2/25/13

Triadic Tales - Last Morning, - Short Story (Part Two)

TRUST

Triadic Tales - Last Morning, - Short Story (Part Two) PART ONE

Public meant free gathering and the cultivation of trust. Bellingham knew his neighbors, but he also knew thousands of the 10,000 who lived and worked and recreated themselves in this, the first completed cyber-community.
 
Twenty paces to his right was a kiosk. Bellingham insisted on this word for all small public spaces in the community because they were where one could find one or two persons whose job was to serve all who came. There were almost 500 kiosks on the four levels of the cyber-community. That meant there were always eyes on the ways. There was always help at hand.  It was an environment where the value of helpfulness, ontological in Bellingham's view, was palpable.

Bellingham gathered up a croissant and a Turkish coffee and greeted the young man with a silent nod. He left his customary tip, a substantial one.

He sat alone at a table in front of the kiosk. One could have a kitchen as part of one's residence, but kitchens were less and less necessary for those whose inclinations did not extend to home cooking. 

In addition to kiosks like this, there were small squares every two or three hundred feet and each square had eating places and other commercial and recreational and spiritual spots.

Bellingham felt this was his last day. He engaged in frequent conversation with the one he called Abba, Abba within him, for decades, from when he began to use his version of the Abba Prayer, the one Jesus taught. It was his a daily rule, repeated often, mostly in silence. 

"Well take me then," he said.  "Today will be just fine. If not just fine. Whatever." 

You will go when you go. You will see. Look out today from the very top.

Bellingham got up and began ascending from his level to the top. His was the second. The top was the fourth. The way wound through the stadium-like structure. It was a a walk of about a mile..

Bellingham reviewed the general  events that had led to this. The collapse of the car industry as a major player in the world economy. Runaway oil prices. The house of cards aftermath. 

Colleges and universities wiped out. Religions decimated.

Many predicted the crisis. But only a few seized on Bellingham's idea. So he was left to create this place and hope others would finally see in it a way of life beyond the ruins. A way of diversity, technological imagination, and local economies.  

There was a future for humankind, beyond the continuing downward trajectory created by addiction to oil and automobile. This community was now at capacity.

Bellingham was attracting nibbles from other entrepreneurs.  Presidents and other leaders had clung to the prospect of a solution less complete, less sensible. They were clinging to a failed reality. It was up to this place to slowly and surely become a model for the world, an admission at last that integral design lay at the center of things. The computer was created to advance reason. We did not need still more irrationalities based on the binary trap.

Bellingham looked out from the high level across the fields to where the old interstate lay. He knew this would be one of his final strolls. Behind him was a kiosk where all things geological could be accessed. A young woman he had only seen in passing was visible through the entrance. She sat before a large screen which now was simply an image of old bricks - a wall from somewhere, beautiful in its simple, nuanced repetition of shapes and tones. He thought he heard music, but it was probably just the light wind turning the solar silos.

Bellingham listened more intently and in his head he heard a song from childhood.

This will be the day that I die

His mind was oddly empty. Just the song. The girl. His sense of being moved by light wind. 

Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store 

Follow Me on Pinterest


Buffer

RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press