NYE 2199, Planet Earth
Written by V. Shruti Devi in May, 2022 and edited by V. Shruti Devi on 14th July, 2022
[All *s (randomly numbered, at this point), denote likely web-based interpolations by criminal offenders, unless the author wrote with trance-like inspiration!]
Of the myriad Realities that humanity knows to seize through methods scientific,
pseudo-scientific, and the Ikkat-like greyness that interweaves these apparently
repugnant-to-each-other non-dichotomies, there are approaches of quantum physics,
with it’s space-time-and-all-other-permutations-and-combinations dimensions, and
then there are yogic and other similar non-documented processes in eastern cultures
on earth, especially in areas that are thought of as Asia.
While the present moment is, indeed, the joker, at this point of time, one is focused on the story that is being written for the reader who
will access it via temporally and spatially predicable contours (although those could be
altered either by the now-quite-clichéd industrially constructed time machine/s, or via
humanly-gained siddhis- abilities akin to a set of super powers).
The realities one creates using one’s mind are likely to prevail and hopefully gracefully
conquer realms of space-time and beyond, conjuring futuretruths, in the light of which to create comparatively more durable norms, worlds, ways of existence.
These thoughts were being communicated in the year 2023 to practitioners of yoga in
a grove in the Eastern Ghaat hill ranges of India, as they embarked on a session of
learning Sheetli: a simple yogic pose and action that draws breath to create a cool sensation within the human body, even in the midst of a scalding and radiating spring or autumn. By a semi-retired-young world leader. A woman who had concocted the exact mix of
chutzpah, intention, and social-distancing (in a non-Covid sense), to be able to carry
out these activities, as well as prosper through equitable means, and in a sustainable manner, in the times that she inhabited.
Just as they had learnt lessons in Constitutionality, Democracy, and Human Rights
from her at the turn of the previous century, a different set of students (who were, at
one level, a part of the same biosphere, and thus identified, so some extent, as a
collective harking back to the gene-pool and philosophical conglomerations of her 20th
Century learners), were keen to explore siddhis when they were not planning for the
future and single-handedly, in a joint-the-dots-with-all-those-in-solidarity kind of way,
maintaining the world order in the interest of their own survival, to begin with.
Think
indigenous art, think all hemispheres, think galaxies. Read the heavens.
No mindless penance, but a confluence of common sense, the knowledge of yogic
siddhis, and access to the best of wisdom from the world of quantum physics. (Herbs
and wicca were floating at a nebulous everywhere-zone).
She conjured holograms of all the tarot decks that she’d known, and, more recently,
created. Drew cards that were somehow energized out of their slivery planes in their
packs that juggled images of the vulpine, feline, canine, bejewelled, wind-swept, [armourized]*, knighted, coronated, silken, lunar-lit, ;coin-scattered, floral, choral, coiledin, overbrimming]* symbols. Land-bound caravans of nomads [and yes-mads]* hurling into
constellations, from there, with tales to tell, and prophecies to shimmeringly declare.
Memory brought to her, scenes from the Universal deck: prosperity on farms, scenes
outside huts, glorious-looking images of plenty: grains, luscious fruit, rivers, fishbearing, rainbow-lit streams, and entire epic lists that would constitute Biodiversity
(and some CITES-endangered lists that would also gain epic proportions).
In the troughs and crests of human activity, eddies and whirls of such realities had
been achieved.
Humanity had used its genius to find ways in which to soften the blows of undiscerning
Nature, and to conjure a flurry of papers, decrees that helped meet the needs of
women, children, the differently-abled and everyone else, universally, to survive in
dignified or semi-dignified ways, depending on how such things were defined. That
much, they had been able to achieve.
But the narrative continueth!
Fundamental questions need to be re-asked. The impacts of collective action (local
collective action) on the individual, for instance.
Much of what is perceived as being wholesome, and abundant, and steeped in a deep
knowledge of Nature and the ways of the earth often translates to making the will of the weakest individual within a system subservient to the goals of the strongest within
the same system.
It could be an agricultural practice. Wouldn’t a more ideal world be
one where each individual had Options, rather than the partly-empathetic exoticising
and glorification of the continuation of inescapable human toil and labour?
Tarina (or Taru), the semi-retired-young world leader, put this question to the group
that had gathered to brainstorm. They hailed from various continents, and almost half
the participants belonged to indigenous communities who had been working on
planetary governance for a while.
Thus began the Constituent Assembly Debates for the Planet (which, by the way,
already had an unwritten Constitution and a sort of shadow everything- government,
bureaucracy, constitutional monarchy, even!)
This entire transmission was put on Pause. There was loud clapping, the new year’s
eve revellers of the year 2199 burst into applause.
