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In the new world, actually going to someone’s home and seizing property was done last, since every single bit of communication lived forever, and all that was needed was a judge’s order and it was all downloaded and scrutinized in the blink of an eye. People knew this, of course, and if they really wanted to communicate and have it never be known, they would do what their great-grandparents had done and write a letter, or meet in person, or just not tell anyone anything. But even if they didn’t write down their intentions, the software used to analyze their communications was getting ultra-sophisticated. And where years ago someone who was going to murder his spouse might put the word “chloroform” into a search engine and have that as evidence in court, now programs were designed to come up with that same kind of incriminating evidence from everything you ever looked at.

If you committed a crime, every piece of reading material, every store you ever went to—either real or virtual—and everything you ever bought was analyzed at such lightning speed that law enforcement would have three really good theories before they ever went to your home. In the case of the bus murderer it was easier than most, as he wrote angry letters to his congressman complaining about the outrageous taxes he had to pay for health care even though he was never sick a day in his life. They also found old-fashioned letters to his mother saying that he could no longer give money to help with Grandma, as he had been demoted and his pay had been cut. That, along with his obsessive interest in everything Peter Pan, helped the computers come to a conclusion: This guy hated everything old.

* * *

Brad Miller hit the ball straight down the fairway. It went almost three hundred yards. Herb had just hit into the trees and was sixteen over par by the fifteenth hole. “I shouldn’t have bet,” Herb said.

“Don’t worry, there’s three holes to go. You want to press?”

“You’re seven strokes ahead. You would actually need a real stroke for me to win.” He took out fifty dollars. “Here, let’s stop. I lose.”

“Come on, finish the game,” Brad said, taking the money. Brad pressed the button and the sixteenth hole lay before them. This hole was always windy, with a dogleg on the right and a huge sand trap on the left of the green. Brad addressed the ball.

“Wait,” Herb said. “Let’s not play with the wind today.”

“Okay with me.” Brad went to the control wall and turned off the breeze.

The Golf Depots, as they were called, were springing up everywhere. Invented in Japan, where space was always at a premium, they were open-air golf centers that consisted of one 350-yard hole. Every time someone completed it, he turned around and started the next. The putting green on hole one would become the tee on hole two. Scenery would change, wind would increase or die down, sand traps would emerge in different places, and you would get the exercise walking back and forth on the same hole. The centers, which took up approximately three square acres, could let ten foursomes play at the same time, all playing from the center outward.

The cost was minuscule compared to real golf, and what was also great was that it was safe. There had been some incidents in the past few years on public courses. Younger people hassling the “olds” for taking too much time or, in some cases, for even showing up at all. The Golf Depots had great security, welcomed an older clientele, and were a bargain compared to actually joining a club, which not only had prohibitive costs but didn’t much like members over fifty.

When the game was finished they got into Brad’s car. Brad had always liked to buy American, although that had become impossible. Even with the Ford-GM merger that took place years earlier, so many parts in those cars were made overseas that they were American in name only. Still, Brad felt good about driving his electric vehicle with the familiar two logos from the car companies he grew up knowing.

As he slid into the seat,