Olympia. A short science fiction story by 2050+
Smart room. Ford & Lopatin, “Channel Pressure”, Software Records, 2011 (album cover). Courtesy the artists.
This text was originally published in Italian on the online platform Flash Art Italy in June 2020.
05.00AM
Alarm! I need to wake up early today to finish up a text for the literary magazine. It’s urgent (it’s always fucking urgent…) and I only have a couple hours left for it.
I sit on my triple-king-extra-large-size-sensing-bed and grab my screen. Since the fifth pandemic I’m basically working from home all-the-time. I’ve been living in a permanent state of semi-quarantine for the past five years and I’ve gradually become an indoor animal, laying preferably horizontal rather than standing on my legs. My bed is my home (it takes at least half of my 40sqm studio): I rest on my bed, I work on my bed, I eat on my bed, I have sex on my bed. My bed cuddles me when I’m lonely - and when my levels of oxytocin are too low - and I need a hug ...I love my bed.
On my cabled pod, days flow into nights, into days, into nights...Time has lost its structure, except for the intermittent sounds of annoying notifications all around me. I feel under pressure. Fortunately massive doses of nootropics keep me running, more or less smoothly.
Carrier pigeon. Courtesy and © Austrian National Library.
Comparison of different transfer rates. Tweag.io graphic with 2050+ rework.
05.10AM
On screen: “Network will be resumed in four hours”
Fuck! I should have known better. After the last dramatic energy crisis, data centers are powered by solar energy only. These days we are basically harvesting data as we are harvesting grain, and sometimes the network shuts down waiting for its batteries to recharge naturally. We said goodbye to diesel powered backup generators a while ago, and with that to the industrial efficiency that came with it. Honestly I was very frustrated at first. After years of ultra reliable band connection I could not stand to wait even for a few extra seconds for my dear data, but now...I actually enjoy these pauses, it’s like breathing again.
The problem is when they fucked up your deadlines though. Deadlines still don’t obey network disruptions.. I need to send this text by 07.00AM and I’m going to do that the other way!
On my balcony (a small accessible fragment on the outside world) I have installed a large aviary where I keep my friends and companions: a small colony of genetically modified doves, commonly known as G-N1. Each one is trained to fly between my home and different locations across the city. Bob, the biggest and strongest, flies regularly to the home-office of my manager. She also has an aviary, but a much bigger one.
I take Bob, give him some corn, place the micro-pen drive on his hook-shaped neck and launch him in the pristine blue sky.
Urban skyline in the clouds. Photo by Bon Bahar/Unsplash.
05.25AM
Bob spreads his wings wide open. It takes him a few milliseconds to activate his navigation device – assessment of air pressure, flight stabilizer, identification of the best route – and he is up above the clouds. The city is below him. Andrea, his human-owner (although these days the concept of “mutualistic osmosis” is preferable to that of “ownership” when it comes to human-bird relationships) lives in a high-end apartment in one of the most recently constructed parts of the city, built around the year 2019. Flying above these rows of houses, Bob notices the perfectly-kept terraces. The end of the 2020s were the times when having an instagrammable aesthetics was everything, and youtubers and influencers – the most popular professional categories at that time, and the largest demographics in these townhouses – would go out of their way to have the neatest, most immaculate, IG-friendly balconies.
An eagle grabs a drone. Photograph by Koen Van Weel/Getty Images.
06.50AM
Bob has flown over the city for almost one and a half hours now, and he still hasn’t arrived at his destination. He takes a nervous glimpse at the nano-monitor installed in his aviary pupils and quickly realizes that he is in trouble. His ETA is 7.14AM, way past his delivery deadline. There is just one thing he can do: veer abruptly to the right, re-route, and pass through Noolwok, the ungoverned part of the city run by hackers. For a bird, crossing Noolwok can be incredibly dangerous: the place is known for the gory fights between eagles trained by the police and unauthorized drones, and Bob fears he will be mistaken for one of those birds at the service of the law. This for him would mean certain death, but there are no alternatives: he should take the risk.
