Convergent Realms

III

Ellie hated her sleeping quarters. It was filthy (she didn't know how the ship was brand new), it reeked of old clothes, and it was smaller than a closet. But it would be her new home for... Well, they didn't say how long she'd be out here, now did they? That's quite an important detail to not clue people in on when you're forcefully drafting them. "Forceful drafting" was a pretty useless expression, wasn't it? It's not like companies were giving you choices in other aspects of your life, now were they?

Ellie sat down on the (her, she supposed) dinky little bed and sighed. She missed everyone. Even mom and dad, because while they could be a pain a lot of the time, they were better than no parents. She would be back, right? Has anyone ever died in a Purge? That was a dumb question. Of course, people have died in Purges. Just not the ones on our side. That's the whole reason they're called Purges.

The ship began its departure, she could tell, as a low rumbling became of the soft ambiance that she had so thoroughly enjoyed (not). She didn't even know where she was headed! This was crazy! Thankfully she was being paid. Not much, but you can't really be paid much in any job, so this one's as good as any other. Except for the whole Purge part. She hated the idea of killing off an entire world, it just felt icky. All so that humans could inhabit it like we're worth it.

The announcement rattled through the ship that everyone would be given sleep aid for the remainder of the journey. She chuckled at that. She had too much to think about to just sleep through the rest of the flight. Sure, others would probably choose to skip the next few days and arrive on the battlefield fresh, but she wasn't that kind of person. She wanted to imagine what the world would be like, what kind of tech would be different. She'd been told it was far in the past, and she tried to recall what far in the past would be, but all she could come up with was a handful of questions.

Would they have air conditioning? That seems to be the thing that never changes throughout all these worlds, they all seem to master the ability to control temperature. We do it with a special light, but it's been said that some places just use motors to blow cold air on everyone! Wouldn't that be uncomfortable? Wouldn't it get too cold? It just seems like a dumb idea. Either way, it probably would, as there were only a couple of worlds seen that don't.

The second was what kind of entertainment would they have. Is all their stuff AI-generated when we ask for it? I'd hate to have to search for movies or books to see, it seems like so much work. A long, long, long, time ago, holograms used to have gigantic blocks of inefficient tubes of electricity called "cords". Imagine having to plug in each cord to each socket and keep them out of the way of each other, not even mention untangling them. It sounds like an actual nightmare. Wow, where did that saying come from? A nightmare. Sounds cool. I've heard it's like a dream, but bad. Some people choose to have nightmares, which I think is weird, but I heard, that back then, people weren't able to medically suppress them! They just had to go to sleep every night thinking they might have a nightmare. 

And the companies. What kind of laws would they establish? As of the year 1943 (our time) Pop! Co. is the leading brand of cola and has the most investors, so they control the lawmaking until someone surpasses them. They've actually been pretty good about it, although they've done some questionable stuff. But companies in the past have done much worse jobs. There's got to be a better way of assigning leadership. I wonder if it works differently in other places. What if lawmaking wasn't based on money? Actually, on second thought, I don't think that would be true in any universe. 

Maybe there's less poverty genocide. That'd probably be a good thing. It upsets me a little that someone thought of something like that, but someone also thought of a way to turn plastic into a viable food source, so it isn't all bad. Well, actually, now we've all got to eat plastic, which gets annoying. Maybe the bad outweighs the good. Maybe things will be better in the faraway world I'm dreaming of. Maybe it's far more technologically advanced. We've gone through that a lot. Humanity has its ups and downs, but no matter how many times we nuke each other, some of us get back up and repopulate. I suppose some things that we've had for hundreds or even thousands of years would be brand new to the world we're going to. 

It's funny to think that the main point of our history class is to teach us one thing: Humanity kills itself off over and over again, and sometimes not enough people survive to keep track of the year so the calendar has to start over from the beginning, but we will always get back up again. That and learning about old people. I suppose that what I call the year 1940 actually just means "One thousand, nine hundred, and forty years since incident" in logical terms, which is pretty funny to think about.

To think that someone like me exists in some faraway place is a dream I have all too often. To ponder what their world is like, or see what they do for work, what they're paid, really anything just to get a glimpse into a different world. Well, I've got my wish. One thing I still think about though, is why someone along the timeline created time travel. No one actually knows who it was, they ended their own life almost immediately after taking a peek into the future, then some idiot comes along, opens a gateway to the time machine, and the companies reverse-engineer it, so now we're stuck on a dinky little ship headed off to find a world and kill anything in it to clear it for habitation. There's an ancient saying that applies here that I think describes the human race and its triumphs for pointless things really well. 

Old habits die hard.