We were in a small room. A strip window ran the length of one wall, near the ceiling, allowing hazy light to fill the space. Wherever we were, it was daytime, and there was a warmth to the light that suggested summer. The walls were bare, devoid of power sockets or switches, just plain white panels made of a translucent plastic. Behind me was a thick door with an air seal.
Ben picked up Beth’s body. She seemed so insubstantial, it was as though he was hardly carrying anything.
“There’s a keypad on the left,” he said. “Just touch it and press the open button. It shouldn’t be locked.”
I did what he asked. There was a three-inch square cut into the wall beside the door, and when I touched it, a display appeared, showing a red lock button above a green open. I pressed the latter, and the air seal deflated and the door slid back.
I walked into a corridor constructed with the same material as the walls of the previous room. I looked in both directions. Circular hatches capped either end. There were a dozen or so air seal doors flanking the corridor.
“What is this place?” I asked Ben as he emerged from the room carrying Beth.
“An isolation unit for infectious diseases.”
He turned right and I followed him. When we reached the hatch at the other end of the corridor, a sensor registered our presence and the aperture opened like an old camera shutter. Ben ran on, but I managed to take only a couple of steps beyond the aperture before I came to a halt.
We were on a glass bridge that connected two skyscrapers. The building we’d just exited was a sleek glass-and-steel structure. The one we were heading towards was a contoured building made of translucent white plastic.
Both structures towered over the ground, rising perhaps as high as two hundred stories. We were about two-thirds of the way up. Beyond the bridge was a city unlike any I’d ever seen. More buildings rose into the sky in elegant contours to form a harmonious skyline that contrasted with the jagged teeth of most cities I was used to. Holographic billboards flashed and flickered, advertising products I didn’t even understand. The sky was full of aircraft, personal drones that carried people from landing pads that protruded from the buildings. Vapor trails etched the clouds, but they didn’t traverse the atmosphere. They were heading straight up. I looked across the city and saw the source of the trails: a spaceport. The physicist in me was overwhelmed as I realized humankind had achieved an ambition that was as old as our species. We had touched the stars.
Everything seemed to shine beneath a golden sun.
“Ben,” I finally managed. “Is this…” I trailed off.
“Yes,” he replied. “Come on.”
I marveled at what I saw.
The future was dazzling.