Bob is now tensing his muscles and bending his wings to make his body more aerodynamics. He needs to be fast. He has been flying inside the anarchic territory of Noolwok for a few minutes now, and there seems to be no danger at the horizon. From his bird's eye gaze, the streets, the buildings, the trees below him slide through as a confused blend of colors and shapes. Squatting down behind some reflective space blankets to hide from the drones, some hookers wander around dodgy streets: in a post-pandemic time, when human-to-human physical encounters have been deemed illegal, prostituion has become for many the last resort to have physical contact.
The end of Noolwok is in sight. And the house-office where the text needs to be delivered is right around the corner. This time again, Bob was lucky.
Illustration of a pigeon house. Max Ernst, “A bébé éventré, pigeonnier ouvert” originally published in “La femme 100 têtes”, 1929. © Max Ernst/SIAE 2020.
07.14AM
Ah! Bob must be here. I could recognize his tweeting among a thousand G-N1 doves. He’s probably very tired. Let me give him some extra corn and a sip of the energy drink. He likes them so much. “Here you go Bob, you deserved it. Go back to be a regular bird till you can. Your friends are expecting you and that Electro-Funk music duo you guys like so much, is on and loud in the aviary”.
Finally Andrea’s text. This guy...always last minute...but always so good! No one writes like him about this new generation of AI-Novel writers. They call them N41, and after their first book they really became a thing. How long will it take to replace Andrea with an AI-crit ? We run a literary magazine, but the progress in AI trained on humanist studies is so impressive that the end of our services seems to be very close...In fact, I keep on wondering why we stress so much about deadlines and work. It must be an unconditional reflection, a mental burden from the past. Since the Planetary Assembly that followed the great climate collapse, production and distribution have been drastically reduced, and work fully automated: agricultural farms, industrial plants, distribution centers, hospitals, the aviation industry, even some media outlets are run without humans. We are just occasional visitors of a fully unmanned artificial landscape and are able to make a comfortable living on our generous universal income (arguably the most important social conquest of the 21st century). And when that is really not enough, since the nationalization of the data industry, I can even get some extra cash selling some of my private data to the government. They use it for big scale computation and stuff like that.
Farmer Robot. “Sweeper Robot”, Courtesy sweeper-robot.eu.
It’s crazy, ten years ago, no one would have ever thought that a set of radical policies succeeded, that private big-tech would have been overthrown by a bunch of enlightened young politicians, demanding the obvious: to put us back in control. I’m not sure whether we got a better deal with the government dealing with our data, but at least we can decide what they get and what they don’t.
Classical statue holding a “WE BUY DATA” sign. Photography and Courtesy Zack Dougherty.
Two dogs look at the horizon from the top of a hill. Photo and Courtesy Lèo Berne.
07.30AM
Olympia’s home is only five hundred meters away from NOSTALGIA, her favorite coffee place. These days it’s hot, very hot and the risk of a new pandemia is always around the corner.
The short walk can’t be taken too easily. Olympia literally leaves her home only to buy the kind of food or medicines that cannot be delivered to her home by E-C2 messenger-dogs, a mixed breed hormones-powered kind of dog that is strong and fast enough to run swiftly across the city, following a sonic-based navigation device.
Car wrapped in foliage. Photograpgh by Vincent Desailly – originally published in “The Trap”, Hatje Cantz, 2020. Courtesy Vincent Desailly.
In a few years this town has changed face. The quasi-permanent lockdown, the disappearance of carbon fossil fuels and electric mobility, and the massive use of other means of transport - whether organic or robotic - has brought nature back: ungroomed woods and wild flower fields alternate with large extensions of pollutants-sucking vegetation. These are part of a long term government project meant to restore decent living conditions after the ultimate climate collapse, when people finally realized that toxic levels had become comparable to primordial Earth (or pre-life Earth…!). Olympia will certainly not experience the results of this program in her lifetime, but maybe in a few generations her grand-grand-grand-grand children might enjoy the taste of clean air.
