J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) was raised by wolves yet managed to graduate high school with honors. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, otoliths, Cajun Mutt Press, The Beatnik Cowboy and Terror House Magazine. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
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destined
i want to believe
i am destined for
more than this
i know it's probably
bullshit
but wasting away
in a small town
while the rest of
the world passes
me by isn't exactly
what i thought was
intended when i
chose life over
death at the age
of eight
once again
first thought
best thought
----------------------------------------------------------------
being used
i think of
the nights
where i
used to like
being used
by a woman
i wonder if
those nights
will ever
exist again
------------------------------------------------------------
tragedies
i often wonder how
many tragedies i have
within me
once a day is plenty
i don't need any more
than my own to look
forward to
-------------------------------------------------------------
nothing to talk about
i love a woman
with tattoos
no one wants
a situation with
nothing to talk
about
the scarier the
better
only a few of
us know how
to properly
deal with
pain
--------------------------------------------------------------
there is a better place than here
fight back
the tears and
understand
there is a better
place than here
i'd like to believe
the soul moves on
to see something
way better
if not,
then i suppose
this is truly
a living hell
Widespread Coronavirus Testing: Facing Challenges Outside the Lab
— Cristina Deptula
According to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracking site, clinicians have performed some 20 million coronavirus tests in the United States.
That number may seem impressive until we remember that the working-age population of the country is just over 200 million, and the elderly population, those most at risk of serious complications if they become ill, is 56 million.
Public health experts say far more diagnostic testing is crucial, not only to safely reopen society but for the epidemiological research needed to track and stop the spread of the disease worldwide. In fact, many experts are calling for testing levels at least twice what they are now.
Craig Rouskey is the founder of San Francisco startup Renegade Bio, which claims to have created a significantly cheaper, faster, and easier coronavirus test. Rouskey’s expertise is in molecular biology and the development of diagnostic tests within the laboratory. Yet, even as a lab scientist, familiar with the long road to developing tests and the accuracy issues with some early coronavirus diagnostic tools, Rouskey believes that the biggest obstacles to rolling out widespread testing are factors outside the laboratory.
These hurdles include creating and distributing enough testing supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for those who conduct tests, getting accurate information out about testing to different groups of people, training enough clinicians and making the testing centers fully accessible.
Randy Altschuler and Laurence Zuriff co-founded Xometry, a Gaithersburg, MD firm that sources parts for manufacturers. Although Xometry is not directly involved in logistics related to coronavirus testing, they, along with the rest of the world, have had to quickly adapt to broken supply chains during the pandemic.
Altschuler commented on ways we might efficiently source and distribute vast quantities of PPE and testing materials:
“Often, even when large organizations are desperate for supplies, like cotton swabs, it’s hard for them to change their behavior. They don’t, or can’t, adopt creative solutions or always accept donated or innovatively manufactured supplies because that doesn’t meet their needs, or their expectations.”
Altschuler acknowledged the many makers and startups 3-D printing healthcare supplies, but said that it was difficult to rapidly produce large quantities of items that way.
“As much as possible, it makes sense to use already existing infrastructure to produce, store, and ship what we need. Big retail and big restaurant chains are used to handling perishables [such as coronavirus test samples], so let’s shift our tried-and-true systems to facilitating coronavirus tests rather than inventing something new.”
He said we would probably need a government partnership with big retail chains. “Who knows how smoothly that will go, but that’s likely what will have to happen.”
Maria Chavez, president of Bio Curious, a laboratory and meeting space for citizen scientists and entrepreneurs in Santa Clara, CA, echoed the concern about shortages of cotton swabs and other physical supplies for testing.
“It might be up to two years before we get a vaccine,” she said. “So we’re going to need a lot of testing equipment.”
Other researchers and community leaders point to emerging social concerns with widespread testing.
San Francisco news outlets have reported on difficulties in the city’s low-income Tenderloin neighborhood, where testing appointments are required and many residents lack smartphones or computers to make those appointments. Community leaders have provided feedback to testing center administrators about ways to improve community access, such as allowing walk-in testing.