Feasting on steaks made of lab-made meats, and swishing down [chilled]* home-made
wine decanted to perfection and marketed by safety-standardized home-brewers
across the globe, they savoured the aromas and moods of a past earth.
Mahua
flowers, toddy, cacti…not always brewed, but regulations had helped eradicate hooch
tragedies triggered by e-waste, battery-fermented poison.
Not capable of being
decanted, either, and so the matrix shakes itself out some more, turning spirals to rudimentary nursery-shapes, and unleashing a confetti of diagrams to the ether to
vapourize, solidify, elucidate itself in it’s own words, to the void.
Those yogis had turned into spirits in the ever-expanding multiverse, and a correlation
between spirit and unseen energies as comprehended by modern science had been
made. In such a world, to continue to procreate and experience the struggles of
material existence was a matter of choice as far as the procreator was concerned.
Other planets, more cultures, worlds, in a sense, had all been discovered, and some
were being communicated with, and interacted with. Not very different from the
planet’s past, sociologically speaking [, except for the opportunities of bungee-jumping,
roller-coasteering and surfing the waves of astoundingly foreign scientific revelations.]*
Much like the perfectly-brewed, recipe-shared and decanted Coorgi and other homemade wines, specific temperatures and certain atmospheres were needed to ensure
supreme-quality brews of Reality.
And as with every disruptive opportunity, decanting could just shake up the entire mass
of juice, and create the same old clarity, or push humanity, and viticulture up the eraspiral by a very precise and calculated decantation process.
Not to mention the
Discipline needed to responsibly consume these victuals.
So, no Prohibition in the year 2199, only strong will-power to drink just the right
amount, and to thus abstain from a larger gobblement, so to speak.
As a famous semi-clad barrister and world leader pursuing truth, freedom, and nonviolence, and opposing racism, had once said, or also said (in these approximate
words), there is enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.
Well, that
might have been the case in the year 2023, but the planet had crossed all such
material barriers decades ago.
The air was fresh for human consumption, waterbodies of all kinds [and sizes]***** had been
revived and recharged, a diversity of plants (and not monocultures), had risen from a
transitory morass of degeneration, ruin, and waste.
Fauna and avi-fauna responded to human interventions, and began to co-operate with
anthropocentric endeavours to recreate bounty.
The Critical Mass had made its presence felt.
Things needed to be Visualized once the need for amendments, environmental action,
and a mix of seemingly opposing ideas and stances had been resolved, and
unequivocally registered into consciousness.
The conviction was created. The visualizations were practised, and the sought-for
change then became an inevitable reality.
Such things have happened before, and will continue to kick into action time after time,
era after era.
Energy sources other than those drawn from fossil-fuels or nuclear energy had been
obtained. This had been made possible because research to create other forms of
energy had been given top priority.
Once the energy conundrum was solved out-ofthe-box, via technology, everything else fell into place.
The misfortune of some human beings being subjected to hard labour: be it within [the
great walls of]******** agricultural and industrial production, or subterranean unpleasant
activities such as cleaning and manual scavenging, had been made completely
redundant and not-necessary (vote banks can be diverted to other, more humanedriven concerns).
The reasons that [thinking and knowing]********* people at large chose to stay tuned into their
physical bodies was to explore the siddhis a body could acquire.
In order to retain this reality and these bodies, the global temperatures that climate
activists argued for in the first quarter of the 2000s were relevant.
The new year’s eve party, 2199, was an [open-house**********] open-air event, set in the outdoor, on a
stormy evening in a biodiverse forest.
Solar and other-powered [energy rays***********] devices (a few decades ago, solar drones used to be used for this), were set on an outcrop, for partygoers to “pluck” the natural and gourmet produce from the trees and plants that
engulfed the area.
(On another note: most fruit and vegetables are naturally covered
with what appear to be extraordinarily advanced and eco-friendly packaging materials, [whose multi-temperature controlled refrigerator do we earthly beings inhabit, and
where are the manufacturers,]************ were there any instructions for over-heating that the
spacecraft forgot to airdrop?!)
Other snacks that harked back to the planet’s heritage passed them by with automated
discretion: ragi chips, barley wafers, roasted corn in five hundred different colours,
rajma beans in another eight hundred hues, and so on…minced vegetables cooked in
hollow bamboo, yam cutlets, roasted sweet potato with lime (good for a cold), shots of
tulsi (basil leaves), crisp lentil patties with coconut chutney, and refrigerators-full of
defrostable, or air-friable, or solar-cooked, or just plain freshly-made food did the
rounds. Year 2199 managed to retain such diversity.
Human siddhis had been discovered, realised […most people now knew how to be
conscious of how and why the human body was assessing materials, textures,
quantities, characteristics, of elements, and to thus comprehend the readings better.]*************
Who, then, had been left out? What was the sense of unease at this 2199 NYE party?
