FutureTech World

Author's Note: This story is a continuation of a branch off the interactive story You Are What You Wish originally started by ZachC over on Fiction Branches.

Mucho thanks to Hikaru for generously giving me permission to include her contributions in my overall story. Also thanks go to ZachC, Weirdoid, and Anonymous51, who also gave me permission to repost their "upstream" segments, but I settled for just linking those here.

Earlier segments:

And So It Begins by ZachC
Jon's Device by Weirdoid
Alternate Reality Device by Anonymous51
Karyn gets an ARD by Anonymous51

Previously on You Are What You Wish: High school seniors Karyn and Jon are good friends, but not romantically involved. Jon's grandfather died during spring break, and left Jon a magic wishing stone. Wishes, once made on the stone, cannot be undone. Everyone within the stone's range, which is currently thought to be "a few miles," is affected to think that whatever was wished for has always been true. The only exceptions to this memory rewrite are the wisher and anyone within earshot of the wish. Karyn made a bad wish and altered her body, giving herself larger breasts and long blonde hair. In an attempt to get around the can't-undo and range limitations, Jon wished for a "what if" machine that would let him enter alternate realities. They now both possess wrist-mounted "Alternate Reality Devices" (ARDs) with synchronized functions. When either one is activated, the other will automatically trigger and bring both Jon and Karyn into the new reality. Jon is ready to make his first "what if" command to his ARD.

Jon activated the 'WHAT IF' command button on his ARD and spoke into the device: "What if 'modern' technology was 100 years more advanced than it is now?"

Both Karyn's and Jon's ARDs glowed green on their wrists and then the glow expanded to cover them and the whole room. It was so bright they had to close their eyes. Then the glow faded, and they could see again.

At first, it seemed like nothing had changed. Jon's bedroom was still furnished exactly the way it was before. There were no mysterious gadgets lying around. No huge computer panels, no jetpacks lying discarded in a corner.

Jon said, "Okay, this is disappointing. I was hoping for something futuristic, space-aged, something, but this is all exactly the same... no wait. Where's my laptop computer? And my TV? Well, that's different... I wonder why they're not here in this reality?"

Karyn noticed something else. "Jon, your room is now spotless. I don't see a single speck of dust or dirt anywhere."

Jon looked around, and agreed. "You're right! Mom told me I needed to vacuum in here, and I'd been meaning to get around to it... but I don't need to anymore. This floor... hey, it's not just clean. This carpet is like new. And all those little dings on the wall, you remember we marked it up pretty good playing ball in here, those are gone too. It's like the room was just painted!"

Karyn was still noticing other small differences. "Your bed is now perfectly made. Not the usual sloppy job you do right before I come over."

Jon ruefully looked at the bed. "Yeah, it looks like Mom made it, I never do that well."

Jon looked himself over, and verified that he was wearing the same clothes he was before. He looked at Karyn and she too was dressed exactly the same as she had been. Then Karyn turned around and Jon spotted another change: Karyn was wearing makeup. "Karyn, you weren't wearing any makeup before, were you?"

Karyn looked puzzled, and then put her hand to her face. "No, and I'm still not wearing any."

Jon grabbed her and spun her around to face the mirror on his closet door. "Yes you are, look!"

Karyn gasped at her reflection. She was indeed wearing makeup. Not a lot, but even a little was more than she usually bothered with on a schoolday. She stepped closer to the mirror. "Wow, I really am. And that's a pretty good job too, like I had it professionally done. Very subtle. But I don't feel it on my face!" She looked at her fingers, and saw the makeup hadn't smeared on them. "Oh, and my nails are painted too!"

Karyn touched her chin, and then she touched her cheek, and then she was rubbing her eyelids and her lips. "It's not smearing at all! It's not on my hands, and it's all just staying put on my face! Okay, now that's cool. I wonder how I'm supposed to get it off, though."

Jon had an evil thought. "Maybe in this reality you had it tattooed on your face. I know how you usually can't be bothered to take the time with it."

Karyn paled at this suggestion. "Oh no... that can't be right. I'd never want to get stuck with just this one look, would I? And how could they possibly tattoo mascara on my eyelashes?"

Jon let her off the hook. "Relax, I bet it just takes a special remover, and you probably have some in your purse." He gestured to where it was still sitting on the desk.

Karyn brightened at this. "Oh, I like the sound of that better. And I should see what's changed in there." She picked up her purse and started digging through it. "Ok, here's my wallet, and here's my hairbrush, and my hand-mirror. I have some handi-wipes, but no obvious remover, nor any cosmetics at all though. My iPhone is missing."

