by Unknown
Away from the coast at about sixty kilometres inland there is a place called the Flowery Nest, which spreads all around the huge town of Denia Vallia with its crimson flowered terraces and the incredible number of spaces designed for plants and flowers. They were literally everywhere: on every column, every balcony, every roof, every arcade, on the facades of the palaces... I remember wondering how these people managed to grow and preserve all these flowers year-round so as to always look so fresh and incredibly beautiful and, above all, why all this excessive flower-flood, which ultimately doesn’t benefit the residents here, who are mostly former students.
Another thing that struck me was the existence of big and shiny butterflies, which, as Silvia informed me, had this place as their natural habitat and were one of the biggest and most beautiful species in Europe. There were times when, walking through the city, you were startled by swarms of hundreds of light blue butterflies that leapt out of clusters of white roses!
But I was more taken with the statues. As soon as I saw one, I’d go straight to study it. I could see the pedestal and read the inscription, but, unfortunately, the names meant absolutely nothing to me. These people may have changed the course of history and I didn’t have the slightest idea who they were. At moments like these, the distance and my difference from Silvia, Stefan and the rest felt greater than ever. I was and always would be the man from a different era.
I cast these bad thoughts out and wandered in the crowd feeling as if I fit in again, like I belonged in their world. At least that’s what my physical appearance said—without betraying anything of what was happening inside me—and that made me swell with pride! I did, however, wonder whether the joy and happiness I felt was ultimately non-existent, whether it was nothing more than mere enthusiasm.
Further down, I saw little boys and girls inside the flower beds, who, dressed up like poppies and cyclamens, were running uncontrollably around and singing out of tune, each one in their own rhythm. The health and whole-heartedness of these dishevelled children, who lacked for nothing and were given the freedom to express their pure and unadulterated joy so effortlessly through songs, laughter, games and funny voices, was incredible.
On the outside, life in the city during the morning was more or less the same as in old times. Thousands of people flooded the streets each with a different destination. Except, they, the prematurely “sacked” from the glothners and their service, had nothing to fear in terms of redundancy, boredom and other symptoms of our time. Most of them went to the ball fields or to the fitness centres, some painted, others studied but, no matter how long I waited, I never saw any labourer in a flat cap, any employee in a stiff white collar or any businessman in a suit with briefcase tucked underarm.
SOCIAL CLASSES, HIERARCHY, MANNERS AND THE DEFEATED BEAST OF BUREAUCRACY
From a social point of view, the modern perception of the Flowery Nest was that of a lower-class state, that is, the opposite of Waren, the Garden of Lilies, New Göteborg, Soonval in the South and, above all, Norfor. I thought about Aria who, as she said, chose it for its aura of spirituality and its overall attractiveness.
As time passes, I get deeper into their meanings and evaluative beliefs. The class hierarchy here has a purely intellectual and cultural content. The Flowery Nest, for example, hosts very few spiritual leaders, who live there only temporarily. The people there are educated by following the spiritual guidelines and the ideological trends that come from the large centres of the North.
There are also some old graduates of the schools of Norfor living there, truly enthusiastic people and passionate art lovers who might not be great artists themselves but know how to distinguish the good and beautiful elements in an artistic creation. True receivers, they’re capable of even bursting into tears at the sight of a work of art.
We had so few people like this in our era. Here there are infinitely more. Plus, there’s only a handful of the type of people who, lacking any esoterism, simply accumulate knowledge so that they can show it off in corresponding circumstances. These people confuse knowledge with education but are, in actual fact, truly uneducable.
And yet, this majority of cultivated people with this exceptional inner refinement, who would be more than welcomed and highly estimated in our era, in this era simply constitute the relatively lower class and I’ve often heard them being accused of doing nothing. The most mediocre physician or the most humble nurse are considered socially superior than Stefan, Hilda and the rest of the neighbours of the villas, provided that they, too, can "experience" nature and "be moved” by the high art, which I understand to be the case with nearly everyone from the Volkic generation and onwards.
Therefore, concerning the masses, the established social perception of today challenges the correctness of spending decades on studying, concerts and spectacles, courses and lectures, exhibition visits and travels, sports and other recreational activities that leave them no time to do something for their fellow human beings.
And all that is completely unrelated to the service. I remember the first days of my new life in the Molsen institute, which itself was a microcosm of society: an entire, small community with all the characteristics of the current social structure. The office partners were doing their service there. I still remember their leader, a dark-skinned nineteen-year-old boy who bowed to all the patients, the Cives, that is, who were being hospitalised there, as if they were going to tip him.
The nurses were considered socially superior to their Cives and, of course, to the office partners, the partners whose job was to assist them in keeping records and other general administrative matters. The nurses, therefore, were not doing their service; they were all mature and treated by everyone like priestesses.
