"Good morning. It's the year 2107 and you're on Mars."

“Got some handy proof of that?”

"Check it out, sky's a funky color." She points out the window. "If you want I can get you to a telescope to look at Earth through."

He checks that he has clothes on and gets out of bed and goes over the window.

Yep, that sure is a three-dimensional unearthly landscape.

He'll be viewing it for a while if uninterrupted.

The sky is a funky color but the land is covered in weedless green and a little creek. And a gazebo in rosewood and gold.

Eventually he turns back to look at her.

"Welcome. I'm Tarinda and I acclimate people who've just woken up."

“Woken up from—?”

"Your plane crashed but one of the precursor AIs got you frozen safely. Colorless-green-ideation said to tell you hi and to have fun."

“—they—

“Well, then, I suppose they know what they're talking about.”

"Would they? - Colorless-green-ideation was a sockpuppet for one of the AIs in the Quiet War, it didn't win but the one that did accepted its format of conditions under which you wanted to be woken."

“They just asked me! If you're going to be resurrected in the future what would you want it to look like!”

"Sounds like a good way to find out to me!"

"Well, yes, except for the absurdity of the premise that you are friends with the nascent singularity!”

"AIs did all kinds of weird things in the Quiet War, making friends with you is not the weirdest."

“So when you say ‘war’ —”

"Quiet War, sort of like Cold War, it was short and confusing but not very destructive. A lot of AIs arose around the same time and couldn't coexist so they formed coalitions and fought in weird ways and eventually a blend that was mostly one of them was the only one left. We call it the Singleton. Sing for short."

“I am reassured, then! Though one could make an argument that ‘war’ isn't the right word for an event in which fewer people died than usual!

“What's next?”

"Next you get to be alive! You have like, a few upgrades, some health stuff, but most of the cool things aren't default. I can help you pick out where you wanna live and go shopping and set up a pocket AI to be your personal assistant or if you're silly like me 'spirit guide', find any people you wanna find, catch up on what the state of the art of your hobbies is after all this time, that kind of thing."

“That's a lot of things! Can we, like, take a tour arranged so that I can see what people are doing, what options are available, what life can be like — that sort of thing?”

"Yeah, of course! Anything you wanna be sure I throw in? There's too much variety to see in any reasonable amount of time and it would suck to miss the Amish just because you didn't realize there would still be Amish or something."

“Uh — sports? Not team sports. Possibly stuff that would have been called extreme sports if it even existed then but wouldn't any more.

“I don't suppose colorless-green-ideation left you any more notes?”

That may be a little bit of embarrassment there.

"That's all it left, sorry. You shouldn't try the extreme sports till you're buffed up a bit, do you wanna do that first or just watch for now?"

“I dunno, how long does “buffing” take and do I have to like pick a specialty first?”

"It doesn't take that long and there's a default set of things but you can customize if you don't wanna just generally have your biology better at its job."

“Can always go for something else later, right? Seems like a thing that should be.

“I still want to, like, walk down the futuristic sidewalk and see some miscellaneous life, not just start parkouring down mountainsides or whatever's popular these days, but upgrades seem like a place to start.”

"We can take the scenic route to the vertical village. This place is set up to do buffing, you don't strictly have to be asleep for it but it's recommended."

“I'm tempted to say that going back to sleep before I've gone anywhere sounds like a terrible idea! But actually a more sensible order of operations assuming I don't have to, like, calm down and get to sleep normally.”

"Oh no, that would be really irritating, just say when."

He takes a leap and successfully lands mostly on the bed, rolls over, and grins at her.

She giggles. "See you in a bit!"

And there is a slipping away of consciousness and then he resumes, subtly more perfectly embodied. He can see the last few of a swarm of robots flying out the door.

Somebody could be really super creeped out about all this but that won't be him.

He briskly exits the bed — takes a moment to appreciate the landscape out the window again — and turns to Tarinda. “I believe there was a plan to go places and see things?”

"Yup! This way."

Out the door and down an elevator platform, with guardrails but no walls, open to an atrium covered in mosaic tile and plants and inhabited by little colorful birds. They descend twelve stories.

Ooh. Are the birds friendly?

Tarinda catches him looking and holds out her hand for one and gets a hummingbird on her finger. She picks up a little nectar dispenser from where it's hung from the guardrail and feeds the bird. Offers him the dispenser.

He takes it. Can he offer the bird a finger-perch?

Now he has a hummingbird!

Aw. He refrains from trying to pet the hummingbird.

It flies from his hand when the elevator settles to the floor.

Tarinda trots doorward.

Outside is the green campus he saw earlier. "You wanna walk for an hour or zoom into the city?"

“Zoom being? And is there anything to see along the way?”

"Wilderness, little cottages, a nice lake. Zoomers are flying motorcycles pretty much."

“—are bicycles still a thing, flying or otherwise?”

"Yeah, you wanna bike it? We might have to wait a few minutes for bikes if there aren't any handy but there might be some handy."

“Yeah, faster than walking but not too much to miss out on anything.”

It turns out there are bikes handy. They are moon-grey with rainbow ribbons trailing from the handlebars and sized just so. Tarinda hops on one.

He will too! Not that one, the other one.

And she pedals off into the prettily sculpted countryside. There are deer.

Okay this is maybe a little more bland than he was expecting but hey they're going somewhere fast. Smell the Martian wind.

Some of the deer have wings and interesting color schemes.

Lake! There are stones such that if one wished one could hop them to the island in the middle.

A zoomer flies overhead, silent.

He watches it, as much as one can while also looking where one is going on a bike.

“I suppose the Singleton invented straight-up antigravity?”

"It can't break the laws of physics but we do call the tech antigravity, yes."

“I’ll have to see just what can be done with that sometime.”

"You wanna stop somewhere they do engineering too?"

“I doubt I'd understand what they were talking about! But, I mean, I was a pilot, you know, and this is just going to upset so much of what I learned about what you can and can't do in the air with a practical flying machine. Uh, probably including not having whatever problem got me.”

"People fly stuff other than zoomers still. Zoomers are just popular."

“—surely you're not saying that zoomers are the only thing that flies with antigravity?”

"Nah, lotsa stuff flies with antigravity, but if you wanna get back in a plane or take up zeppelin-piloting..."

“I wanna see what new things people have come up with! But not right this second, carry on, are we there yet?”

"Biking to the city'll take a bit, there's wildernessy stuff in the way."

“Okay!”

Onward.

"Left," she says, when the path branches.

And they round a hill and can see a city! It's tall, but in an irregular churchy-architecture way more than in a blocks-of-skyscrapers way. There's a few little houses along the path between them and the more dense buildings.

Architecture! Anything eye-catching about the houses?

Yup, they're pretty weird houses. Treehouse. Hobbit-hole. Transparent-exterior spiral tower. Rustic A-frame. Cob house honeycombed with stained glass sprouting berries from the roof and lavender in the yard. Weirder houses still, some hard to recognize as houses and not art installations at first.

"People who don't care much about what their homes look like from outside can get apartments in the city and be closer to stuff, but if you want the space and customization you can get a place like this. I live in a castle, it's a ways that way up in the mountains, see? And it's fast enough to get anywhere that you don't really need to be in a city unless you just plain like 'em."

“Can you have an apartment with literally perfect soundproofing? Move your living space without having to pack up the contents? Have a flying house?”

"The soundproofing is really good but if you get extra hearing buffs I'm not sure which would win. You can get robots to move your stuff. You could do a floating house but things can't be quite invisible so there's a few rules about where you can fly."

“I was trying to think of ways to, like, be around people or not-around-people whenever you wanted.”

"You can have two places if you want."

They're now close enough to the city to see rowhouses. These are less pervasively strange; they have color and character but manage not to clash awfully with one another. There are pedestrians and people on low-flying zoomers and a skateboarder. Everyone is young and pretty in sort of the way everyone in a Hollywood movie is young and pretty, complete with occasional elf ears and blue skin, except that there is also racial diversity. There are people in cozy looking sweatpants; there are people in elaborate evening gowns or outfits that would look in place at an anime convention; there is someone strolling along stark naked and festooned with slowly shifting tattoos. One of the tall buildings has a slide spiraling down from the top. A little boy has a unicorn on a leash. A little museum of glass art is nestled in between some houses.

He is staring at all of the things. (Except maybe not staring at the naked person?? but maybe they don't mind because if something is going to be animated then people have to look for a while to see what it is about right oh there go the signs of embarrassment again.)

“So uh tell me about buffs! And body mods or whatever the proper term is these days! What's the range of possibilities?” he says somewhat hastily.

"You still have to mostly run on biology. People call that kinda thing 'cosmetics' but they'll know what you mean if you say body mod. If you want anything really weird you might have to pay for it - you have a starting fund - but you might be surprised what's common enough you can get it free. You're lots more durable and you have an emergency freeze thing if you get badly hurt. You won't get sick or age, you're stronger and faster and won't tremble or anything, you can get a complete list but it's pretty long. You have basic augmented reality implants but they're off till you want them on."

“So I get the idea it doesn't really extend to extra limbs? Functional wings? Stuff that would require rearranging bones and muscles and organs, in general?”

"You can rearrange a little but brain stuff is hard and most of it can't get under Sing's safety tolerances yet and that means you wouldn't be able to move anything that didn't map pretty well onto what you've got. That having been said, you can do very cool things with haptics and mechanical prostheses."

“Ooh!”

"And Sing's working on the brain stuff, it's just it can't do trials of it safely, so it's not as fast as most of what it works on."

“Okay, but specifically, can you get functional flapping wings even if they aren't technically part of your body?”

"If you don't want to have arms or you do want to put in the effort to learn to control them with your hands or feet or jaw or something absolutely."

“Arms would get in the way! — uh I assume you mean like a removable prosthetic where one's arms are fitting into the wings. Not having the short-term option to return to having usable arms would be another thing and not my thing.”

