Sord in Prosperity - Hope Beyond the Apocalypse

EP. 130 - HOME

"GLAD TO BE BACK home?" Becca asked, dropping her pack onto the kitchen table.

Sord gazed around the small kitchen for a moment. "I suppose. Happy about not having to eat that crap hospital food. Geez, Mom, they are even more militant than you about ingesting sweets. No desserts. No videos. No fun. Nothing but boring school stuff and pouring through the terribly tedious stories you forced me to read."

"Good for them!" she smiled.

He thought about his trip home on the shuttle, passing by onlookers. "Which of them knows what I've been through? My face must have been splattered on every vidscreen and newscast. I'm sure the adults are making Robbie and me out as examples of classic stupidity. No teenager in his right mind will swallow that line, however. Based on Robbie's messages to me, we're the talk of school."

"Did you see how people were looking at me on the shuttle?"

She knew where his mind was going. "Sord, believe me, you are likely way overblowing the fame factor of your little adventure. I've already heard some people calling it a stunt by rowdy, undisciplined teens. The parents I know are kind enough to ask how you're doing, but no doubt they're going right back home to speak with their kids about the importance of following our societal guidelines. Of being thoughtful and moderately cautious. Of proper planning and risk assessment. Of learning to manage yourself irrespective of your age. Either way, it's not the kind of talk a mother likes to hear about her darling, can-do-no-wrong son. Maybe I give you too much credit."

"Tsk!" his tongue clicked. "Please, I've already been lectured on this topic until my eyes turned green."

"They do have a little bit of green in them. From your father."

Sord knew she was not paying attention, and he was anxious to get back to school. To tell his friends. To embellish and amplify Robbie's stories.

"I just want to get back to normal life."

"You will," she affirmed. "And regarding your studies while at the hospital, I failed to ask in the shuttle. How did your reading, bio, and math assignments go?"

"Lousy. Not really lousy, but I couldn't get as much done because you made me read that crappy old diary again for hours, and I'd fall asleep every few minutes. He's a terrible writer with even worse stories."

Becca rose and stepped to the sink to begin preparing dinner. "Oh, good" she replied, her back to him, "so you read more of the diary as I asked?"

He sighed. Required readings. Utterly boring. Most of his current reading and literature classes were on history, but not the fun kind. Not the tales of seafarers from long ago. Or the Revolutionary War and Wild West. Or of heroes larger than life.

No, not at sixteen, the age when Prosperity considered citizens old enough to begin facing the terrible truths in humanity's recent history. It's not like the distant past was rose colored, but it was certainly more interesting than the previous hundred years. The prior century was filled with horrific tales of torment, hunger, deprivation, and the gross mismanagement of all things within the grasp of humans, most particularly their own mentality.

Sord clearly appreciated the complexities and suffering of those years. How society was corrupted by the power of concentration and centralization. The incessant push and pull of control to the top, the few, the corrupt or readily corruptible. Of networks, systems, and AI that went off-kilter, quickly devolving from the original dreams and mandates of improving the lives of all humans to controlling their lives, desires, and emotions.

This wasn't fun stuff. It was immeasurably tarnished, viscous mires of poison and pain, very removed from his everyday life.

Though he loved history, that love was selective. "Nobody," he considered, "could have wanted to exist during those last hundred years. Yes, technology advanced at a far greater pace than humanity's ability to cope with it. I get that. Ethical systems, arguably having difficulty keeping society intact with such advances, were subverted or ignored. Instead, they were replaced by the spoon-feeding of self-centered, self-absorbed, confirming narratives from social networks and the media. Much of this malodorous fodder was initiated by proto-oligarchs who may have started with good intentions but were ultimately corrupted by power and control, fear and entitlement, and love of possessions. No society in the history of the planet could ever get beyond that Great Filter. And some new technology was always on tap, at the ready, to further amplify the disparities, depravities, and divisions."