What used to be a vibrant global city of the 21st century, is now a silent forest punctuated by finger towers for the rich and hyper dense condos for the rest of us. No space for the human middle class in this era, but lots of space for other species.
Specimen of Paris Japonica Kinugasasou, Hakusan, 2003. Photograph by alpsdake/Wikimedia.
Before leaving her house Olympia takes a look at a little plant in a small artificially lit indoor vegetation pod. It’s a Paris Japonica, a sub-alpine japanese species known for being the plant with the biggest genome ever discovered. Olympia regularly encodes her old data in the DNA of this gracious plant. DNA storage of data older than two years has become mandatory practice to prevent regular Data Warming crises and to reduce the data load on the existing infrastructure. It is by far the most efficient and densest known data storage medium in the universe, and it has progressively generated a new culture of cute Data Gardens sprouting across town in public rooftops or private terraces. While holding the plant, Olympia thinks for one second about the thousands of pictures she used to share on now-defunct social media platforms such as Instagram or Facebook, and that are now all in those green leaves and white flowers. She can’t help thinking: “What a crazy waste of time”.
She finally approaches her changing chamber and dresses up for her walk outside.
Multilayer clothing. Revisiting the traditional Korean dress in a genderless way. Design by Jasmine Jeemin Sohn, part of the "VS The Brink - Captain the Unknown" course at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Teacher Lucy McRae.
08.00AM
Olympia is out. The gong at the top of the all-secular-religions temple rings eight times. Its echo reaches Olympia’s ears, covered by a fluffy pair of anti-pathogenic earmuffs. It took her nearly half an hour to get ready. These days, venturing into the outside world requires a long and complex dressing ritual. One needs to wear multiple layers of protective garments: ankles and wrists covered, gloves until the forearm, anti-pollution goggles glasses, and a mask, of course. Olympia loves fashion, and she takes these occasional strolls as opportunities to flaunt the most precious pieces of her wardrobe. Today she is sporting a fashionable pair of stilettos with soles filled with fungal mycelium spores. As Olympia walks, her feet’s sweat is filtered and combined with the mycelium spores, thereby feeding the fungal culture for the generation of grown materials. Her own body is utilised as a material source for producing a soft, warm pad, which would come in handy in case of snowstorm – these days, extreme weather phenomena are a daily occurrence.
The door closes behind Olympia. She takes a furtive glimpse at the clouds above her. It’s funny how, despite the high-tech paraphernalia she carries around, she still looks up at the sky to assess the weather conditions. If her 6-year-old cyber granddaughter would see her now, she would burst out laughing. Old habits die hard…
Thermal screening of a woman's face. University of Nottingham, 2018. Courtesy University of Nottingham.
08.05AM
Olympia is facing the acid green, solar-powered lighting of the shop sign. It reads: NOSTALGIA. The AI system guarding the entrance of the shop recognizes a human presence, and a female voice asks her to take position in front of the photocell. The tone is amicable, but firm. A few years back, right when the first pandemic was over, Olympias agreed to have her data used for “the common good”, so she is now bound to the inspection. She meekly prepares herself for the biometric examination: she stands still, legs slightly apart and arms raised above her head. A tiny laser beam comes out from what once used to be the doorbell of the shop, and positions itself on her forehead. The security procedure continues: her face gets quickly scanned and her body temperature checked. In a few seconds, Olympia’s facial features are analysed and cross-checked against the millions of profiles stored in the town’s data archive. The AI-usher is now scanning through her file: her medical history, the last purchase she made on Amazon (a skipping rope to exercise at home, and a cake pan), the number of times she has participated in a city council meeting on Zoom…. Olympia closes her eyes and tries to focus on the breathing. She is very tense. Some days ago, she sneezed a couple times in the middle of the night, and she is afraid the AI might suspect she is sick and turn her down.
