Mid-afternoon. Today
Paul bought lunch at BiBiBop Asian Cuisine at Polaris. Paul says BiBiBop means ‘Mixed
Rice’ and is pronounced ‘ViViVop’. While at Polaris you stopped at Apple and
bought ‘Microsoft Office Home and Student 2016’ software and are now using it
for the first time. – Amorella
1543 hours. It appears to be working fine. The last time I
bought a Mac Office was 2003. Kim shared her new one in 2007. I like this
cleaner layout better.
Humanity is metaphysics. First, definitions. - Amorella
** **
humanity - noun (plural humanities)
1 the human race; human beings collectively: appalling crimes
against humanity.
• the fact or condition of being human; human nature:
music is the universal language with which we can express our common humanity.
2 humaneness; benevolence: he praised them for their standards
of humanity, care, and dignity.
3 (humanities) learning or literature concerned with human
culture, especially literature, history, art, music, and philosophy.
ORIGIN
Middle
English: from Old French humanite, from Latin humanitas, from humanus.
***
metaphysics - pl.noun [usually treated as singular]
the branch of philosophy that deals with the first
principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing,
substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
• abstract theory or talk with no basis in reality:
his concept of society as an organic entity is, for market liberals, simply
metaphysics.
Metaphysics has two main strands: that which holds
that what exists lies beyond experience (as argued by Plato), and that which
holds that objects of experience constitute the only reality (as argued by
Kant, the logical positivists, and Hume). Metaphysics has also concerned itself
with a discussion of whether what exists is made of one substance or many, and
whether what exists is inevitable or driven by chance.
ORIGIN
mid 16th
century: representing medieval Latin metaphysica (neuter plural), based on
Greek ta meta ta phusika ‘the things after the Physics,’ referring to the
sequence of Aristotle's works: the title came to denote the branch of study
treated in the books, later interpreted as meaning ‘the science of things
transcending what is physical or natural.’
Selected
and edited from Oxford/American software
** **
The definitions above encompass the meaning of humanity and
metaphysics. The metaphysics here is in reference to Kant and Hume – which holds
that objects of experience constitute the only reality not Platonic which holds
that what exists lies beyond experience. Being human is here and now; i.e.
people are human. When the book’s setting is in Humanity Center the reference
is Platonic; that which normally lies beyond living human experience, i.e. after
physical death. – Amorella
1640
hours. I had not thought to include the differences between Kant, Hume and
Plato, but this is significant to note. The vast amount of wordage on ‘unconscious’
and ‘consciousness’ in yesterday’s posting is important to me because I need to
know my ‘knowledge base’ but it does not appear necessary to explain in such
detail in Soki’s Choice.
Without reading the definitions first you
would not have come to the simple conclusion that humanity is metaphysics. You
have to become aware in your own skin, so to speak. – .Amorella
1646. That was a Eureka-like moment. Our humanity is what makes
us ‘appear’ alien on Earth. Lesser animals also show these human-like traits
from time to time but to me this is a reinforcement that shows higher-like
consciousness is a part of an evolutionary-like process.
Post. - Amorella
Dusk. Carol and
Linda are giving out treats while Kim and Paul are walking around with the
boys. Carol had a two-hour nap before supper and you had one, the boys and the
others had already left when you awoke. – Amorella
1842
hours. There have been lots of boys and girls coming around for treats. It is
fun to see the excitement on the little ones in particular. At home I’m the one
who gave out the goodies – always enjoyable. Most of those in our neighborhood
are grown and gone from home these days. It’s a fun evening. Such holidays can
keep you thinking young in any case. Darkness descends through the thick of
clouds and brisk cool winds. It is all so cozy sitting inside as it grows dark –
love the twilight this time of morning and evening.
When you awoke this morning it was dark but
the nightlight stretched across the ceiling reminding you of Rod Serling’s “Twilight
Zone”. – Amorella
1856 hours. Here is the opening from that wonderful show.