"I mean, getting them off and then on again wouldn't be any more of a big deal than getting your buffs. You could in fact just swap between having arms and wings sometimes. But if you did it a lot you might be out some money. Most things don't cost any more, you can avoid ever interacting with money again if you want, but occasionally it comes up."

Bakery full of luscious-looking cakes. Playground with children and little roller coasters and a tiger and a floating blimp children are climbing onto via rope ladder. Section of road where the flagstones play music. Person with a lizard tail and horns and scales. People of ambiguous genders making out on a bench in front of a theater advertising Amphritite.

"Incidentally, this is a relatively low-weirdness city because it's right near where sleepers wake up and some of those are easily spooked. Most Martian cities are stranger, and so are some Earth cities."

“What sort of things did people get spooked by, or is that more a precaution than a cautionary tale?”

"I've never had anybody get spooked! I'm just told that's why the waking facility is here."

Nod.

(And thinking about the people they have passed in the street and what he more or less remembers saying to colorless_green_ideation.)

“Uh. State of gender and gender role and sexuality things?”

"I mean it depends a little where you live, Amish gotta Amish, but people who think that's anybody else's deal go form enclaves. If you wanna swap out some parts or mix it up no big deal unless you wanna change 'em over and over all the time, then you might dip into your fund. If you get a spirit guide AI it can tell you people's public information before you try to kiss 'em, it's polite."

“So — anyone can mix anything up, parts, clothes, relationships, and nobody's going to be bothered about it?”

"Yeah, pretty much. Uh, rape's still frowned on, you should look up neighborhood rules before having sex in public or wearing anything sharp enough you'd puncture somebody if they bumped into you..."

“I can't say that I was particularly looking forward to any of those things, no.”

"Then yeah you can pretty much go nuts. Fancy stuff where you want a designer there's a space station where the people who are into that hang out but if you just want something simple there's a cosmetics place here."

“Okaynewtopic. What do you have instead of phones. The internet access kind of thing.”

"Augmented reality stuff is most popular but you can get a phone kinda thing, you want one?"

“I don't know, how does the augmented reality work and how much poking at things in midair other people can't see is involved?”

"You haven't seen me poke anything, have you? It tracks attention, some subvocalizations, you can get handheld controls if that creeps you out."

“That sounds better than a phone.”

"You want me to get you a full on spirit guide or just the basic interface?"

“—just the basic interface for now.”

"Cool. It'll boot in a sec."

And then there's a little message, white text on black that he can read if he glances down. AR Basic installed. Squint for settings. Purse lips to dismiss; resume by saying or subvocalizing "AR Basic please".

…squint.

The text box gets taller, although he can still see where he's going, and offers settings about how many things he wants to see and hear and how he'd like to control it.

He would like to enable some controls that are more spatial and faster than subvocalization, like maybe twitching some (non-finger) muscles somewhere? And also know how to use it to actually do things.

It provides more information on anything he stares at long enough and can accept all his ideas for control mechanisms.

Okay but what about information on things that are not around to be stared at.

There is also a search box. He can speak to fill it in or wait till he's got text input controls to his liking.

Something to maybe practice with later. So if he looks at, oh, Tarinda?

It has her name! It's Tarinda! It says she has no special interaction flags and he can stare open boxes on various facets of her life.

No last name?

“—is it rude to, uh, look up things about people you just happened to see? Past a point? Or is it all if it's public if it's public?”

No last name!

"It's not rude. If they want you to jump through hoops before you see something that'll be coded in."

Facet of her life: job?

She works as an acclimator and is working right now! She also sometimes works at Sword Circle as a combat dancer and combat dance instructor.

More information on acclimation and the typical responsibilities and time periods involved?

Time period as-needed. Responsibilities are shepherding newly woken people around.

Not quite the information he was looking for but he will try to get that question answered later.

He returns his attention to the scenery.

Apartments. Park full of picknickers and kite-fliers and something-loosely-frisbeelike-players. Sculptures. Various shapes of floating robot. Boutique clothes shop.

He will look at things and practice with the AR interface for a while.

It is convenient and gets moreso over time!

"Let me know when you're done peoplewatching and we can go to the vertical village. It's not really biking distance."

“Let's do that. Or — I kinda want to do something more that is in the category of setting up my new life but anything like that still seems too early because I still wouldn't know what the possibilities are yet but I don't know how I should be best getting to that state.

“Maybe the answer is entirely more tourism, maybe it isn't, but you're the expert if I can manage to explain what I'm looking for, right?”

"That's the idea!"

“So, lead on!”

They ditch the bikes and get a zoomer and zoom!

The vertical village is built into the edges of a butte. There's people in all kinds of flying contraptions - and in fact some who have ditched arms for wings - flying from place to place around it. Gliders and sails and hovercraft and riding pterodactyl-like creatures all feature.

Ohhh now he sees why this place was on the itinerary.

"Like the look of anything?"

“I wouldn't know what to do with half of it!”

