The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  “Joseph, don’t!”

  There was a sharp popping sound.

  The old man collapsed in a heap, eyes glazed open, mouth curved in the suggestion of a smile.

  Aratta dropped to his knees and leaned over the elderly dead man. He hadn’t seen this coming. Somewhere from behind, he heard Susan approaching at a run. He reached over and gently closed the man’s unseeing eyes.

  “Is he—?”

  “Yes.” Aratta said, and stayed kneeling. “He felt it was his time,” he said quietly, and finally got to his feet. They both regarded the still figure as it gradually acquired its true form and vanished from the ripple back into the real world.

  “Did you know Joseph?” Aratta asked.

  “You mean Mr. Galecki?” She shook her head. “Met him only a few days ago”—a lifetime ago—“at Lee’s house. And you?”

  “Same,” replied Aratta. “Just before he died, he said something. It seems he lost his wife. Perhaps not that long ago. Perhaps it was not due to natural causes. It is always a sad thing.” He said that last thing softly, seemingly to himself.

  Neither could think of anything else to say.

  They slowly walked toward the commissioner, who was standing at some distance, wishing to accord the two a measure of privacy.

  “My condolences,” said the commissioner. “Was he close to either of you?”

  “No, not really,” said Susan. She felt melancholic and utterly spent. No one should go out like that, she thought. No one ought to hear as life’s last chord the sound of a bullet entering one’s head. She turned. “Aratta, I would like to retire to my room. Would you be so kind as to teleport me?”

  “But of course,” he said. They both vanished.

  Aratta returned after a minute.

  The commissioner gave him a faint, somewhat bitter smile. “I trust earlier you were trying to illustrate something beyond the truism that different cultures yield different outcomes.”

  “Indeed,” said Aratta. He forced himself not to brood on Joseph Galecki. “Here is what I wanted to make you aware of, Your Grace. Some cultural groups on Earth have been positively inspired by other populations. However, all too often, the success of one group is alleged to come at the expense of other groups cohabiting the area; the success is alleged to derive from systemic maltreatment and exploitation. Behind-the-scenes, dark machinations are claimed to be at play. This may produce a seething desire to see excelling groups brought down or otherwise to redress the alleged injustice. And whenever there is a feeling a change is feasible, you may witness a groundswell of violence, political upheavals, or wealth redistribution schemes.

  “It has happened time and again to members of the more economically successful groups. It happened in the Soviet Union in 1929, as the more prosperous farmers were stripped of what they had and were sent to exile and worse. It happened in Uganda in 1972, with the expulsion of the Gujaratis. It happened in Germany in the 1930s, with the persecution of the Jews.”

  The commissioner listened in silence as Aratta went on, “Ever since at least the French Revolution, some territories convulsed at one point or another by movements that sought to engineer brave new societies, ushering an equalized world order.

  “Now then, this brings me to the culture of the West—still the single most impor­tant cultural force about. At present, it is tinged by a victim-­oppressor, group-identity creed. It is tinged by a paradigm of grievances, accusations, and animosity coupled with societal entitlements, racial preferences, and welfare benefits. Your Grace, the paradigm I speak of amplifies tensions along racial, ethnic, and gender fault lines. It is a patronizing paradigm of double standards. It fragments society to identity groups and frames all group interactions as a zero-sum game. This paradigm feeds on divisiveness. Worse yet, it fans flames and generates divisiveness, seeding resentment and polarization and paranoia as it racializes and politicizes and catastrophizes. This paradigm is a miasma that defiles and warps all that it permeates.”

  Aratta stroked his chin thoughtfully. “The source of the grievances may be long gone, along with the generations of people who perpetrated it. But opportunism is forever in vogue.

  “Your Grace, through the decades, this paradigm has evolved into a complex landscape of championed groups bearing an array of immutable identity markers that include fringe sexual orientations, darker skin complexions, and females. A moral caste system. The groups of the Deserving vary somewhat from one Western country to the next and from one decade to the other. However, the visage of the consummate exploiter and oppressor is fixed: white non-Muslim straight males.”

  Aratta gestured with obvious scorn. “This smelly little orthodoxy views the dynamics of human society as a power struggle among opposing groups that operate in what is a vast spoils system of power and influence. One could imagine this outlook as a marriage of Nazism, Marxism, and Dante: immutable racial features dictating behavioral traits, a perennial jostling for power of groups bearing irreconcilable interests, and widening circles of condemnations and divinity standings.”

  The two of them started pacing along the empty surf.

  “On some matters,” Aratta told the commissioner, “the different sanctioned groups are at odds with each other. In cases of an intersectional collision, the heavier truck pushes out of the way the lighter truck. Thus, as a rule, transgenders trump females, and brown Muslims trump white queers. He who hath a higher victim cred, wins.”

  Grim humor flitted across his face. “It may sound like this identity train is on a journey without end through grievances and fatalism scape, or it may seem like it chugs its way to the never-never land of equivalent outcomes or equitable power-sharing among different identity groups. It’s neither, really. Judging by the actions and by the history of socialist totalitarian movements, it is a power struggle of the deserving underdogs to turn the tables on white males and assume the coveted slot of the exploiter and dominator, resulting in the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is, its variation of it.

