The Loved and the Lost (50 page)

As humans, we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves for being aggressive and individually greedy. Any creature that had to fight its way out of the primeval ooze and survive by consuming others and protecting its offspring by destroying and consuming the family units of other creatures over billions of years cannot be expected to change its instincts quickly, if ever. Was it a mistake of nature to give us an intelligence that would cause us to outstrip our biology and not be regulated by the immediate environment? Was it a divine plan (or joke on the creator's part) to give humans the ability to destroy ourselves and much of the planet's life forms much more quickly than the evolutionary forces that usually bring down a species? At this point, we can't know. (Hey, that just gave me an idea for another story.)

One last thing on this topic. I have in my little brain the idea that, in some future story, I'm going to show that in the 31
^st
-century, humans are gaining the ability to control themselves and thus the one-to-one necessity of A.I.s to humans is being lowered. I don't know if I'll do that because people have changed culturally or because they'll have actually have bred out of themselves this need to dominate others to an extreme. We shall see.

At the beginning of
The Lens and the Looker
,
humans in the 24th-century can't time travel. They can in the 31st-century and a History Camp counselor from that future, Arimus, comes back and kidnaps three spoiled hard cases: Hansum, Shamira and Lincoln. He takes them back to a time when there is no social safety net and he abandons them. That's when the fun and adventure starts.

So, as a writer whose stories depend on time travel, do I actually believe it's possible? Not in the way it's used by me or most speculative fiction authors. Am I suggesting that in the foreseeable future it's possible? I used to believe it, but now I'm not sure. It's impossible to be certain about things like that.

Then why do I use time travel? Well, it's a great literary device that allows characters from different times to be thrown into the same arena of life to compare notes and knock heads - and the more outrageous the situation the better. You see, for me the art of writing (and the fun) is to make the impossible seem real and truly plausible; to craft words in a way that the reader will want to suspend disbelief. Also, time travel works especially well for me since my interest in doing these stories is to be part of a discussion about what type of world the human race will plan for the future. Time travel allows me to compare the past, as well as the future, and then I hope some readers will decide to live the changes they want to see happen in the world. Hey, like Arimus said, “. . . what's life mean, without an impossible dream?”

One last thought about time travel and the one thing I am certain about. We shouldn't hold our breath about it coming soon enough to help fix and save the world. The older I get, the more obvious it becomes that we're on our own for that.

This is a bit of a catch-all section. Because of space constraints, I have included a few brief thoughts that could each have their own sections. I'm hoping these thoughts will be expanded in a longer version of a “Back Story” to my books, or on my website, in the future.

In the 24
^th
-century of
The Verona Trilogy
, I created something called a steady-state economy. In our present economic system there must be continual growth and expansion, which leads to the continual consumption of natural resources and, as a repercussion, the continual growth of populations. At the present time we cannot have one without the other.

In a steady-state economy, I envisage scientists having determined (and the A.I.s confirming unbiasedly) the amount of calories of energy that would be safe for three hundred million people to extract from the planet without interfering with the delicate and very long-term balance of nature.

These units of energy are then converted into “money” (like gold and silver was used as a standard in the past) and divided among the population as a guaranteed income.

I retain “money” in this future because I see it as probably the greatest of human inventions. It has allowed humans to engage in complex bartering and include knowledge and service to be part of economies. So, where do the phrase, “Money is the root of all evil,” and other related clichés come from? While money has the potential to distribute the wealth of a community in some kind of equitable fashion, it also has the potential to centralize power into fewer and fewer hands over time. That's where our world is at now.

However, in my future world, after individuals use what resources they need for food, clothing, shelter, transportation and their other general needs, they can invest the rest of their share of the world's bounty with people who have the talent and ambition to create technologies, goods and services that other people want. If these technologies are innovative and use smaller amounts of resources than previously, then the surplus energy (which is money) is their profit, allowing them to have more latitude to be more creative and innovative.

So, this is not a nanny state. It has recognized that it is vital to allow people to have outlets for their creative energies and ambitions, whatever they are, (business, entrepreneurial, technological, scientific, artistic) But it has also recognized that the natural world is finite and the rest of the ecosystem of the planet has to be taken into account on society's balance sheet. This is the one line the ultra-ambitious can't overstep. That's where the A.I.s come in.

Finally, I did an online search on a phrase I thought I invented, “steady-state economy.” What popped up was a group of professors, economists and environmentalists who have already started an association on this topic. So, it's started. We shall see where it goes. Look it up if you want.

There's a clichéd phrase in our culture, “Those with the most toys when they die, win.” Of course, the originator of the phrase is definitely saying this ironically, but so many people in our world live like this. As a baby boomer, I was part of the Yuppie (Young, Upwardly-mobile Professional) generation in the 1970's and 80s. As boomers age, we all now aspire to be Woopies. (Well Off Old People).

But seriously, so many people today have lost hope in the future, or more dishearteningly, they don't even know we're supposed to be having a discussion about it. In my 24
^th
-century future, as opposed to wanting to be rich and decadent, people aspire to be elders. These are experienced leaders in the community who accept the responsibility and are given the authority to keep society strong and steady. After all, who wouldn't want to be an elder when along with that role comes the respect and admiration for helping keep the world in a shape that will allow humans to continue existing on planet Earth for thousands of years?

