Pretty often, Jasmine’s answer has been, “I sure can’t see anything.”
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Sometimes when I look out on a world for the first time, I just have to ask, “So, is there anything interesting to do in this mudhole?”
The Second Great Depression set the Western World against much of the Asian World. The release of Rogue AIs into Earth’s communications networks pitted the Russian World against everybody else. And the fall of Japan and the other Pro-Western Asian nations to an outraged China built the world we live in now. A new Cold War descended on the world and we never left it behind as we went into space. Trade and communications became rare as each of the Great Powers built their own markets in space and then throughout the stars. We were three different sets of worlds that rarely interacted. And when we did, those interactions were rarely happy.
I’ve been to a lot of planets in my time. I’ve been to industrial Core Worlds and tiny settlements on the edge of civilized space. I’ve docked in orbital starports with every luxury known to man and landed on dirt-filled clearings with a hose going to the nearest lake so we can stock up on water. I’ve been to more types of worlds than I could imagine before I started traveling. I love some of them. I like a lot of them. I’m not so fond of others. And I’ve been to a few mudholes I never want to see again.
Artificial Intelligences changed the worlds by helping humanity explore the universe. But most people don’t really notice that. What they do recognize is the AI that is part of their personal computer and talks to them all day. They see the butler or maid that cleans their house. The workers who build cars on the production lines. The miners who go underground in search of precious metals or coal. AIs have changed the worlds by taking the dangerous, dirty, or boring jobs that most people don’t want to do. That’s the Western Worlds of course. Those colonized by Europe and America. The Russian and Chinese Worlds are rather different.
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