Future War in Space: “A Clear Blue Horizon”
Editor’s note: The following story was written by Mimori Oizumi Jones. This piece is a finalist from the Atlantic Council Art of Future Warfare project’s space-themed war-art challenge that explored space and interstellar conflict during the last decade of the 21st Century. Tune in to watch or attend the project’s May 18 event at the Council with David Brin discussing the stories and the future of conflict in space.
—- —- —-
The various conflicts which waged across early 21st-century Earth held her fascination, despite or because of the 50 years of technologically-mediated peace preceding her birth. The war they now fought was one against time and the consequences of their accumulated actions.
In other imaginative accountings, the trigger which focused their cooperative energies might be nuclear catastrophe: the world watches in horror as the cradle of civilization, parts of Russia, China, the US detonate into radioactive wastelands; the world huddles together in the catastrophic aftermath.
No.
Despite the best efforts of their conglomerations, the people of Earth manage to find their commonality, working together to forge the technological magic needed to save their world…
#
She releases the stylo; it floats obliquely away. As she uncurls from the near-fetal position in which she writes, the slab of memory cell tumbles away, surface glowing as it translates her script. A small robo-server deftly maneuvers to collect one then the next before attaching to the nearest surface.