Jon checked his pockets. "My wallet's here, but my camera-phone's gone too!"

Karyn contemplated this carefully. "100 years of progress probably made them obsolete. And your TV and laptop too. I wonder what replaced them."

Jon pulled the curtains aside and looked out the window at their front yard and the street below. "All the cars look the same. Damn, I was hoping for flying cars. That's what they always promised us in the future."

Karyn slid open Jon's closet door and made the next major discovery. "Jon, look at this."

Jon turned around to see. Now here, this was different.

The right half of his closet looked like it always did, with his coat, jacket, and some of his nicer clothing neat on hangers. However, the other half was now filled by a large white boxy machine that fully extended from floor to ceiling. Jon's first impression was that it was a combination microwave-washer-dryer-copier-wardrobe. Its front had various openings and doors that looked to Jon like each belonged separately on those types of machines. The right side of the box had an opening that spanned the box's entire height, with what appeared to be a very narrow closet or wardrobe inside. There was a single empty hanger hanging from the tube inside at the top of this inner closet.

Jon looked closer, and realized his first impression of the giant box was at least somewhat correct: A label on the device proudly proclaimed that it was a Hitek ® Personal Replomatâ„¢. "Well. that's something new. I wonder what it can do?"

There was a very obvious button on the front marked 'power' so Jon pushed it. Lights all over the machine came on immediately, and the screen in the front panel filled with text:

Replomatâ„¢ BIOS version 25.14.1 ©1985-2003 Hitek Industries Inc., all rights reserved.

Loading Microsoftâ„¢ Producer ® '06.... OS load complete.

SYSTEM STATUS:
Heisenberg Compensators: 99.6% tuned (no adjustment needed)
Capacitor Charge: 91%
Estimated time to full charge: 0d 1h 24m 21s
Stored Replicator Patterns: 3.2 Pb
Total Pattern Memory: 256 Pb
Local Net Connection: Enabled

Material Reserves:

After that was detailed a long list of elements and amounts. High on the list with quantities measured in kilograms were common things like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, silicon, and aluminum. Karyn observed to Jon that there was a bit of gold (2.5 grams) and silver (30.2 grams) stored in the machine. The "Estimated time to full charge" countdown clock was steadily decreasing. As Jon and Karyn watched, the "capacitor charge" amount changed from 91 to 92%.

Aside from the power button, there were no other visible controls anywhere on the front of the machine.

"I don't understand this," said Jon. "Pb?"

"It's the symbol for lead," said Karyn, who didn't happen to know what a petabyte was.

"That doesn't make any sense. I wish it came with an instruction manual."

Jon felt nothing, not even the usual wish-induced sensation of not being able to look straight ahead. "I wish I knew why that didn't work... Gee, thanks. It already came with a manual anyway, I just don't have it. Let me try it...."

"Wait!" exclaimed Karyn. "Just wish that you have the manual right now."

"Naah," said Jon. "I can figure it out. Besides, they wouldn't design a machine so we could do something really dangerous just by accident." He looked up and down for some buttons. "How do I run this thing? Maybe I use voice... or maybe it's some kind of touch screen. Am I supposed to get inside it and press something to change my clothes?"

"It looks awfully narrow," said Karyn. "Besides, there's a hanger inside it. I think it doesn't materialize the clothes on you, it puts them on the hanger and you still need to wear them."

Jon was poking at various places on the screen. If it was a touch screen, he hadn't hit it in the right place yet. "I can't find the controls. Maybe if I use my PC? It said something about a local net. But my laptop's gone!"

"Maybe we all have computer terminals built into our heads," said Karyn. "Why don't you try just asking it something?"

"Can't hurt." Jon pointed dramatically at the machine and said, "Replomat! Two cokes please!"

The machine spoke for the first time. "Voice mode now active. Did you mean Coca-Cola ®?" Its voice sounded very familiar.

Karyn said, "Hey, that's my voice!"

Jon chuckled. "I bet it's customizable. Yes, Coca-Cola please."

The Replomatâ„¢ still needed more. "Royalty charges for two single-servings of Coca-Cola ® will be 10 cents. Do you authorize the charge?"

Karyn muttered, "Holy shit, this thing must have DRM!"

Jon asked, "Replomat, what's my current bank balance?"

"Accessing... Jon Winters, you have $287.23 in your personal account, and $30,400.21 in your college fund."

