Blind.Faith 2.0.50. Tomasz Tatum

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СКАЧАТЬ fast and furious as their watershed moments were institutionalized or branded into the collective memory before they risked being bleached out by the ever faster turning of world events. The developed worldmonde.Planet was already gathering steam long before the advent of social engineers and cybersquatters, before facebooks and firewalls and spyware. The worldmonde.Planet was spinning at dizzying speed even before Chapman & Co. and a parade of Russian spymates became all the rage.

      There were the ages of JFK, MLK and RFK, all being blown away in quick succession.

      Or Nine-Eleven and the animosities, annoyances, angst and agencies it subsequently spawned. With the advent of smartphones, there came the art of sexting and, not long thereafter, the inevitable rise of reputation-restoration management agencies whose primary business model was to ensure that inappropriately bared body parts or unseemly bulges in undergarments disappeared from the ethernet before they could do any serious damage to reputations or careers.

      All of these developments were soon accompanied by the radiant new TEPCO shine that much of the worldmonde.Planet and the agricultural industry eagerly took on post-Fukushima.

      Naturally everyone liked Spikey Ike at one time, way back there in those dark days of pre-modernity, even if it took another few years before the presence of a wall like that in Berlin was finally a firm and physically established fact. In their minds, however, the more deviate architects of that particular age’s divisions, its reason and its politics were no doubt, somewhere in the back of their minds, already busily stirring cement and stacking bricks long before a gate went up at Checkpoint Charlie.

      After all, in a logical context, walls serve no real purpose except as structures that serve to separate.

      Those having the fortune or misfortune to one day find themselves on one side or the other.

      In another time or under other circumstances, they might well be neighbors.

      East and West. Or Arabs and Jews. Black or white.

      First world, third world.

      But who nowadays truly needed to pay attention to the often incomprehensible sensibilities of neighbors in a fully globalized age where physical location played little or no role anymore in the trade of goods or ideas?

      There was absolutely nothing to be gained in being nostalgic anymore, if indeed there ever was. Such tidy states of affairs belonged to the irretrievable past.time now, to a period that dated back many long years before Charles’ time.

      In fact, to a time that was even long before the days of Niklas Vladimir.

      It is unlikely that anyone today could say with real certainty why a concrete wall had ever been erected around the perimeter of Libertyville@Esperantia several decades ago. The official explanation, and thus the one that was still often stated to be valid to this date, simply declared it to be in the overall “national interest”, declaring it necessary to protect and to serve its citizenry in light of the many constant and enduring threats being directed at it.

      This was an explanation that was very often mobilized because of its terrific all-round effectiveness. Lots of otherwise questionable endeavors, from dubious make-work programs to granting tax exemptions on chick flicks or even making mobile to go to war, have all been publicly and convincingly justified as having been in the greater national interest at one time or another.

      The same general principle has historically applied to awarding concessions for selling everything from opium to tea to guidance systems for nuclear missiles, for printing reams of postage stamps and paper money, for licensing taxi drivers and tax auditors or prescribing a recommended cholesterol level for pork meat.

      It was kind of like Isotype. Every moron could understand the implied symbology so its messages didn’t need constant explaining.

      National interest. No questions asked. Period.

      The beauty of the argument was of course that opposition to any idea or set of ideas could then nearly effortlessly be portrayed as boorish or unpatriotic, as a frivolous rejection of the carefully groomed values of the society that chose to institute this set of ideas.

      National interest was the big buzzword then. Even if some of the actions in question might under different circumstances be judged ambivalently. Like running gambling casinos, subsidizing horse racing and lotteries or voting for latently horny fat politicians who eagerly wrap their hands around the slender waists of scantily-clad constituent beauty queens at important functions such as ribbon-cutting events and grand openings at gaming arcades, muffler shops or pick-your-own-strawberry and avocado farms where migrant laborers did all the toiling. Or, for that matter, at any number of other mindless photo ops created specifically for this purpose of perpetuating their political raison d’être.

      And for someone whose cerebral matter was hardwired as minimalistically as that of Niklas, anything deemed to be in the “national interest” in essence constituted a perfectly adequate explanation. It was just like invoking the gospel. It was cute and simple. There was no compelling need for him or anyone else to have to think and rethink things over and over again.

      Life could be simple if people would only allow it to be so.

      As the airliner approached Libertyville@Esperantia on this particular sunny morning, Charles could clearly see that the whole expanse of the city, which essentially constituted the entire domain.state–their new soon-to-be home–was wedged in loosely between water and two broad expanses of what appeared to be largely uninhabited marshland. Along the northern and eastern edges of this area, the large, lazily meandering riverbed culminated in a shallow lake or lagoon. This had the appearance of being thick and muddy, probably due to the amount of silt being transported by this stream at this time of year. A handful of dredges, looking diminutive from up here, could be seen working on the river. As far as Charles could determine, there were no towns and really no significant settlements to be seen outside of the perimeter of the wall which closed off the city from the mainland. There were also only very few roads leading into the enclave discernible as he peered down from his stratospheric perch like a hawk on the lookout for prey.

      But, much to his surprise, from his vantage point at some twenty or thirty-odd thousand feet in the long descent into Libertyville@Esperantia, Charles could easily make out a fair number of drilling platforms that appeared to be several kilometers offshore. Seen from his perspective, they resembled miniscule renditions of the Eiffel Tower protruding from the marble shiny rippled surface of the water. If one focused carefully on shadows on the surface of the ocean, one could see that the light was broken by tiny flames that produced even, uniformly shaped blobs of dense black smoke as they flamed off excess gas. The shadows of these smoke clouds on the pearly, seemingly stationary surface of the water deeply fascinated him.

      It couldn’t possibly be long before they arrived now.

      So as the jet continued to gently rock its way through some annoying morning thermal turbulence, traversing the boundary of Libertyville@Esperantia in the course of an increasingly steep descent, Charles strained hard to catch even a telltale glimpse of color flashing from somewhere among the dense cluster of drab green-brown-gray global age prefabricated concrete severity that was now beginning to spread out before him. He was seeking some sign of encouragement that he secretly hoped would permeate their lives, inundating their senses with a new sense of optimism, a positive, uplifting vibe to greet them once they set foot in Libertyville@Esperantia. Despite his mother’s sympathy, his opinion hadn’t counted heavily thus far in the long deliberations that had led up to this moment and his being a captive party to this adventure. Up to now, he had been an unwilling pawn in this grand endeavor so there was little else he could do except to wait and to hope fervently that something–anything!–might СКАЧАТЬ