by Unknown
Then came the great days of 1050 (3439 AD), with the priceless confirmatory work of Gibling, Eric Gord and Tervalsen. The literary movement of the Minores, from the Aidersen, about which Jaeger and Stefan had talked to me quite a few times in the past, came later, in the late 11th century. The works of this school of art and thought remained classics throughout the entire Volkic history. In fact, in Lain’s library, I saw with my own eyes some of Fletchius’s relevant writings, dating from that era. But after many unsuccessful attempts to study them, I concluded that they just weren’t for me.
During the next few years, Alexis Volky found global recognition as the “greatest intellectual hero of the human race.” And only after the initial excitement had subsided did many descendants (MC-MCC) realise that a figure such as Volky had no need to exaggerate, lie or embellish facts. Facts were enough by themselves. He was the first one who was able to bear to see and tell the world, without adding anything of his own. They said that he truly was a magnanimous and extremely gifted spirit; but that’s all. Some, however, went so far as to unsuccessfully compare Volky with the greatest representatives of their natural sciences: Astrom, Vilinski, Jergesen and Sioberlef and even with our own Newton and Einstein!
Nevertheless, despite the admittedly weak efforts to reduce Volky’s value and contribution to the development of global culture, he stands here among them as one of the dominant figures of history and, based on their beliefs, he will remain so for centuries to come.
Hundreds of thousands of biographies have already been written about him up to the present day, not counting the ones on Volkic preaching. Each and every one of his ancestors—all of whom lived in the Valley—have been studied, from the most ancient one to the most recent Volky who, as a matter of fact, was one of the 200. Tinersen—the one with the parables—was one of the many, maybe even one of the greatest, who popularised and taught the Volkic preaching after 1200, with the year 2396 A.D. as year 1, so around 3596 A.D.
The spiritual preaching of the Volkists had the same immeasurable influence on the world in the visual arts, prose, poetry and philosophical thought, but also in the shaping of the moral conscience and moral education of young people, that is, the contemporary view of human life and the world in general.
LAST DAY AT MARKFOR
14-VI
Today is the penultimate day of my stay in my favourite city. In the morning I went to the centre of Markfor, ancient Magenta, to… vote! Nobody here asks if you live permanently in the city or if you are entitled to vote and such. This perfect lack of control by the Committee of Technical Agency Partners of the broader Markfor area, the region where they are assigned as election representatives, is owed to the fact that there have never been any incidents of any kind of trickery or fraud for many generations now.
The elections concern the construction of new buildings in the centre of Markfor and the maquettes have been displayed to the public for two months now. The main ones are maquettes of three large buildings, meant to be constructed for educational purposes, but there are also some floricultural project suggestions for the decoration of the parks and squares of the state and any Civis who is a permanent resident can go and vote based on their preferences. So I, too, employed my mediocre sensory abilities, carefully chose the ones I liked the most and voted. In my head, my love for Markfor atoned for my “fooling” them by pretending that I live here permanently, but deep down I know that “one of them” would never do such a thing; they would never get carried away and lose their self-control. At least through these pages I can confess. But apart from that, I don’t think I would even tell Stefan…
18-VI
I don’t think I could ever experience such a thrill, such a lovely anticipation for the journey anywhere but in this new life of mine! It’s now the third day of our journey and despite all the fatigue—now we don’t only fly all the time—despite the countless crowds and the amazing variety of new images and experiences, tonight I found some time to write a few lines, not so much to describe what I’ve seen— which is impossible—but to say how happy I’ve felt throughout this whole trip, much happier than in any of my previous trips, and especially the one to Norfor.
This time I found it easier to get in touch with these vast states, whose size and noise scared me to the core seven months ago. I remember that I couldn’t shake the feeling that, at any time, they would fall on me and crush me. Well, to be honest, another reason why I don’t feel that way now is because neither Torneo nor New Göteborg, nor Anolia appear that big or crowded when you’re coming from Markfor…
They’re much smaller and much more beautiful and they don’t have any immense underground illuminated states. Their population is less than a million and their sky is free from the dense steely nets of the overhead bridges that create a huge weight on your chest when you’re unaccustomed like I was.
And their names are easy and calm: Rosa Azzura, Maribor, Liebach, Lilienborg, New Scaldia, Rosenborg, New Christiania, Sotsiana, Bozen, Nymalmoe… They’re all garden cities, continuous and successive in most cases, around the areas of Ancient Tyrol, Slovenia and now old city of Stirlen, as I noticed on the map.
But no matter how beautiful everything I’ve seen these three days is, I know that nothing would seem as beautiful if I wasn’t filled with this amazing thrill of the journey itself. And this sweet joy of the journey, just like every other kind of joy, comes from within; it’s a gift from my inner self! To have the fortune to travel with Stefan, Hilda and Silvia is a precious feeling! So, how can the endless rains of yesterday spoil your mood, when the sun lives now in your soul?
20-VI
Thousands of nature’s signs, more and more every day, foreshadow the arrival of the spring. Yesterday was a lovely sunny day. In a couple of weeks everything will be blossoming here.