As everyone has a guaranteed income in the future I envisage, schools are no longer factories to train industry's workers at society's cost. Everyone receives a classical education, including sciences, maths, technology basics, history, arts, crafts, food production, etc. As people get older, the ambitious ones will specialize in their interests. And, as mentioned a bit earlier, regional craftsmanship reemerges for clothing, household goods, building, food, etc. Most people will be happy to lead healthy lives, able to express themselves through their talents, raise their children and be part of a community. Progress is measured very differently in this world.

One of the fun things I have happening in this future world is people living in small communities of 30 to 60 people. Anthropologists have determined that this was the size of the majority of human settlements up to around 10,000 BCE. It's a natural number then, one that allows survival of a group. It gives enough variety of personalities and talents to fulfill the group's needs: hunters, gatherers, artisans, men, women, leaders and followers. I envisioned a good portion of people in the future choosing to go back to living in these smaller communities. However, in my future model of modernity, because we've been able to retain a very high level of technology, people don't live lives of subsistence. They don't live lives of opulence either, but ones in which they are comfortable, produce most of their own food, and are able to communicate with and contribute to the rest of the world. This goes hand in hand with the steady-state economy, where growth is not necessary or seen to be good. Progress is now the development of ideas and the ability to continually do more with less.

Large cities were necessary, in part, so people could be safe from “others”;
other
tribes, then
other
city states, and then
other
civilizations. As they grew, their leaders harnessed the populations in different ways to grow further. Cities were also the engines of economic growth and growth was seen as desirable. They centralized resources and production, allowing surpluses, which eventually became known as profit. And the natural world? Up until recently, it was treated as an inexhaustible storehouse of materials, just waiting for humans to put it to
good use
. In the new economy of the early 24
^th
-century, where the physical size of a city doesn't matter and the planetary population has diminished to a thirtieth of that of early 21
^st
century Earth, cities were no longer necessary or desirable.

I gave New York City the arbitrary size of 30,000. That was to show that what we now think of a small city in the early 21
^st
century could once again be seen as a large center. But it's a large center not for industry or commerce, but for culture and education. It also acts as a meeting place, when online conferencing just won't do. Even in the future, some things are best done face to face.

I have Manhattan Island underwater. Why? With our glaciers and icepacks melting and our planet going into a warming cycle, (arguably sooner than it would have because of humans burning fossil fuels) the oceans are rising. In this future world, the coastlines of the continents have changed again, just like they've always done over long stretches of time. I thought it would be engaging to show one of the liveliest cities of our civilization now resting with the ancient ports of Alexandria under water.

It could be interesting to note here that, at the height of the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago, ice sheets many
miles
thick extended south of Seattle, Washington, Chicago, Illinois and even New York City in North America. In Europe and Asia, ice sheets covered all of Greenland, most of Great Britain and the Irelands, all the Scandinavian countries, the northern part of Germany, Poland, Belarus, and much of what is now northwest Russia. Because so much of the world's water was locked in the ice, sea levels were as much as 400 feet lower than they are today. So, the world as we know it is not as permanent and perpetual as most people in our modern cultures think. If we are to survive, we must understand the cycles of our environment.

When constructing a world for
The Verona Trilogy
, I wanted to show that a future civilization in harmony with the planet doesn't necessarily have to be monolithic, or a single type of culture. There is variety, experimentation and growth, although the philosophy and laws for society's long term survival still prevail. So, while you'll find people who live in micro-communities of around sixty and in cities in the low thousands, you also will find regions like Haudenosaunee.

I chose this society because I was so impressed when I studied how it had been organized. Anthropology and oral histories are at odds about when the League of Six Nations, or The Iroquois Confederation was formed, somewhere between the mid 12
^th
and 15
^th
century. But what is not in dispute is that there did exist an advanced, egalitarian democracy, where individual and group rights were balanced and heavily entrenched in the culture. Five and then six native nations, including the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, the Seneca nations and, then in 1722, the Tuscarora, banded together under the vision of a man named Deganawida. He was known as the Great Peace Maker, a Christ or Buddha-like figure who convinced warring tribes to come together in peace. The region of what is now New York State, Ohio and the Saint Lawrence Valley of Southern Ontario and Quebec held millions of this native population. Although still a culture that had not progressed far technologically, it transformed millions of acres of land into a sophisticated balance of field crops, hunting grounds and areas of trees selected for food and housing materials. It also developed trade routes and built large settlements of long houses.

But what I wanted to showcase was the political system. It was one where the leaders followed their populations, where the clan mothers picked the leaders, and everyone contributed to the general welfare of the group. Individuals in this culture had a measure of personal freedom that caused many of the newly-arrived, indentured European settlers to run away from their masters and join the natives. It is said that the American constitution was partly inspired by the Haudenosaunee civilization, although the American Founding Fathers didn't quite get it right with their highly centralized government.

I won't speak much about History Camps here, because I think their operations are pretty well described within the stories. The one example I use in
The Verona Trilogy
is “History Camp, Verona 1347.” It's a very close approximation of Verona in medieval times.