Did They Go A Step Too Far?

In light of the recent attacks on Charlie Hebdo in France and the barbaric murder of more than 10 people there were a lot of accusations towards the Islamic culture as being shockingly primitive in its way of dealing with satire and how a small proportion of this religion is inevitably taught to act like animals in the face of offences such as what Charlie Hebdo was putting out.

There was of course people that commented and told the inevitable crusading proportion of the Catholic faith not to generalize and condone all Muslims for the barbaric act of few extremists. Some of these "peace-makers" were members of Charlie Hebdo itself. They are trying to mitigate ethnicism by implying that the killings  were the consequence of a few crazy individuals and not the Islamic religion.

But how accurate is this really? What I see, and what I see greatly lacking in the media and the general public, is that the true consequence of this murderous incident was Charlie Hebdo itself. The killings occurred as a radical response to the "satire" of Islamic religion Charlie Hebdo is known to venture into. Charlie is said to target "political right wing, capitalism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam" according to NPR.org, but at what extent should ridiculing people, entities or their beliefs be accepted?

When I was still young my mother always taught me that if I did not want to get punched or assaulted at school I should never insult other people, not just to not get attacked, but because making fun of others or calling them names is wrong in itself. Charlie Hebdo did not apparently receive this message.

Even though the mocking of religions or famous figures is in itself harmful, in the sense that it does not kill nor physically injure anyone, it could still be a very damaging and spiteful endeavour. It is of course known that the satire issued by such media companies tends to mock radical, extremist or misguided behaviour by religious or famous figures, such as terrorism, racism, feminism and the like. However, one must ask if the act of ridiculing the main figures of religion is in fact combating these mal-behaviours, or is it in fact ridiculing and generalizing a whole religious group of people as being all terrorists?

It is rather ironic that in the aftermath of the incident that happened on the 7th of January 2015, Charlie Hebdo and the media at large are telling (to mostly Western Countries) to not get angry at Muslims in general, even though what they themselves were drawing about was mocking the whole religion (even if unintentionally, which would be a great overlook).

The problem here and the point I'm trying to make is thus that the consequences that brought about the killings of Charlie Hebdo's journalists were caused by Charlie Hebdo itself. This is not a matter of freedom of speech or not, this is a matter of ethnicism. Did Charlie Hebdo's caricatures of prominent religious figures imply ethnicism?

The majority of the Islamic community is not of course terroristic, and is not going to come at your doors with guns and shoot at you for drawing their prophet. But if their is a small proportion of this religion that is dangerous, is mocking them and insulting them the way to go in combating such a problem? Do the majority of "good" Muslims feel as if they are actually being respected when they see this satire?

Combating physical terrorism should not be done with verbal or visual terrorism. Same would go for any other religion.

No one dares enter a Christian church naked and bellowing profanities when that same venue is considered "holy" by the community. Doing so would probably result in a jail sentence. We must not forget that the Christian faith has had many flaws in the past, and that during the Inquisition in Spain, even failing to cite loyalty to the King or to your devotion in God would result in torture or death.

Today we are facing a similar situation were the new Inquisition is the underdog, yet instead of purging it with proper means we are poking it with a stick and pretending it will not retaliate.

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side

To achieve sustainability in an ever growing population we must not put others to blame for the harm being caused to our planet.

When we look at the Earth from space all we see is a pale blue dot surrounded by nothing, except an endless dark stretch of space, void of life, breathless, dead.

And on that little blue dot speckled with green is our home. Our families, our loved ones, friends and all we care about. What we do today is putting all of this into jeopardy.

What we do today will affect our future. What we do tomorrow depends upon today.

To change our world we need ideas. Some ideas are simple. Growing a plant, turning off a light bulb, keeping the windows closed when the AC is on. All of these are important tiny steps, but we must not be scared to be a little more ambitious. We should strive to be both ambitious and simple.

Most of all, however, we must be positive!

The ideas we need must stem from the problems we face. How are we to assign priorities to these problems? We must look beyond boundaries, beyond borders and political noise. Climate change, ozone layer depletion and similar phenomena affect us all equally. How conscious are you of your fragility on that pale blue dot?

We must also look beyond time. Think about your daughters and your grandsons. Will they merit a world worse than the one you inherited?

The only green we know is Earth. We know not of any other planet that harbours life. And even though Earth is plentiful and has provided for us for millennia, it is not infinite. Resources are running out.

The cost of metals such as copper keep rising and to keep to demand extending mining operations threaten to destroy our ecosystems.

Reducing our impact is ensuring our survival. We must keep the balance intact.

On a positive note, the 2000's (as they may be called) are a great time to live in!

There are great minds at work to solve the problems of an ever growing population.

Here I present the four ideas that I believe will shape this century, lest they save us and drive us into a Greener Tomorrow:

1 - Cities in the skies
2 - Automated electric vehicles
3 - Space elevators
4 - Asteroid mining

I will be going into more detail in each one of these on separate blog posts to show how they might hopefully be our lifeline for the future.