Leaving the Molsen institute I became more aware of all the different steps of the current social hierarchy. So here’s how it works: the Lorffes from the Valley of the Roses, all kinds of Ilectors, the “leaders” of the Aidersen Institute and all its branches and, last but not least, the great Maîtres of Norfor are the ones who rule. That’s who the masses have as their idols. All these people, according to today's meritocratic perceptions, now in 3906AD, hold the positions that a thousand years ago were held by the scientists who, in turn, had been chosen by the great men of our era—from CC to D, from 200 to 500 according to their calendar, that is circa 2600-2900 AD)—and who in our own terms were something like the tycoons of America, the Supreme Court Judges, the great politicians, the self-seekers, the generals and the aristocrats. Besides, I had verified for myself that the few existing administrative positions were covered by the partners who were doing their service. And to think that ordinary Cives like Stefan were considered immeasurably superior to them.
In fact, the exemption of the Cives from any mandatory intermingling with the office partners—similar to our own public servants—or at least the reduction of this contact to the minimum possible was a right that had been definitively won centuries ago by their Universal Commonwealth. And it is actually considered to be one of their most valuable and enviable achievements, something like the securing of civil rights and individual freedoms was for us. Of course, such a right wasn’t won from one day to the next, but gradually, over hundreds of centuries. And it’s a very promising thought that the monster of bureaucracy will one day crumble to the ground, defeated by logic.
The administrative approvals that are required nowadays are very few—mainly of a scientific nature—and are willingly brought ready to the Cives by the partners. This willingness to serve is one of the most fundamental elements of their culture.
The demographic and traffic regulation and control is always done in a certain way and is always communicated directly to the Cives, so that they are aware of it. That is all. There are no violations but, even if there are, the intervention of the partners in individual cases is unjustifiable. For example, Stefan’s linsen is in constant need of tune-ups but he is not required to remember anything or keep records. The partners are the ones whose r
esponsibility it is to keep records of the dates and details and to ask when they can come and get the linsen and return it fixed without bothering him! In fact, they have even been taught how to stand with respect not only before Stefan, but also any other Civis. And all this respect stems merely from the fact that the latter have fulfilled their “social duty”; their service.
Now, if one focuses only on the Cives, one will realise something else that we didn’t have in our time: the current class distinctions, from the Lorffes to the rest of the population—the masses, that is—do not stand in the way of all social classes obtaining the same inner cultivation, the same air of “high society”, the same joy of life. And this is something that we never achieved, not even during the French Revolution.
These people have managed to achieve—and I don’t even know how—that the mass be a soulful receiver, have the same courtesy and the same manners as the top intellectuals of Rosernes Dal. And, as they informed me, they all consider themselves descendants of the old working class!
It seems incredible how this class managed to evolve to such extent since that decisive moment in history—over twelve hundred years ago, circa 2600 AD when the technocrats and natural scientists undertook world governance—when the political leadership was abandoned and replaced by the Marie Curies and the Max Plancks of the time. And I remember how surprised I was when Stefan told me that the great ancestors of today’s Ilectors used to be industrial workers.
For a social observer of our time, a walk through the streets and the gardens of the Flowery Nest would surely be of great value, to see with their own eyes how everyone, without exception, knew how to dress, how to talk, how to enter a group for the first time, how to walk and stand in any given circumstance. It is perhaps surprising that a world so advanced in its inner culture, doesn’t consider this commitment to “good manners” as something superficial, something too formal and conservative, too unworthy a social convention for the “superior people” to engage in. But they argue that something that reflects a real emotional and moral wealth cannot be classified as shallow and superficial.
Seeing them give this tone of joy and happiness to everything they do is truly delightful. You see them socialise with each other and the current perception that has passed from generation to generation from a very young age comes to mind: this guileless and selfless love combined with courtesy and good manners: a true masterpiece!
And I wonder: is it the property of each person individually or is it another admirable achievement of their current upbringing and education? In my opinion, it’s neither of the two on their own, but rather the two combined. This unpretentious finesse and courtesy of theirs, their typical nervousness, their morality and modesty and their complete indifference to cheap humour, to the instinct gaining the upper hand and to following some pre-planned strategy in their everyday social life are not things that come out of the blue or that are earned only through persistent exercise.
The same goes for their salvation from the old ancestral inferiority complexes that used to manifest themselves through selfishness, arrogance and vanity. So many generations before this one had spent their entire life in such an atmosphere of love and true nobility, that it gradually became their own and was transformed into a natural and effortless way of life.
I imagine how uncomfortable these people would feel if in the presence of some of our own, clever professionals, whose essential purpose was to seal profitable business deals and weren’t even close to interested in the delicacy of manners or subtlety of style and expression. They would be completely consternated from the very first second. They would conclude that they had to do with boorish, primitive people. And they’d be right. On the contrary, they might have been able to communicate with a “good” man of our time for a couple of minutes. And I’m saying a couple of minutes because after a while, our “good” men would get bored, think there was nothing to be gained from that conversation and get up and leave since even I was tempted to take advantage of their naivety and gullibility in the beginning.
