Traveling Into the Future

Short Science Fiction Stories: Part 5

The Earthquake

“Avar, you really have to help me now!” I was speaking to my AI assistant in an almost imploring tone. I was sitting in my car, which was parked in the lot of a mobility agency in Fresno. My sweaty hands were gripping the steering wheel. “I haven’t driven a car myself for years.” As always, Avar acted as though she was experienced at this. “No problem, Nero. First, I’ll read out the data from the car computer. Just give me a second.”.

I was still in a tizzy. Normally I would have traveled in the hyperloop capsule from Los Angeles right to San Francisco’s city-center and then would have taken a robo-taxi to the hotel. But after the earthquake last week, the hyperloop route had to be checked out, so the capsule traveled as far as Fresno. I would have been able to travel the last 200 miles in the bus that served as a substitute for the capsule. But my ambition seized me and I booked a TIC, or temporary individual car. “The hydrogen tank is full,” Avar said in her usual objective tone, which was a source of stress to me at the time. “You have a range of 480 miles. The sensors are reporting no additional earlier damage. Two months ago, there was a stone impact on the front windshield, but the smart glass was immediately able to compensate for it. You can get rolling.” My foot quivered a bit as I pressed down on the accelerator. But all was well after a few minutes. Once learned, never forgotten.

San Francisco is considered a model

I actually wanted to report on how artificial intelligence is used in the telematics systems of the San Francisco metropolitan area. The city is considered a model: Although the population of greater San Francisco has now grown to 8 million people, traffic jams have been a thing of the past for many years. But due to the earthquake, a project was starting that very day at the damaged Golden Gate Bridge, and I wanted to report on it instead. “Avar, is our appointment set for this afternoon?” I asked. “It should all come together. You have to drive to Marin City. We drop off the car there and switch to the shuttle bus heading to the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

When we reached San Francisco Bay, I saw the facilities where green algae grow. They produce the hydrogen that is converted into electric current in the fuel cell of my car. A short time later, Avar said: “We have reached our intermediate destination,” and then follows up with another pat on the back: “Congratulations. Good driving.” We left our car at the parking office’s terminal. It was supposed to find its way into the parking structure autonomously. We climbed into the small, driverless electric bus, which brought us to the Golden Gate Bridge’s north shore, where Brian, my interviewee from the San Francisco Municipal Railway, was already waiting for us, A few years earlier, Brian, who is in his mid-30s, had the idea of using small, autonomously flown volocopters as personal transport. The engineer’s vision had now become a reality faster than people had thought. That’s because Brian has set up a substitute transportation system for the now-inaccessible Golden Gate Bridge. In an endless sequence, the volocopters fly from the north shore to the south shore and back. They land briefly at a temporary terminal at their destination, and people climb in and out. “Over the last few days, we first had to program the volocopters, but now everything is working smoothly,” Brian said. “Thanks to the replacement transportation, engineers can check the bridge in a state of calm. The quake was quite strong, and its epicenter was only 30 miles from here in the Point Reyes nature preserve, but I believe the bridge’s vibration dampers kept the situation from getting worse.”

We climbed into a volocopter and took off for the south shore. The flight only took a few minutes. Brian explained the control system to me. Laser scanners record the distance to the volocopter flying ahead and to the one following it. Learning algorithms determine the flight path on this basis. Small electric motors drive the twelve rotors, which are supplied with energy by both a battery and a fuel cell. “It is basically the same principle that you find in robo-taxis,” Brian said. “Given the long lines of traffic, we can transport a great many people in as little space as possible.”

San Francisco has earned a global reputation for its robo-taxis. The autonomous, electric two-seaters drive through the inner city in their own lanes and couple themselves together into convoys. In this way, they require very little space. They only uncouple during the last mile of their trip. I said goodbye to Brian and hailed a robo-taxi with a typical wave. “It’s a good thing that I don’t have to drive here,” I said to Avar. “But Nero, you have really done quite well for a human being. Although I really must say that artificial intelligence is just better at driving.”