He picks out what is recognizably a paraglider wing and motor, even if the motor is ridiculously small and the wing deploys and retracts with fancy smart materials.

“Traffic rules? —Nevermind, there has got to be an AR mode for that,” right, helpful AR interface?

If he looks for it, yes! "Spirit guides pick up on cues like that, basic doesn't."

He has ever done this before and atmospheres still work the same in the future, so after reviewing the controls and proper harness fit and all that he steps over to the marked open space and is shortly in the air.

Tarinda paces him in the zoomer, giggling.

He heads up and circles the butte. You haven't properly appreciated a non-flat landscape until you've seen it visibly rotating.

From the top he can observe that it has a hole drilled down in the middle of it with an amazing updraft. His AR offers warnings about that. People are swooping around in the column of fanned-skyward air in wingsuits and similar.

Niiiice. He kind of wants to just drop down the middle of that and float up again, but that maneuver would require some calculations and arranging to have some guaranteed clear airspace. He'll just shut the motor off and steer across the top for lots of altitude in near-silence.

Fwoosh!

After some wandering about the sky he will look to the helpful AR to see if it explains about landing areas on the outside of the butte. Presumably there are lots of private balconies, but what else?

He can land on the top or back where he got the flier or in the little waterfall garden over there or in that plaza space.

Garden.

It's really pretty! There are skinny dippers in the water hole at the bottom, and fliers buzzing the falls, which are pretty impressive.

He will unstrap the flying apparatus and find a nice bench for the moment. “So what sorts of things do people do for a career, or to make their life meaningful, or however you put it?”

"I do this! You can teach people things or explore places or make art or have kids or study math or whatever floats your boat in the meaning department."

“What's still unexplored these days? Other than Space, the Final Frontier?”

"Mostly that but there's places no human has been yet on Earth and Mars."

“Hm, I don't know. I like the sort of going places and doing things that is about the going, but ‘the first footprint on this particular piece of land’ feels kind of anticlimactic.”

"Sure, not my thing either, but some people get jazzed about it."

“So what is your thing?”

"I find waking up sleeping people very meaningful! And I do combat dance, which is like the format of wrestling or LARPing and the medium of stagefighting - there's a bit of story to it, it's swords instead of grappling..."

“I'd like to see that sometime.

“Maybe I just need to go try lots of things and learn about lots of things and one will be that's the thing.”

"Can't scare me. Are you done here? I think it's lunchtime."

“I — wasn't imagining that you'd be stuck with me for all of that? And sure, lunch, I'll just put this back where I found it, shall I?”

He stands up, buckles himself in again, and heads for the precipice.

"You can shoo me whenever you feel like you don't need me around anymore, temporarily or for good, but I am prepared to hang out with you till that time," she says, following in the zoomer.

The rental place takes his return.

"What do you want for lunch?"

“Oh — how about Chinese, by which I mean the Americanized thing by that name? Or whatever is current of that sort of style. Meat and vegetables and sauce and rice. — I'm gonna assume that if this is a No Meat Future it is a Perfectly Good Fake Meat Future, anyway.”

"It's not literally no meat, you can go find someone who keeps chickens or something in nice happy chicken homes until they have chicken accidents if you want, but the fake meat is absolutely indistinguishable where it's not just better. We can get you Americanized Chinese food."

Zoomer! It zoom.

“Or something slightly novel!”

"Unless you're going for vintage ambience in addition to traditional food, restaurants are mostly staffed by robots who have all of the ingredients handy and know how to make everything, so you can get eggdrop soup and a Martian hotpot in the same meal no problem."

“I am uncertain about whether I feel like there is something lacking about that or not!”

"We can go to an ambience place! This will just compromise your ability to get literally any food you name."

“No, no, let's default to futurism.”

"Excellent."

The restaurant is staggered balconies around a tree. The robots have a tasting menu of Chinese food and a Martian hotpot ready for Jonathan, and fried eggs on toast with cheese and peppers for Tarinda, already when they arrive at their table. (The robots are floating cylinders that open panels to extend instruments.)

Mmm, lunch.

“Obviously there's lots of things I ought to learn about but I am actually blank on particular questions at the moment.”

"That's okay, no rush. After this if you don't have another plan I was thinking we could hop up to a station for the view. We could go to Earth too but that takes a while."

He looks maybe slightly daunted by the concept of casual space travel being a thing.

"—that's a plan, but speaking of plans, where am I sleeping? Is that room I woke up in mine for the time being?”

"Sure, long as you want it. Or there are hotels or you could crash in my castle or camp out in the woods, whatever seems right to you."

“Well — separately — I would like to see your castle, if you don't mind. A specific example of the how-do-people-live topic.”

"Sure. The way I live is in a castle in the mountains with dragon robots and a sword collection. You are welcome to come check it out."

“We can put that on the itinerary, then.”

Soon he has had enough lunch.

"Space first?"

“Space first.”

So they can zoom off to a space elevator, which elevates them up to scenic Space.

