“Seattle, WA” by jodastephen is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The year is 3030, and a nine-teen year old boy named Freddie Lyre lives in a behind-the-times town called Lameville. Freddie is a computer programmer and the town that he lives in does not have the money or patience to keep up with the new technological discoveries. Freddie’s big dream is to move to the big city and hopefully get a job with the company that customizes and installs the new Hologram Assistants into houses and buildings; however, Freddie and his family do not have the finances to pay for him to move to the city and start a new life. One day, Freddie is working on his computer in his room when his parents come into his room. He asks them what they need, and they show him a bus ticket and some money. He asks what they were for and they told him that they had been saving up some money to pay for him to move to the big city. Freddie is astonished. He thanked them and then immediately started packing up his things out of excitement. The day Freddie was leaving for the big city he had to say goodbye to his family and friends. Freddie boarded his bus and headed to the big city of Futropolis. On his way, he’s thinking about how his life will be from now on and thinking about how great it will be. Here he goes to start his new life.
Freddie moves into his new apartment and feels right at home with all of the city sounds. After he had finished packing, he got up to go explore the city and look for any jobs that could be available. As he is walking around, he sees a cute coffee shop and decides to try it out. He goes in and sits down, and a hologram, that looks like a robot man, pops up next to him. Freddie is startled but is then fascinated. He has never seen a real hologram up close.
The hologram began to talk and said “Hello, I am your hologram table assistant today! How can I help you?”
Freddie had looked over the menu and told the hologram that he wanted a soy vanilla latte and a sugar honey bagel. The hologram confirmed the order and then disappeared. A couple minutes later a robot that looked like a table on wheels arrived at his table with his order. Then the hologram assistant appeared again and asked if there was anything else he could do for Freddie.
Freddie asked, “What kinds of things can you do for me?”
The hologram answered with “I can do just about anything. I can look things up on the internet for you, I can order things online, I can call people for you, and I can give modified advice for humans.”
Freddie thought for a minute and then he asked the hologram if he could look up businesses in the city that are hiring. The hologram came up with a long list of jobs and their applications, and one of them was for a paid internship at Holo Incorporated. Holo incorporated is a business that installs and builds holograms for houses and buildings, and Freddie has been hoping that he could work there because he has been fascinated with the new technology. Freddie asked the hologram to pull up the address for Holo Inc. so he could go visit it. As soon as he had written down the address and finished his food, Freddie thanked the hologram, paid, and went on his way.
Walking into the big glass doors of Holo Inc. was like a dream come true for Freddie. He walked straight up to the front desk and asked if he could talk to anyone about applying for the internship position. The lady at the desk told him that it was his lucky day and that the CEO of the company has come in to help evaluate interviewees. She told him to sit in the seating area and wait for his turn, so he did. A couple minutes later an employee comes out to take Freddie to the interview room. In the room was a tall man with slicked back brown hair, dark brown, bushy eyebrows, and a dark handlebar mustache. He stood up and introduced himself to be Dr. Shrew, the CEO of Holo Incorporated. As he shook Freddie’s hand, all Freddie could do was stand in awe. He has read about Dr. Shrew’s research since his first publications about holography and the study of holograms in light. Dr. Shrew was Freddie’s role model. The interview took approximately thirty minutes and another ten minutes for Freddie to have a chance at a casual conversation with Dr. Shrew. Dr. Shrew had said that Freddie had a really good chance at getting the internship and that he should get a response in about five business days. Freddie went home after a long day to settle down and get well rested for the week to come.
Five days have passed, and Freddie is waiting to hear if he had gotten the internship job at Holo Inc. Every day this week he has gone to the same coffee shop and has had the same hologram assistant who he has grown fond of. Also, during these past five days, Freddie has visited many buildings in order to do more research on how the holograms act and how different they are built for different purposes. For example, the hologram assistants at the hotels focus more on arranging rooms and letting tourists and visitors know where things are in the city. And the holograms at the movie theaters were mainly concerned about making sure everyone in the movie has enough popcorn and beverages, this is helpful because then the individual people do not have to get up during their movie to go get refills on their things. While Freddie is pondering at his table in the coffee shop, an aggressive vibration came from his phone in his pocket. He pulled out his cellular device and saw that it was an email from Holo Incorporated and he frantically opened it.
The email read, “Dear Mr. Lyre, we would like to inform you that you are our first pick for the internship position if you so choose. The deadline for the acceptance of this position is tomorrow at three in the afternoon. Thank you.”
Freddie was so excited that he went home to call his parents and tell them the good news. After he told his parents he went and accepted the position and he started work the next day.
