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Teleportation might seem like science fiction, but in the middle of the last century, the smartphone was pure science fiction, too. Not to mention the internet, as no futurists could picture its importance in today’s world.
    Last week the Agency announced that it was going to double the pay for those who study
    quantum physics. Alright, okay, you may think that you guys gotta create and then we’ll buy you out because in quantum physics we have serious gaps, a deficit of ideas!
    Orange Energy sucked out of people would never be able to do what its original owners
    could – it wasn’t capable of asking a new question, creating a dream, inventing a new fantasy.
    Only human beings could do that. “Nonetheless,” objected the experts from the UN, “there’s no guarantee that a man who holds on his creativity would make rational use of it by himself. We still have to reap the full benefits of the revolutionary leap forward that the world has made, readjust. Let’s harvest the scores of new inventions that Collective Mind will produce, and deal with the problems later. We’re studying them, but their number is miniscule in comparison with the thousands of supremely important successful new developments that we have.” The success of Collective Mind was well protected by the armor plating of a host of useful technologies.
    “Supremely important,” Isaac spat out angrily. His hand reached out for a cigarette. “But I don’t smoke!” In stressful moments, Isaac’s old reflex of fumbling on the table with his hand for a pack of cigarettes sometimes came back.
    He tried to pull himself together. “The computer could still work out, there’s still time.
    You can earn the money you need to pay for your sister’s surgery from the V-Rain. Then there’ll be enough for a decent human life too. Use the chance you’ve got! The doctors still don’t have a full picture! Just get on with the work like a grown-up while there is still time! And don't forget: long comas may cause permanent damage.”
    His rage and the pain inside his head made it hard to focus on his work.
    What the heck was going on here? Isaac slammed his hand down on the mouse in
    annoyance. The plastic cracked, but thank God the mouse still worked.
    “One thing the terrorist was right about was that the people who run the Agency and sit on all these inventions have too much power.”
    “In all of the futuristic films, there always has to be an omnipotent corporation or empire.
    Essentially that is the model of the future world. Of course, no one ever thought the dragon would emerge from the UN. The more Veggies there are, the more docile the world is. The total elimination of crime has weeded out a whole mass of freedom-loving individuals who were beyond their control. Tomorrow they’ll call anyone opposed to Collective Mind a criminal.”
    All that was left from the rebel Elvis was the small prickly piece of board and a half sane promise to burn it.
    As he tried to focus his mind on his work, Isaac played with the piece, intending to throw it out as he had promised himself to do. After his reflections about Collective Mind, Isaac felt a certain respect for Elvis’s audacity. He had to conserve his own energy and not waste his breath on idle talk and promises, especially if it wasn’t all that difficult to make them into reality. Isaac looked at the piece of board again – it had a couple of microchips and a mini-memory card on it.
    A mini-card, but with a big memory, and it wasn’t a fragment at all, it was complete and undamaged. Happy to do anything but work, Isaac decided to take a look at what was on it.
    He plugged it into his own computer and saw a mass of folders with files and tables. He opened the first one and froze, dumbfounded. His intuition or maybe it was that special energy of his hadn’t let him down. He was looking at a table of people who had been tested, but had not yet downloaded their creativity. First names, surnames, IQs,