Jenny licked the dew that clung to the surface of the membrane that
separated her from the family's indoor garden. It was her favorite
way to extract the refreshing morning dew from the air; at the same
time she could harvest the microscopic chlorophilia that lived in
this thin layer of moisture. "Oh what small pleasures of life", she
thought, as the last of the nourishing nectar of chlorophyll and plant
protein trickle across her tongue. Inside the microcosm was a self-contained
and completely balanced garden that provided essential vitamins and
amino acids that would feed Jenny's family during the winter when
their outdoor organic farm would lie dormant. This indoor agricultural
complex was housed in a quarter-acre geodesic dome that sat, like
a giant hub, in the middle of the twenty-acre family homestead.
Family life was orderly in ERD-7. The disorder and downright chaos
of the past had seemed so archaic to Jenny's sensitivities when she
streaked through History of the late 1900's and Early 2000's
in the Electronic Infusion Lab at school yesterday. "Learning was
so relaxing and yet so energizing," she said to herself as she thought
back to the session in the passive think tank in which she reviewed
the events of entire centuries in just minutes, before joining the
rest of her class for the Meta Events/Cause and Effect debate. Oh
yes, and Jenny's paper entitled "The Great Transition, From Involution
to Simplicity" won her high praise from her Peer Review Achievement
Board as well as from her Staff Resource Advisory Group.
Since the transition period that took control of the earth away
from the developers, entrepreneurs, nation states, and self-proclaimed
messiahs and put it under the jurisdiction of the Sustainable Life
Council the quality of life had flourished. Even by 2100, people
were beginning to move out of the unhealthy death-pits of the big
cities and into the Environmental Renewal Districts that had been
certified safe by the Council.
Jenny's affair with the bizarre and sensational became most evident
in her insatiable curiosity for the historical period of the Great
Transition. And how could anyone really blame her for being titillated
by the period of greatest human transformation ever recorded, when
whole civilizations watched helplessly as huge populations competing
for limited resources collided with nature in a near-total destruction
of life on the planet. People had been so reckless with antibiotics,
fossil fuel emissions, nuclear energy, chemical fertilizers, and insecticides
that the earth's temperature had soared to a dangerously high degree,
much like in a terminably sick patient.
It was then that individuals and governments, afraid that it was too
late for adjustment or repair, gave in to a group of altruistic representatives
from around the world in their proposal for a Sustainable Life Council.
What seemed like extreme measures were taken; they were applied to
the world at large and enforced without global consensus. Civil libertarians
and fundamentalist sects were incensed, but their voices had to be
ignored for a period of nearly 100 years. During that period, several
radical policies were initiated that ensured a future for the world.
Life had to be restored to a dying planet.
A birth control mist was sprayed over all the reservoirs on the planet.
Child birth ceased. Reclamation projects began to systematically clean
up environmentally quarantined land areas. People were permitted to
continue in their food production so long as they gave up all chemically
intrusive methodologies. Cars were abandoned, and bicycles were provided
free at convenient stations throughout the land. Drugs and chemicals
were removed fron the market as commercial commodities and placed
under the strictess control. All weapons were systematically collected
and melted in large farm and reclamation equipment converters. As
the Project, as it was called, was administered globally, death and
dying centers were set up to relieve the sick and suffering. Healthy
people and patients recovering from environmental poisoning were invited
to apply for an Experimental School in which subjects-- such as
Holistic Health, Centering Principles, Cooperative Development, Planetary
Consciousness, and Planetary Stewartship and Sustainable Agriculture--were taught. Graduates of these institutions were permitted
to become the first homesteaders in the reclamation districts. Those
settlers that demonstrated the greatest concern for the welfare of
others were even permitted to have one child to ensure that a healthy
age distribution existed in the districts.
After the great fall of the world population and the imposition of
quarantined zones to stop the spread of uncontrollable diseases, the
reclamation districts became the vital links to the future of the
planet. Some districts were decimated by the plagues that ravished
the period, but, slowly, other districts survived. When the Great
Transition had played itself out, the world population was less than
one hundredth of the level recorded in the year 2000 and the agricultural
land mass had increased two-hundred fold. After the Great Transition,
the Sustainable Life Council decreed that the world population would
never go beyond the current level and that areas, deemed as too populated,
would be balanced by shifts of whole populations to other renewal
sites or phased out through population control.
People finally had a chance to live on acreages that gave everyone
room to plant sustainable foods and to spend significant time alone
in spaces that nourished the spirit of the planet. Groups of people
assembled in lush, centrally-located vacation centers to plan and
dream and invent and dance and sing. Inventions to make life more
hands-on and meaningful were shared. Laughter became, once again,
a hallmark of healthy human interaction. Kindness and selflessness
were the ordinary and the everyday. Expression in the arts flourished.
Jenny had been born in a period when civilization, unencumbered by
doubt, drought, and debacle, was able to make enormous break-throughs
in education, natural disease control, sustainable agriculture, and
human interaction. Devices that instantly infused the mind with
epochs of history, major frameworks of scientific theory, whole language
acquisition, and volumes of great literary works freed educational
institutions to develop ethical principles, utopian culture designs,
fine craftsmanship, appreciation of the arts, wisdom, and the essential
mind.
Jenny recounted the wonders and serenity of modern life, sighed, took
one last lick of chlorophylium and then, spotting a big yellow Viceroy
butterfly fluttering around the vegetation nearby, stretched her arms
outward, and scurried off playfully, waving her arms gently up and
down to imitate the flight of the graceful butterfly.
© Gary Bacon 2005