Into this unsettled situation the possibility of building a free and just society had infiltrated. The example of the Martian exiles proved more attractive than we could have imagined.
Planet Earth, we found, was now largely a Han planet. Which is to say that modes of Chinese Pacific thought prevailed, as more confrontational Western modes of thought had dominated in the previous century.
Yearning for a better life had always been latent in society. Now came a renaissance. One of its effects was the establishment of Huochuans in many global centres. Huochuan was a Chinese word for cargo vessel; the name caught on for travelling institutes, which drifted from city to city with a freight of learning and wisdom. One whole section of a Huochuan was devoted to a huiyan, literally ‘minds that perceive both past and future’, now applied to life-story-storage systems.
As nationality came to play a less active role in human affairs, the concept of age-grouping, with activities suitable for each age, became predominant. Divisions such as YEAS and DOPS were influential in this shift in thinking. It proved to be the thirty-something group that received most benefit from Huochuan teaching.
Huochuans promoted a system of two-way communications. Those whose lives had taken a wrong turning could receive consultation and/or counselling. A method developed whereby long-bygone conversations could be recalled verbatim and improved. Anyone had opportunities to reconsider their lives and alter career or direction if insight demanded it.
In payment the beneficiary contributed to the huiyan by depositing a vid, document or disk, recording their inward and outward lives. In this way, the Huochuans accumulated a grand compendium of the experiences of generations in a kind of psychic genetic inheritance. For the first time in human history, attention was paid to the individual life – to all individual lives – ‘this odd diversity of pain and joy’, as an old folk song has it.
Such huiyan records served as a style of general entertainment/enlightenment (called tuokongs), much in the way of some serious TV programmes of the twentieth century.
With the proliferation of genetically altered vegetables and fruits, the eating of meat became a thing of the past in many regions. Domesticated animals became a rarity, although cats, dogs and songbirds were almost venerated, as were the semi-domesticated reindeer of far northern lands. Here and there, gates of zoo cages were flung open and their occupants set free.
People lived differently. They thought differently. Their cities were now contained; they kept in contact with one another by Ambient, much as ships at sea had once kept in touch by radio satellite. The old system of M-roads fell into decay. Beyond city walls, the wilderness was allowed to return. There, as on Mars, a degree of solitude could be enjoyed.
‘The Utopians!’ It became a magical word. While a percentage of those returning from Mars fell prey to terrestrial diseases, the virus of Utopian thinking spread. I am told that, in the great hall of the Unified World (as the reconstituted United Nationalities is called) stands a row of bronze busts of those of us who made history. There in effigy is Dreiser Hawkwood, there is Tom Jefferies, of course, and Kathi Skadmoor and Arnold Poulsen. And I am there too!
If future generations enquire why I, my humble little self, should stand there with the great, there is a reason. For I it was who went out with Kathi and Dreiser to confront Chimborazo when it gave birth.
The inspiration to do this came to me in a waking dream from my earthly Other. I was walking somewhere in a kind of desert called Crapout – though how I knew its name I have no idea – with another person, maybe male, maybe female, when a strange manifestation filled the sky.
It appeared like the cloud of an explosion, very alarmingly. I sheltered my companion in my arms, and was unafraid. A noise of trumpets sounded when, from the great threatening cloud, something beautiful appeared. I can’t describe it. Not an angel, no. More like a – well, a winged octopus, a pretty winged octopus, trailing streamers. It seemed to glance down at me with much kindness, so that I woke crying.