Sometimes I forget that I'm dealing with regular citizens of the local population.
Especially when my holiday is interrupted for another so-called important message.
Do you know how easy it is to transmit infrared information from one set of sunglasses to another under the shade of nature preserve trees?
I promise you I am unimportant. I am like the the air you breathe, the gravity that holds you down on the roads you travel and the sunshine you feel. I am nothing you can hold in your hands and readily see. Truly, I do not exist.
Yet, all sorts of people want my attention. My associates. My colleagues. Family. Friends.
There is nothing the matter with being an ordinary anonymous guy living an ordinary life in an ordinary neighbourhood living. At least I'd like to think so. Not today, though.
What was the message this time that stopped me from acting like an ordinary citizen on a quiet Saturday called Earth Day?
A secret revelation about a plot to assassinate the leader of a faction dedicated to preserving the revolution?
A merger to end all mergers?
The breakup of a conglomerate's charismatic executive and the executive's cinema superstar spouse?
The design of a superefficient energy production machine made with technology hundreds of years ahead of its time?
The discovery that intelligent extraterrestrial beings steer clear of our solar system because we haven't yet figured out the purpose/nonpurpose of our evolution/intelligent design?
I would accept any or all of those answers to justify a disruption of my inaction.
Instead, what do I get?
I get ... or rather, I got a message that told me billions of people have no idea how to live their lives.
I'm a nice guy. I like to please everyone I meet.
Why?
Well, because I know that no one, absolutely not one single person, has a clue what life is all about. I think I've told you this more than once, haven't I?
Someone hasn't read the memorandum detailing the explanation that I'm ahead of most of you on this subject. In fact, I'm ahead of myself here. I already know what I'm about to say.
Next time, I'm paying the gravestone carver to cut an email message in granite that says, "Rick does not want to be disturbed while on holiday."
Then, the first person in my organisation who attempts to get my attention while I'm tuned out will receive a giant chunk of rock to the head.
Do you know how many people working as spies and counterspies are looking for a kink in the armour? They want to report a report up the chain of command that proves opposition spy networks really exist. Not only that, but they want to show the opposition has a competitive advantage which drives up the cost of spying (HINT: budgetary increase the next year, with big, fat bonuses for everyone!).
Anyway, today's message was a repeat of old information I learned when I was sprawled on my back in the hospital as a newborn! Pooping in my diapers, no doubt. And drooling happily.
But that was a message from my network.
It was a message I intercepted from another network that draws me to this computer blog during my two-week holiday from technology.
Have you learned the ways of the mimeograph? Are you an expert in the mathematical distribution of symbols within a given language?
You see, the average set of text in any language has a probability distribution for every symbol within that set. Most of us read sets of symbols by words or groups of words. For instance, in the English language we see sentences and paragraphs. We do not see the number of times the letter "a" or "t" appears on a page.
Today, while absentmindedly meandering through the glen at the Hays Natures Preserve, I noticed a few people evenly spaced apart who were picking up stapled packages of photocopies from vendors. They caught my attention because they also skipped the exact same set of vendors with photocopies they didn't pick up. I mentally noted the vendor booths where these people stopped by and then I innocently stopped to talk with vendors and passersby while I picked up the stapled packages of photocopies in the same order as people I saw earlier.
Some of the photocopy collectors were parents. Some of them were single. Some young. Some old. A well-planned meeting of associates from a rival network.
A few of them I knew but the rest I hadn't seen before. One of them belongs to my organisation.
Like I said, it's a free world. We can do what we want when we want how we want where we want. To what extent is up to you.
I sat down with the photocopies and scanned them into my pattern matching machine, a matrix of ants who move eggs from one cubby hole to another based on the type of fungus data the machine feeds them.
Based on the ants' activity, I have concluded Chinese leaders are giving Tibet a little room to negotiate the appearance of the freedom of secession because the leaders did not move emergency services into Tibet with the best efficiency to secure the lives of their Tibetan citizens after the recent earthquake. Why Hu and Wen allowed this to happen, I do not know.