Jon shrugged at this. "Looks like I can afford a couple Cokes then."

Karyn asked, "Jon, I know it's not much, but how do you know for sure? It didn't answer you."

Jon turned to Karyn. "What do you mean? It just told me. That sounds really close to how much I have in our 'home' reality."

Karyn was getting confused. "I didn't hear it say anything."

Jon said, "I heard it say both of my balances, clear as a bell. You didn't hear that?"

Karyn shook her head.

Jon considered this. "Some kind of automatic security feature, I guess. I wonder how that works. Oh well, we'll figure that out later. Replomat, I authorize the charge!"

The light inside the "microwave" part brightened briefly, and then faded back to its earlier level. An LED to the side of that door started flashing. The Replomatâ„¢ said, "Enjoy Coke ®! Don't forget to recycle the bottles!"

Karyn opened up the "microwave" door, and sure enough, there were now two bottles of Coca-Cola ® inside. They were the old-fashioned wasp-waisted kind.

Karyn took them out and grinned. "Yes! Ice-cold!" She handed one to Jon.

"Hmm," said Jon. "I wonder exactly what it can make. Replomat! Make me a girl!"

"Jon!" yelled Karyn. "If you say that it's going to turn you into..."

"Nonsense. They wouldn't make a machine that dangerous."

"Well, even it works I don't think that's a good idea. I mean..."

At this point the Replomat interrupted, saying, "Function locked."

"Replomat, how about a blonde? The first blonde you have."

"Jon..." growled Karyn, who was currently blonde and right next to him. "Don't do that."

"Function locked," said the Replomat.

"It doesn't matter," said Jon. "It isn't working. I think it's going to need a wish to get it to work."

"Aside from the fact that I'm right here," said Karyn, "you can't just make people. First, it's impossible. Second, if you did, getting rid of them would be murder, so you'd have to keep them around forever."

"Remember the episode with the extra Riker?" asked Jon. "They did it on Star Trek. And we're just visiting this world. We can leave behind anything we want. Now, I need to figure out how to get this thing to work.... Replomat, make that a brunette."

"Function locked."

Jon sighed. "Maybe I should use a wish to figure this out. But I've been doing pretty good without one so far..."

Karyn asked, "Replomat, what does 'function locked' mean?"

The Replomat replied, "The Hitek Replomatâ„¢ model series is incapable of performing the requested functions as stated. To perform direct gender modification of living subjects, please upgrade to a Hitek MAU Mark 2â„¢ series or better. Alternatively, a variety of transgender prosthetic, cosmetic, and accessory products may be replicated. The nearest hairstyle machine is located in the bathroom."

Karyn punched Jon in the shoulder. "Ha, I knew it! And it would have if it could!"

"But that's not what I meant," said Jon.

"But that's what you said," replied Karyn. "Don't you know that when you make a wish, you need to be very careful how you phrase it? Never say 'make me a'. You'll be a ham sandwich before you know it."

"Fine," said Jon. "Even though it isn't a wish. Replomat, make a brunette girl for me."

"Function locked."

"All right," said Jon. "What is it this time? Replomat, was that function locked message the same as the one before it?"

The machine spoke again. "Functions locked for different reasons."

Jon looked at the stone in his hand, then said, "Naaah."

"What?" replied Karyn.

"I was thinking of wishing that the Replomat obeys me. But if I'm going to do that, I may as well just wish for what I want directly... and if I'm going to do that, I may as well just stay home and wish for anything I want there. No, I'm going to do what a native of this world can do. As a last resort, maybe I'll make a wish, but only after I've tried what a person living here would try. What would someone who lives here do?"

"Try to unlock the function?" suggested Karyn.

"Sure. Replomat, what does your most recent 'function locked' mean?"

"Android creation is an age-restricted feature. For users under 18, parental permission is required, and no such permissions have been recorded by this device nor by your home network."

Karyn nearly fell off her chair laughing. "Jon, it knew you just wanted a sex toy!"

Jon muttered, "You'd think it could say something a bit more informative than 'function locked', sheesh."

Karyn was still giggling. "Oh, just give up. It's probably not something the 'local you' would do anyway."

Next chapter: Explorations.

FutureTech World 02

Author:

Audience Rating:

Mature Subjects (pg15)

Publication:

Fiction

Genre:

Character Age:

Teenage or High School

TG Themes:

Permission:

Posted by author(s)

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.

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!"

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.