Short Stories

April 14, 2027

An impassioned speech given to the North Carolina State Legislature goes viral on the Boards. Anti-IAN groups see a massive increase in donations and memberships. The Naturalist Movement takes the forefront of this surge, becoming the defacto spokes-party for anti-IAN sentiment, demanding that all copyrights and private information regarding IANs be released into the public domain.

April 21, 2027

The first documented use of Nanocule as a proper noun for IANs is published in a popular blog. ‘Nanocule’ begins to become the public name for IANs, joining Xerox, Kleenex, and Google as brand names that have become a noun or verb.

November 24, 2026

The FDA officially declares IANs safe enough for over-the-counter use.

Competing protests shut down Boston. The news reports from inside the city explain some protesters are demanding cheaper access to Nanocules for the lower classes, while others demand more regulation and research into this new and potentially dangerous technology.

November 25, 2026

Over the counter ‘IANdigestion’ pills are made available for sale, marketed to prevent indigestion, heart burn, gas, and constipation for a full day if taken in the morning. These pills are 99.53% effective. One package of thirty pills costs five dollars. Side effects are minor, including mild stomach-aches, and occur in less than .01% of the population.

7:46 am, October 3, 2055

The door opened to Erin’s office. She entered, followed by Jack shaking the last few drops of rain water off his coat as he wiped his eyes, and looked carefully around the darkened room. A split second later the heat/motion sensor near the door flicked the lights on, bathing the room in a soft white sheen, and turning on the picture-wall to reveal Erin’s collection of photos. A soft violin concerto filtered out from the wall speakers, filling the room with its soothing melody, and the wall behind the couch faded into a huge window to let in the first thin rays of morning sun.

February 27, 2024

Due to overwhelming medical and economic concerns, two lobbies form a joint petition to Congress, demanding extensive regulation of Nanocule Inc, and the creation and marketing of IANs.

The Medical Practitioners Lobby cites the current high cost and scarcity of medical grade IANs as being prohibitive for family practitioners. The Pharmaceutical Lobby claims that in the future, no drug company will be able to compete with the incredibly cheap and prolific IANs using conventional drug manufacturing methods. Both lobbies claim Nanocule Inc. must be considered a monopoly, and therefore dismantled. The irony does not go unnoticed in the media.

October 20, 2020

Geoff Bugess, a student at UC Berkeley, creates the Line Standard, or LSTD. This internet protocol is an incredibly fast and secure method of allowing individual devices to connect to a single wireless signal. LSTD is released as Open Source for use in the Line when it is completed.

March 29, 2021

The first Zettabyte server is designed and built by the Bundestag of Germany in Pottsdam. Holding more than one trillion gigabytes of data, several prominent politicians demand this server be given to the people, providing one free web-page to every citizen of Germany. Several European countries follow suit, building their own servers and providing Boards and online storage to their citizenry.

February 15, 2015

Facebook successfully acquires Twitter in the largest tech merger in world history. Before the end of the business day, the number of Facebook accounts passes the two-billion mark. Researchers guess that of the two billion accounts, only 1.2 billion users actually exist. The rest are duplicates, dummy accounts, or inactive.

April 6, 2015

The Jericho Hack strikes the Internet. Two million people find their names, addresses, family trees, place of work, salaries, blood type, allergies, favorite foods, medical histories, and sexual preferences posted to the Internet. Tightened security from hacking is demanded from a panicking public.

July 2, 2012

MIT and University of British Columbia scientists develop a new method of treating disease using tiny capsules containing DNA and other biological machinery for making a drug. The nanoscale production units are tiny spheres encapsulating synthetic RNA like that found in living cells. The resulting nanoparticles produce active proteins on demand when the researchers shine a laser light on them.

August 3, 2012

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration grants approval for “ingestible sensors” invented by Proteus Digital Health. These 1 square millimeter devices are embedded in pills, and relay information about the insides of a patient to a doctor or nurse. The sensor transmits that information through the skin to a stick-on patch, which in turn sends the data to a mobile phone application or other authorized device.

7:31 am, October 3, 2055

It was raining hard as Jack Reed ran from the train station, heading further from downtown Chicago. The high-speed train had taken only four minutes to get to the northern suburbs, and from the station it was a three minute run to Erin’s office. Jack wasn’t sure why he had decided on Erin — had he even decided? Or had his body taken over, guiding his footfalls towards the north-bound platform while his brain was confused? Was he deciding anything, he wondered? All he could remember was staring at the bodies, scared and alone, and then running for the northbound train.

You have to be careful in the Steamworks.

It is a belly filled with brass and steam. Towering pipes twist and turn like yarn through brick walls and floors. Concrete walls and iron doors, bars like a prison. The heat, sweltering and pure, scouring your skin free. It is enough to drive you insane.

I thought I was insane, once.

That first day, when I had taken the King’s Shilling and become a City Engineer, I crawled through the hole in the ground down the slim ladder with rungs as thick as bottles. I thought I could feel the heartbeat of the City through the bricks as I descended, deeper and deeper into the pit. I kept my eyes shut, squeezing tightly lest I look down and fall.

Yellow. Burning yellow. With a sharp sliver of black dividing the topaz jewel, the cat’s eyes slowly blinked in the flickering firelight.

“Patience,” Rufus muttered, half to himself, half to the cat. “Almost there. Almost.”

It had become a mantra, a holy psalm that spurred Rufus’s actions ever onward. It kept him going, moving in the dim candlelight when his strength had all but left him. Almost there. Just a few more tests…