by Sandi Gamble
“Some sat in front of these devices, all day!” our teachers explained, their voices betraying their own astonishment that people could live in such a manner. Such a waste of precious time, such a waste of life.
As a result of this onslaught of media, they became violent and hostile, often desensitized to the pain they could inflict on another human being. Not only with their fists or weapons, but their words also.
“People of all ages simply lashed out at others, hardly conscious of the harm they were doing. As a culture, they hurt other people for fun. Yes, that’s right, for fun. As you might imagine, with this cruel desensitizing, crime rates soared, mostly murders, rapes and other assaults.” Nobody could escape, nobody was spared, every person was affected in one way or another.
The Governments of the day had developed a plan, and that plan played out far better than they had ever expected. The manipulation of media and cultural cues had given them a result they could only have dreamed of. They had a pliable, desensitized generation of foot soldiers more than willing to do their bidding.
“Is it any wonder they ended up destroying themselves?”
We sat dumbfounded, considering the question. Perhaps it was only rhetorical, but each of us, certainly Jace and I, struggled to conjure up a response. Was it any wonder? Could things have been different? Why hadn’t people rebelled? Was the brainwashing so effective?
I could not imagine how our ancestors lived and survived in such dark, primitive times. Of course, my astonishment was just a function of the same arrogance they felt then, thinking that they too lived in the most enlightened of times. Sitting in my classes, listening to my teachers, striving to be the best I could be, it never occurred to me that we were on a collision course with the past and that my knowledge and training would be the only thing to keep me alive.
CHAPTER SIX
THE PURGE
There is much that I value far above the way our forebears lived. Certainly, I have no respect for them when I see how they fought or became passive. But there are other aspects of their experience and lives that I think would be wonderful to experience. There have been times when I have secretly desired to hold a domestic cat and feel the small creature’s warm body and soft fur beneath my fingers or hear its soft purr in my ear.
Years before, when I was little more than a small girl, my mother and I traveled to a museum where they had footage of this small domesticated animal. They showed the cat in the arms of a human, the cat purred so loudly it could be heard on the screen. Even when my mother took my hand and tried to pull me away, I resisted. I could not take my eyes off what I was seeing. It seemed almost magical. Not only did the cat seem very relaxed in the human’s arms, but the human seemed very relaxed holding the furry creature also. Looking at the film, I felt I understood for the first time what a symbiotic relationship really was.
My chest was filled with such a sense of longing as I watched that film that I didn’t know what to do. I could almost feel the relaxation that the cat and the human felt. It was such a delightful sensation.
After that day, one of the most selected scenarios chosen in my relaxation pod was of a small kitten purring.
To my understanding, cats seemed to be the epitome of all that was good in the natural world, particularly as it intersected with human experience. They were so loving and so precious, something that should have been protected at all costs. But they too were wiped from the face of the earth by the arrogance and foolishness of human behavior.
Which seemed to be a repetitive theme in human history. Arrogance and foolishness. Sadly, it seemed our forefathers did not truly care much about anything – (unless they were able to get something from them), not their neighbors, not the animals that roamed the earth and, ultimately, not the earth itself.
They loved themselves in the individual but not the communal. They treated each other abysmally but, as we had come to understand, that lack of compassion or care could not help but reflect upon how they treated themselves. Unable to truly care about another, it was impossible for them to truly care about themselves.
Whatever ability they had to bond with others extended only slightly. They loved themselves and, perhaps their family and kin. Beyond that, they held everyone in suspicion and as potential objects for conquest. For too many, the same feeling defined their relationships with family and kin.
As a race of people, they were petty, clannish, and ultimately self-destructive. They wanted the one thing they could not hold, the one thing that would prove to be their undoing the more they approached claiming it – they wanted power.
Such a being capable of much cruelty to his fellows certainly cared even less about the other creatures with which he shared the earth. However, for some, the cruelty toward other people did not extend to animals. Our teachers taught us about small pockets of animal protection activists, people who put their own lives in danger in order to save individual animals, as well as animal species. Extinction was their greatest fear – for every species that inhabited the earth. But in the end, they could not stop the relentless consequence of man’s foolishness and pride. When push came to shove, they lost. As a consequence, the animals lost. Ultimately, humanity lost.
For many creatures, extinction was barely noted. For others, the ending came with a grudging acknowledgment. The final indignity for cats came when the species was charged with a decline in smaller wildlife and so were found guilty and sought out for destruction. It wasn’t that they were particularly worried about the wildlife but more the food source that the cats were destroying. The irony was completely lost on those making the determination, that the greatest agent of extinction was condemning another species for doing nothing more than trying to survive. Those cats that were not out and out destroyed were eaten when food supplies ran out.
As a result of all these actions, there were very few small creatures who survived. Of those that did, the few that were saved exist now in the ARC.
