You are Karla Powell. You get up after a big shock, look around and reflect on recent events. You are part of a team of renowned scientists studying some method of making time travel possible and finally your experiment was working, then there was the accident and what looked like a very strong explosion. You think you must be dead after the explosion, but you're still alive and now you're in the woods.
You couldn't be sure, but judging that the accident occurred with a study on time travel you believe it could have been dropped in a different time, which judging by the lack of signs of civilization could mean you ended up in a different time. distant past, you should still check it out. You walk through the woods for two long hours looking for some clues about where and when you are! until you come out of the woods and find yourself facing the sea. There was an island on which there was only one thing that resembled civilization, the Statue of Liberty, but there was no way to get there.
You looked at the statue a little, wondering how it was next to a forest when it should have been in New York, and looking over the trees you couldn't see any other buildings. Then you heard movement and looked in the direction of the sound. A woman was coming towards you. She wore an outfit unlike anything you've ever seen, mainly because it was seemingly impossible to wear and useless to hide anything as it was so tight you could see pretty much everything through it.
"Can't get home? Got a problem with the Teleporter?" the woman asked you
"I'm sorry, I think I'm lost. Where I am? and what day is it today?" you said
The woman laughed a little and answered "You are in New York and today is August 19th, 13751."
"Is this the year 13751? Did I really travel through time and get this far into the future?" you said
"Traveled through time? I thought you were just wearing a retro costume as a hobby." the woman said
"I came from the past yes, from the year 2022 to be more exact. I was part of a team studying time travel and there was an accident, which is why I ended up at this time." you said
"If you came from 2022, you must have been the victim of the first known accident regarding time travel. There were others later until we finally mastered the technology, but strict laws were raised on the subject and hardly anyone gets authorization to travel to any time in the past, while it is totally forbidden to travel to the future." the woman said
"If the technology was developed then it should be possible to send me back to my time." you said
"I don't know if you'll get permission to come back. You've already seen something of how the world has changed and it's going to take some time for them to assess and be able to decide if you can come back, as you won't be able to let any future knowledge show." the woman said
"And what am I going to do while I wait? Where will I stay? You say this is New York, but the only building I see is the Statue of Liberty?" you asked
"You can stay with me until then. And you're talking about other buildings, I mean the city that existed many years ago, it doesn't exist anymore and all the inhabitants live there." the woman said pointing to the Statue of Liberty
"How? Has the population decreased that much?" you asked
"No, the world population today is much greater than when you came. Today there are approximately 57 trillion people in the world." the woman said
"But according to calculations it shouldn't be possible for so many people to live on Earth. You have dominated outer space and spread across the universe. This is the only way to make it look like such an uninhabited place even though there are so many people." you said
"We can reach the ends of the universe if we want to, but we don't have to. In fact, everyone lives on Earth. Let's go to my world and I'll be able to show you better how things work at this time." the woman said
You questioned what she meant by going into her world, but she didn't say anything else, she just walked towards the water and threw some powder into the water. Apparently nothing happened, but she took your hand and guided you, the two of you walked across the water to the statue island. On the way she explained that she had thrown in a powder that made the water temporarily impenetrable, so that it was possible to walk on it as if you were on land for a few minutes. From there you entered the Statue of Liberty, but inside there was a huge hall with several extremely high shelves, all with various objects that resembled SD cards. You simply asked what those things were and she told you they were people's homes at that time."She then guided you to an elevator that rose to what you believed was the navel of the Statue of Liberty, where she indicated one of the SD cards, took your hand and said "I'm back home."
Everything that happened was too fast for you to have any reaction, a glow covered the woman's body and yours and two seconds after she said the sentence, you two were in a wooden cabin.
"Where we are?" you asked
"We are in the world inside my computer." the woman said
"In the world inside your computer? Is this a digital world inside a computer?" you asked
"Exactly. Computers had already been reduced in size to the size of a fingernail, but a major discovery made in quantum physics in the 63rd century allowed digital data to be converted into physical matter, thus turning a simple drawing into something real, and then we managed to figure out how to do the opposite process, converting matter into data inside the computer. The next step was to create a virtual world in which we could live inside the machine, so people started to migrate and live inside their own digital worlds instead of a house. After some time the buildings lost their meaning of existence and were all abandoned, because the resources needed to maintain these digital worlds and the computers in which they are found are insignificant compared to the primordial times like when you came, they were all gone. stored in a single place in the city and the rest was left for nature to take the place back. We only kept one building to have computers to be kept safe, as you've seen in New York only the Statue of Liberty was kept, and as it's out there it needs maintenance from time to time to keep it steady." the woman said
"I understand, the technology has evolved even in a way never imagined." you said