Randall took his personal electronic assistant, usually referred to as an Annie (from the initials ANI or Artificial Narrow Intelligence), from his pocket and self-tested. The results would be available momentarily, but Randall always chose to wait. He would have breakfast first.
The restaurant was flooded with sunlight. Above the low-level fog, the distant mountains of the adjacent island chain could be seen. The only sound was the air service and the hum of the space elevator. The high-rise Randall lived in encircled the elevator up to a few hundred feet making a kind of artificial atoll ten kilometers from the nearest shore. Where the building ended the tether of the elevator freed itself and continued to geosynchronous orbit. The complex itself was connected to shore by an underwater tunnel where electric transport could quickly move goods or people from or to the high-rise.
Randall was middle-aged in a society where life expectancy was pushing a hundred and twenty years, but he was still trim with only a hint of gray at his temples. He was well known and admired in the field of Space Law but otherwise not of impressive carriage. He had never married and always took his meals in restaurants.
Randall remembered moving to the offshore high-rise about five years earlier to get away from the managed tower complexes. The tower complexes were where most people lived unless they had money or connections. The complexes were densely populated, highly policed areas where towers that soared to heights of a mile or more might house as many as a hundred thousand persons. The tower complexes had concentrated the population of the world into smaller and smaller areas leaving much of the Earth a restored wilderness. Most thought this was an environmental good even though they would never actually be able to visit the restored areas.
He also remembered that the government, to manage the tower complexes, had enlisted the aid of Ems for the past fifty years. Ems were emulated human brains running in fast computer hardware. The Ems could run as fast as necessary to suit the job at hand. For instance, Ems could monitor the millions of audio, video, motion, infrared and other monitors in a tower complex in real-time. All movement, business and interactions of a tower's residents were known to the Em managers. As a consequence, crime, at least violent crime, was almost non-existent in the tower complexes. Though not as oppressive to live under as some claimed, it still took away most of the freedoms of life that people in earlier centuries had taken for granted. Randall knew history well and did not take his freedoms for granted, so he moved.
The server robot interrupted Randall's thoughts when it brought his food. Even though he knew them to be synthesized and vat-grown, the taste of the eggs and ham were excellent. The seasoning perfect to his taste, as it should be since his Annie had uploaded his taste profile to the kitchen AI.
He took his coffee outside in the sun, though “outside” was an enclosed area resembling a balcony. The screening adjusted to allow only a light breeze through even on a windy day. It also modified the equatorial light to a diffuse softness that lulled Randall.
Taking his Annie from his pocket again he unfolded the screen and asked for the test results. All were normal except one which was flagged with a consultation alert. Randall knew it wasn't a good sign; no one consulted a human doctor anymore unless the problem was quite serious. Before he could schedule an appointment Abram Jackson hailed him from the balcony doorway.
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