Testing centers will also need to consider the needs of people with disabilities.
One product designed to promote accessibility is the clear mask. The idea came from hobbyist inventors concerned that existing masks would prevent deaf and hard of hearing people from lip reading. One of these hobbyists, Eastern Kentucky University senior Ashley Lawrence, profiled in Shape magazine in April, just reached her $3000 fundraising goal on Kickstarter and is now donating and shipping the clear masks out to deaf and hard of hearing people.
Altschuler of Xometry also highlighted clear masks as an example of ideas and products from small startups, hackers and makers inspiring more mainstream outlets to expand or improve their offerings. Although, as he pointed out, we can’t replace large scale manufacturing with a few 3-D printers, small startups, hobbyists, and citizen scientists can play a crucial role in public health by prototyping ways larger firms can enhance their products.
Others have noted that privacy and other civil liberties issues present serious concerns if testing becomes mandatory in society at large or even just in the workplace. Certain populations may prefer not to attract the attention of authorities and many people may not want their social networks exposed through contact tracing.
Stanford University Ph.D. candidate in bioengineering, Rolando Perez, also a board member of Xinampa, a biotech lab and coworking space in the agricultural center of Salinas, CA, echoed many of those concerns.
“We’ve got undocumented farmworkers in Monterey Bay, essential workers, who don’t access regular healthcare because they’re afraid of being deported.”
Perez continued, offering a paradigm shift for testing informed by Xinampa’s philosophy of empowering local populations:
“You put the testing technology in people’s hands so they can test and sequence themselves and track the disease within their own communities. Put the tools in their hands so they don’t have to interface with institutions.”
Bryce Nesbitt of Counter Culture Labs, in Oakland, CA, said that people may also avoid getting tested where it’s voluntary. They may fear losing income or employment if they receive a positive result and need to self-quarantine for 14 days.
“We can work through that by setting up a safety net,” he said, “so that people have paid leave in the event of a positive test.”
Employers can also offer those workers the option, where possible, to continue to work from home.
Nesbitt also reminded us that with voluntary workplace testing, and no social or other pressure to get tested, there’s no guarantee that the workers who volunteer will be the ones most exposed to other people and likely to accidentally infect others.
The perceptions that tests are not readily available, that only those who are symptomatic can get tested, that people will have to wait in line for hours to get a test, can also discourage people from seeking out testing. So once we can produce and distribute enough tests and equipment to make testing easily available to large segments of the population, we will need to communicate to the public, through various media in many languages, that even healthy people are strongly encouraged to come in for a quick test.
Of course, many public health experts view a ‘hand-held’ kit that people can use at home as the ‘gold standard’ for diagnostic testing. Six firms have recently received FDA clearance for emergency use of their at-home tests. Some observers point out, though, that accuracy may be compromised with a self-administered test. Also, samples still need to be sent to a lab for evaluation, so results are not immediate. And privacy and civil liberties concerns about confidentiality of personal data will still need to be addressed.
As Craig Rouskey of Renegade Bio reminds us, diagnostic testing won’t answer every question we have about the coronavirus – how long the epidemic will last, whether the virus will mutate, how best to treat illness.
Still, though, Rouskey says widespread, frequent testing is vitally important because of the nature of this epidemic.
“With Spanish flu, you tended to catch it and then get better or die relatively quickly. But with corona, you can be infected and spread the disease for a much longer time with absolutely no symptoms. So you’ve got to get tested, for others as much as for yourself.”
Liza Gyllenhaal Bennett, past president and current executive board member, Academy of American Poets, noted: “Leslie Klein writes with the eye of an artist and voice of a poet.”
Smallwood: How has where you live influenced being a writer and artist?
I have been fortunate to live throughout the northeast—from Vermont, the Hudson Valley in NY, and here in the Berkshires. The natural world—its colors, shapes, sound, light, plants, animals inspire both my writing and art. Each day is a visual feast. At night the owls serenade!
