World of Tomorrow Page #2

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in balloons on Mars.

Hes flying!

But I missed my home.

I missed something deeper.

Did you miss me?

Yes.

At birth, I had inherited from you the

memory of myself meeting you right now.

What?

I made a decision to be reassigned to

Earth and spend more time with people.

These became the happiest

years of my life.

But Simon was inconsolable.

For many years, memories could

only be harvested from the dead.

The images were fished out blindly from random

clusters of neurons and looked like this.

I opened an art gallery of anonymous memories,

and it was here that I met my husband.

He was a clone as well, from the same

source as David, the boy in the tube

I felt I had known all my life.

Only now his beautiful sparkly eyes

were lit with the mind of his Prime:

a David from over 400 years ago.

As an older clone, he showed

many signs of deterioration.

But I loved him, as

though we were originals.

He died suddenly, and Davids

line was permanently ended.

That is the thing about

the present, Emily Prime.

You only appreciate it

when it is the past.

I harvested his memories and

they still bring me happiness.

This is one my favorite of his

memories and I cannot explain why.

He is descending a staircase and sees

a large plant blowing in the wind.

Flopping its fronds together

in a sort of plant applause.

I have viewed this

memory over 6,000 times.

You missed him.

I do not have the mental or emotional

capacity to deal with his loss.

But sometimes, I sit in a chair late

at night and quietly feel very bad.

When the night is at its most

quiet, I can hear death.

I am very proud of my sadness

because it means I am more alive.

I no longer fall in

love with rocks.

In 60 days from now, a

meteor will strike the Earth

and most everyone here

will die horribly.

Our wealthiest individuals are now uploading

their digital consciousnesses into cubes

that they are launching

into deep space.

Our lower classes are desperately

trying to escape the meteor

through discount time travel, causing

untold millions to die in orbit.

Their dead bodies burn as they return to

Earth and now light up our night sky.

Whats this up in the sky?

Dead bodies!

Look another one!

Yes. It is very pretty.

Theyre OK?

No. Theyre all dead.

Ill count them!

- One, Two, Three...

- We are all doomed, Emily Prime.

Even those on the

interplanetary ports.

They are rumored to be burying the clones

of world leaders beneath the Earth.

Emily Prime, there is another

reason I have contacted you today.

You retain an early memory that I have

forgotten that was very important to me.

I wish to retrieve it

from you before I die.

I shall extract this

memory from you now.

This is... This is me

And mommy.

This is me and mommy walking.

This is me and mommy walking.

A rainbow!

Thank you, Emily. This will bring

me great comfort in the days ahead.

You missed it. I saw it.

You missed it.

This is your future, Emily Prime. It is

sometimes a sad life and it is a long life.

You will feel a deep longing for

something you cannot quite remember.

It will be a beautiful visit.

And then we shall share the same

fate as the rest of the human race:

dying horribly.

The advice is give you now is the

advice I remember receiving from myself

at your age in this moment, so I cannot be

certain where it actually originated from:

Do not lose time on daily trivialities.

Do not dwell on petty detail.

For all of these things melt away and drift

apart within the obscure traffic of time.

Live well and live broadly.

You are alive and living now.

Now is the envy of

all of the dead.

OK!

Thank you, Emily Prime.

It has been an honor to meet you and a joy to

emerge from your 3rd generation birth canal.

I shall now return you to your home and

current time. I will not contact you again.

Goodbye.

Aah!

What a happy day it is!

Daffodil, Daffodil, Daffodil

Oh look at these pretty colors!

I can see the sun is still there!

The rain's still there

and the rainbow's still there.

But the rain is still there,

and it didn't go away.

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