  “Your Grace, it’s a power trip striving to become a power grab. And the more alleged injustice, the more legitimacy the powers-that-be have in extending their authoritarian tentacles to redress it.

  “At the same time, this doctrine offers a pathway of limited reprieve for white males who check their privileges, recognize the original sin of their birth, and regard it as their personal savior.

  “Under the guise of civil rights, this doctrine has captured institutional power and subsequently normalized its tenets and delegitimized dissenting outlooks. It was not a popularity contest, which it would have lost. Rather, it had the backing of the courts, which meant the power to litigate, which meant administrations and HR departments fell in line. Thereafter, it was but a matter of time until most everyone else would submit. And so it happened, from Hollywood celebrities to educators to corporate board members. Many who grew up in the decades that would follow don’t even have to pretend. They believe.”

  There was little humor in Aratta’s smile. “Contesting this orthodoxy is but a symptom of having internalized one’s oppression or of deep-seated misogyny and racism—hence, could be dismissed out of hand. Challenging the faithful can never be valid; by definition, such criticism is construed as ‘bullying’ or ‘silencing.’” He stuck his hands in his pockets, as they walked on. “It’s a bright new day. Language has been manipulated, terms mutated and weaponized, reality and facts are treated as malleable. In fact, the intent has been nothing short of creating a linguistic framework in which it is literally impossible to conceptualize heresies. In the public discourse, the intent has been not merely to win the chess match, but to set up a game board with rules and play pieces where no other outcome is possible.

  “And everyone is pressured to affirm, time and again,” Aratta noted, “what is at odds with common sense and with one’s perception of what’s so. Informed consent is not required; this orth
odoxy flows out from the air registers next to the water cooler at the office and at university lecture halls. Everyone breathes it in, willingly or not.”

  “I see,” said the commissioner.

  “Your Grace, there is one thing I wish to show you.”

  The commissioner nodded in affirmation. Aratta clapped his hands, and they were transported to another reflection.

  The two of them now stood on a rooftop, while down below, many hundreds of people marched with great clamor. Loudspeakers blared from one of the street corners.

  “We are in the city of Tianjin, fall of 1966,” Aratta told the commissioner. He continued, “This was the year China descended, once again, into a dreamscape of class enemies, public shaming, and struggle sessions.” He fell silent, and the two of them surveyed the tumultuous scene. “Those young people you see down at the street truly believe in the cause, as young people are prone to. It is anyone’s guess what the older people actually thought during those years.

  “It was a time of social upheaval. In turn, this generated grievances, outrage, and hatred. Those who were discriminated against or were mistreated by government officials had scores to settle and desire to gain the upper hand. But perhaps what foremost propelled the people was fear. Fear of being denounced, fear of being cut off from resources, and fear of persecution. Fear of losing one’s job, reputation, and place in the social network. The only way to stay afloat was to out-denounce and out-proletariat others while getting as close as possible to the centers of power, which granted access to entitlements and opportunities.”

  Aratta and the commissioner peered some more at the street below. “Until a few weeks ago, the Red Guards were the in-group,” Aratta explained. “Some statements made in an influential publication changed things, and for the next month, it is the Rebels who will have had their day in the sun.” Aratta observed the scene one last time. He clapped, and they were back at the real Earth. One more jump, and they were back in one of the private rooms of the Commission Hall. The two of them took seats, facing each other.

  “In the future, if something comparable will come into being throughout the West,” said Aratta, “it will happen because the tendrils, the nodes, of this ideological scheme tether a critical mass of jobs, reputation, and social networks.

  “Through the generations, the web of power and control has been progressively gaining influence. I will give you a sense of its current extent, Your Grace. Practically overnight, the fanciful notion of gender identity divorced of one’s biology went from a fringe belief and a mental disorder, to the reining orthodoxy—where any serious dissent can get one professionally marginalized or banned from the social media networks, where in some contexts and jurisdictions certain pronouns are mandated. There is a broad campaign to redefine what it means to be a man and a woman. Children may be invited to choose their own gender, and at times take hormonal puberty blockers, in effect chemically castrating themselves. Some men alleging to be females join women’s teams. And Air Canada dropped its ‘ladies and gentlemen’ customary greeting, replacing it with the allegedly more-inclusive greeting, ‘everybody.’ The speed this all took hold is telling.

  “For this dogma to acquire a virulent form, it needs a trigger event. But more importantly, it needs to first reach a critical mass of influence and power.”

  “And would it, in your opinion?”

  “It is not possible to predict,” Aratta replied. “The orthodoxy’s web of control may stay at current levels; it may wither; it may expand. Mind you, the related, broader trench warfare between the ideological camps has been waging for generations, if not centuries. Regardless of what the future would bring, that much can be said: Western culture and institutions have taken a beating.”

  He bowed.

  “Thank you for this instructive presentation, Lord Aratta,” said the commissioner. He was well pleased with the last hour he had spent with the man. “I have but one question on a point you had made previously. Why ‘oppressor’?”