** **
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that
which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as
infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and
superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his
knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Twilight Zone.
— Rod
Serling
Selected
and edited from Wikipedia – The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
** **
The middle ground
between light and shadow, between science and superstition, is the setting for
my book; however it is not the dimension of imagination, it is the dimension of
Soki’s Choice. – Amorella
1904 hours. Good one, Amorella. What is the dimension of Soki’s
Choice?
The anomalous inner workings of your own
heartansoulanmind, boy. Post. - Amorella
‘One’
is needed to show the problem you are anticipating – how to show in the ‘Address’
that Friendly and all are arriving on an Earth in 2001 that did not suffer the
killing plague that nearly destroyed humanity on the first Earth where they
arrived in 1988. This anxiety is due to your colossal arrogance more than
anything else. Post. - Amorella
2121
hours. I have been considering your options here, Amorella. I read over the
first chapter of Stuck. Friendly and Fargo are in separate places and a crew is
included. Ship is stuck and the finding is that Ship has recognized another
Earth, one in which most of those people survived because there was no plague
to kill all but a handful of humanity. This is how it is.
** **
Stuck
[Chapter] One
Trexer rubbed the dark sweat from his
forehead, we’re out of the water, and we’re soon dead. “Problem,” he mumbled,
“we have a captain.” He scanned for his mate, Hartolite. Oh, pond in my life,
where are you? Trexer’s heart poured into an eddy. His reasoning shifted into a
conscious flood of trained equations balanced against survival instincts. If
Ship sits, stress will break his machinery, and his new engine is a
mixinthewoods. We shall languish here waiting for death’s sleep. The gravobars
trickle by Ship’s engine, as does our escape. Ship lies as an exposed withering
vine clung on a hollow stump amongst the stars. We shall be eaten by life’s
ever sharp, tearing, and internal teeth. Oh, my Hartolite, where are you?
Trexer stood a thoughtful theatre and raised a curtain of fingers to stop his
stubborn tongue from speaking. This has happened in a nanosecond, he thought,
then careless courage struck haphazardly, and his bright green eyes swiftly
refocused. I am Tall Trexer, Ship’s master engineer, and with resolution, he
said, “Captain, we have a problem.”
“Is blackenot on?” inquired Captain
Fargo. Give me the sun’s blueberries Trexer. The captain’s fingers danced
nervously as he stood barefoot on Ship’s grassy floor. Childhood conditioning
reinforced from two hundred years earlier popped into his head as though it
were yesterday, ‘the brighter the berries the more shade in the head.’
Receiving no reply to his previous question, Fargo queried, “Is beacontohome
on?”
“Yes, said Trexer, reflecting the resonance of
his old friend’s secure voice, “but the power to run home is off. I don’t know
why.”
Captain Fargo’s eyes reflected a flashing
storm cloud. We are stuckinagray with no power. Is this the event foreshadowed?
I am a good runner, a very good runner. Ship is a good runner too and normally
follows his instincts as I follow mine. I am ready to serve with my feet in
service, but we stand and wait. Homepeople at PrimeThree have not reported.
Perhaps they do not see us as missing. Trexer’s charcoal eyes set like dead
rocks in a stream. No engineers on Ship but Trexer and me. We four marsupials,
and only I am experienced with earthlings. Why did PrimeThree keep my Friendly
home? She is my best mate and put off on lesser missions. Though we were
successfully in our first earth mission, homeplanets put us through two years
of near solitary quarantined containment.
Beacontohome is on. Blackenot is on. We had a
flawless first trip - no doubt because Friendly was the captain and I crew. His
eyes drew to Ship’s living, grassy floor. Friendly saved the one bad day we
had. He shuddered - finding the remains of billions of earthlings a year dead.
O Godofamily, where is Friendly when I need her? Fargo, scratching his cheek
with his left hand, uttered to Trexer, “How long before the problem’s
critical?”
Trexer, with eyes looking as old tree knots,
responded, “One week, before end-of-the-road pill time.”
