STORY SLIP

This short story is unfinished…

“When all is acceptable, nothing is exceptional,” he said. The fish jumped in the windy sun, whipping and splashing, brisk whitecaps, fins and foam scratching the ocean’s back in perpetual ecstasy.

“They are all together,” she said. How thick his hair is! “So perhaps not one is exceptional. But look at the vigour, at the energy they possess! And it’s a bigger energy than anything you or I could produce, physically, alone, simply because they are many. Many are doing the same thing, so it makes a larger thing. But there’s another interesting phenomena: being conformist to a group and group actions does not drain one of energy as we would expect, because as individualists we consider grey conformity to be boring, therefore enervating. It might even increase it, because no energy is taken up by decision making. When each fish leaps, its arc, proportionately, is twenty times higher than a human could achieve.

“This is one reason I welcome the Millennials’ vision of the world to come, for their world is communistic, with the struts of support going outward, laterally, rather than vertically. This creates an essential change in the hierarchical system, almost a gutting-out of it. Pluto is “causing” this trend; until 2025 it will be remaking hierarchical systems. The Israeli kibbutzim were “prophetic” — our Millennials possess the same strong group orientation as those Israeli kids. This will sooner or later change the outer shape and inner structure of Western politics. The change will/has already started to occur in the U.S.”

“Yes,” he said dreamily. “I can see villages, even large ones, instead of cities; or cities are rare, and not wild west like ours today. It’s like a bunch of domes, or perhaps smaller houses, all together, all similar, peaceful and green. We control/tune with nature so well that each village can grow the bulk of its own food. All that stuff. We are close to telepathy, and can already communicate in many wordless ways. Most elections take place without ballots, paper, digital or other. And there you lie, in your red skirt.”

“Um-hmm?”

*****