In the future, travel times will be cut down so short that you will not be sure whether you have arrived at your destination or are going back home.
A businessman is planning to put people in containers and send them hurtling through a vacuum tube that will connect cities.
I am not making this up. He calls this contraption Hyperloop, and I only hope there is a fail-safe method to bring the boxes containing the passengers at the end of the journey to a slow stop or people will be going around and round like the song that I sometimes put on a loop because I like it so much and which my wife says drives her crazy.
I have seen a documentary on this futuristic transport system and it reminds me of the very ancient method of sending news copy to the linotype. I had seen a Hollywood movie about newspapers and journos and in one scene a copy editor shoves copy into a canister and tosses it into a snaking pneumatic tube and off it goes to the printer somewhere below in the basement.
Dubai is testing out the Hyperloop and I hope that when people start using it, it does not stress out the residents too much. Most Dubaiians are used to a leisurely drive of a couple of hours to work and back home and the fast pace may not be good for their health.
“Darling, I am home,” you would say and the wife would not be too happy. “Wait, what,” she may exclaim. “You usually came home at 8 o’clock and it’s now only 4pm! Why does your face look a bit elongated?”
“Isn’t that super,” you will say. “Please make me a cup of tea. I will now watch TV the rest of the evening to calm my nerves. It was a stressful day at work today, just sitting on my chair. Oh, my face? We are not supposed to look out of the container windows as the speed is very high, but I thought let me experience the speed and had put my head out.”
Travel they say broadens the mind and it is not the arrival at your destination but the experiences on the way that count, say learned men.
With instant travel the first job that will disappear is that of the travel writer. “I have a great pitch for an article on 20 things that commuters miss on a Hyperloop to Abu Dhabi instead of driving in a six-cylinder, extremely combustible car,” one might go, as they unsuccessfully try to sell an idea to an editor.
Supersonic aircraft will also take to the skies soon and airlines will not have to make the hard sell any more about leg space or cold turkey sandwiches served on real plates with real cutlery.
By the time you finish a sentence, ”Can I use the toilet urgently...” the plane would be streaking across the runway and into the atmosphere and you will be pinned back in your seat because of the speed. And a few moments later, “Please keep your seat upright for landing, stop eating and drinking and stow away the food tray, we are now landing.”
“Darling, when are you back?” your wife will ask on the phone, hoping that you are still floating 60,000 feet up in the atmosphere somewhere.
“I am back,” you will reply. “I am outside the front door, just paying off the HyperUber guy.”
All this to-ing and fro-ing at hyper speed will be stressful and gurus will hold classes during the Hyperloop journey on how to relax and how to be mindful.
“Today, we will talk about how to slow down your fast-paced life. Oh, OK, seems we have already arrived. Let’s do this again tomorrow, same time.”