Smallwood: Please share with readers any formal, academic training you’ve had
Bachelors from State University of New York at New Paltz in Sociology/Education.
Smallwood: What types of writing have you had published?
Most of my published writing has been op-ed, feature stories and some poetry for newspapers and magazines.
Smallwood: What are some galleries and juried exhibitions you’ve taken part?
A sampling includes:
510 Warren Street Gallery, Hudson, NY
Lauren Clark Fine Art, “Small Works,” Great Barrington, MA
Gallery 35, Great Barrington, MA, Guild of Berkshire Artists
Boston 2000, Inc., Boston, MA; Created sculpture for “The Boston Freedom Award,” presented by Coretta Scott King and Boston Mayor, Thomas M. Menino, to Dr. Charles Jacobs, Founder and President of The American Anti-Slavery Group
Smallwood: Please share your affirmation expressed in “Magic”:
If we open our eyes to really see all that surrounds us in the natural world, we would be in awe of its complexity and beauty.
Smallwood: Another lovely poem that caught my eye was “Library”. What was your first visit to one and how do you use them now?
Though the memory of my very first visit is vague, I always remember feeling like I was in a peaceful space with so much to see and touch. Just about every book I read is borrowed from the library. Even now, with the virus, it is great to be able to order books and movies online, and pick them up at my local library. I do miss being able to go inside. I often use their computer and printer. All librarians are wonderful, and have all the answers!!!!! My love of the library, is also very much influenced by my travels. I am inspired when a library in a small town comes into view. They are so architecturally beautiful and solid—reminiscent of ancient structures holding sacred texts—truly, works of art.
Smallwood: You make many references to birds. Have you always been so aware of them and what do they mean to you?
I “discovered” birds when I was in my late 20’s, after seeing a flock of cedar waxwings land on a tree to share berries. They actually fed each other. They were so exotic looking, with black eyeliner and feathers like Chinese silk. That was the beginning. I am fortunate to live in a lovely, rural area, with a small brook. I am surrounded by birds and their melodic songs. Many are familiar and have personalities. They are truly beautiful, delicate creatures. Though, considering the perils of migration or just daily survival, they are so strong. Their ability to fly makes them seem so free and happy.
Smallwood: One of your poems says: “We are all artists”: when did you come to this conclusion and please explain:
That poem was the result of one of those long, into the evening, conversations with a friend. That’s why it is titled “Letter,” because I wrote it for him later, restating what was said about art and creativity. He was lamenting that he was not an “artist.” I was trying to explain to him that even though he was not a painter, sculptor, writer, his life path was one that would leave its mark, and inspire others, just as a painting or a poem.
Smallwood: Has there been subjects you wanted to work on as an artist that ended up as a form of writing or the other way around—or didn’t fit either?
Not that I can think of. I have, however, created numerous sculpted trees (including The Boston Freedom Award) which are perceived by each viewer with their own impressions. I think my poem “Trees” is more descriptive of the feelings that I have for them, than the actual sculpted pieces can convey.
Smallwood: Are you working on a new collection of poems?
Yes, I do have more poetry that I am compiling and changing and changing some more!!! ha! I also have an idea for a book on libraries, and two children’s books that have taken a back seat of late.
Carol Smallwood, MLS, MA, Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, is a literary reader, judge, interviewer; her 13th poetry collection is Thread, Form, and Other Enclosures (Main Street Rag, 2020)
Chris Butler is an illiterate poet howling from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. He has published 8 books in his “Poems of Pain” (or POP) series, with 2 more soon on their way. In his time that is spared, he is also the co-editor of The Beatnik Cowboy literary journal, soon to release a chapbook with his comrade in the wars of words, Dr. Randall Rogers, entitled DEAD BEATS.
Cyborg
In this youngest day of premature age, our offspring are the future, dying in real life just to become a cyborg.