The Poison Wall

Many years ago before the Sundering and even before the Black Mist took over the Delta there was a farmer, cunning and pre-emptive who lived in a little hut at the base of the Mountains, and his name was John.

John was a master botanist. He classified plants and identified them on the spot just by looking at them for a couple of seconds. His knowledge was passed on to him by his family. John's father, Professor Albert Pompidou of Gillis was a lecturer at the Great Mountain Halls. His mother, Ophelia Lepsi was an adventurer. She had travelled the far-beyond, into the jungles, and came back with samples for her husband to name.

John had characteristics of both his parents. He was adventurous and intellectual. The farms that he built on his own at the foot of the Mountains where the Blue River disappeared provided sustenance to his family; his wife Elizabeth Pompidou and the three children she nurtured.

No man in the Delta had foreseen the coming of the Black Mist except one. John had long preached about it's coming. He felt it in his soil, saw it in his plants, tasted it in the waters. He feared of what might come of the far beyond if the mist had to overcome the mountains. And he also feared of what might come across to the Delta from the jungles beyond, when no man was left to defend against the threat. He did not wish to see his home ravaged by beasts, neither did he want Skaipei and it's denizens to suffer from this assault if it would come to one.

So John devised the most cunning plan ever to come to his mind. He was to build a wall of poisonous plants, thick and long covering the base of the mountains. A wall that no man and no beast would be able to cross, for it would be the plants he loved that protected the Delta. 

He set out to build this wall ten years before the coming of the Black Mist. Those years the skies were still clear and the sun shone bright on the soil. The air, however, already felt thick and heavy. The wind that incessantly blew from the sea to the East reached the mountains where it broke and left it's cargo. And so it was when John sown his first seeds that the winds from the East brought the first black drops of moisture over the Delta.

From his gardens John selected a variety of plants most toxic to all kinds of beasts. He chose the most deadly of all, and picked varied species to leave no dent in the shield which he was to grow. To protect the soil, he sown Rapa filiformis a bulb plant with threadlike leaves. The bulb seeps out toxic chemicals that inhibit burrowers from advancing, while the tendrils above had sticky barbs that readily attached to beasts passing through. These then seeped the same poison onto their victims. 

Other kinds included plants of the family Corocoros. A blue form of shrub that had large nail-like protrusions from it's branches. A scratch on these needles poisoned the victim with a chemical that prevented clotting. Other plants unleashed a mixture of toxic gases all over the wall.

To grow his poison wall, John first sown his seeds all across the Mountain base and constructed irrigation pipe along his transect. Over ten years, the wall was watered through these pipes, for not even John was invulnerable to his own creation and would not be able to go close to them.

So eventually the wall grew, sixty kilometres long, five kilometres wide. It's height varied at areas, but was on average at least five metres high, yet thick and impenetrable. The plume of toxic gas that was emitted from the wall reached a further kilometre all around it.

This was a great achievement for John. He felt proud and of duty to his people though the same cannot be said otherwise. For the citizens of Skaipei outcasted John from their city. He was labelled a traitor, a heretic. No one believed of the dangers beyond the mountains, even less of the coming Black Mist. 

Only when the dark tide swept over the Delta like a mattress being pulled over a  naked baby did the people of Skaipei think back to what a crazy man had once told them ten years ago.

"I shall erect a wall of poison below the Mountains, for when the darkness comes, let there be a barrier between our lands and the jungles beyond. Let there be a sliver of hope for us in the dark, that the beasts from beyond may not make of us what cats make of mice of the fields."

The Forgotten Inn

"My name is John Pompidou. I am an outcast." He said this without flinching. 

John Pompidou looked like an old man. His hair was shoulder height,turning grey and was sprouting from under a cowboy hat, brown and made of leather. His chin was covered by a dark brown beard, not very long, but dense and  which continued up his lips to join a bulky mustache. 

He sat on a chair, his right foot crossed over his left, his hands draping down backwards. He didn't look at Virelda or Kripp, but kept chewing on a piece of straw. 

"I have seen you looking around the Grand Cave. As if lost. Are you lost?" He now lifted his eyes from the ground and looked intensely towards Virelda. 

"Sir, I...I am not lost. My friend here, is showing me around." Virelda looked at Kripp concerned. Kripp grinned slightly and moved towards Pompidou. 

Kripp whispered. "She's a highborne. A daughter of the skies!".

John Pompidou jolted slightly backwards on his chair and almost toppled over. 

"Interesting." He said. 

His chocolate brown eyes, although the same colour of his skin and everything else he wore really, were bright and intent. He examined Virelda closely. His eyes moved up and down three or four times before he said a word.

"You look pale, child."

"I am pale." Said Virelda. "We have travelled for two days now, and I haven't ate much."

"I see, but your skin. It is not tainted."

Virelda looked at her skin and then back at him. John's skin was the colour of his leather hat. Brown and rugged like that of Kripp's. She now looked back at her skin and was amazed at how delicate it looked, fragile even.

"What do you mean by tainted?", she asked.