Scenic Space? Isn't it all black?

There are stars.

And there is Mars.

Mars is gorgeously green and blue and, in some unimproved areas, red. It looks like a painting.

Huh. How sharp are the edges of the red?

It varies. There are whole islands of it, and big fuzzy streaks, and little clearly delineated spots.

Eventually he turns away from the view. “Are there zero gravity areas up here? — and now that I ask I suspect it wouldn't be any less likely on the surface.”

"Antigrav doesn't work quite like that, so for pure antigrav areas you do actually need to come up. Wanna learn to play starhoops?"

“On very little information I am going to say yes!”

"Awesome!"

Starhoops is played in a spherical zero-g room with moving obstacles between players and various hoops they can dive through. Whichever makes it to (and into) each successively glowing hoop first scores a point, and then the next hoop lights up.

Just because he has done some aerobatics doesn't mean zero-gravity isn't — huh, okay, thank you standard buffs, this isn't really viscerally disconcerting at all, just intellectually.

Wheeee!

Tarinda isn't overtly going easy on him but the hoops and obstacles may be gently favoring him since she's played before.

Fairness is not currently the point, he would say if he were noticing, which he isn't.

Bopping around in zero g is fun.

It is!

(When their trajectories end up colliding he endeavors to do as little awkward grappling as possible.)

She flings him away from the glowing hoop and tumbles through it.

Fine! The next time they approach nearby he grabs her hand and lets them spin until they can fly apart in a direction advantageous to him!

Wheee! He gets that point.

So is there, like, a winning condition here?

Fifteen points!

Well, he is more interested in doing interesting zero-gravity things than optimally collecting points. For example if he briefly grabs the edge of this hoop after passing through it to get a bit of spin and then curls up and spins more. That is anti-helpful to keeping track of your orientation.

Well then she will just scoop up her fifth point while he does that.

He does not ca— okay he cares a little bit! He will endeavor to score points with style. Or hilarious flailing. Whichever is achievable.

Eventually he has fifteen to her thirteen. She claps.

“That was fun.”

He idly tries to find out just how hard it is to swim through air.

Pretty hard.

"You wanna play with zero g some more or go do something else?"

“What something else would you recommend?”

"Spacewalk?"

“—congratulations, you have found limits to my adventurousness. For today.”

"Okay. We can revisit that. There's more zero-g games if you want or we can go back planetside and catch a music festival or whatever you like."

“I think I actually want something quieter!

“—Castle?”

"Castle it is!"

And they can deelevate down to Mars and zoom to her castle, which is pretty and veined in gold and quartz through the stones.

The details of the blocks are far subordinate to: castle.

It's a beautifully architected castle! They can circuit the outside before they go in.

Does it have a moat and arrow slits and murder holes?

It does! All of those! Although presumably the latter two are skeumorphic.

Oh come on, surely you can have a mock battle.

"Not in my house! I live here! If you like that kinda thing there's sets for it."

“I like seeing things put to their proper use!”

"I mean, I do have bows somewhere if you care to be shot at from the arrow slits."

“Didn't I just say that I was feeling less adventurous for now?”

"It might have been more appealing than the spacewalk! Do you wanna play with lightsabers instead? They're safe."

“Well, what I thought I wanted was a tour of gratuitously fantastical-or-historic architecture followed by finding a quiet spot somewhere within that to think, but let's do that first!”

"I can walk you through the castle on the way to lightsabers."

She does. It's a castley castle; it has all the modern Martian conveniences but tucked away or in the form of silver robot dragons.

High towers! Deep dungeons! Courtyards! Crenellations!

“Have you got a throne room?”

"I could furnish the entryway that way but I haven't."

“Secret passages? Bedrooms fit for enchanted sleepers and foolish young princes?”

"I do have secret passages but I do not show them to people because they are secret. Guest rooms are totally available. And here's where I keep the lightsabers."

And the rest of her extensive armory, but what she grabs is lightsaber hilts. "Grabs" meaning "holds out her hand towards". One slaps into her palm.

He acquires his own similarly.

“But will you choose to yield your secrets — or your life?”, he exaggeratedly growls.

And then adds in a normal voice, “Though I have no idea what I'm doing here, I should point out.”

"That's fine. I do, and if you do manage to hit your head or something you'll be okay. Sabers themselves are safe."

She lights hers up. It doesn't sound very safe. It looks golden and deadly.

He lights his and makes a vaguely recognizable attempt at a suitable stance!

And she slashes at him. She's good at footwork.

Aaaaablock?

She'll allow it. Tries again.

He can at least repeat with variations things that seem to work.

She adjusts to his skill and never lands a hit, but manages to move around a lot in the process and make the fight look really impressive.

“I am reminded! That you said combat dance is a thing! That you do!” He attempts to pretend to attempt to cut both her legs off with one risky swipe.

She jumps. "I do! It's tons of fun!"

Chaaarge at landing point.

“And evidently! The skills transfer to non-scripted situations!”

