As the pair walked down the polished metal walkway, Gary turned to his young friend and asked, “Hey Burt?”
“Z’up?” Burt replied, staring at the hologram projected from his wrist of a woman dancing.
“I’ve got a question about these,” Gary stated, motioning at the various robots that quietly whirred and floated by them.
“Huh?” Burt’s holographic woman froze in place and was replaced by a lurid projection of a cheeseburger. Burt paused the commercial, and retracted the hologram. “Sorry. Z’up?”
“These robots,” Gary restated.
“Yeah. Some sweep the street,” Burt explained, “some pick up bigger trash, you can buy bottled water from the blue one over there, and the tall pink one has ice cream.”
“No, I know that,” Gary said. “I’m just wondering how they float.”
“Huh?”
“They all kinda hover. They don’t seem to be like the hovercrafts I used to see. Do they got, like, an anti-gravity device?”
“Do all you 19th centuries ask these sorts of questions?”
“I’m from the 20th century, but, no, I’m serious. How do they float? Wouldn’t it be more energy efficient to just have wheels?”
“Energy efficient? Is red more energy efficient than blue?”
“Well, if-”
“No, Gary,” Burt stopped him. “That doesn’t matter here. The energy it takes for me to fly a jet to the beach is not significantly more than the energy it would take for me to walk.”
“Is this how it is in the real world or just here in the simulation?”
“What’s the difference?”