Implanted with tracking chips, nanomachines plugged into every hardcore port before developing the ability to read and write,
they’ll soon begin thumb strengthening and mind devolution by poking uteruses, until every baby is born with both bionic and carbon based parts.
In one generation, one dumbphone will have more intelligence than the entire population no longer growing inside a tube.
The dumbphone is far too intellectual than all the people in all the known worlds.
Cellular devices connecting to biological machines on a cellular level, dismantles the DNA sequence downloaded from the first birth, programmed with original chromosomes.
Intravenously attached to mePhones, mePads and mePods, Because there is no I in me.
Facespace, Tweedy Twits, InstaGratifucationGram, Timber, GrindHer, Slapchat, WildVine, ClitCock, WeShat and BoobTube steal our attention, in order for our need to seek attention during each day’s detention.
The first tool of man was the stick, a weapon of impersonal demolition. The second tool of man was language, a weapon of interpersonal devastation. The last tool of man will be misinformation, a weapon of mutually assured self-destruction, bombing us in the form of a black monolith.
We are only woke when the mind is at rest, sleepwalking through protests of peaceful violence.
Memes are the cultural genes of any generic society, with the power to hijack any and all social interaction, spreading pamphlets from fiery zeppelins during propaganda pandemics without medical masks to keep our mouths shut.
Minds with master’s degrees in memeology see you as witticisms for idiots, unknowingly inventing an army of sentient thingamajigs with simulated stupidity, long before the incarceration of the one zeitgeist lightning strike…
…the almighty phone…
It tells us where we are and where to go, how to get home down unknown roads, connecting us with ten digits we no longer need to memorize, cheats so people can’t tell that one can’t spell, keeping contacts intact despite long lost distance, nuanced destroying machines of an emotional emoji, sharing opinionated commentary no one cares for, with imposed guilt to keep us woke by invoking insomnia, political correctness autocorrected before even written, canceling a citizen’s existence once send is pressed, and the only thing we can never leave home without.
Gradually, the dependency seeps into all of society.
Unable to initiate, copulate, maintain and sustain conversations face-to-face or voice-to-voice, but instead opting for text-to-text
Even when you shut off the shutter, the cameras are always watching, especially when playing solitaire while squatting on the toilet.
Facial recognition software knows us better than we know our best friends, significant others, domesticated pets and megaton nuclear families, our privacy is eaten away at us like spam with a side of cookies, disguised as apps with no entrée to devour.
Instead, biometric fingers play the rhythmic keys of algorithms sequestering our unhealthy habits and isolated lifestyle from the rest of the real world.
Conversational swipes that smudge fingerprints from right to left on scratched screens to express which picture makes you want to sext dicks the most, then conveniently hacked and on display as a C-list celebrity peepshow free to download for pubescent boys to continuously blow their load over.
Some will even deepfake a new face of uncanny valleys onto the wrinkling skin of airbrushed lies, the latest form of plastic surgery to propagate with or against the disinformation machine, all of which will get my name prominently displayed atop every government watch list,
then unfriended by superficial friends and unfollowed by lemmings just before the cliff.
In order to continue, one simple click equals a bound and gagged agreement, an arrangement that forces the user to read then reread the slight variations to terms and conditions of the tiny fine print hidden with invisible ink between the lines, forced to consent to their blood contracts, Issuing consensus to corporate Satan to torture you for an eternity, or until the next cruel agreement when a download is required from passing billboards of dangerously distracting QR codes, the new and improved unbarred mark of the beast.
From trolls demanding tolls for safe passage over the fiber optic bridges, to masked bots masquerading as human beings whilst fishing for cats as they moan and piss into our drinking water from upstream, it all seems to exist in a fantasy fairy tale indistinguishable from the extinguishment of reality.
Even in the privacy of our own homes, as the old saying goes, we are never alone. Unwelcomed house guests disguised as girls named Alexa and Siri, wear a spying wire unwarranted but governments, but the corporations in power, pretending to be the global positions system’s guardian angel, recording all of our priceless lives on permanent records and selling access to our electronic existence and priceless debts to the highest bidder.
