 I had just been writing a weblog
entry entitled THE WORLD AS A
PRISON, explaining how
we had all become so inured to being browbeaten, indoctrinated,
humiliated, deceived, cowed, and intimidated by our fellow man that we
had given up hope of ever making a better world, and had started
deluding ourselves that we were actually free, that things were actually getting better, that somehow, ludicrously, less regulation
of the power elite and more growth would solve the world's problems.
 And then I woke up. I was soaked in sweat from
heat to foot, screaming and writhing, when I felt the caring hands, the
caresses and calming embraces of my loved ones sleeping nearby. "Just a
nightmare...", said Mireille, the new visitor to our community.
"Just a nightmare", said Mimic, the macaw, swooping down from the giant
cedar tree, and perching beside his friend Oswald.
"It was so real...", I
said. "It almost made sense in some ghastly, terrifying way. A whole
world of overcrowded, frightened, beaten-down people spreading like a
cancer, killing and inflicting massive global suffering. But the real
information -- the pictures of dead children, the stories of the
tortured, the anguish of animals bred strictly for food, the details of
cynical genocidal war plans -- all of this was carefully suppressed and
hidden for fear that the bare truth would cause massive revolt, suicide,
revolution, madness. Just endless unimaginable horror behind a thin
facade of calm and normalcy..."
"Shhh..", said Mireille. "You're frightening the children. You'll give them nightmares."
I looked around and my heartbeat and respiration slowly returned to
normal. Our community, the Astarte community of artists, about 100
people in a stunning expanse of untouched tropical splendour, the
community I had adopted and that had adopted me, in my youth after
three years as a Traveler, was intact, peaceful, safe. I was home.
I put on my Second Skin, the programmable attire that had replaced
clothing a century ago, and had obviated the need for residential
buildings. I instructed it to play some soothing music from my personal
collection, and, as a distraction, to display an educational program,
on the language of whales, in my Mind's Eye. As the last one up this
morning, I quickly disassembled the SmartWalls of the community Sleeping
Area and stowed them under Oswald's cedar tree. Jorge had set up a
temporary Learning Area for today's three events: A story-telling
session for the children this morning, featuring legends of the wolves;
An afternoon seminar on computer animation; and the evening rehearsal for
Mireille's new play Mirages,
which our community would soon be presenting to some of the
neighbouring communities. I decided to go for a walk in the forest,
with Mireille, and Catherine, one of the community's children, tagging
along. Just ahead of us, a parachute with a package attached dropped to
earth from a helicopter
overhead, guided as it landed by Vittorio and Vanessa, our community's
culinary experts. It was their self-chosen job to convert the week's
nutritious BasicFoods that had just been airdropped by the Eos
community of fabricators, using flavour chemistry and the herbs and
spices the children grew to learn about ecology, into the amazing
gastronomic delights consumed twice
daily by the members of the community.
As we walked in the forest, Catherine skipped ahead, pointing out the
names (species and personal) of the abundant birds, animals and flora
we passed, with Mimic repeating them, and correcting her when she got
them wrong. The smells of earth and rain and wildflowers filled my senses, and my heart.
 But suddenly the warm sun flickering through
the forest canopy went grey, and as I turned over a terrible reality
suddenly dawned on me...
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
