it understood fine."

"Jon," said Karyn, "if the machine thought you wanted to change into a girl, then the machine probably knows how to do that. Meaning you aren't the first person to ask for that. Maybe someone else asked it... and when they asked for it it wasn't a mistake–they meant it. Look at all these pictures."

"But I don't get it. These are all full of relatives I don't recognize...."

"You don't recognize them," explained Karyn, "because they're the same relatives you know, but they decided to use something like this Replomat to change sex. Your aunt and uncle aren't missing from the wedding. They're there; they changed sex and they're the two people you didn't recognize. That isn't a picture with your dad missing but a 'new aunt'. The 'aunt' is your father as a woman. I bet one of those pictures is you as a girl. I don't think you have any new relatives here at all."

"Really? None at all?"

"Well, there always could be an extra sibling in there somewhere. Someone could have turned into a woman and gotten pregnant when in our world that didn't happen because they were a guy. Or maybe someone used the Replomat to make a person, or an android, and that person or android is in the pictures. But most of them are just the same people with sex changes."

Jon didn't have much time to consider Karyn's theory, because right then his mother's voice interrupted his thoughts, rather loudly.

"JON! ANSWER ME!"

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Author's Note: More of the FutureTech story has been already posted at Fiction Branches, starting here, and continuing up through the "Research" segments. I think I'll be rearranging the segments slightly, though. That segment about McStevens should come later than where I posted it. If you have your own ideas for what to add on to this story, please, be my guest and contribute over at FB. :) If I like your contributions and you allow me permission, they'll end up in what's posted here at Big Closet.