The natural world essentially vanished. So too the artificial world that humans created for control, for commerce and for distraction. The devices known as personal computers filled landfills to brimming. Televisions, which they watched to distraction in their determination to lose touch with reality are long since gone.
We have no such personal devices. They had been banished for many years while society re-ordered itself within the ARCS. We do of course have computers, but they are solely used for appropriate occupational needs and as a study-based device. The closest technology we have to any device that assists us with our lives is a PAD – a Personal Assistance Device.
PADs are useful aides. Each of us has one, and it links to the implant that each of us is given at birth. It wakes us up, turns our lights on and off, and gives us weather reports and suggestions of dress for the day based on what is in our wardrobe that is matched to the weather. It alerts us to incoming chats and calls and plays music to us based on our individual preferences. It measures health parameters and can direct us to seek medical treatment when required. It can also provide information to us that we might not have for the lack of our PAD, we only need to ask. It is individually programmed to be responsive to each of our needs alone. It is comprehensively responsive, or as much as an inanimate object can possibly be.
It records all of our personal details and, most importantly, keeps track of the population.
PADs are vital to our individual functioning but also to our larger, communal needs. As such, it is illegal to not have a chip or to remove one. Not that any of us would ever knowingly compromise our PADs. To do so would go against everything that we have been taught.
Despite knowing Jace for as long as I had, I remember having the distinct sense that I truly met him not long after we began at the Academy. Perhaps it was that during those first few days something within me changed. I was no longer a child and so I no longer reacted to him solely as a friend. From not long after we had first gone to the museums with Ann, I began to view him differently and, I b
elieve, his feelings about me grew more complicated as well. There was a new tension in our relationship, one that was not entirely unpleasurable.
I remember timidly looking over at him during our very first lesson on the history of warfare. His soft curled brown hair fell messily around the strong outline of his face. His large almond shaped, chocolate eyes were animated with excitement and shared an easy smile with his lips that turned up at the corners to greet me, as he turned toward me and mouthed, “This is remarkable!”
Oddly, my stomach did backflips. Never had that happened before. I could feel my face grow warm.
So much of our time at the Academy seemed destined not only to continue our friendship but to see it blossom and grow into something more. We both wanted – and were assigned – Environmental Geology as our occupations. Our unique talents and intelligence levels were so singular that our teachers had never seen one student at our level let alone two at once. As a consequence of all this, we were almost always joined together in our learning and study.
I don’t think either of us ever minded. I certainly did not!
During the warfare lecture that day, Jace sent me a small note. It simply said, “Call me later.” He had drawn a cute little flower in the corner. Passing notes and even communicating with eye contact and facial expressions was nothing new for us. But the flower? That was something new.
I tried very hard not to engage him or look at him for the rest of the lesson, but it was very difficult. When I did manage to avoid looking over at him, I kept glancing at the note and the small drawing. Every now and again I felt compelled to shift in my seat to glance at him and, each time he would catch me looking his way, and give me one of those cheeky, flashy smiles of his.
I made a face each time, but the truth was that I felt shy each time. I slunk down in my seat and stared back at the instructor standing at the podium. Each time I could feel the heat rushing across my face. I could not understand what was happening to me. “What a stupid display you are making of yourself,” I snapped at myself.
I tried to calm myself down. “It’s just Jace,” I told myself. But somehow it was the fact that it was Jace that was the crux of my new feelings, which were both disconcerting and extremely pleasant.
As we knew from the very moment we met, Jace and I were a perfect match. We enjoyed the same things, and both of us had a passion for environmental studies. My passion had come to me from the many hours I had spent with my mother, exploring the world and having her as my first teacher, teaching me about the plants and the way the world once existed. My father was another incredible influence, although his influence was often less direct. My father is an Atmospheric Scientist. His dedication to science and to the study of our atmosphere and our environment made my career choice an easy one.
I had been raised for such a path, and for success upon it. Many times, my father took me to the lab and introduced me to the equipment he used in his occupation and his study. Telescopes and electron microscopes – instruments and tools that allowed him to measure the heavens and the atom, the vast and the molecular. I found his enterprises to be both amazing and interesting. While it is possible that I would have simply possessed my nearly insatiable curiosity, there is no question that my upbringing honed my curiosity and molded it, along with the importance of a clear line of inquiry.
The truth was, I wanted badly to follow in my father’s footsteps. I wanted to share his passion or, at the least, study something that I felt passionate about. It was a delightful and wonderful happenstance that I got my wish.
Not that being the only child of Noel and Zara Vayne was one joyful experience after the next. Despite the intellectual and emotional gifts bestowed upon me, I was more than a little bit aware of the expectations placed upon me and the vision that my parents had for my future. There was no question that I felt the weight of that pressure riding on me.
The expectations and pressure did not come solely from my parents either. The truth is that the community has a great deal of interest in marriage, partnerships and children. These things cannot be left to the whims or coincidences of individual caprice. When a partnership is formed as one was with Noel and Zara, my mother and father, and wedlock is entered into, the Ministry will allocate by requirement how many children that you can have as a family.