“One week?” We’re not dead yet, Trex, he
thought. “Time wise, gravoskimming is nearly done. We must be near earth’s star.
Can’t we pushanpull blackenot to off and navigate by sight?” PrimeThree surely
is doing what it can.
“We can’t risk exposure. Blackenot remains
on,” said Trexer strongly; besides, he thought, we could disrupt solar
functions if we are too close to a star or planet. Hartolite saved my life for
this? To fail?
“Rules are running,” grumbled Fargo. He
scratched his nose, “We have to run the natural laws.”
“Running gets us home, Captain,” said the
thin-lipped engineer. We run from the whirlwind only to be cast across death’s
river later. Trexer turned from Ship’s instruments and dug his toes into the
well-manicured grasses. I draw my eyes to the rocks between the wildflowers. I
stand in Ship’s central breeze and smell the tall and wild-leafed bushes of
home. I view Ship’s California blue sky streaked with white spidery wisps; long
stretches of spinets set to dim Ship’s artificial sunlight. The distant crooked
limbs of wild swamp oak stand thirty to eighty feet tall. Trees, running only
at the roots, grow taller and older than people. Trexer watched for the playful
antics of the squirrel-like rodents who lived in the wooded environment. Food,
he thought, fishes and furry rodents. The fish freely swim, unknowing they will
be pulled for food. Nature sucks us in only to gobble us down. Why people
worship nature I will never know. Look how serene and tree-like the captain
stands, thought Trexer.
I love Ship, reflected Captain Fargo. I see
the doldrums in Trexer’s eyes. “There will be no returning to homeplanets until
we complete our mission,” snapped Fargo. He ruminated - thirteen years ago,
Friendly and I made our culture’s first direct contact with the natives.
We found two women and two men after a plague
killed more than six billion people. Now I return with a crew of three. The
survivors did not want our direct help except for the donated medical supplies.
Friendly and I did biochemical studies and found no hint of an environmental
problem that may have lead to those many quick deaths. Everyone should have
died. Each native had a lifesaving genetic mutation that allowed herorhis
survival, but we never have discovered what it was.
Our spiritual ministers had foretold we
would have a like plague years ago, but nothing has happened to us. One
malcontent even predicted our sun would become dark for a few seconds; that our
star would blink out then on again. Scientists still keep close tabs on our
ever-consistent sun. Where do our peoples’ outlandish fears come from?
Our species is educated. We know better
than to believe in the implied injunctions of our spiritual ministers. Yet,
here is Trex terrified at the prospect that we are stuck in the mythical gray,
in the blink between this universe and another. He now thinks we are in a
pulled-the-trigger voyage, that we marsupials, like the natives, are doomed by
a long ago foreshadowed calamity. I think there is no difference between us.
The natives and we can be as alien to ourselves as we are to them.
“I’m checking Ship’s machinery,” said Trexer.
I’m built to run, he thought, if we survive, this will be my last hop-and-skip
from home. PrimeThree can find others for the sacrifice.
“We have a week,” muttered Captain Fargo. “We
. . ..”
“We have a working Shuttlevator.” interrupted
Trexer with renewing confidence.
“Good,” grinned Fargo, “Shuttlevator will take
us to earth.” He double-checked the instrumentation. “Shuttlevator is not
functioning, Trex.” My eyes focus on my toes-in the-grass. It’s hard to ask
naked feet to stand on grassy floor and do nothing.
***
Fargo’s right, thought Hartolite, we can’t
afford to disrupt the gravity of a sun or planet when we do not know where we
are. She slid her hands into her pouch through the slit in her overalls and
struck a conversation with Yermey. “What do you think? We should be within a
day of earth,” she ruminated, “There should be a way to check this without
pushanpulling blackenot off even for a nanosecond.”
“I don’t think there is,” replied Yermey, “but
there might be a solution to our navigational problem through a side door.”
