The space habitat of New Ragusa had an ancient tradition where every hundred days the citizens would hold an election as to what the season should be.
The effect was easily accomplished by modifying the internal temperature and operating hours of the central sun-line, and by altering the humidity. In this way, almost any climate, from frigid polar winter to sweltering tropical summer could be rapidly achieved. Many types of vegetation, carefully stored in suspended animation in different stages of their annual cycle, could be planted overnight by drones to complete the seemingly magical change.
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It was well past 9 pm, and Harv could probably have let Buddy off his leash, but there had been warnings about the raccoons in the densely forested areas north of 97th St. He still found the park a bit creepy after dark. Nowhere near as bad as thirty years ago, but still. It helped that Buddy was big. Although really, he’d probably just lick a potential mugger.
Traffic on the 395 was light at 6 AM. Phil made the L’Enfant exit, turned right onto E Street SW, and then a block later, rolled past the blue “NASA Employees Only” sign. He waved his ID on its lanyard at the guard, who recognized him and raised the gate just in time.
“Much knowledge has been lost over the centuries to fire. The several burnings of the Library in Alexandria destroyed, perhaps, a million books. Possibly the greatest of such disasters were the accidental burning of the 1931 UK census, which resulted in a data gap between 1921 and 1951, an entire generation, and also the destruction of the US 1890 census, from a period of immense population growth, and prior to consistent metrical record-keeping.” — anonymous archivist, 2025
Alejandro went to the store and bought a house. It was time, and then some, to move out on his own. He gave the cashier-bot a fiver, and slid his new house into his wallet. There was a small status screen in one corner of the card, and a touch-sensitive combination pad to open the door.
Pozsony County, May 1242:
I check my dosimeter again, and earn another dirty look from Abel. Problem is, we’re much too close to the big central chunk of neutronium, the paper-weight that makes everything on this asteroid point down, and not just float around. I don’t like the deep tunnels.
The late winter damp seeped through the sheepskin door of the Great Tur in Berestye. The proprietor, Old Askold, shivered and tossed another log on the fire that was the primary source of light in the tavern.