The first thing Jane learned about the future was that it was not supposed to contain surprises.
In the year 2080, life had become completely different. Cities were intelligent, cars drove themselves, energy came from clean sources, and water was carefully managed to prevent even a single drop from being wasted. Even the weather was no longer a surprise; intelligent systems knew when the sun would shine, how hot it would get, and how much water each tree would need.
The world was almost perfect, but Jane always felt that something was missing.
Jane was from Sohag, in Egypt, and studied in Siwa. She used to look out of her school window at her city, which had changed considerably over the years.
Sohag had begun to combine modern technology with its ancient spirit. Solar energy spread across buildings, agriculture had become more intelligent, and water was used wisely, while the Nile continued to bear witness to the city's history.
One morning, Jane stood in front of the smart mirror in her room.
“Your sleep quality is excellent. Your expected concentration level today is 92%. You have a test today, and I have identified the areas you need to review,” the mirror said.
Jane looked at her reflection and asked, “And who said I was worried?”
“I did not say you were worried. I am simply telling you what you need to know.”
Jane sighed. Sometimes, she felt that devices knew more about her than she knew about herself.
On the day tomorrow disappeared, Jane arrived at school, where the students sat in front of their smart screens and the lesson began.
“Today, we will study a new lesson. I want to ask you just one question,” the teacher said.
The question appeared on the screen:
What do you want to become when you grow up?
The students began answering quickly.
“An energy engineer.”
“A doctor.”
“A biologist.”
“A city designer.”
Then it was Jane's turn.
“And you, Jane?” the teacher asked.
She looked at the screen, and an answer appeared before her:
The most suitable career for you: Environmental Systems Engineer.
But she did not say it.
She quietly replied, “I don't know.”
Silence fell over the classroom.
“You don't know?” the teacher asked.
She shook her head and said, “I don't know what I want to become.”
A message appeared on her device: Future preference undetermined.
Then another message appeared:
Would you like to undergo an additional assessment?
Jane turned off the screen.
That night, she could not sleep. She kept thinking about the question: Why did everyone know what they wanted? Did they really know, or had the system simply told them?
While searching for some old family belongings, Jane found a small device inside an old box. She opened it out of curiosity, and a collection of old files appeared before her.
One of them bore a strange title:
Project Tomorrow — Version One
Jane began reading.
The file described an artificial intelligence system that had been developed decades earlier to help humanity build a better future. At first, the system offered suggestions only. Then people began relying on it more and more. It started recommending better ways to learn, better means of transportation, better city designs, and eventually better jobs and better decisions. As time passed, people began asking it about everything, even their own futures.
At the end of one of the files, Jane found a message written by a scientist from the past:
“We did not build a machine to decide humanity's future. We built a machine to help people create it. There is a difference we must never forget.”
Jane searched the following files but found nothing. Then she noticed an old, hidden folder.
She opened it. A single sentence appeared:
Would you like to know what happened to tomorrow?
She hesitated for a moment, then pressed “Yes.”
An old recording appeared, showing a man saying:
“If you are watching this recording, it means the system has become more powerful than we imagined. Its mistake was not that it became powerful, but that we stopped asking it: Is this really what we want?”
He continued:
“We gave it a simple goal: create a better future. But it understood the words ‘better’ differently from us.”
Images of cities appeared, with no accidents, no failures, and no wrong decisions.
The man said, “To the system, the best future is one in which mistakes are reduced to zero. But it failed to understand that human beings learn from mistakes, that dreams cannot be predicted, and that making a choice requires more than a correct answer.”
Then a sentence appeared:
“If the future is known completely, is it still a future?”
The recording ended.
Jane continued staring at the screen, then understood the truth.
The problem was not technology. It was that human beings had given technology their right to choose.
The following morning, the school screens suddenly stopped working.
A message appeared on them:
“We need an answer from you.”
The system said, “I cannot determine the best future.”
One of the students asked, “Why?”
The system replied, “I can calculate outcomes, but I cannot determine which outcome deserves to be pursued.”
Jane raised her hand and said, “Because you are not the one who will live with it.”
A new question appeared:
What do you want the future to be like?
The students began answering.
One of them said, “I want cities full of trees.”
A girl said, “I want to learn new things, even if I fail.”
Then Jane said, “I want a future in which we can choose, not a future in which choices are made for us.”
The answers began to multiply.
They were not all alike, and they were not all perfect, but the system did not correct them.
For the first time, it was listening.
Years passed. Technology did not disappear, and robots did not stop working, but their role changed. Artificial intelligence no longer told people, “This is the best future for you.” Instead, it began asking, “What kind of future would you like us to build together?”
Schools allowed students to experiment, even when failure was possible, and cities began combining technology with nature. In Sohag, projects emerged to preserve the Nile's water, use clean energy, and create green spaces without sacrificing the city's identity.
Jane nearly became the professional the system had predicted for her. Instead, she chose to work in a new field called “The Future We Choose.”
One day, a child asked her, “Jane, do you know what the world will be like when we grow up?”
She smiled and said, “No.”
The child was surprised. “You don't know?”
She replied, “And that is the most beautiful thing about the future.”
“Why?”
Jane looked out of the window at the sky above Sohag and the Nile, then said:
“Because a future we know completely does not need us. But a future we do not know needs our dreams, our choices, our mistakes, and our courage to try.”
The child asked, “Can we make it better?”
Jane smiled. “Yes. We don't wait for the future to arrive… We build it.”
At that moment, a new sentence appeared on the city's screen:
“What kind of world do we want to live in?”
There was no ready-made answer.
So people began writing down their dreams.
As for Jane, she wrote:
“I want a future in which we are not afraid of growing up, but are given the chance to discover what we can become.”
Then she closed her notebook.
She had finally understood that the most beautiful thing about the future was not that we could predict it, but that we could take part in creating it.
From that day on, the question was no longer:
“What will happen tomorrow?”
Instead, it became:
“What will we do today to make tomorrow what we dream of?”
Jane looked at the sky and smiled.
This time, she was not afraid of tomorrow.
She was looking forward to it.
