Festive travel AGI style
Christmas Eve: No delays
Jennifer McDonald woke up at 6 AM on December 24th in her Seattle apartment, checked her phone, and smiled. Today she’d visit her parents in Boston for Christmas dinner, her brother’s family in Miami tomorrow, and her best friend’s New Year’s party in Tokyo on the 31st.
Pre-AGI, this itinerary would’ve been insane. Now it was just… December.
Her travel AI pinged:
“Good morning. Seattle–Boston hypersonic departs 2 PM, arrives 2:47 PM local. Your 11 AM meetings are confirmed for the flight. Activate your mobile office pod?”
“Confirmed,” Jennifer said, pouring coffee.
No frantic airport rushes. No three-hour early arrivals. No praying a connection wouldn’t implode. The system coordinated everything—her calendar, the aircraft, even city traffic—so her autonomous car delivered her to the terminal with exactly the right buffer.
Not fifteen minutes. Not twenty.
The right one.
THE SUBTERRANEAN COMMUTE
At 1:15 PM, Jennifer’s car descended into the I-5 Subterranean Megahighway. The old surface interstate was still there—some people still enjoyed manual driving—but the real traffic flowed below.
She reclined and opened her laptop. The car accelerated smoothly through the illuminated tunnel carved through bedrock by AGI-designed boring machines. No traffic lights. No congestion. Just steady flow.
Her video call with the Tokyo office connected perfectly—fiber embedded in the tunnel walls delivered better connectivity than most pre-AGI office buildings ever managed. While beneath Seattle, she finalized Q4 projections with colleagues who were already living in the first hours of January.
Twenty-three minutes later, the car surfaced at Sea-Tac Hypersonic Terminal.
“Thank you for choosing automated transport,” it announced cheerfully—then drove itself off to the next pickup.
Jennifer stepped inside carrying only a small bag. Checked luggage had become a quaint idea. If she needed something, she could buy it anywhere, instantly—or have it shipped ahead so it arrived before she did.
THE TERMINAL
The hypersonic terminal felt more like a luxury hotel lobby than an airport.
No security lines—she’d been cleared continuously from the moment she entered. No boarding passes—her identity was her ticket. No crowds—the system spaced departures to prevent bottlenecks before they formed.
Passengers lounged in comfortable seating, worked in private pods, or ate food that would’ve been a special occasion a decade ago. The ambient stress level that used to define holiday travel was simply… gone.
Jennifer grabbed an espresso—excellent, cheap—and walked to Gate 7.
Boarding in four minutes.
The precision was almost unsettling.
On the observation deck, hypersonics arrived and departed in an unbroken rhythm. The old airport had managed chaos. This terminal managed choreography—different aircraft types, different destinations, all coordinated by a traffic system that treated the whole sky like a solvable puzzle.
“Flight 2847 to Boston now boarding. Estimated flight time: 47 minutes.”
THE FLIGHT
Her seat was what would’ve been called first class in 2024—lie-flat, quiet, personal space, attentive service.
Except this was economy.
Actual first class involved private suites with showers.
She’d booked economy because, honestly, 47 minutes didn’t justify the upgrade. She’d save that for Tokyo—seven hours even at hypersonic speeds.
The aircraft launched in one smooth motion. No takeoff queues. No “waiting for a slot.” Her departure time wasn’t a suggestion. It was a commitment.
Jennifer opened her laptop and resumed meetings. The onboard connection was faster than her home internet used to be. Below, the curvature of Earth became visible. At Mach 5, you saw the planet’s shape.
Forty-seven minutes later—exactly 47, not 46 or 48—they touched down at Boston Hypersonic.
THE NEW NORMAL
Her father picked her up in his manually-driven car—old-school, proudly so—but even he used the subterranean highways now. They were home in sixteen minutes.
“Remember Christmas 2019?” he laughed over dinner. “Your flight got delayed six hours. You missed Christmas Eve entirely. Spent it crying in O’Hare.”
Jennifer shuddered at the memory: the chaos, the uncertainty, the gate agents who couldn’t help because they didn’t have information, the missed connections, the lost luggage.
“I flew here three times this month,” she said. “Boston for work, back to Seattle, here again for Christmas. Total travel time: four hours across all three trips. Pre-AGI, one round trip would’ve taken longer.”
Her mother shook her head, still amazed. “Your brother’s flying in from Miami tomorrow morning. Leaving at 9 AM, arriving at 9:47. With his whole family.”
“Then flying back tomorrow night so the kids can sleep in their own beds,” her father added. “It’s extraordinary.”
It was extraordinary.
And completely routine.
Jennifer checked her schedule: Miami tomorrow, back to Seattle on the 26th, then Tokyo for New Year’s—arriving refreshed instead of wrecked.
Outside, snow fell on Boston. Somewhere, hypersonics launched in tight sequence, maglev trains crossed continents, subterranean highways moved millions through bedrock—and the whole thing held together because the system treated delay the way old infrastructure treated weather: a variable to route around, not a fate to accept.
Inside, Jennifer sat with family she could now visit on a whim, distance reduced to a minor inconvenience