Compilation Of Short Stories

4. Holographic.

Dr. Sweiner had built his career on developing new technologies in the hope that he could inspire humankind to reach new heights. He laboured long hours, studying the various sciences: physics, engineering, biochemical research, and tiresome mathematics. Though he was enamored with every form of learning, nothing quite had the same hold on him as the human psyche.

He found it interesting the way people were so instinctive to respond under changing circumstances. He was curious about many things regarding the psychology of people. Why would a baby fall so many times in order to learn to walk, yet when it is grown, and troublesome times occur; a person is so often quick to lose their resolve, even if whatever they were doing was very important to them? Why did men beat their wives, when in truth the woman has done nothing wrong, and the man in this event proves an abomination to himself and the species? Why did people seek an interconnectedness with one another despite their vast differences? Why do people take life, but fear losing their own?

He would spend late hours investigating such questions and much more. Sleeping only a couple of hours at a time, he would indulge his curiosity regarding all sciences, but always returning to questions about people and their behaviors.

It was true that people were, in part, products of their environment. It was also widely believed that humans retained instincts from their early evolutionary origins. Which struck him as curious in a species noted that: if you don't use it you lose it. All the same, greed, and war, and selfishness, had all helped in rekindling such reverse evolutionary direction for the species at large. In this, it seemed to him, that every step forward was truly a step back, and that humankind had no real means of going one direction or the other; given that societies clung so tightly to such primitive practices.

One night, tinkering in the lab beneath his overly large home, and deep in contemplation; reflections on where mankind came from, and where they were going took precedence over his work. He slid in his chair away from a mess of mechanical components, wires, and tools. Weariness and retrospection of his studies made it difficult to concentrate on his work.

It was 3:00 am, May 8, 2057 when he had the idea. It was the idea of ideas. It was something so revolutionary, that mankind would be forever changed for the better. At least that was his hope.

From that night forward he seldom emerged from his lab. His maid could hear him working late into the night, sometimes not sleeping for days. After a few months had passed came the sound of power tools.

After another five months he took his food from the dinning room and disappeared, as was his way. This time, however, the sound of power tools were replaced by some kind of complex machinery. The lights fluttered on and off, the power to the entire block ceased, and an explosion erupted from the east side of his home.

Smoke billowed from the lab, and Dr. Sweiner quickly came hacking and wheezing. "Damn!" He yelled. "Damn it all!" His cursing continued all through the night.

The work was completed after only three years; an accomplishment in its own right, but it was the work itself that caused him to marvel. There in a large transparent man-sized cylinder, right before his eyes, was a young boy. The boy looked around the room From the confines of his tube.

"This is only a temporary place." Dr Sweiner told the boy. "I want to put you where people are. I know you can't speak yet, but you'll learn."

The boy's image was a projection sourced from a spherical machine at the top of the tube. Several sensors lined the top and bottom of the tube, each moving around observing every detail of the lab. They would scan the room, then return looking at Dr. Sweiner with curiosity.