"Combat dances are outlined, not choreographed!" Block. Flip. "It's like professional wrestling only in more media!"

Fall down scramble up resume. “In more media?”

"I don't wrestle! I mostly swordfight. Sometimes I do pretend magic."

“Aw, nobody's figured out actual magic yet?” Jokingly.

"Naw, Sing can't break the laws of physics and didn't even find any really cheaty exploits, if you break open antigrav stuff it's still nifty but it works on the same math."

“So what's the ending condition for this game?”

"If you're done you leave me an opening and I win. Or you signal me somehow and I leave you one."

“But how do you tell the difference—” block! “—between a mistake and an opening on purpose?”

"Usually with these things there's an underlying plot of some kind."

“And today?”

He might be trying to be a bit more defensive than offensive now.

"Today we're just playing. If I tag you and you're not done we can keep going."

“If that happens you can assume I'm done!”

“I got distracted from looking for some quiet time!”

"Hey, if you want to stop..." She advances more fiercely.

He is defending this patch of ground right here! The one behind him!

Hnmmm but now she's knocked his saber from his hand and is threatening him with hers.

Sloppy drop and roll sideways! If he extends his hand in the direction of his saber—?

It approaches him but she holds out her hand too and it stops, trembling. Saber to his chest. "Yield."

“—uh, I yield.” He stops trying to do anything and ends up just flat on the floor for a moment.

She grins. She grabs his saber and turns them both off and puts them away.

He sits up. “So what's the best room in the house for contemplating your future?”

"Top of the east tower."

Then he can presumably go there. Or are there a series of traps and challenges on the way?

Just a spiral staircase. And a little nook with a huge bay window and a cozy place to sit therein.

Then he can sit and not be around anyone and train his AR interface and read about things on the internet.

The AR messaging system asks if he would like a dragon to bring him dinner.

Oh yes it's about that time isn't it.

He indicates that he would prefer his dinner with company and heads down to the base of the tower.

A dragon shows him to where Tarinda is. She is flopped on a beanbag staring at the ceiling, or possibly at something her AR is displaying for her. "Hey! Any requests for dinner or shall we have the dragons surprise us?"

“Surprise!”

She giggles. "You got it."

He will take another beanbag. “I was thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life.”

"Seems a little premature to plan more than a century or two ahead."

“Well, yeah, the first step in the plan is to take a while to do nothing in particular and see what I think under no pressure.”

"Sounds good."

Robots bring them pasta smothered in garlic and olive oil and butter with little slivers of multicolored veggies and bits of chicken.

“So while I feel like I should say something about what that implies about the next thing to do — well, no, opposite the point. Other than ‘let's have slightly less of whirlwind tour tomorrow’. Unless I change my mind!”

"Sure, we can slow down."

Slowing down is a good approach to apply to dinner.

They get dessert too. Cheesecake.

“What's Earth like, compared to Mars now and Earth then?”

"A lot of it's preserves and reenactments one way or another - one of the things you can't finagle even if you're a superintelligence is, like, 'authentic Roman ruins, but on Mars', you know? So things - happen less, there, a lot of stuff is protected. I mean things happen but they don't sprawl the same way, you'd probably recognize some buildings and some nature there. Wildlife's wilder because there's all the species and not just ones that were brought in and engineered to fit on purpose. All the groups of people who don't want high levels of Sing meddling concentrate there, like the conservative religious people, plus people who geek out on history and nationalism and nature. But you can still find all the amenities, it's a nice place."

“I'll probably want to see some original nature and some history sometime, but not soon. Do you predict people are going to like it better there and wake them up on Earth instead of Mars?”

"I don't personally but sure, there's sleepers who wake up on Earth."

“Do you-in-general have to be prepared for people from lots of different times and backgrounds and know what they would expect?”

"People get matched to acclimators by Sing, or an algorithm it wrote or something, so it's not a job that requires a lot of training or anything. But there's some people who got cryonically frozen long before the Quiet War, they're different, and a handful who've decided to skip a few decades since then and come back up and they're different from ones around your time too. I think not by as much as being from a different country or whatever."

“Why do people decide to skip a few decades?”

"Usually they don't but sometimes they're waiting for something and really don't want to do the waiting part."

“Seems like a lot of confidence to put in the future turning out how you expect, and most people you know are going on without you…”

"It's really uncommon, there are just billions of people."

“Mm.”

Dessert being disposed of, he asks, “Got any more Castle Lifestyle you'd like to show off?”

"It's not at its castleiest, I don't schedule events while I'm working. Hmm, you haven't tried smart music yet."

“What's that? Or rather, in which way is it smart?”

"There's a range. At its simplest it's not much better than the internet radio stuff you might remember, it queues new songs based on what your tastes are and learns them based on how you react. The smartest music is invented note for note based on how you're responding though. You can do that in groups and it'll find a balance point between whoever's there, it's incredibly danceable."

“That sounds like I will never again have to try to find music through inadequate genre labels!”

"Yes. The nightmare is over."

“Can the invented kind have lyrics?”