People were dancing to various world tunes, incorporating the sounds of nature, of
electronic winds, and of sonic waves.
Levitation was an everyday art, and dance-forms were at a never-before stage of complexity made to look effortless.
Those who couldn’t
make it there in their material selves were present in holograms, or in spirit.
Connectivity went beyond the planet.
Even in 2199, those with different abilities had
been overlooked in some spheres. These might have been highly accomplished and
erudite people in past eras.
Those whose denied [themselves a peek into]* the existence of undiscovered
sciences because of their intellectual vanity.
Or maybe their totally justified concerns
regarding ethical science.
In the name of ethics, the brakes must be applied to much of so-called scientific
advancement. If not, you might solve climate change, but at the cost of the human
rights of some.
It’s often a question of one person’s human rights over another person’s human rights.
There is inter-generational equity to be taken into consideration while calculating
whose side you might be speaking on.
The World Community had, somewhere around the year 2032, finally reached the
target of being able to retain cultural and democratic [political]**************** diversity while efficiently
planning and employing natural resources for planetary consumption through peaceful
means and dialogue.
Once this was achieved, climate change and every other world
problem was solved with greater speed and [thoroughness*****************] efficiency.
Biases in human thought and behaviour: racism, dishonesty, chauvinism, and jingoism
of any kind, were a thing of the past.
This was brought about by a kind of reformatting of human minds and attitudes through
various means, ranging from the natural progression of ‘social reform’, to the chanting
of, and meditation on specific mantras to create renewed awareness on a variety of
states of mind, thought processes, behaviours [, and topics].******************.
Such was the setting of the party, and many were the oppressed, and this was
because of the controversies that still raged, regarding intellectual property, the control
over the means of communication, and the impediments to activities connected to
being able to convey facts to the masses.
In a much-decanted world, such concerns gained weight, and at the root of these
concerns, was the idea of what the appropriate degree of calibration of the individual
and the collective ought to be.
Snatches of conversation at the 2199 NYE party could be heard: the constituent
assembly debates of the earth constitution…it had placed a great emphasis on the
concept of the Public Sector that the country, India, had used for governance.
This
could be a metaphor, now, for the nature of human existence.
With surveillance-related technologies that can read and communicate directly to the
human mind, privacy, and, indeed, the very quality of human consciousness, had been [almost irreversibly]********************* eroded.
At the turn of the century, revellers wanted to know what it had actually been like, to
be an original human being…with their original limbs and organs, teeth, and
thoughts-to-themselves.
Was it even possible? To be a free body, to go anywhere,
untraced, to be able to make decisions in free range?
The trade-offs were possibly
justified. The so-called gains: Security, Justice for all, Equality.
While automated refreshments and beverages made their way around the party arena,
people mulled over these thoughts with gravity. It’s what you do when you’re on the
cusp of another century.
With various forms of time-space travel, and highly advanced levels of wiccan and
other practices, there was the need to be constantly alert to the malfunctions that the
hyper-new scientific age wheeled into existence: The fluctuations of quantum
scramblers, and the unsatisfactory refragmentation of goods and beings in mundane
transportation processes, for example.
But travel had never been fool-proof for human
civilization. And dreams were always just that- dreams. Once upon a time.
Much of the chatter on the cool, rainy, weather-and-climate-perfect evening was about
how to phase out paperwork from the previous centuries, that had purported to create land titles in private property on the moon and elsewhere, and about the condition of
the rings-of-garbage around various planets and their satellites.
Concerns regarding the status of the documentation of semi-human beings,
genetically modified beings, and original human beings, and the kinds of rights that
each of these categories ought to enjoy were accentuated by the presence of
characters from these transitional configurations of being human.
It was sometimes possible to differentiate from amongst these broad but almost
indistinguishable categories from the manner in which they responded to the curated
menu that was in circulation: a deep-rooted cellular memory of the authentic taste and
texture of organically grown, non-genetically engineered grains, or fruit, or vegetables,
and a plethora of human-made dishes was more likely to be accurately divined by an
original human, even if programmes to make all such distinctions were fed into the
genetic and other programming of other creatures. But associated memories would
vary from individual to individual, from point-of-time to point-of time, and would thus
need an infinite number of permutations and combinations to replicate.
Some foods and beverages had been created for the occasion using beyond-earth
elements and materials, and all those attending the 2199 NYE party would be the
original connoisseurs of those products.
They would also be the first group of entities to have the opportunity to team those
offerings with the ready-made desserts, pasta and innumerable so-called multi-cuisine
delicacies growing on some of the trees of the biodiverse if ‘slightly’ genetically
modified forest (a paradox in itself), grown with zero human drudgery.