Hartolite gave him one of her finest
disgruntled looks, “Fine, Yermey. What shall we do? No doorways appear in
navigation. Shall we climb down into Ship’s basement and position ourselves to
work up, or shall we climb to roof’s escape and venture down to the basement to
grasp our heading?” Yermey tolerates my anger. Why? I once thought he believed
himself intellectually superior to everyone. But he is arrogant beyond belief.
Yermey beamed. “We have a week. We
should be securing our materials for these few remaining native earthlings.
Hartolite, your green eyes are dark and somber. Lighten up.” He thought, she is
always like this when she sleeps with Trexer. He is younger, but his mindansoul
always sees things half-empty. Yermey continued, “Surely PrimeThree will direct
Ship Two to search us out. Our purpose is to help these few remaining natives
survive as a species.” All the arguing to return to earth, he thought. It has
taken years to convince our prime-parents. We have had no contact.
Yermey silently reflected on
Godofamily, and the ancient story of Marsupials’ Great Fall. I don’t believe
the myths, or our ministers - yet old stories hint the truths about our basic
nature.
We
need to find why the few natives did not die. Hartolite needs to study the
genetics closely, particularly if they have had more children. I need to look
at the genetic nature of their survival spirit. There must be a connection
between the concept of Godofamily and the madness of massive death. I cannot
find it amongst us; but the earthlings have similar ideas and concepts - even
stories of the fall of angels before the universe was created. These far seeded
myths must be genetically predisposed. Our similar environments feed on these
spiritual feelings, but the feelings are inborn first. I am sure it is a part
of the natural law of life no matter where higher consciousness originates.
Hartolite quipped, “I told Fargo you would
solve Ship’s problem.”
Yermey frowned, and pushanpulled the chute for
his clothes, then, frustrated, he scratched himself unperturbed. He looked
directly at Hartolite as if to say, ‘Yes, I am a slovenly male who scratches,
so what?’ He said, “We’re close to Earth, I can calculate it in my head.” He
paused to scratch his nose, “Where in the cleaner-chute are my overalls?”
“We can work the Shuttlevator, it’ll work in a
pinch,” stated Hartolite confidently. Chuckling, she added, “You still look the
cutie, older and naked, but still the cutie.”
“You women think men folk look cute naked. We
have nothing much to show. That’s the reason, you know.” While laughing, he
commented, “We men know why the womenfolk really want to visit earth.” Women
created those straws after Friendly returned. What a humiliation. I’ll not use
a straw for drinking no matter what.
Breaking
into short smile, Hartolite returned, “You men are a crumpled lot, with a
squatters-bush of pubic hairs constantly in need of scratching. Scratching
what? The mighty and bendable twig, the soft and slow, the calculated and
uncurling of a twiginatwig.” “Yeah,” he
responded sarcastically, “you like our fingers crawl-to-pouches though. Luckily
for you your slender fingers arouse our sensibilities.”
Hartolite hesitating with a feigned blushing
said, “And you arouse our patience.”
“Yeah, well,” he crabbed while dressing
cock-of-the-walk slow, one leg at a time into the pulled from the chute
overalls.
***
Later, Trexer spoke directly to his amour,
“Hartolite, I don’t like this situation any better than you. You keep staring
at your darksouled suicide capsules as though you are about to take one. We
have a week. Yermey will solve the problem.”
Cocking her head strongly, Hartolite replied,
“Yermey can’t solve a stuckinagray.” You said so yourself not more than ten
minutes ago, she thought. Every time I visit, you put me in a depression. I’m
supposed to administer crew psychological testing too. I come to cheer you up,
and you find something negative. She remembered gravoskimming’s first night
out. I was thinking, Ship, who is a mile in diameter and a quarter mile
vertical, should have more grass, trees, and streams. Top level is nothing but
sky with an old-fashioned gravorunning tube for escape. We need more hills,
streams, and lakes on the ground floor; we need Ship to be twice this size. I
knocked on Trexer’s door.
