3. Transport

...one early Ford advertisement tried to persuade the public by an argument "by using our model T you can get to countryside fast and enjoy fresh air immediately !"...

quotation from one ecological magazine


From this year, there are no gasoline stations in Prague. The last one was bought by some merry prankster and transformed into "Museum of Idiocy". Veterans of old times land in the garden nearby there, hold a pump hose , have a good inhale of gasoline fragrance , discuss forgotten times with friends and buy a ticket when leaving. There are interesting debates going on among scholars about "why were automobiles such powerful tech-species that they caused such an disturbing change in environment which resulted in extinction of thousands of natura-species?". While many emphasize the role of addiction and "different state of consciousness" driver felt when (s)he was riding, others focus on strong territoriality within car's shell , general agreement is mostly achieved about thesis that "an automobile was a tech-specie maladaptation exploiting man's will to power".

Automobiles were a blind branch of an evolutionary tree, they simply haven't survived (wo)man's ascension towards sky, and (wo)man's mind was the host automobile concept parasited upon. But one day, when all the essential conditions were met, (wo)man decided to become an angel and started WIN.G project.

WIN.G in itself was not at all an act of genius. It was just a small little step Culture takes when it evolves. It was not revolution, but evolution. The basic idea was - (wo)man can fly - and this idea was more based upon an observation of airplanes than upon some vision of an angel. It was said "Yes, (wo)man can fly, if (s)he knows how to master the matter, energy and information".(S)he mastered the matter by nanotechnology and received gift of carbon nanotubes,(s)he mastered energy and received the gift of hydrogen,(s)he mastered silicium and received the gift of processed information.(S)he thought about them, mixed them in proper ratio, told about it to the others and obtained WIN.G.s

Main concepts of WIN.G & pre-scripts are available for download on the Net so anyone can download them. If (s)he has an access to The Feed (s)he can compile the pre-scripts in his matter compiler and have his own WIN.G copy almost immediately. There are some corporate based models - Škoda Dodá for example - with additional hard-to-copy-without-knowledge features. Any child is donated basic model of WIN.G at the age of six, but the possibility to turn off some autopilot functions is given to only those who pass special cognitive test in the age of 23years - this numeric constant is rooted in the Prague Ecological Protocol and we consider it seriously . WIN.G "hack" modifications with autopilot completely turned off exist and are publicly available, but the person which would be found flying without an autopilot turned off in the domain of Prague will immediately be deported on the opposite side of Membrane, will be unregistered from the citizen database and will never legally cross the city Membrane again.

With everyone having autopilot turned on, WIN.G is thousand times more safer than 2dimensional traffic of past century. Only 5 deaths and 49 injuries occured this year in our domain and all of them were caused by unpredictable behavior of those older than 23years who have some autopilot functions turned off.

According to analysis done by Automata traffic jams will certainly not occur for forecoming 900 years if our transportation system will become fully 3D.

Matter in the city is transformed either by The Feed in form of molecular moieties or by "metro package transportation system". MPTS project was started by automata after referendum 2 decades ago,it is located underground and consists of system of pipes and tubes with many input, output and routing points. Capsules travel through this system, every capsule is routed similiarly as a TCP/IP packet on the Net. Those who are afraid of heights can use this kind of transportation - almost anyone can comfortably fit into a capsule - even a lucky couple can - and reaches destination almost anywhere within the scope of Prague membrane in maximum 30 minutes. Those who are afraid of transportation and are claustrophobic as well can use old-school Metro. Last Metro station was opened in Kladno in 2038.

Prague is connected with an external world by a newly built intercontinental airport which is also prepared for flights to orbit. Port itself is not within the circumference of the Membrane and does not fully belong to Prague, but it is very close to the south-eastern Entrance from where anyone can fly on his own or use MTPS.

For intra-continental movement, especially for distances under 1200km the most rational form of transportation is to use former railway network. Hlavni Nadrazi was - after the disappearance of Magistral in post-automobile era - hugely extended both on the surface as underground and has direct connections to all European capital cities. Frictionless magnetic field train will take a traveller to Brno in 40 minutes, to Bratislava in 1 hour 15, to Berlin in 1 and half hour...