Listing to Port

1. That house that’s just down the road from you and there’s nothing particularly unusual about it, but somehow as the years go by it will manage to avoid routine knockings-down and bombings and the ivy wreckers of creeping abandonment long beyond the others of its type. And eventually it will end up in a time where people notice and celebrate it. There will be tours. It will be lovingly furnished with replica flatpack, and the guides will tell the tourists that this is where David Bowie wrote the punk ballad ‘Candle in the Wind’, and there will be a gift shop where one can buy kale oreos. Occasionally, on Revolution Sunday, actors dressed as Queen Elizabeth II in a range of rainbow replica outputs will perform a medley from popular twenty-first century musicals. But on a quiet day you could stand in front of that house now and almost be in the future.
2. The Eiffel Tower. Oddly enough, the Eiffel Tower will be one of the longest-lived of the current generation of landmarks, surviving both the second and third Dark Ages relatively unscathed. Even after the war of 9851, the tower’s twisted base will remain, at which point it will be mainly used as a memorial for the remaining three thousand years of its existence. By this point, there will be little to no material remaining that has not been replaced during one of the Tower’s many restoration projects, however. To recreate the experience of being in the future, stand facing the tower on a quiet, foggy night in summertime, wearing knee-length galoshes, brown sunglasses and a stick of cinnamon.
3. Central Johannesburg. Although the city will be largely deserted and partially buried by the year 4000, the buried portions will be excavated and lovingly restored around 6500 under the influence of the First Contact movement. Taking as their starting point the fragmentary footage remaining from the 2009 film District 9, First Contact believe that Johannesburg is situated at the planet’s zero reference point in Galactic co-ordinates, making it the obvious point of landing for any alien civilisations hoping to make contact. The 6500 reconstruction aimed to restore the physical city as closely as possible to its representation in the film. Owing to the mass migrations of the 3300s and 6100s, the future population of Johannesburg will be substantially different to its current one, so your best bet to experience the future now will be to find a time when nobody is around.
4. Amundsen-Scott polar research base, South Pole. Admittedly, in 9290 it will be a luxury hotel for the super-rich looking to experience real ice away from Antarctica’s overcrowded coastline. However, above ground it will be a fairly faithful replica of the original. Go outside on a day with poor visibility and you might never know the difference.