“Come in, Hartolite,” he said. I do not think
the men folk really want me around, but I am here yet. I have to keep the men
under control. It is a pouch master’s duty. The men always focus on every
detail of their work. We are built to snuggle and give them quiet time, but
women folk are secondary. Men will snuggle and even place their hand in a pouch
or hold hands, but they want little to do with our private nature unless their
biological needs come up. And, that would be once a year at most.
She entered feeling elevated, “I thought I’d
come for a snuggle.”
Trexer mirrored her slight smile, “Come over
here, and bed with me.”
Seeing the look in his eyes, I sauntered over,
sat beside him for a moment. I giggled to myself. Trexer needs a little action.
It’ll be the first time in seven months. I stood and dropped may blue overalls
to her waist. He actually wants in my pouch, I thought. So, I hesitated to
reinforce this rarely found desire. The pause snapped in a blank look, and I
could tell he was ready to return to other things. I quickly pulled my overalls
off, lay down beside him, and automatically eased his right hand into my pouch
before he could roll over and go to sleep. I teased and murmured playfully. I
thought, Trexer is one of my true, old, friends and I am forcing his pouched
fingers to play. Trexer, who is younger than I by sixty years, became the best
patient I ever had. We held hands for the whole time he recovered from the
fevers. Now, he wants to entertain me again. Wonderful.
“You want me to play dead,” panned Trexer,
“like a tree rodent?” You teasing fool, he thought, and put his left hand out
to give her neck a rubbing.
Hartolite immediately used his hand as a
pillow. They fell slowly into the bedinabox. “Pop your overalls, Trex. Let’s
see what I can get cooking,” she said gleefully.
“I’m not in the mood,” he suddenly asserted,
“I’m under too much stress.”
“Men are never in the mood. You silly boys.”
Hartolite reached down with her right hand and cooed, “Don’t you want to slide
your hand into my pouch as you did on our first sleeping?”
He rumbled with resignation, “Just for a
minute,” and garbled a, “maybe.” His usual sluggish-to-be-moving hand stayed at
his side.
“Don’t you feel good when I do this?” laughed
Hartolite as she leaned to kiss his stomach. “Too bad you boys don’t have pouches
too.”
Trexer muttered, “Why? What would we do with
pouches?”
“Well,” she said coyly, “I could slide my hand
further in and down.”
Trexer’s voice took on a stubborn boyish tone,
“We’re all pouchbabes. You put your hand in your girlfriend’s pouch just as
easily as our holding hands.”
Hartolite whispered, “But boysanmen don’t have
to share-a-pouch.”
Trexer stubbornly sat up, “We share,” he said.
“I’m sharing myself and my bedinabox, what else is a friend supposed to do? You
should respect my being tired.”
Hartolite smirked teasingly and whispered,
“Trexer,” And other privacies.
Trexer suddenly nurtured a deep, sexual laugh.
“So you decided to bed each of us, playing away, thinking it will induce a
creative means out of our situation.”
Hartolite rolled over rakishly. “Not quite,
but I thought it would do you some good,” she retorted. Then she returned to
her outwardly nature. “Rub my back, will you, and my thighs. I’m all tensed up,
Trex.”
He begrudgingly complied, and quickly adopted
his unpretentiously contented and sanguine smile. He whispered intimately,
“Okay, let’s get this physical lovemaking done so we can cuddle and sleep.”
***
The next morning Trexer awoke and said, “What
do you want to do, lay here and play dead? Ship’s not going to work because you
jump into a suicidal pout. Friendly is always upbeat and positive like Yermey.
I can never move her to gloom.” Well, sometimes, he thought, but you my
Hartolite, are a cuddle babe. You are no doubt manipulating old Yermey and me.
Women folk. Sex is Godofamily’s private joke. We men would just as soon do our
public works in peace then sit around and tell ourselves stories. The women
folk pop us in those pouches when we are little and never let us go. Centuries
popped in and out. One would think the women folk would get tired. “Don’t be so
dramatic with those pills. Do you want me to take mine too? Is that what you
want?” he said with anger. He thought, I
might, and then what would you do?
