The Reality of the Future

A Conversation with my Son in 2038

A future memory, anchored strongly in the present and its ties to the past.

My son is more integrated with modern digital technologies than I am, of course. And my son likes other things than I do. But what if we could find a reality, on some level or other, that we both enjoy to play in?

What if in his adulthood, being close to becoming a father himself, he trusted me to ask the questions that burdened him the heaviest, all through his shining and loving anticipation of what was to come?

And what if we had a conversation, then, about fatherhood, about freedom, and about reality?

On a calm early summer’s evening, and in nature; base nature, Virtual nature or augmented with AI technology, where every vision, every sound, every colorful light beckons the question: ‘Is this real, is this man-made, a figment of imagination?’

With daytime’s heat making way for evening’s cool, and the scents of spring blossoms for summer nights’ smell of dry grass. With fluorescent lights, patterns and hallucinations illuminating the calmly darkening evening sky. Maybe on a nighttime stroll like that, my son will have said something like this: