Charles Stross - Message in a Time Capsule

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2024-11-24 0 0 8.81KB 3 页 5.9玖币

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M*ss*g* *n * t*m* c*ps*l*

by Charles Stross

1,100 Words.

— Dash it! Is this gadget turned on, Miss Feng?

— No, I was not enquiring as to its state of sexual arousal, thank you.

— What, it is on, is it? Fascinating! Ahem. Look here, allow me to introduce myself. I’ve only got three

hundred of your what-do-you-call-its ... seconds ... so I shall have to be jolly brisk, what?

— This is a time capsule. I am told it only holds eight megawotsits of data, enough for a brief natter and a

G&T. I’m sure your clankie tech chappies can figure it all out: something to do with the chronic entropy

barrier, I’m told, otherwise we’d be able to send you a couple of uploads and a God program to eat

your brains instead of this deeply tedious message in a bottle.

— (Do I really sound like that? No, don’t tell me, Miss Feng. Just pass the Port.)

— I am Sir Ralph Takahashi, the MacGregor of Clan MacGregor, hereditary patron of Gelnochy

distillery, heir to the Takahashi trust in Yokohama, and governor-general of Batley. I come from a long

line of upper-class twits; blue blood has flowed in the old family veins for almost four centuries, that being

how long it’s been since they bought their titles of nobility. That was back during the aftermath of the

Martian Hyperscabies epidemic of 2256 — damned bad show that, but it did free up a lot of seats for

the likes of my ancestors. (The blue-blooded cyanoglobin hack appears to have been dear old Uncle

Tojo’s idea — he thought it would help if we looked the part — but he unaccountably overlooked the

small-print in the neurological warranty, for which may he jolly well itch in his coffin for ever.) But I’m

rambling, aren’t it? Forthwith, to the point! I’m here to sell the prospect of life in the exciting

twenty-eighth century to you chappies, and I don’t have much time left.

— The twenty-eighth century (since when? Something to do with a middle-eastern death cult, wasn’t it?

No, don’t tell me ...) is a fine and exciting era and welcomes immigrants from all time zones. We’re trying

to develop the tech for a return temporal tourist trade as well, but I’m told we won’t succeed for another

seventy-six years. If you come from one of those centuries and cultures where English was spoken, you

won’t have much trouble communicating with classicists and over-educated upper-class drones like me,

ha ha. And the Great Downsizing (I gather some of your more optimistic fellows used to look forward to

this event, calling it a Singularity), in conjunction with the discovery of the Spacetime Squirrelizer (which

allowed your less optimistic fellows to get away from the Great Downsizing — which is why my side of

the family tree is descended exclusively from pessimists) has spread us pretty thin across the galaxy. This

means that there are plenty of good employment opportunities for squishy flesh-and-blood types, but

bear in mind that some occupations are now entirely traditional clankie preserves — forget trying to get a

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Charles Stross - Message in a Time Capsule

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