Obsolescence

Kerry was the first. The progenitor of the PV... the one who had made it all possible. And Kerry was now at the end of his useful life. But he had spawned a whole generation of PVs. Of smart, reliable and unbelievably advanced organo-metallic lifeforms. To call him self-aware would be a gross exaggeration. But then humans were still exploring what self-aware meant. It was enough to call him self-assembling for now.

Kerry's biological (mother?) creator or inventor, Carol Watkins was one of the true dreamers. She had used some of her own cells as the base for the artificial DNA which made up a lot of what Kerry was. And the materials science techs had been her partners in creating what was now a dying PV.

All this was not something which entered John's thoughts as he walked out his large roomy two bedroom cottage. It was his refuge. But today he would travel almost 200 miles out to get to his office. Of course his PV, one he had named Dee was waiting at the curb. He shared his PV with another house owner down the block, but they had different timings of use. Share-a-PV was just catching on. 

Dee waited patiently. Today she was dark blue. Nano scales were all she used to change color. No actual paint was used on her skin. John strode into the PV and told her where he wanted to go. She picked up the coordinates and without a word they were on their way.

John did not even look outside the window...

Carol was working on a way to preserve Kerry. Using a technique of reverting to a more basic cell design, she may be able to rescue the essence of Kerry. Though she knew this was of little real use, she was keen to see if it worked. It was this very curiosity which had set her on the path a lifetime ago...

Growing Kerry had been a long series of trial and error. Though once his DNA was coded, it was surprisingly smart. He had largely self-assembled. Once Carol had got the coding right. But the coding had taken most of her lifetime to perfect. It was incredibly hard and the difficulty had been in stabilizing the sequence. It was a fight with nature to damp down the random issues which kept cropping up. But once the PV was grown, it was able to harvest the Sun's energy and the wind and friction .... in fact all energy around it to move incredibly fast. It was the death knell for the automotive industry. And the change had been frighteningly fast. Within a few years, fuel pumps had closed down. And all research was now focused on creating the next growable tech. It was not easy; in fact it was incredibly hard. And it was going to take forever. But once people knew it could work, nothing was going to stop them. 

Dee was blissfully unaware of all this as she barreled down Superhighway 22. It would be a short journey as she was approaching 300 miles per hour. Without the risk of humans driving vehicles, PVs were able to travel at much greater speeds. Distances seemed shorter. John was at work before he knew it. With a gentle sighing, Dee opened an aperture for John to step out. She did not know that he was working on a concept which an amazing (almost prescient) engineer had made a blueprint for more than a decade ago. It was called a Hyperloop. And it was to replace her.