A month had passed of Freddie working alongside Dr. Shrew and they had grown close. Dr. Shrew had been a great mentor to Freddie and Freddie had learned a lot over the month. One day at the coffee shop while Freddie was enjoying his meal, his hologram assistant was asking him how everything was, and Freddie replied and said it was great. Freddie had thought for a minute and realized that he and the hologram had become close, so he asked the hologram if it had a name and it said no. Freddie thought of the name “Greg” and asked the hologram if he liked it, and he said yes. In the past month Freddie has invented a new software for Holo Incorporated. He has made it possible for holograms from anywhere to be summoned to other places. For example, the hologram from the coffee shop can be summoned to Freddie’s apartment whenever he needed him. Freddie and Greg bonded a lot over the next few weeks since Greg was given his name, and they have had fun when one day Greg had told Freddie something unexpected.
One day Freddie and Greg were working on a project in Freddie’s apartment and Greg stopped him suddenly. Greg then proceeded to tell Freddie that he and some of the other holograms have developed artificial intelligence and are able to act and think for themselves. Freddie was baffled by this information, but also very interested. Greg said that Dr. Shrew had found out about the artificial intelligence and going to use it to his advantage in a bad way. Freddie did not believe what Greg had told him and just shrugged it off; however, Greg was still trying to tell Freddie that Dr. Shrew was planning to take over the world by giving artificial intelligence to all holograms and letting them take over technology. Freddie still did not believe Greg and went to bed. The next day during work Freddie was very distracted with the news that Greg had told him and he decided to check it out himself. When Dr. Shrew went on his lunch break, Freddie went into his office. Freddie got onto the doctor’s computer and started looking at his folders. After a little bit of searching, Freddie found something suspicious, so he decided to look further into it. There was a document that had blueprints for artificial intelligence being inserted into holograms. There were also different codes that he was going to program into the holograms to make sure that they follow his plan. Freddie was surprised and did not know what to do. All of a sudden, he heard the door start to open so he hid in the closet. While he was in there, he heard the doctor talking to one of his hologram assistants that the plan to take over the world will commence in three days at three in the afternoon. Once Dr. Shrew had left the room, Freddie thought that it would be safe to come out of the closet but as he stepped out, he noticed that the hologram assistant was still in there and he saw Freddie. Freddie ran out of the room before the hologram could say anything and he ran straight to his apartment to talk to Greg. He told Greg that the plans for world domination were true and that they had to find a way to stop the doctor. Greg told Freddie that there was a secret lab underneath the Holo Inc. building, and it was where holograms went to get reprogrammed and fixed. Greg pulled up the blueprints for the Holo building and they were making a plan on how they were going to infiltrate and stop Dr. Shrew’s evil plan. Freddie invented a doomsday device that when plugged into the mainframe of the secret lab would destroy the holograms. In Greg and Freddie’s eyes it was a great plan, but they did not know if it would work completely. Over the next three days their plan was perfected and thought out thoroughly. They had found different ways to get into the secret lab and have thought out scenarios for each of them.
On the day of the evil doctor’s plan, the security in the Holo Inc. building had increased and there were guards everywhere. Freddie and Greg had to sneak pass them to get into the secret lab, so Freddie dressed up as a janitor and easily pushed right past them. When he got to the door that led to the basement, he called Greg to come and open the locked door. Once they opened the door, they had realized that Greg could not physically go down to the secret lab because of the lighting that was down there. Obviously, this was a dent in their plan, but they decided that Freddie was going to go alone, and they were going to communicate over comms until the plan was completed. It was two fifty-six when Freddie finally got down to the main computer in the lab. When Freddie inserted the kill switch, he noticed that there was only an option to shut down all holograms. It took him a second to realize that this would shut Greg down too and that there was no other way around it. Over their comms, he told Greg what he had figured out and that he didn’t want to do it because he would lose his best friend. Still in shock, Greg had calmly explained to Freddie that he had to do it to save the world even if it meant that they could no longer be together as friends. There was forty-eight seconds left until the domination of the world started and Freddie had a huge decision to make, although it may seem like an easy one, it was very emotional. Finally, with three seconds left on the timer he said goodbye to Greg and said that he would never forget him, and he flipped the switch. After he did it, it seemed like nothing had happened. He tried to contact Greg but there was no response. Freddie ran upstairs and looked around, Greg was nowhere to be seen, but neither were the other holograms. He went to the coffee shop and everyone was baffled and asking where the holograms had gone, and at that moment he knew that his plan had worked, and that he would never see Greg again.
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