Luckily, shortly afterwards the velvety sound of the doors sliding announces that Olympia has passed the scanning. The female voice speaks again: “Welcome back Olympia! The NOSTALGIA team wishes you a pleasant time with us”. Olympia breathes a sigh of relief, and walks through the door.
08.10AM
The interior of NOSTALGIA is crammed with junks from the previous decade. Olympia’s eyes scan the shelves: an architectural publication celebrating the best social-distancing devices of the year 2024; a pile of porn magazines focusing on sexual robots (surely an object for fetishists or collectors, since printing on paper is now illegal).... Finally, her gaze lands on a bomber fake-leather jacket and her heartbeat starts going faster. In front of her, there is a rare model of the iconic NO-BIRDY, with sleeves modeled after raven wings. Those jackets were popular right after the end of the pandemic, when humans were taking their first, shaky steps into “the new normality”, and had to protect themselves against the attacks of canaries and sparrows – during the lockdown, birds inhabiting cities had grown unused to the human presence.
Olympia is daydreaming – she has always wanted to own one of those jackets...– but her fantasy is quickly interrupted by the voice of the AI-shop assistant: “How can I help you, human?”.
Olympia comes back to reality, her cheeks slightly rosy: “I would like an espresso, please” – asks Olympia. “No milk and just one spoon of sugar”. Despite all the stimulating products available on the market, espresso remains Olympia’s favourite.
The AI shop attendant nods silently, and leads her to a VR station. Olympia follows him, takes a seat, and patiently waits to receive a VR-set. There is just another human in the shop: a young mother with her baby, probably in search of some cheap knick-knack.
The toddler is awkwardly silent, and Olympia gets a littles creeped out by looking at her. Her tiny head is crowned by some weird skin flaps, which were implanted over the tiny scalp right after she got out her mother’s uterus. This practice goes by the name of “thermal epidermiplasty”: it’s a mandatory surgical operation aimed at increasing newborns’ resistance to global warming. Scientists have proven that children with extended skin on the head are able to withstand working in high temperatures due to the higher number of veins near the surface of the skin. The second outstanding feature that draws her attention is the size of the baby’ stroller: it’s gigantic – these kids will spend most of their lives in bed anyways, and it’s better they get used to it soon. The size of the toddler’s body is completely disproportionate to that of her baby-bed. Her minute arms and legs are almost invisible in the cloud of pillows, blankets, and organza. In fact, her growth has been artificially blocked – in an era of resource scarcity, being tall is a luxury, and shorter bodies are preferable as they consume less.
“This kid will never reach 1.50m” – thinks Olympia, with apprehension, examining the tips of her boots. “Soon there will be no humans as tall as me. The only creatures I’ll be able to look in the eyes are the ultra-tall stray cats and über-big boars that romp about in the streets these days.” As humans are getting shorter, animals are getting bigger, since they need large masses to survive the pollutants saturating the air in the outside world.
The robotic barista is approaching, and the sound of the espresso cup tinkling against the tray brings her back to life. Her espresso is coming. She can smell its aroma.
The tiny, white cup is placed in front of her. Olympia wears the VR headset. She can anticipate the adventure…
Virtual reality populated by human avatars. Screenshot from VTime. Courtesy VTime.
In a second, she is catapulted in the year 2020, several years back. She is in a café, crowded with people. Ahhh, the beautiful noise of people chatting!
The aroma of the espresso tickles her nostrils. She lifts the cup and takes a small sip, letting the dark liquid spread on her tongue. She smiles.
Olympia doesn’t know it, because her eyes are covered by the VR helmet, but the AI-barista of NOSTALGIA is looking at her, sighing. Artificial intelligence still doesn’t know what espresso tastes like.
Text by:
Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli
Erica Petrillo
Image research:
Massimo Tenan
2050+ is a Milan-based interdisciplinary agency working at the intersection of technology, environment and politics.