There was small talk on the nutritive and health-benefit value of everyone’s diet.
Cocktail-party oral traditions of the human race that continue, and that have served to
aid and assist medicinal healers of yore, and gourmet aspirants of the hyper new
scientific age alike.
Anecdotes of cooking, eating, planting, harvesting, tasting,
launching, gather Chaucerian weight.
Robots will remember to sing. Instruments of all cultures will be loaded into the
software.
Clearly, the fact that the barbecued (or rotisseried) delectables were made of
synthetically manufactured meat pointed towards the fact that the planet had
embraced some form of vegetarianism. How that stance had been arrived at would be
quite another story. Just like almost miraculously achieved universal healthcare,
instantly uploaded education, and the space for unusual belief-systems [against the
onslaught of cold science]********************* would be.
The planet had moved on, long ago, from substantial materials to energies, for most
of it’s product-manufacturing.
The debate was no longer about extractive industries, but about upholding the quality
and quantity of invisible energy fields and forces, and making sure that none are
adversely impacted by these usages.
The skies were clean and blue, there was just
the right amount of clear water and sunshine, no toxins or pollutants singed the air.
A large part of the solution to the threat of climate change, years and years ago, had
been brought about by climate activists agreeing with the arguments of those who
opposed civil nuclear energy.
Climate activists had lagged behind, for many years, on accepting the fact that the
production of civil nuclear energy in the way that the 21st Century produced it, was
more damaging to water security and the health of the planet than most other known
human activities were.
The deadlock amongst environmentalists was overcome when climate activists also
became anti civil nuclear energy activists.
This led to new research and solutions for the best energy mix for the planet.
As these histories were being recounted, and the new century was being ushered in,
there was a din near the time-fountain.
Gate-crashers from another era barged in, flashing cell-phones and colourful
gemstones, talking in languages that sounded like inter-stellar breezes. They were
from the planet’s recent past, and had arrived at this location, apparently because of
poor signals.
After communicating this, as was customary, to the time-fountain protocol system, they
made a hurried exit, but not before registering [wholesome]********************** visions of the century that
beckoned.
Their impacts on time, and vice-versa, was an area that was still
inadequately researched and documented. Time would tell.
Conversations moved on to the feasibility and efficacy of the time-fountain and its
protocols. A never-ending host of variables there.
There were at least two hundred people attending the party. Although they were from
various continents of the planet, there was a collective consciousness that they
emerged from, very like the students of yoga from the film on the planet’s history.
Their conversations would be your clue, dear reader, to the many characters across
centuries, who would think and say and do what these characters do.
Some voices might have been more shrill, out of necessity, in their questioning of
matriarchies and patriarchies, and other such feudal and closed-in societal formations,
where breaking out of a system is seen as a great victory, especially when it’s by the
weakest individual, and a perpetuation of a system, albeit in the name of honouring
Mother Earth, actually works to choke the spirit of the tiniest aspiration of creative
energy.
Show me a small farmstead that works on the best of ecological principles, and I will
show you a little girl or boy who has had to not dare to dream of life other than the
back-breaking, person-nullifying green spinach-sprouting fertile land which, by the
way, belongs to nobody, at one level.
[There is a time and a place for an order to step back to, and simmer or freeze, or icepowder at.]***********************
The Climate Crisis was solved.
Those who allowed biodiversity to flourish on their private urban and rural plots amidst
towering concrete for as long as they had a fighting chance to live life, and to do so
without earning any marvellous carbon credits;
those who opposed civil nuclear energy;
those who sacrificed years of their life to ensure that the wheels of global governance
ran on the correct rails, irrespective of whether they found time to document their
activities, or be credited for their efforts;
those who had the sense, and were fortunate to have the ability to speak truth to
power;
who questioned malpractices in administration…these were some of the kinds
of people across the planet, who made the real difference.
The other big difference was made by the growing display of intelligence by the nonhuman inhabitants of the planet.
Theories have abounded, over time, about how and why Covid 19 came about, and
whether it was Nature’s way of giving the human race it’s first warning to slow down.
This vital realization gradually dawned on all of humanity: That there is a misplaced
sense of superiority in instant nirvana, snappy or speedy results, crisp storylines, plots
and eventualities, media-friendly attention-grabbing structures for action punctuated
with milestones, and [neat]************************ products-to-show. 2199 understood that [some brands of
mediocrity might overshoot passing comets in their haste, amplifying sound and fury.]*************************
reality and sustained strategic thought and action saved the day, not budgeted drama.
There might have been very few visible characters, but there sure was a narrator [who
drew the veil]**************************! Thus ended the Tale of the Year 2199.
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