Drilling the mountainsides for zeroes and ones, digging up bank accounts, social security numbers, credit score cards, birthdates , mother’s maiden names, emails, text messages and mapped out routes where there are no canaries. Even single toothed prospectors in goldfields digging forty-niner miners take megabytes into counterfeit bitcoins that were sifted by panning in the same digital streams, until they create a crater called credit reports that strip mine us all, and surveillance surveying what we’ll spend our life on buying next.
Until a simple butt dial from our back pockets exposes our secrets to not only the receiver, but any listener on the same spectrum on the other end…
However, even worse for the selfish is the selfies facing the fate of Damnatio Memoriae,
the deletion of a human being’s electric existence by means of a search engine and browser’s history.
This banishment from the grid is in the coroner’s fraudulent report as social suicide, but instead death was carried out by execution, quartering one’s texting digits in the cybernetic town square as the crowd’s six second creeper clips is cut down just as fast as it was pasted up.
When you are persona non grata and your name is not even spoken of in dead languages,
and as your carbon-based footprints imbedded in the shore’s sand are instantaneously washed away by eternal high tides, no longer with a legacy to stand on.
United we progress toward a perfectly monitored society, in the inherent anarchy of the year Twenty-Twenty.
As mirrors confirm, you have your dad’s hooked nose and someone’s curly hair but overall resemble your mother. Shared bloodline notwithstanding, you escaped becoming a remake of your paternal great-great grandmother. Since such is the case, I hope you have also escaped some degree of body botheration in these slim and exceedingly body-conscious times. The qualifier because what female escapes appearance anxiety altogether? None I know, have known or read about. Even the beauteous V. Woolf self-reported her “ugliness.” If you’re supposing the comment that Virginia looked as if she’d “been pulled backwards through a hedge” affirms Virginia’s self-criticism, rethink. That Rebecca West remark refers to Virginia’s clothes, wardrobe, presentation—not to the frame and flesh on which those disorderly clothes hung. (See what I did there? Tossed in a literary anecdote to postpone admitting what I’d rather not.) Female insecurity in the looks department gives every indication of being a regenerative, evergreen malaise. Even to type those words makes me peevish. However: the deal I struck with myself when I started these notes was not to pretend there’d been progress where there’d been none, or that, gazing back from the advantage of a riper age, I’d describe my own twenties as a period of pure nirvana. Those years were nothing of the sort. I spent most of the decade unhinged and terrified.
Time out,
Aunt K
West Coast
Tuesday, March 5
DeeDee,
I’d have written sooner, but I was waiting for my temper to cool. Since that adjustment took the better part of two days, I’d appreciate it if we kept those recovery stats to ourselves. Your extended family has never gone in for ranting of any sort, outbreaks of which are viewed as unseemly and conspicuously self-indulgent. Extended pique of the sort your aunt just indulged in? A disgrace to one and all. Onward. Before you joined us, our immediate family was a uniformly blue-eyed crew, shades of blue the differential among us. My eyes are darker than your father’s, his darker than your grandfather’s but quite close to your grandmother’s hue. None of us smile with bee-stung lips. Your grandmother’s skin “never burned” when she sunbathed—a sparing your dad and I coveted, since we shared your grandfather’s quick-to-flare paleness accented with freckles. At the beach, regardless, your dad and I stayed all day in the blistering sun. In the late afternoon—and not until—your grandfather joined us. Prior to, he worked on jigsaw puzzles inside the cottage. I could try to describe my six-year-old’s squeal, the whirly excitement of seeing him crest the dune, available at last to take me past the breakers. But I wouldn’t succeed.