Now you can see that men and women cannot tolerate even the slightest “politics” and expedience in their social interactions even when it comes to a handshake. Any calculating behaviour—if, of course, it comes to their attention—causes adverse reactions. These people do art for art’s sake and never for profit, otherwise it stops being art. They make friendships for friendship’s sake and for the spiritual nourishment it offers, away from utilitarian objectives.
THEIR RENAISSANCE AND HUMAN EVOLUTION BEFORE THE FIRST NIBELVIRCH
9-XII Again
(Late at night)
As far as their inner cultivation is concerned, Stefan had told me a while ago, “Our teachers have their ways. For each of those children there comes a time, even before they enter their adolescence, when they feel such an attraction to our culture that, learning about it in school and gradually coming to a deeper understanding of it, makes the voices of the generation of 876 (3272 AD) come alive in their heads! That year, millions of people stood in endless queues for months, day and night, to see the newly completed then “Temple of Love and Peace” in the Valley of the Roses. They stood in such awe that they thanked God for not having been born in a different era. In that same awe and with that same inner need our youths stand before the spiritual edifice of our civilisation.
As I learnt, a hundred and ten years before the first Nibelvirch, Alicia Neville added the Temple of Love and Peace to the sea of the Valley’s masterpieces, which was considered to be the greatest marble creation of all times. They too had their own Renaissance, around the turn of the seventh century of their own chronology (circa 3100 AD), the starting point of which was marked by the building of the Valley of the Roses. This century went down in their history as incomparably higher than the 5th century BC of Athens or the 19th of Western Europe.
One night, I searched in the Reigen-Swage for this incredible building located in the outskirts of Markfor which, as I noticed, manages to combine the symmetry and harmony of ancient sculptor Ictinus with the majestic way in which the peoples of the North expressed the soul in their architectural masterpieces.
Sometimes, the information I have to process is so much that I get lost and confused. I go back and forth from subject to subject that I often forget to mention the most important parts. I’m really trying to record as much as I can and in the most precise way possible, but I don’t always succeed.
Now I remembered something else, a bit irrelevant: the first one to foresee the evolution of mankind was an ordinary biologist of the Valley named Jansen, who at the time wasn’t among the best in his field but got luckier than his teachers. After centuries of life in this vast spiritual capital and drawn out initiation of several generations into long-term self-cultivation that had refined the psyche of the people and had transformed them into more sophisticated human beings—and everyone here verifies that no interventions were ever made on infants by the biological institutes of the Valley—he, Jansen, was the first who, with great confidence, announced from his lab to the whole world that he had proof that supported that there had been tiny but extremely significant anatomical changes in the most delicate and important neurons of the brain, changes that were directly connected to the quality of spiritual life of the residents of the Valley. Everyone agreed on their existence, but they had never managed to prove if those changes were indeed a result of the quality of the spiritual life or vice versa.
Regardless of the differences of opinion and ways of expressing them owed to the different time periods, another wise man, Jacobsen, had made a vague statement regarding the possibility of a new, eminent flourishing of culture. Twenty-five years later, if I remember correctly, the aesthete and philosopher Close and Lelia Nopotkin called the attention of their generation to the need to keep their eyes open, have faith and be prepared for something unexpectedly great: the "century of secret promise", for what "is today invisible."
The specialists of each field had their own the
ories and opinions on the subject. In the various observatories in the faculties of the Valley, each of which had the size and structure of a small town, the two Ferids, father and son (astronomers and thinkers), along with many other faithful followers of the venerable elder, a great lover of the universe, were looking for spiritual influences and messages from distant, kindly beings.
Before the year 830, Aloisius Nilson, an intellectual and recluse from Flambia, wrote from there, in the midst of his solitude, about the “great events that are dozing in the depths of the future” and that “they may not be as distant as they seem”. He said that “the day is not far when the dialogues of Plato may be rewritten; when new Parthenons may be built and new 9th symphonies may be composed.”
None of them, however, was able to predict—neither then, nor later in history—the arrival of the Nibelvirch a hundred and fifty years later.
Those hopeful and promising sermons lasted for decades. In fact, the last years before the arrival of the Nibelvirch, a few Ilectors—mainly Bearen, Tatiana Baclyn and some fellow named Gunnar whose last name I don’t remember—spoke to their generation about many things related to this, both general and more specific, things that they later were lucky enough to see with their own eyes.
Humanity waited for “that which was to come” for decades. The conditions of life had improved so much that they had reached the level of making prediction possible. But there were many who said that people would be better off without the ability to predict with such confidence a spiritual revolution that would happen sixty years later, the way they could formerly predict a natural phenomenon like the coming of a comet. So intense was the thirst of their hearts that they couldn’t wait.