To better understand why my rivals would be discussing this among themselves, I stopped at a favourite spot where they leave messages out in the open for one another in the arrangement of "surplus" items at Mike's Merchandise. Here's what I found, a set of books placed at intervals that matched the distribution of English letters in the photocopies they collected today:
- "Mao's China and the Cold War" by Chen Jian
- "Reclaiming Conservatism" by Mickey Edwards
- "The Color of Our Future" by Farai Chideya
- "America, 1908" by Jim Rasenberger
If my rivals know what I know - that we don't know what we're doing but go forth pretending with strong convictions - then what are they up to?
You understand what I'm saying, don't you? You see, I have THE Book of the Future whereas they have the Books of the Future.
It's a sort of standoff. I'm not supposed to have THE Book of the Future. I'm not the one who has the ultimate set of skills to read the many levels and layers embedded in the pencil shavings I create. However, I've already opened the book. It's in my hands. The book is in my possession and no one wants to take it away from me because they know what the book does to those who see their own futures.
Why do all tales point to the same core storyline? Why do all civilisations form almost exactly the same hierarchies?
All from all. None from none.
Any one of you can find one of the Books of the Future lying around. It might be a hidden spring of cold water in a dense thicket in your neighbourhood forest. It might be the set of turnstiles at a subway/metro station. All of those pattern generating formations will tell you what's going to happen in the future ... except for one thing. They won't tell you your future.
Actually, they will tell you your future. They'll tell you the future you want to hear/read.
THE Book of the Future tells the possessor only one future. You will have no future. You do not exist. You are anonymous and disappear.
I just wanted to be an average storyteller who entertained a few people along the way. I was willing to study the history of our people to see the kind of stories that interested readers.
Then, as I've told you, I stumbled upon a few people who saw my storytelling dreams and views of the general ignorance of the population as an invitation to train me in the way of reading the future.
Do I have to tell you what a high pollen count foretells?
Do I have to detail the ripple effect of shifting plate tectonics?
Will you accept a child with three parents as easily as you'll eat the genetically-perfected organism that has a lineage tied to your family - part fish, part plant and part human that has familial body likenesses?
THE Book of the Future is not really a book. It's not really a computer program. It's not anything you can put your hands on. It's the culmination of our social progress feeding upon itself and propagated by a group of people who are trained to keep the self-food-filling propagation moving along automatically and autonomously. I don't call it prophecy but some do. I don't call it predestination but some will. I don't call it inevitable but many see it that way. It's like magic, only it's not, but neither one of us can tell the difference so it doesn't matter what we call it because it predicts what will happen anyway.
Right now, all I want to do is drink beer and try to fool some fish into setting a metal hook into their jaws. I don't care about the future. I don't want to know what's going to happen next. I'm keeping the book under wraps for a few days.
Your future is happening before you can do anything to stop it. Oh, sure, some of you will commit suicide and think that you're stopping your future. Of course, you're wrong. You're just following orders. Our species has the odd habit of putting a portion of itself to death in order to preserve the species (now you can see why any extraterrestrial beings would want to steer clear of a specific form of being that has developed a method of exterminating portions of itself willingly instead of seeking to maximise its self-replication at the cost of eliminating other "life" around it - how can you trust a population that hasn't perfected self-interest at both the species and the individual level?).
I'm sure you'll find other ways to get my attention during my holiday. However, let me reassure you that I know you don't know what's really going on but there are those who do and "have your back," as they say, 24 hours a day (not exactly 24 but you know what I mean).
The last I looked at the future, an island nation will soon have something important to say and a female scientist makes a startling discovery that requires several linked laboratories to verify her test results.
Now, for the last time, leave me alone to be the anonymous person I'm destined to become. I'm just a guy whose smile disarmed him before he knew what he looked like. I'm no Buddhist priest or bloodthirsty berserker (I have people to handle those duties). There will be plenty of time to deal with the politicians, religious leaders, business executives and crime lords who get in the way of a prosperous future. Give me another week to enjoy the peace and quiet of mosquito bites and lost lures.
Should I use worms, crickets, grasshoppers, chopped shad, hotdogs or dough balls on my next fishing foray?
If you're a vegetarian, don't worry. More people die on public roadways at the action/inaction of themselves and other people than I've killed and/or eaten fish ... and the world's just as wonderful as it's ever been!
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