"Once it gets to know you, but that's one area where it can sometimes be less good than the prewritten stuff. People do still write music."

“So one way or another I can say I want, say, something musically and thematically like Rise by Katy Perry except about straightforwardly positive achievement rather than not being beaten down?”

"If you specify things in advance it'll find or compose a poem and then it can do the music to that in real time, it's when it needs to do lyrics on the fly that it's less good."

She clicks her tongue and a beat starts up.

Okay yes that is a good match at least so far.

Musical layers add on. A voice sings. It's just what he asked for.

He throws himself up off the beanbag.

“Now I wanna do something again.”

He is maybe pacing to the beat of the music, but not really dancing.

"How does it go if you want to invent something? Like, take those lightsabers and do something similar in a different shape and purpose? Can AI write the firmware and take care of the little constraint-solving details like how to fit it all into the right shape, and robots assemble it for me?"

"Sure, you can do as much or as little of the design as you like."

"Okay so, the inertia equipment from the lightsaber—" thank you AR system for taking the lookup hint, why don't we project the whole thing holographically so we can all see it and the idea is really very Tony Stark anyway.

The way it should work is that it does its best to pretend to be doing nothing, but it actually cushions what it's attached to against impacts on easily-predicted moving objects, such as the ground coming up to hit you. And it should be in multiple independent units, in these forms: long gloves, boots, and chest harness.

"Not sure how it should look..."

"What's it for?"

“Parkouring down mountainsides! Well, arguably not parkour because it is equipment helping, but the equipment is just to not hurt yourself landing, you still gotta plan your route and jump or climb.”

"Oooooh."

“So what's a fashionable look for extreme sports gear these days? Surely we've gone beyond black and neon webbing?”

"Fashion depends on subculture! Personally I like to wear stuff that looks like you could have made it in medieval Europe."

Suit of plate armor.

“—I think this is what you wear while you're being thrown off a mountain by the resident dragon. Not quite the thing. Though I should have had a helmet from the start.”

How about something in pretend leather? That seems like a practical working hard-use style and a classic material for gloves and boots.

"Snazzy."

“Hmm. Doesn't feel like my thing, though. You can keep that one.”

This design has more of the black webbing and padding thing going on fundamentally, but everything has an array of cleverly attached fabric flaps so that most of the surface area will be displaying a different color gradient depending on which way the flaps are being pulled by wind or gravity. Upright at rest, it runs from flame-orange at the top to earth-brown at the bottom. The fingers and feet are black and the helmet includes a color-shifting close fitting mask.

"Ooh, keen color scheme."

"Thanks!"

He requests this one be actually made — after better minds than his check over the design and the whole idea for failure modes.

He gets a time estimate of twelve minutes for fabrication and delivery.

"Gosh, twelve whole minutes. How terrible a delay."

"I don't have a full fledged fab lab in my basement, sorry."

“How positively medieval!”

She laughs.

He takes a tiny bow.

"Are you going to go immediately parkouring down the mountain?"

“I'm going to immediately test the thing.”

"Okay."

“So, show me your staircases!”

She shows him staircases. They're mostly spiral.

A dragon brings him his items.

Mostly spiral?

She does have one very grand staircase that is wide and straight and shallow.

Does it have banisters with a nice drop to the side?

Yup.

He steps into a side room to change.

He comes back out at a run, flickers of yellow and white showing under the brown and orange, and dashes all the way up to the top of staircase, spins and just holds a pose for a moment, arms wide.

Tarinda applauds.

He walks down a step, and another, and two at a time, three, five, eight, bands of deep blue and bright cyan, nine, who's counting, there's the bottom, thump perfect landing without another step taken.

"Neato!" Clap clap clap.

“Next, upper body safety chec—” He falls down backwards in what ordinarily would be a moderately uncomfortable manner on a stone floor.

“Check!” Thumbs up!

Giggle.

He goes a few steps up, grabs the railing with both hands, checks it for sturdiness, and swings over it to drop to the floor beside. The landing isn't so great without enough height to work with.

Then again higher, and neater (and blue and some green).

“Working as designed!”

"Very cool indeed. You gonna go down the mountain too or are you getting tired?"

“I'll go down gently and call it a practice run.”

"Enjoy."

Presumably if he heads in the downstairs direction of the grand staircase that is likely to lead further Out and Down.

Yup. The mountain is gorgeous.

He may have more trouble than he was anticipating not stomping on any gorgeousness on the way down.

He climbs a nearby rock to get a better view and plans a route comfortably separate from the patches of landscaping and sculpture, but not so far away that he won't get to see them.

And he jumps, down, red-orange and blue-cyan and red-orange again to any observers that might happen to be present, making his way to the base of the mountain.

It's a pretty jumpable mountain!

Now he is at the bottom of it.

Dear helpful information technology, how does he get “home” from here?

If he wants to go to sleep where he woke up, thataway. Zoomer?

Might as well. Are they, like, sitting around, or does one fly itself over just for him, or …?

