Chapter 1

The year was 2121 AD. If the ancient civilization know as the Romans were around, they would call it MMCCXXI, or mathematicians may say that this year had a prime factorization of 3 x 7 x 101. But it was more commonly referred to as 100001001001, which is, of course, the binary representation. Not the language of humans, but the language of computers, which in this day outnumbered all humans on Earth.

A PED sitting on the nightstand buzzed to life. The date showed Monday, June 18th. It was the 169th day of the year during the 25th week. The time was 6:13 AM, the exact moment of sunrise. The PED sent a signal to the curtains. The motorized window treatments slid slowly apart as the first rays of sunlight crept over the horizon. No direct light was able to make its way to the large window pane on the 51^st floor where Nic was slowly waking from a dreamless sleep. Skyscrapers in all directions blocked his view of the sun from any angle. Even without a clear line of sight, the sunrise bouncing around the reflect glass of thousands of skyscrapers was a majestic sight. At least it was to Nic, which is why he preferred to start each day this same way, and the PED knew that. Nic swung his legs from beneath the covers, and sat up in bed, wiping the sleep from his eyes. The sun’s brightness grew exponentially with each second, as the grogginess drained linearly from Nic’s body. June 18^th, 2121 was just one day before the atomic events at the mines. About 36 hours before Nic committed his fate to the green light.

Nic grabbed the PED off his bedside table. He squinted as the screen lit up brightly against his still adjusting eyes. The PED measured in at 13 cm wide by 20 cm long and .5 cm in depth. A star emblem on the bottom lit up with the screen to signify that this device was manufactured by the StarSky Company. Nic flipped through various news headlines, facts, trivia, games, and other sources of entertainment and information delivered from the corners of the Earth to his hands in an instant. PED stands for Portable Electronic Device. It’s not the most elegant or creative name, and it is hardly worthy to label the device that Nic was currently holding. The screen displayed a short article about the history of the PED.

In the infancy of the technology era, people created devices for every function. Cell phones, GPS, laptops, music players, handheld gaming, book reading, internet connectivity, photo cameras, video cameras, television, organizers, and the list went on. As technology matured, devices stopped having singular purposes, but would combine functionality like camera phones and laptops with television. Soon enough, most any device could accommodate all uses and blurred the lines of nomenclature. So there was no better way to describe a device that does everything, except just Portable Electronic Device. Technology is mature, and cheap, so it is every citizen’s right to have access to a PED at all times. If a citizen cannot afford a PED, an AMO backed loan is guaranteed, regardless of credit history or assets. This loan, however guaranteed, cannot be waived by bankruptcy or any other debt consolidation or waiving except death.

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