In the case of my family, it was one.
Me.
Not only do these decisions manage the need of keeping our overall population in check, but it also serves the purpose of guaranteeing that the union will produce children or, in our case, a child, for whom particular resources, gifts and the energies of the family can be focused.
Of course, with the population capacity so limited and the need to rationalize the number of children born each year, every effort is made to guarantee that there are no “illicit” children. As a result, sexual relations before marriage are absolutely forbidden. No child can be born outside of wedlock. To do so would be to limit the child’s opportunities and limit its ability to contribute to the culture and society. In other words, the child would be shunned, as would the parents. Indeed, no child was to be conceived or born without permission.
There was minimal, if any, resistance to these policies. Everyone understands and accepts the limits of the world we inhabit. As a result, we are all committed to existing in the earth-wide community and to maximize the potential for success in that community. As such, we both explicitly and implicitly agree to live by established regulations that maintain the eco-system and the environment of the earth for ourselves and for future generations.
Undoing the damage earlier generations had done to the earth and its environment, left us with a long way to go before we could achieve the early pre-purge environment. There was still a great deal of work to be done. However we have made great progress. We were all aware of this. We knew that we, as a human community, all had to make the necessary sacrifices to undo the sins of the past.
Our commitment to success was not begrudging, it simply was. Like breathing, eating and sleeping, it was part and parcel of who we are. We had learned a long time before that the population needed to be carefully managed if we were not to outpace the limited resources available to us. In short, the lesson was clear: overpopulation is not a sustainable model. It was simple maths. How earlier generations managed to miss that simple fact was astonishing to us.
However, there were many, many things that made prior generations confusing to us. We simply knew that the population had to be monitored very closely.
Historically, the warning signs were in place. But, as I’ve noted, they were ignored. Whether due to ignorance, which is hard to fathom or arrogance, which at least is consistent with so much else about human behavior then. Whatever the reason, by the year 2014 the world had grown to seven billion people! Seven billion, on this glorious small rock called Earth! Those seven billion represented at least three billion more than the earth could safely and adequately sustain.
Estimates at the time placed the earth’s population at ten billion by 2050. Of course, this estimate was so far off as to be farcical. In fact, our researchers are convinced that the number was deliberately wrong in order to lull the population into believing that the governments of the day could manage the ever-growing famines.
It had become painfully obvious to our researchers that the governments at the time had absolutely no faith in their populations. And why should they? They had spent generations consciously and quite successfully transforming them into numbed and ignorant masses, moved by trivial entertainments and oblivious to the havoc they were wreaking upon their environment.
So it was that by 2025 the population had reached an astounding 14.6 billion people! The number was astounding. How could anyone believe that such a number was sustainable? Even if each and every person was reduced to the minimal amount of calories and fluid intake, there were simply not enough resources. And, of course, the limited resources were not distributed fairly or intelligently. The very people most
complicit in destroying the resources of the earth, most culpable in stripping it of its riches and its flora and fauna, were the very ones who continued to claim ever greater percentages of the resources for themselves.
Even as resources dried up. Food supplies vanished. Even as governments faced growing anarchy in their streets, with mobs roaming the cities, scrounging for food and water, with lawlessness becoming the law of every land, even then there was almost no effort to address the problems.
Not that such a reckoning would have accomplished much. The earth had long passed its breaking point.
There was no longer any need for housing as the growing population simply roamed the streets in small packs, like feral animals, sleeping on the streets, defecating in alleys or in collapsing buildings. There was no running water, no sanitation. The medical system was completely broken. Medicine delivery was non-existent in the cities. Only in the fortress-like, gated communities of the very, very rich and powerful was there anything approaching “normalcy”, and even that was diminishing rapidly.
And still, the governments acted as if the day of reckoning was far off.
Powerful corporations and interests believed that they could still make money from fossil fuels. Climate change was no longer an arguable notion. It was real. It was present, and it affected every aspect of life.
By 2025, governments had long been using dramatic means to try to control the weather, which still continued to become ever more extreme. They had sent drones and probes high up into the atmosphere, spraying and seeding clouds, both trying to bring rain and, when the rains were too intense, they tried to stop it. They became quite good at turning the water supply “on and off”, turning off rain in one country while flooding another.
The technology was actually quite effective, and for a while, allowed for greater food production. However, as with all things human, greed and arrogance took over. Eventually, the seeding got out of hand. Flooding in some countries was devastating while drought plagued others. Soon, the technology itself no longer proved effective. They could no longer effectively control the weather. Hurricanes of ever greater force pummeled the coastlines while tornadoes battered the inland areas. Snows twelve feet deep were common and stretches of drought lasting a decade or more was not unheard of. Cold summers, warm winters. The climate was turned upside down.