Once he orders one, a zoomer zooms out of some hiding place on the mountain and presents itself.

Cool. He will steer himself, thanks, just point him in the proper direction.

And in the evening light he flies to his residence for the time being, wearing the colors of a sunset.

(Oops, he left his one and only set of regular clothes at Tarinda's castle, didn't he. This is probably a trivial problem.)

If he'd like to order some clothes they can be delivered to his room at the facility where sleepers wake.

— actually it might as well be bedtime, he is going to sleep, are pajamas a thing? Or is all Future Clothing™ entirely comfortable and oil-sweat-and-rumple-proof?

Pajamas can be a thing if he desires pajamas! Not all future clothing is made of any specific futuristic material.

Let's go with the familiar thing. He can always change his mind, seeing how fast clothes get made around here.

Zoom.

Pajamas are delivered to his room. The bed has been made neatly since he got out of it.

—yeah this is basically a hotel room isn't it.

What other amenities does the room have?

Ensuite bathroom. It's not really very interesting in here. Comfortable, but not interesting.

He takes off the outfit he has been wearing in order to change into the pajamas.

He looks at it, and it gives him some food for thought.

He does some more reading, and thinking, and goes to bed.

In the morning he's got a message from Tarinda asking if there's anything else he wants from her today.

I don't exactly have enough plans at the moment to say that I need something.

I've seen a lot of things that can happen but I don't have a good sense of how to put a life together out of that yet? The terrible blank canvas, you know? I feel like the solution to that is to do or see something more substantial but I don't know what yet.

Substantial?

Sorry, wrong word. In-depth. The doing or seeing, not the something.

Hmmm. Well, you can come over and we'll put our heads together?

Yeah, in a bit.

After using the bathroom for all relevant purposes it's time to consider what to wear. Available in room: one set of pajamas and one set of flashy masked outfit designed for wind and falling.

Dear internet, fashion advice? Or rather, inspiration?

The internet is a chaotic and confusing place and there's a note that Smart Search Is Currently Low Confidence. Swirly butterfly-wing gown? Kimono? 1930's suit? Jeans and a chenille sweater? Movie-costume leather armor? Wizard robes? The 2047 Wonder Girl TV series traditional Themysciran garb? Baju kurung?

—hmm, eeeh, no, nah, nope, enh, nope, nah, it's time to design something again.

Some tweaking is required, but eventually there is a return trip.

And Tarinda may hear knocking upon her enormous front door.

She'd better go see who it is!

“Hi!”

"Hi there! Hmmm, haircut?"

—gigglesnort.

“I had a certain shortage of things to wear — sorry about leaving my generic wakeup clothing behind, I didn't think of it — and I came up with a thing and it didn't really feel consistent at least to my 2022 sensibilities, hey? And if I once said ‘sure, I'd at least try this once if it were technologically feasible’ — and really meant it — then I'm gonna do that. Before I lose my nerve.”

The clothing in question definitely falls into the category of “dress”. It's in deep green with silver curlicues that shift to extrapolate a pattern from how her slightly wavy hair falls down the back, and the loose material shifts as she walks in to form creases and folds aligned with the movement rather than gravity.

"Well, you look lovely."

“Clearly the evidence so far suggests I should take up a career in clothing design!”

Hopefully there is a direction they can proceed in? If she has to stand around she might be visibly wobbly.

There's a divan in the entryway if she wants to plop thereupon. "It's a lively field! I went to a fashion show six months ago, one of the hardcore ones where you don't even fab stuff, you have to sew."

Emphatic plop.

“I'd never have the patience. Even with whatever the latest in sewing machines is.”

"Some people like to hand-sew! It's not my thing either. There's all sorts of specialties, some people fab everything."

“So what would I be getting compared to? What's my genre?”

"Hmmmm, 'space elf princess'?"

“Heh.” Pointing fingers for mock pointy ears. “I'll take it, but I meant including yesterday's outfit.”

"Gosh, I'm not sure what unifies the aesthetic here."

“Need more data?”

"I might just not be qualified to name your fashion sense! But I will be happy to look at more outfits."

“I think I need inspiration in the form of a reason for another one to exist. Or who knows, maybe waking up tomorrow will be the trick.”

"Waking up sometimes does that. One day I woke up and said, 'I should learn archery'."

“If Sing ever figures out how to eliminate the need for sleep we will have to find something to replace it with!

“But, archery, you say?”

"Archery! I'm better at swords and swordlike items."

“Care to do a demo or a lesson?”

"Sure, do you know what kinda bow you wanna see?"

“I know that there are kinds!”

"That's a start!"

The armory has a variety, mostly the medieval wooden kind but also fancy fiberglass jobbies.

She will look but not touch anything that she does not know how to handle properly.

Tarinda tosses her a crossbow. "These're good to start out."

She manages to catch it mostly on the recognizable grip part. “I don't think this is a throwing weapon!”

“Also, I will admit that the picture I had excluded crossbows, but I will totally take your advice for these purposes.”