Earth 2088
An aircar flies over parkland. It continues into a tunnel in a hillside, then angles down, down, down, through many levels.
At the one hundred and twentieth level the aircar turns and zips out into one of the horizontal passages. After about four kilometers of intersecting passages the aircar slows and pauses before a three-by-three meter double door not noticeably different from the hundreds it has passed. The doors slide aside to admit the car.
The aircar settles to the floor as the doors slide shut behind it. It is now in an enormous cubic cavity a hundred meters on each side. The appearance is convincingly of having exited to the surface again. The walls and ceiling are gigantic holograms of treed hillsides and blue skies flecked with clouds.
The car door folds upward and a frowning young man steps out. He strides up the path that winds through fifty meters of Japanese-style garden: carefully tended trees, shrubs, and pond with goldfish and waterlilies shaded by a weeping willow. Small birds and dragonflies flit about the perfect scene.
The living space is designed to look like a luxurious house from previous centuries. The front door opens as he approaches and the young man steps into the high ceilinged foyer. He walks straight past the mossy, fern-shrouded waterfall. He walks through the large reception area with its five meter high ceiling over dark wood, leather, and glass furniture on the thick, tiger-striped carpet. He crosses the Minoan-style tiles around the ten by thirty meter indoor swimming pool to the living area, which is all dim and soft. One wall appears to look out onto twilit polar scene, another, the rippling deep green of an ocean kelp bed. In the middle of the room is a small, luminous figure acting out a melodrama projected by the free-standing, door-sized, curved 3D movie screen behind it, and mesmerised by it is a gorgeous, slightly plump young woman reclining on a lounge that seems all cushions. Her dress is metallic, golden, and twinkling with hundreds of tiny, colored lights.
The young man stops at the couch and says angrily, "I couldn't get anything from them. Nothing."
He starts pacing, ruffling his hair with his hand. "What little money we had -- all gone!" He stops and looks at her. She hasn't even taken her eyes off the movie. He yells at her, "We're broke Ellen -- flat broke!" but she makes a quieting movement with her hand and shh's him.
In a sudden fury he scoops up a decoration from nearby and hurls it at the movie which explodes, sending fragments and shimmering dust everywhere.
Ellen shrieks. "What did you do that for?! It'll take days for it to repair itself! She sags as she realises, "Oh no, tonight will be the night the Royal Marriage is telecast... and the next clue in the Kracklies contest. Maybe Sarah would lend me one of her screens. Jonny...?" But he has stormed from the room.
She sighs, gets up from the couch and starts fishing the larger pieces of the screen out of the deep-pile, shag carpet. While gathering most of them into a small heap to facilitate the screen's self-repair, she hears Jon walk back into the room. She ignores him.
He lays his hands gently on her shoulders, "I'm sorry sweetheart."
Her response begins as complaint, but she gradually loses control and ends by breaking into tears. "Do you think you're the only one who hates being poor? Do you think I like having only last year's fashion? I haven't had a new body for more than a year! Do you think I don't want to go to the Orbital Concerts or the Moondances? Do you think I don't feel ashamed that we live in this primitive shack in a turn-of-the-century slum and that we can't even afford a baby license?" Her body shudders with sobs.
He bends down and wraps his arms around her, "Oh pussycat, I'm sorry." Then, straining under her weight, he lifts Ellen to cradle her in his arms and carry her, Tarzan-style, across the living area toward the bedroom. Unfortunately the Tidy-bot has just become aware of the mess around the destroyed movie screen and is scurrying across the room when Jon steps on it. The Tidy-bot bleeps in protest, flies out from underfoot, clatters high against the wall, and falls into the tropical fish aquarium. Jon's balance lost, he staggers backward across the carpetted area, across the tiles, to fall, amid wails from him and screams from her, into the swimming pool.
Their butler robot recognises this as a situation where it could lend a hand, so it stiffly walks to the pool. "Nyuff sqwrk zzt spff." (Its speech circuits were in need of repair.) It reaches a hand out to Ellen, who is dog-paddling and spluttering. Jon gains the pool edge and pulls her to him. He lifts her while she takes the hand offered by the butler and hoists herself out of the pool. This overbalances the butler and it plunges head-first into the water, uttering the first real words in years: a croaky "Oh no."
A long cry comes from the pathetic, bedraggled Ellen. "It's ruined -- completely wrecked!"
Jon looks at the butler. It has sunk to the pool bottom. "It's not that bad. He can be repaired -- never worked right anyway."
"Not your stupid butler! My dress!" she yells, then turns and runs, crying to the bedroom.
He groans and hauls himself out of the water.
About to follow Ellen, he turns instead to the kitchen, plodding wearily and wetly.
He sits despondently at the table and asks the house computer for a pick-me-up drink. The request is apologetically refused -- unpaid bill -- so he places a call to his parents. After a couple of seconds the slightly transparent 3D image of his mother materialises before him. She has the frailty of the old, but extensive body renovation has maintained her appearance and given her a permanent, dreamy smile.
"Hello dear, how are... oh, you're all wet."
"Hi Mum. Yeah. Look Mum, I'm ringing because I'm desperate -- we need some money. Could you ask Dad for me?"
A little frown crosses her face. "I don't like your chances Jonny. Nickel asteroids are getting pretty rare these days -- we can barely afford maintenance on our mining robots. Times are hard on us all, dear. I'll see what your father has to say and I'll call you back. Do dry yourself dear or you'll catch a cold." The image fades and he is alone again.
Elbows on the table, he holds his head in his hands and moans quietly. "What am I going to do? I'd be better off dead. Wish I was born a hundred years ago. At least you could earn money in a job, instead of being forced to live a life of," he spat the hated word, "leisure!"
From here he can see most of their enormous apartment with its out-of-date furnishings and robots.
"Broke. Life is shit!"
Originally written November 1988