  “Your Grace?”

  “Earlier you said something. What is the basis to regard white males as exploitative and domineering?”

  “For a handful of centuries, the white people of Western Europe regarded themselves the masters of the world—and in some real sense, they were. You heard Galecki talk about the West as the source of the modern world, with its standards of living, knowledge, and artistic vit­ality. To this I can add that—directly and indirectly—Western people have been instrumental in raising more people out of poverty and out of intolerant social conventions than any other group.

  “Here is the rest of it, though.

  “Some Western Europeans journeyed about as they pleased, claimed what they saw, and carved political borders at will for other population groups. Their cultural and racial arrogance knew no bounds, and they had a ceaseless drive to impose their outlook and economic operating system throughout. From forcing opium on the Chinese, to their missionaries insinuating themselves practically into every tribe and nation—­Western whites have corrupted or outright unraveled societies worldwide. From coercing some Malays to labor in giant plantations to shipping some Indonesians and Indians to harsh labor in South America and Oceania, Western whites uprooted countless and consigned them to a life of indentured labor or of slavery.

  “Granted, all of those things had little to do with fair-­skinned people of other cultural groups—such as the people in Ukraine or Albania. All the same, during those centuries past, whiteness was all but synonymous with supremacy and paternalism.

  “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

  Chapter 38

  The Western End of Madagascar Island, off the Coast of Africa, Qataria

  Aldabara briskly walked inside a wooden threadwheel. Through a series of pulleys and ropes, he thus gradually brought down the sheets of waxed canvas into place, shielding the paper screen walls of his house from the approaching storm. It was but minutes later when the first drops of rain started coming down, quickly turning into a downpour. The sound of heavy rain was mixed with the howls of strong winds and punctuated with the occasional deep rumble of thunder.

  As was his habit during storms, the aging man sat crossed-legged, eyes closed, letting the cacophony wash over him. At some point, his eyes snapped open at the loud thumping sound that came from right outside the entrance door.

  Aldabara rose up and hurriedly made it to the door. He flung it wide open, squinting due to the sudden gust of rain on his face. There! Lighting flashed white on a nude woman laying on the porch a few steps away. Holding up one arm against the torrential rain, he blinked a few times, straining to see as the night shrouded in darkness the still, prone figure. He couldn’t make out any details. Aldabara went down on all fours and felt his way on the deck until he managed to reach her shoulders.

  The elderly man squatted behind the woman, reached under her arms, and pulled her inside the house, kicking the door shut behind him. He dragged the limp figure across the floor mats toward the small room with a spare bed. The woman was muttering incoherently, seemingly delirious. Aldabara looked down at her but then had to look away, physically dazed and disorientated suddenly. He glanced her way again, but his brain registered nothing but boiling shadows and flashes of light. The elderly man closed his eyes, breathing hard, and wiped with his sleeve the rainwater mingled with sweat that trickled down his face. He shuddered. Something bizarre was at play here. It was as if some primal forces were shrouding the figure in a black haze. He was prevented from beholding her.

  For a moment, Aldabara stood there unsure. Then he heaved the woman up slightly and managed to drag her the rest of the way. Keeping his eyes screwed shut, he rolled her over on the mattress. For a long minute, the only sound in the room was his labored breathing and her unintelligible mumbling.

  Aldabara pulled himself to his feet. Fighting vertigo, he temporarily braced himself against the sid
e table. The elderly man straightened up and left the room, coming back moments later carrying a large towel. He dried the mystery woman the best he could, covered her with a sheet, then heavily sat down, leaning against a wall. Slowly he regained his breath and proceeded to dry his face and arms.

  Now what?

  He stole a glance at the bed and recoiled as a searing pain hit him between his temples. For the briefest of moments, before the midnight fog shrouded her, he glimpsed a fair-skinned woman. A dark hair streaked gray. Eyes closed and lips writhing.

  Aldabara gritted his teeth and peeked once more. For an instance, through the roiling cloud of darkness, he saw. The gray hair was gone; an adolescent lay there. He pressed his hands to his temples and forced himself to gaze her way without flinching. A child. An older woman. Aldabara started to scream from the pain that erupted within his skull. A young woman. A child. An adolescent. And then the pain became too excruciating. Darkness and flashes of light buffeted him, and he felt himself sinking down and losing consciousness.

  The elderly man regained his senses to the sound of pattering rain and urgent, unintelligible whispers. He opened his eyes in the dim room. Outside, the storm was subsiding. His mysterious guest was still lying on the bed next to him. From within the black cloud enveloping her, he could hear her thrashing about, mumbling incessantly. He closed his eyes, straining to catch what she was saying.

  He remained by her bedside the whole night when eventually, sometime before dawn, sleep overtook him.

  Aldabara woke with a start. The sun was high in the clear blue sky. He sat up with a jerk, looking. The bed was empty.

  He rushed out of the room. There! By the window with her back to him. She was wearing one of his larger shirts, long brunette hair still damp from a shower she must have taken.

  She spun around at the sound of his footsteps. A young woman in her mid to late teens regarded him. There was a hint of astonishment in the intense, bottle-green eyes.