The Grover Wheel

I wrote a short story about life in the modern world. It’s written in the style of classic science fiction, but the ‘wonders’ it contains are all pieces of commonplace modern technology. I was inspired to write this by my constant amazement at how people take the magic around us absolutely for granted and are left cranky despite things being pretty amazing nowadays.
Regularly scheduled programming to resume soon!

— Future: Now —

The voices grew louder, more insistent, as he struggled to pull himself out of sleep. Fumbling for the hand-held emitter by his bed, he tapped a control that sent a pulse of unseen light to quiet the device that projected the voices. Struck by the invisible beam, the electromagnetic reader/relay unit ceased its chatter and the room went quiet. Heaving himself upright, he twitched a finger at a section of wall and the room was bathed in light from burning tungsten. Blinking back from the sudden brightness, he headed down the hall to the aquatic refreshment room. A twist of his wrist brought a jet of scalding water shooting from a hole in the wall towards a large basin set into the floor. Shining chrome levers allowed for the manipulation of temperature and flow and soon the stream had shifted to a comfortable temperature. After allowing the artificial rain to wash the last clinging remnants of sleep from his body, he stepped begrudgingly onto a small metal platform in the corner of the room. A voice that was not his own echoed around the room and informed him that his weight had shifted yet again in an unflattering direction. Remembering the indulgences of the night before, he sighed and dried his body. Reaching for the gleaming white thermal inductor on a nearby shelf, he directed its beam of energized air at his head and felt the last cold drops of water leave him.
Sitting munching on his toroidal wheat extrusions, he listened absentmindedly as his mobile data unit prattled off world events. The unit in his hand was new; he had purchased it a few months back at the prompting of his friends. He didn’t feel it warranted the exorbitant time-exchange he had paid for it, but its voice was at least somewhat clearer than the model it replaced. A flex of his thumb and it responded to his request for an update on the weather for the next few days. Tapping the translucent sand of its face, the liquid crystal matrix shifted again and again under his fingers to displaying swirling colors and moving images. The mobility of these devices was new. Prior units required half a square meter of space and could be unsightly. He liked how simple it was now to access the connectivity. All of his species’ achievements lived on the connectivity. A brief command could bring them pouring into his palm even though he rarely touched a fraction of its collective power.
Readying himself for work, he slipped the device into his pocket and grabbed the small metal actuator that controlled his mechanical conveyor. Seating himself at the controls, he plunged the actuator into a small slot and twisted. The machine’s heart fluttered, grumbled, began to beat. Pumping liquefied hydrocarbons through its ventricles, it breathed in air and harnessed fire. The violence contained in its bowels converted to mechanical energy and pulled him forward across the earth. Cosseted in the conveyor’s metal and liquid sand, he thought little of the violence under his feet and more of the day ahead. Flipping switches and operating leavers, he danced around other men in their conveyors with little care for their thoughts. His own were gripped by other matters. Heaving a weighty sigh, he struck at the machine in front of him. An integrated electromagnetic reader hummed to life. It began to tickle at the EM spectrum to latch onto a particular piece of radiation and convert it into magnetic pulses. These pulses pushed and pulled at ferrite cores and organic disks in his vehicles magnetic motivators, blowing air in the sounds of human speech and music. Distracted from his cares, he continued on his way.
Work was slow. People hardly entered his shop these days as their desires were satiated by the connectivity and his work was less needed. His wares were stacked on shelves and covered with a fine layer of dust by the atmospheric adjustment recirculators. Thumbing again at his mobile data unit, he reached out through the connectivity to touch other data units. Their owners having filled them with memories and images, they flickered before him in an endless stream. His own life existed now half in data; his mind linked with the connectivity as his own memory frequently failed and the data unit picked up the slack.
His body still required energy though. And the connectivity could not yet beam that sort through his hand. Sitting in his rest space, the agitator in front of him hummed with power. The bowl inside was being bombarded with harmless radiation that induced friction with the water molecules in his food. He tapped his foot impatiently. This agitator was old and slow. Several seconds ticked by that his home unit would not have required. This agitator was also crusted with the detonations of food caused by errant radiation use that previous operators had failed to correct for. It disgusted him, but he lacked the motivation to rectify their errors. Food heated by agitator lacked a certain quality possessed in the preparation by older methods, but it was fast and that mattered to him. Time had become the world’s most precious commodity and all trade was based off numerical valuation of time. So he used the agitator.
The day over, he slumped over the controls of his conveyor and willed its heart to pump faster to bring him home. But he resisted the urge to encourage it to drink deeper. Its fuel was sucked from deep inside the planet and its time-cost had recently become unbearable. Better to economize. Allowing the electromagnetic reader to lull him into mindlessness, he let the pulse of the mechanical heart slow as it beat more efficiently and felt it pull him steadily home.
Not yet ready for slumber, he sat in his entertaining room and shot light pulses at the panel on his wall. The invisible beams motivated the panel to glow. It too was a liquid crystal matrix like the one he had in his pocket. But this model was far from small. It occupied the better part of one wall and filled the room with its energies. Magnetic motivators to either side of the panel pounded out explosions and voices alike as shifting images struck his brain. He wished his panel was a bit larger and brighter. His friend’s model could be mistaken for a window into another world while his own panel betrayed the flaws of unreality up-close. But even its prodigious energies could not overcome his internal struggles. Still troubled by his thoughts, he slipped into slumber.