THEIR AMAZING MOTORWAYS AND OTHER MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION
New Göteborg, 21-VI
The distance between Assilia and New Göteborg is approximately 70 kilometres and this part of the motorway runs all the way through dense plane trees and silver poplars. Stefan said that we were approaching major centres of production and that behind these idyllic landscapes, deep inside the earth, there were huge, powerful pipelines and power converters that bring titanic forces to the glothners of New Göteborg, all the way from the Atlantic coast, thus providing the young people that are doing their two-year service there with the necessary energy.
The total length of the motorway is 2500 km if I'm not mistaken. It is the same autostrada with that of Anolia and Torneo, the famous Taussen bilvej, as they now call it, and it connects far bigger states than the ones we’re going to visit. Stefan didn’t know much about the wide, ancient old road surface when I asked him. He never does when it comes to issues of contemporary art and technology... It seemed like it was made of a synthetic, light green crystal, without, however, being transparent and it is said that its maintenance won’t trouble but the very distant descendants of the present generation.
Seeing the width of this motorway you cannot believe in your eyes! Something less than half a mile! But they say that this is now common for their major intercity motorways. But it’s not just the motorways; dozens of roads and streets spread all around them and among them lawns, flower gardens, flowerbeds. From above, the green lawns look like strips embroidered on the landscape, stretching thousands of kilometres.
The widest motorways are the ones used by the ragiozas, these personal, multi-storey, transcontinental wheeled vehicles, which resemble articulated vehicles. There are also roads for pedestrians, velos, and all sorts of today’s transport means.
Something else that struck me is that their roads are divided according to speed: there are separate roads for all the different speeds of all the different vehicles! We had taken the special road designed for very low velocity because we wanted to enjoy the views and the trip as a whole. “There’s no hurry; we can go at our own pace,” Stefan had said.
On the route we’ve chosen th
ere are hundreds of larinters, fitness centres, swimming pools, resting spaces, health stations and numerous shops scattered all around, housing the always available and willing “partners of Bilvej”, those in charge of this giant motorway.
Countless signs with instructions and directions make the life of even the most distant and unknowing visitors easier and a whole crew is ready to help the romantic Cives that still prefer land travel even if these roads are now considered impractical and quite old-fashioned. Of course, they chose air travel for the significant trips. No other means of transport can match air transport in either speed or safety. Even the heaviest shipments of materials in huge quantities are today effortlessly executed via air travel.
According to Stefan, we are now crossing a countryside that only seems to be uninhabited, but isn’t! If you go deep inside, behind the dense rows of trees you will see a fairly dense settlement. After all, I've said it before: there are no uninhabited places here today; only sparsely populated or densely populated ones.
An endless array of giant, artificial, white and pink rhododendrons cuts now the road in half. I heard Sylvia calling them with their, familiar to me, ancient name: “Albaspines”. It is obvious that people have played their part here as well, interfering with the metabolism and altering organic matter, in their own way. It looks like the small earthly God has once again worked wonders, making the rhododendrons stand still, greeting the passers-by!
I also want to note the only ugly thing I saw this morning. About half an hour before we reached the city, three rhododendrons in a row were trying to keep their old and parched branches a few meters away from a busy road and no one seemed to notice or even care. The only reason I was impressed by that gap in greenery and by the ugliness of the dead trees was because I know how much attention they pay nowadays to such details.
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES, CLIMATE CONTROL AND “RETURN TO THE BASICS”
As acknowledged by Stefan, in a short talk we had, their technical and technological culture has been in decline for several centuries now. Their ancestors had succeeded in much larger and more complex projects. Of course, they now claim that they no longer need to repeat such colossal ventures. For example, I haven’t been to Australia, but I saw on the Reigen-Swage that it has been converted into a huge generator that supplies on its own almost the entire globe with energy!
Now, as far as agriculture is concerned, they have returned to harvesting crops, which now no longer grow periodically, but do not depend on the weather any more. During that terrible period of overpopulation, people had abandoned their land and their flocks and had sought the solution of the global nutrition crisis in laboratories. People of today do the opposite: they go back to the old ways, not out of necessity, but out of nostalgia, improving, of course, the previous methods and procedures by employing their perfect technological advancements. Thanks to this shift in lifestyle, there are again meadows and grasslands in the picture; thanks to the partners of the Lansbee (rural areas) and, mainly, thanks to the flocks. You can’t even imagine the incredible technical training today’s shepherds and farmers have. The combination of diligence and attention to the monitoring and control of the “technical instruments”- which now have their own, individual kind of memory and judgment, similar to the human mind, is their recipe for their success.
At the same time they also control the climate, as did their ancestors during the era of advanced technology, and therefore have expanded their practices to areas that, in the past, we couldn’t believe could be inhabited. Where there once were glaciers and deserts you now see thick, lush meadows, experimental nurseries, pastures and new crops. The same goes for the endless plains and plateaus of Central Asia that are now inundated with this unheated diffused light that they have managed to create. Yet another Herculean feat!