Hartolite stood resigned and glum, “I’m really
not going to take the pill, Trexer.” Now, will you leave me along, she thought.
She gaped at the two medium sized red capsules and considered - with one pill,
I become terribly sick and the other kills me quickly and painlessly. Both
pills appear the same and if I take both I become terribly and painfully sick.
I always flow to different gravities. We women carry too many points of view
for our own good. I must raise myself to the runner’s challenge - and stand
still for a change. Men folk always run. We have to corral them. The men folk
have a lazy, self-centered wildness in them. For our greater Families’ sake, we
have to keep them tame. I don’t know why they don’t see themselves as we can
see them. They always look at us in subtle arrogance and disdain, like ‘we men
folk allow you women to be the leaders of homeplanets because, frankly, we
don’t want the job.’
***
Sitting at the communal dinner, Trexer said,
“The problem is in our machinery.”
Hartolite quipped, “This is yet another reason
for Ship to be referred in the male gender, even with new gravoengines,
middle-aged Ship, like you men, isn’t even running slowly. You three have egos
to be pumped, so here I am, as the sole woman on board to get you men to work.
You need to get cracking and stand Ship on the top of his non-navigating head.”
The men laughed in a childhood glee. Captain
Fargo smirked, “Sometimes we each jog to solve a problem and end up nearly
dying of exhaustion.”
“I’d rather work myself to death,” commented
Trexer dryly, “than dally for Death’s Great Ship to stop hereabouts.”
“I must say I agree with Trexer,” responded
Yermey. “We need a solution before an untimely one is made for us. Our lady
here, will hold it against us unless we do something about controlling Ship’s
situation.” He continued, “Why don’t we shut down blackenot, and head where we
can?”
The captain looked piqued, “Shuttlevator will
not move because Ship thinks he’s home.”
“Actually,” said Yermey, “Ship thinks he is
home, and I think he is near earth.”
“Can’t we trick Ship then?” asked Hartolite.
“Ship’s an entire silicon chipinthebox system and half ego-bionics. He has an
animal-like consciousness. Ship knows to run for home when things are not
right, and he thinks he is home like Yermey said.”
Captain Fargo commented, “So Ship thinks two
opposites are both true, and he has developed a kind of cantonic schizophrenia.
This stuckinagray may be psychological not a navigational malfunction.”
Trexer commented, “Ship is what he is. Ship
hasn’t the brains to think in hidden self-referential.”
Hartolite raised her left eyebrow, “No, Ship
does not. I agree with you Trexer.”
“Can’t we give Ship a perspective he does not
have?” asked Yermey. “Perhaps, a sense of freedom will arise, and he’ll
naturally think to run.”
“That’s good, Yermey,” recited Hartolite as
she turned, relieved, to Trexer.
Yermey smiled confidently and turned to
philosophizing, “Marsupials used to be cannibals; we shared the bodies of the
dead to survive the Great Starvation. What was that historical struggle for?”
Yermey paused, thinking of Friendly, the first marsupial to make herself known
to an earthling. “Darkensoul,” he muttered, “We need to busy ourselves. As a
last resort, before pill time, I am willing to turn blackenot off and hope the
gravobars don’t turn on us. We are runners. Stopanstill is not for us. Let’s
remake Ship grammatical and fluent enough to finish his own sentence and ours
too.”
Fargo smiled; the crew will now work on a
plan. Hartolite was right. She was such a good cuddle the day before we left. I
cannot believe she was right. How can women be right most of the time? It does
not make biological sense. If we are wrong or lazy like they say, then why are
we men folk here at all? Women don’t need us to have pouchbabes. Some wanted an
all female culture. I don’t know why they all didn’t. We men wouldn’t mind. We
could do what we wanted to do - sit around, play games or work. His memory
drifted - when Friendly and I did our first gaming study in human history we
concluded our original trip would be somewhat analogous to the first European
explorers making contact with the American natives. We were sure the native
peoples of earth would think of us as conquerors as the Native Americans came
to think of the Europeans.
