Continuum

Mike contemplated as he dozed off. He was utterly devoted to his father. All his life he had heard of this alien city and had dreamt of exploring it. The reality of being here was quite different. His father was near death, but was driven to find his friend. New developments in the Continuum had driven them both to find this place and make the dangerous descent into the unknown. Who could have forseen that there would be nothing here.

Once the World Computer Consortium had grown beyond even the awesome power of this place, the city had been abandoned. Other, more human structures and edifices were built by man to replace all this. It had been abandoned and forgotten for twenty years. Only the few people who had the need to know had ever known of its existence.

The Continuum continued, chaotic, boisterous, noisy and alive with the melieu of people's thoughts and ambitions. Pockets had formed within the Continuum, of people who were bent the same way. Each group had their own world view, convinced of their own rightness of purpose and destiny. These became the new nations of Man as the old national lines blurred and were abandoned. Pockets of humanity, each ignoring the others.

Man was introspective at this point in his history, much more than he had ever been, for he had always been centered on his own devices. Now, with almost all the population of the planet getting standard implants and gaining access to the virtual net, everyone was becoming part of a great world wide commonality. Little of anything was being done in the real world, except as necessary to sustain the furnishings of civilization.

Access was the same for everyone. Those who could not read were taught by the automation programs of the Continuum. Those who were not able, because of disabilities or whatever reason were given alternate methods of access. Even the blind or the deaf had complete access. The virtual world had become the real world of Man.

The languages were no longer a barrier to Man. The Continuum converted the speech and writings of anyone to whatever language used by the user, on the fly. It was as if everyone spoke the same language in the Continuum - the native language of the person using the Web. Therefore, each person viewed the new virtual world as his own.

"How you doin' Pops?" It was a rhetorical question. Mike knew his father did not have long now.

"I am fine, Mike. Just fine. I have an idea, in fact." Stevo got up on one elbow and smiled. His eyes burned with an alertness that his son had not seen before. Is this how death was?

"What is there left for us, Pops? We have been all over this empty place. It is dead."

"Perhaps not. I think we should take some of that dust from the place where we think those touring bodies used to be, and try to use it to bring this place to life."

"I don't understand, Pops. What do you propose?"

"Lets get over to the building where we found those closets in the wall. I want to take a quantity of the dust on the floor from each of them."

"What is so important about that dust, Pops?"

"It really isn't dust. It is clumps of Nanocites, which are tiny mechanical creatures, incredibly small. It was these that made up the body of my friend, Mary, and others like her. We might be able to use this dust to reactivate the power to this city."

Willing to do anything for his father, Mike readily agreed to try. They took their empty food containers and filled them full of the dust from the floor of each of the closets, and carefully carried it to the end of the city near the tunnel, looking again for the closet containing the power switch.