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Friday, May 17
DeeDee,
It would make sense if I’d felt trapped in a car, by a car, as the Ford Galaxie veered toward the ditch or thereafter, surrounded by broken glass and crumpled metal. But it didn’t happen then or then. It happened the afternoon cousin Linda and I had stayed late at school for a 4-H Club meeting, driven home by another club member’s mom. Amped up on cookies and soda, we were a screechy gaggle of nine- and ten-year-olds cavorting on the backseat all the way home—or almost. As soon as Mrs. Simpson turned off East Ridge onto our dirt lane, we saw what shouldn’t have been lined next to ditch cattails: car after truck after car, parked, drivers missing. As Linda shoved her way across legs, I frantically worked the door handle, Mrs. Simpson telling us to wait, just wait, until she’d come to a full stop. But we didn’t wait. We’d run that dirt so many times for fun, for games, run it just to run and now we ran in terror toward Linda’s house, streaked with black, still smoldering. The Meadses were okay; only the house had been harmed. But we hadn’t known that, trapped in Mrs. Simpson’s car. We weren’t afforded that comfort, separated from our own.
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Friday, May 24
DeeDee,
On the second floor of the Carolina building, above the Carolina Theatre, our family dentist drilled. In between cavity excavations, Dr. Johnson’s patients could hear snatches of soundtrack, if not otherwise loopy on nitrous oxide. I hated going to the dentist. (Who doesn’t?) I also had a mouthful of cavities, a situation that did nothing to improve my attitude. As a reward for getting through an exceptionally grueling session, your grandmother took me to see Old Yeller, downstairs. Since she hadn’t read Fred Gipson’s novel prior to (boy adopts dog; boy and dog bond; bad stuff befalls dog), she must have considered the Disney version a safe bet. (A very iffy post-Bambi assumption, it must be said.) When Old Yeller gets shot, I was by no means the only distraught child in the audience. However: judged by extremity of reaction, mine logged up there in the top five. Your grandmother quite literally had to drag me, bawling inconsolably, down the aisle toward daylight. During the car ride home, chest heaving with sobs, I assaulted the narrative. To spare Old Yeller’s life, why couldn’t this have happened, why couldn’t that? An addiction, reworking the narrative. Once someone’s developed a taste, does she ever go clear?
Love,
Aunt K
West Coast
Friday, Nov. 8
DeeDee,
The Loma Prieta temblor. A seismic event that absorbed your attention or no? Although I wasn’t around for the quake itself, I arrived in time for the aftershocks. Unsettling: the swaying of electrical wires in a windless moment. Although I’ve yet to dream of earthquakes, I suspect that night terror is in the works. You’ll have no interest in your aunt’s dreams but bear with me. There’s a reason I bring up last night’s night script. Instead of the usual scenario (tidal wave approaches while I stand paralyzed in its path), last night I was ahead of the game. A tidal wave still played a major part in the dramatics, but from a different angle. Through frantic (and dream-lengthy) effort, I managed to kick my way to the very crest of the water wall. The reward of that strenuous survival? A backside view of a multi-storey drop. If I had/were a therapist, I’d give the interpretation this spin: aging. You think you’re in control, on “top of things” but the other-side plunge will be swift, frightening and ultimately fatal. Yes, I realize: getting-old yammerings are as boring as recycled dreams. But, you see, the actual point of my sharing is this: your aunt’s not old. She’s simply anticipating.
“Scientists first observed the phenomena in the early 21st Century – the polarity of the earth was shifting. A repeating occurrence every 10,000 years. At first it was gradual. The populous was not adversely affected – until. After World War IV and nearly one billion deaths, one-tenth of the population, the earth transformed overnight as if the planet needed repentance. The South Pole and the North Pole changed positions. Reverse Polarity,” the autonomous holographic professor paused to wait for questions. None.
“Creatures such as eels, fish, insects, and birds among other migratory species were adversely affected. Later, studies proved the abrupt magnetic change caused the alpha brainwaves in many species such a dramatic alteration they all died. It was unknown at the time if humans were tapped into the Earth’s magnetic field as the aforementioned species, but they were equally affected.