The current population in the immense state-countries has risen to several hundreds of millions under this controlled and pleasant-for-humans climate, especially around the major nuclear production units, where an incredible number of settlements have accumulated. Augerinia, the Star of the East, the Steel Castle, Terringa, New Tashkent, Mata Uralia, Samarkanda, Nova Tuguska (the Nygusca of the Europeans), ancient Irkutsk and Omska, Boldieno, Nysuomi… Huge human beehives of ten, twelve, even fifteen million people, and at the same time industrial cities that made use of the inexhaustible energy reserves of the vast continent of Asia (gas, hydroelectric potential, solar, wind).
The fact that almost the entire globe is flooded with white people doesn’t surprise me as much as the fact that they’ve found the way for all these people to live and prosper to such an unexpected degree! That I could have sworn was impossible!
THE MASSIVE COLONISATION OF MARS AND THE GREAT DESTRUCTION
Even that frantic colonising expedition on Mars from the year 2204 and onwards, which lasted about sixty years, is the work of their ancestors at the time of their technological acme. They actually managed to build and maintain entire villages and housing estates on the “interplanetary colonies” of the red planet. In fact, the colony thrived for several years even under very adverse conditions for humans. Now, however, the majority of their settlements is in decay. On that planet, nature was the one that prevailed! Twenty million souls perished within a few months —mostly Anglo-Saxons and Slavs, but also many settlers from the mainland of Europe—due to the harsh and unexpected change of climate and atmospheric conditions that no human technical device was able to restrain. The indiscriminate, natural forces were the cause of the massive holocaust of 2265. But still, even for just a few years, man’s great dream and ambition to colonise another planet came true! The few survivors of the terrible doom of the “Columbuses” of the ether, who managed to return to Earth, bequeathed future generations with plenty of stories about another fabulous human feat.
In conclusion, from what I saw in the Reigen-Swage Institute in Markfor during the winter, one thing is certain: about a thousand years ago, there was unimaginable progress in science and its applications. They had acquired a civilisation so advanced that, when you saw its works of art, you wondered if they had been made by human hands! If that progress had continued uninterrupted, I cannot even imagine what today would have been like. But the so-called period of “suspension” intervened and it played such a key role in history that today it feels like their time is only a couple of hundred years more technologically advanced than ours.
Their inner culture, however, is thousands of years ahead thanks to the experiment of the Aidersen Institute and the Valley of the Roses. That’s why these people are so incomparably different from me in terms of mental and moral life issues; much more different than we were from the people of two millennia ago.
Thus, their lives are now steeped in serenity. The first peaceful days became peaceful years, and those, in turn, peaceful centuries. Man was redeemed from violence, fear for the future, poverty, exile and mutual destruction. Thanks to the “Aidersian lifestyle, culture and tradition”, human value and dignity found vindication.
EXTRATERRESTRIALS: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
But today’s people are also at a major disadvantage: with the disappearance all risks whatsoever, humans’ ability to fight and cope with difficulties has been dulled. It’s incredibly unlikely to find warriors nowadays; they’re like a defenceless species on the brink of extinction. Therefore, in case of a potential external danger, nobody would know how to react. But if you argue that to somebody, they’ll reply that there are no longer dangers and more powerful neighbours and all that are a thing of the past. In fact, they explained to me that the destruction of civilisations always takes place immediately after a sudden boom in culture when hardships have yielded to art and inner cultivation. That’s when the uncouth invaders make their appearance and ruin everything.
But the most incredible thing I’ve been told is that they don’t even fear their extra-terrestrial neighbours! They’ve told me that they know all about the neighbouring planets and that the few that have life on them (!) ar
e inhabited by intelligent and spiritual beings that lack the instinct of domination and the concept of conquest and expansion. They have a much higher view of and respect for life and they are completely harmless to humans! They could have pursued contact with us thousands of years ago if they had wanted to. They already had the necessary technology to do it, but they didn’t, because these creatures did not want any contact or relationship with us, not even a peaceful one. They preferred to watch us and study us from above, thus satisfying their thirst for research. It was in their nature; that was their mentality.
The only times that they tried to contact us were when they felt that man was in danger of extinction because of his immaturity and his inability to handle the tremendous power of nature that he had unlocked. “Then,” they told me, “they approached us, taught us, and disappeared again…”
TERRINGTOWN: THE BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN TERRING, THE FIRST UNIVERSAL LEADER
Marienborg, 26-VI
Large in size but sparsely populated, Marienborg in Central Europe has probably got more museums—mainly historical ones—Reigen-Swage Institutes and theatres than housing estates. It was built right next to the big motorway that connects Blomsterfor with Terringtown and it was destined to become exclusively a city-museum complex, without any residents. That explains why its current, permanent residents are all descendants of the old art critics, historians, musicologists, students and art lovers who settled here centuries ago. Along with them, a large number of scientists and artists from Terringtown had also come here to do research on major works of their own renaissance, the 9th century. When these people moved here, they also brought with them their way of thinking, their morals, lifestyle, and style of dress; even the air of the venerable metropolis and birthplace of John Terring.