We have better built and more lasting
machinery. Our goods and knowledge, we concluded, would sway Earth natives. The
natives would grow to dislike us. They would fear our colonization and our
possible diseases. Humans would fear the loss of their worth and dignity.
Self-identity would dry cultural nations into escaping air. Our secret fear was
that earth natives would follow the forebodings of our public landings and
fight us tooth and nail.
Fargo scratched his left ear, and then
rubbed the back of his neck. He stood quietly in contemplation, focusing on the
food on the table rather than his crew. Earthlings would stand and fight while
we would run away. We were and are not pedantic European settlers, and the
earth cultures of today are not exactly analogous with the indigenous Americans
of yesteryear. When we finally arrived on earth, there was no one to greet or
to destroy us. When we arrived, the earth was not as we wished or as we
expected.
Fargo suddenly looked up, smiled broadly, and
said, “I am a shy and slow man with a twig of manhood as Hartolite knows. She
knows us all. Women folk teach and raise us up with their deliberate and
measured methods. We need to work this stuckinagray in a woman’s meticulous and
subtle manner. We need Ship’s immediate psychological profile, and we must
provide him with a broader point of view, with a less stubborn source of
navigation. We must toy and humor him.” The captain wanted to end with a quip
about Hartolite to whisper sweet nothings to Ship’s navigation system, but he
caught her look and decided to let it go.
***
Unknown to Fargo and the crew, I, Friendly,
sat in the wall chair directing the class A Shuttlevator from homeplanets
through a quick slide of gravobars to stop near the orbit of Mars. My objective
was to land with blackenot on and wait for Fargo and crew before setting out to
find the remaining human colony. I hoped I would not cause any unusual solar
activity or earthquakes when my modified Shuttlevator shut the down the
gravobars. Shortly, instruments on board automatically focused on human life
signs. Data filled on data and quickly shut down. Shuttlevator’s machinery
froze near earth’s moon. I rose from my chair cautiously and confused. I
thought, ‘I am not where I am supposed to be. Blackenot is on.’ I pushanpulled
the manual blackenot defaults, but Godofamily - data showed billions of human
people existing. How could this be? The city near the lake appeared a good
target so I set for it.
I pushanpulled switches and maneuvered
Shuttlevator to earth. Near lone trees stood adjacent to a small stream and
outer wood. A few homes set on the woods’ edges nearby. I thought, ‘I can ease
in and hover invisibly just above the trees. Blackenot is on. Billions of these
people died.’ I did not and to this day do not know how this is. I fought
myself and decided I would not run.
PrimeThree will send a directive to wait for
Fargo, that’s what I thought. The new datum flashed before me. The earth date:
14 June 00ce. Fargo and I arrived 14 June 88ce. This is exactly thirteen years
after the great plague, twelve years after we first found four adults and a
babe alive on the planet. Whatever plague occurred earlier has not happened
here. Billions of people are today alive, but plague or no plague, they too
will be dead some day. I smiled; our first trip now seemed a joke. I said to
myself; ‘these people are dead and don’t know it. This is a very odd, very
strange circumstance.’
***
>Hello. I, the Soki have some
observations. These marsupials are presently stuck in Ship of their own making.
Living people touch death the moment of birth, and they are stuck in their own
self-being. The individual has herorhis own voice, and as such, herorhis own
stage appears to stand relatively taller than the neighbors. In here, theatre
is a rule the living share. I have discovered that the dead individual also has
a voice and rules of theatre too. The dead have rules that end up being played
in a metaphysical court with the privacy curtain closed.
What are the rules for a genuine
non-being, a floater like me? Presently, I have only a vague notion. <
The above is Chapter One, Stuck by O.
Richards, © 2001
** **
