The Before Short Story Series. Part 1 - стр. 8
Ozzie lay on a leather couch by the window while Jordan sat down at his desk and turned the TV on, choosing a news channel—just to make the room less empty.
‘Did you get cold out there? Ozzie?’ The dog was trying to get her nose under the nearby plaid. Jordan walked up to her and covered her. Sitting down next to the dog, he started petting her muzzle. The black spot around her black eye was suggesting an uncommon coloration: on one side, the left side, she was completely white—and the other side she had it all covered with black spots, just as well as her right paws in black socks. ‘An interesting mutation,’ noted Jordan to the breeder upon seeing the energetic active puppy for the very first time.
‘Oh Ozzie, how quickly flies the time! we’ve been living in this house for eight years already. Soon our big project will be done, my girl. Who knows, what we shall be doing afterwards.’
Ozzie was happily snoring, her muzzle next to her master.
Tōkyō
‘Ayaka, we’re leaving in five minutes! are you ready? everything you need too?’ shouted Hiromi from her bedroom.
‘Yes, Mummy, I am ready.’
‘Ayaka, what’s that?! why are you still not wearing the dress I gave you? why are you in your tights? we have no time at all! the train will be at the station in twenty minutes. Please, get your tighties off quickly and put your dress on.’
‘Mummy, I did everything the way you told it last time: the air conditioning is on, so I am in tighties.’
‘Ayaka, did you get what I was saying—get your tights off and put your dress on! please hurry up! otherwise we will miss the train. We’ll already have to call a taxi to the station.
In ten minutes Hiromi and her daughter were standing on the Tsuru station platform, waiting for a high-speed train that would bring them to the capital city centre in twenty minutes. In Japan, the idea of building underground high-speed expressways was rejected due to the high risk of regular earthquakes, which although possible to compensate with use of some advanced engineering technology of our days, would be simply too costly to maintain. Japan Rail focused their efforts on creating a ground-level system of high-speed trains. Its main working principle is similar to that of the underground expressways: levitation, based on superconductor magnets. As there is no physical contact between the surface of conductive rails, which create a strong magnetic field, and the train, friction can be avoided altogether. Taking into account the unavoidable limitations of the ground level, such as train body air drag, the maximum speed values of Japanese trains could not reach the levels set by the newest transport infrastructure in other parts of the world. Nevertheless though, the artificial intelligence based on the quantum computing power of the PAX system allowed the engineers to increase the reliability and efficiency of the Japanese rail transport system.