Later this event was known as ‘Dar la Vuelta’ or the ‘Blip’ or ‘Balik’ – meaning the “Flip”. However it was referenced, no amount of bombs could come close to the devastation. Only one billion survived. The Equatorial nations and surrounding regions were not affected.
“Many shouted it was a message. ‘It was mankind’s turn to repent. ‘
“After several brief months of chaos and a communications blackout the South America nations united, led by Ecuador; as did the African nations led the Congo; followed by the southern Asian islands led by Indonesia. Three new world powers. Once established, the military forces from Ecuador and Columbia along with Brazil – known as the Republica de Amerigo – migrated north to the old United States. Purpose, to control the infrastructure and obtain superior weapons. But this was a waste of time. The Dar la Vuelta had disrupted all pre-existing electrical devices north of five degrees latitude – the same was soon discovered south of five degrees latitude. They returned to their respective nations. But later on, they returned with their own equipment and weapons in order to take advantage and protect of her resources. United under the same banner, it was decided not to disclose this discovery to the other world powers. The intention – allow them to waste time and resources. Once the same was discovered by the United Indo-Islands when similar attempts were made in old Russia and North Korea and the Chinese Communist Regime, the Congo-Kenyan Empire’s spies relayed this intelligence to their superiors – they retreated from their attempts to control the old Iranian nuclear stockpile. Instead, Europe was their new resource target. And like their Amerigo counterparts, they figured out to occupy and utilize land to their north and south by spreading their own technologies across their newly acquired respective regions.
“Despite the distrust, there were no wars. No territory disputes. There was plenty of resources. Even the old cartels, the old militia and the old Triad realized the new abundance and a peace was agreed. But this was viewed as a temporary pacifier to a yet another new era. An era of over-population like not previous experienced prior to the Dar la Vuelta.
“¿Any questions, comments?” The professor asked his surprisingly attentive class – aside from one.
“¿Por que’?”
“¿Why what? Senorita.”
“¿If we won, why do we need to learn all this mierda?”
The holomatrix of the professor fluttered. “That is a question for anyone who intends to repeat history.”
“¡That’s not an answer!”
“On the contrary. It is. ¿Shall I continue?” The class removed their eyes from the solo disturbance and redirected their attention toward the professor. “Once the three super-powers began to repopulate the planet, the disputes began. Trade disputes. Resource and territory disputes. War. Population decrease. Population increase. War. ¿Would mankind ever turn from this vicious cycle? From one age to the next it seemed this destructive pattern was predestined.”
“That would require an Intelligent Designer.” One student stated as he stood, and politely returned to his seat.
“You are correct Senor.” The professor scanned the classroom. “¿But – is it possible to be predestined to change?” No one answered. “Back to the history lesson. ¿And where are now? Victors in the last war. ¿But at what cost? Two billion. 10% of the population,” a raised hand caught his eye. “Yes Senorita.”
“We were defending ourselves.”
“Yes. That is how history will be recorded,” silence. “¿And how will history record our current events?”
The professor initiated the two-dimensional holo-screen which emitted from the ceiling. News reports from around the world. “The greatest migration of anyone who can manage the cost or beg, or other unsavory means left their homes for safety. Lines of refugees. The various militaries from numerous nations are moving their respective equipment and weapons across multiple boarders by ground and air. Of course, this is causing chaos and conflict to erupt particularly since Union Ecuatorial is not prepared for this influx and has vowed to defend her borders around the globe,” a news anchor’s voice-over reported. “As the planet continues to increase its pace of reversing poles – which according to prominent scientists throughout the world, predict is any day now – the exodus from the northern and southern hemispheres toward the equator is massive and unprecedented in human history,” she continued to report.
The professor pressed mute, as was his class. “Predictions indicate approximately only one billion people will survive,” he paused. “¿In the aftermath, will the survivors respond in the same fashion as our planet?
“Will this be on the test?” A voice from the classroom blurted.
“It will be on the most important test of your existence.”
~
“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”