"By the Mist is what I mean." John now spoke in a solemn voice. It was as if something boiled in his heart and he moved a hand to hold it. "The Mist has ruined us all. Cast us away from the light. In this dirty hole. We are pitiful. Outcasts."

"We are NOT outcasts!", snapped Kripp. "We live here by choice. It is you who feel like an outsider. It is you who does not feel like you belong."

"Very so," said John, "I am not a child of this land. I am not a Mole."

Virelda looked at John with empathy. She felt like an outcast as well. Her departure from Skyscapes was not a planned excursion. For all she knew, she might not even be able to return to the City in the Skies. Her heart ached, as John's did a few moments before. She put her hand to her chest.

"I escaped the City in the Skies", said she, "after the High Mayor sent an Elite Force to arrest me." She was honest, clear in her words. She hadn't talked to anyone else till now, except Kripp, and a tear rolled down her eyes.

"I am not sure of what happened to my father. I am not even sure of what might happen to me." She was now shedding tears as she made an effort to continue. "This is not my home. I want to go back home and live in the sky."

"Virelda." Kripp held up an arm around her shoulder. "Home is far away, it is. But this is my home. And soon it will be your home too. The Nest is as good as the City in the Skies believe me. I will show you around and we will meet many people. You will have new family here. New friends. This will be your new home."

Virelda masked away her tears as she looked at the boy beside her. He was not very smart, she thought, but he had something far better than that in him. He had empathy. His words soothed her fears and she hugged him dearly.

John Pompidou was still looking at the two from the far side of the Inn with interest.

"So, you two have reconciled? May I continue?". Virelda and Kripp were slightly embarrassed as they turned back to John to see what he had to say. "As it be, the Forgotten Inn is not a great place to talk in. We shall now move out and meet again in twenty minutes in the Grand Cave, East of the Pool."

He stood up from his chair as he threw the straw from his mouth on the table. "I am to show you the Lungs of the Nest. If, of course, you desire to do so." He looked at Virelda waiting for an answer.

"What are the Lungs of the Nest?", she said. In truth, she did not even know what the Nest itself was. But from what she could understand, it was the name given to these caves and tunnels buried underground. It was the city of the Moles.

"The Lungs of the Nest are the tribal homes. Nine tribes live in the Nest. All swore to protect the Queen. And you, if you wish to become part of the Moles, must meet the leader of each and every tribe. Only then shall you consider the Nest home."

"Very well." Said Virelda. As she did, John Pompidou quickly hurried out of the Forgotten Inn and disappeared.

"He said we have to meet him in twenty minutes." Kripp said, "It is better to hurry up."

"Thank you Kripp", she said. Kripp looked at Virelda and then turned to the door.
"You're welcome", he answered ever so faintly as he hurriedly made way for the door. 

God and Beauty

Yesterday I had the chance to be part of a Christian Mass. One of those ritualised masses that I haven't attended for four years now. I was there because I was with people who adhere to the beliefs of Christianity. People that I love and respect and wish for them to be free in thought, and to live their life fulfilled however that may come about.

During this mass I listened and tried to understand why myself, a few years back, was such a Christian devotee. Then the priest  advocated the life of St. Augustine and he said that this man, in his life, referred to his God as Beautiful. At that moment I felt close to St. Augustine. For when I look outside at the trees and the rocks, when I am by the sea and hear the waves dancing on the sand and look up at the glittering stars, what I see is Beauty.

You see, you do not have to have Religion to see Beauty. To feel the Beauty around us. You might believe in God or you might not, but what we all must come to realize is the beauty of life. I think that Religion was the result of this realization. That men and women of old saw Beauty in their lives and the wonders around them and they had to assign a name to this Beauty. They created God to give meaning to the seemingly perfect and magnificent happenings of nature.

However with time, the pure idea of love and understanding of nature and the closeness of man to nature and its beauty got corrupted. Greed and selfishness shaped religion. Religion became the tool to control the emotions of man. It became the weapon of cunning individuals for their benefits, to use against people pure in heart. Those people who were spiritual and saw Beauty in the world were the most susceptible to manipulation.

Yet today, we might be moving away from that manipulation once again. We are becoming closer to the root of our Religion. We are becoming more Spiritual and less Ritual. For the important part to argue about is not the existence of God but the Beauty of life. All humans, believers or not can see this Beauty. They can feel the power of a storm and the sweet caress of a breeze. They can hear the power of thunder and give praise to the light of the sun that warms us on a chill Winter day.

This is what we need to learn. To dream of life. For there is no greater pleasure in life than to appreciate life. Forget about God for a moment and look around you. There is YOU and there is the world right now. Would you rather love life and live it peacefully or would you rather love the idea of God and live life to please him, when in your mind the same reason for God to create life in the first place was for you to live it?

So worry not about God and what came before or what comes next. There is no need for ritual. No need for prayer. For life itself is a prayer. Drinking dew off a flower in bloom or laying down in a field in the heat of the sun is a prayer to life. It is your recognition of this Beauty that matters.

A Hundred Billion Years Across The Universe

Across the vastness of this simple Universe a spaceship tumbles in the fabric of the matrix on its way to Alpha-B112.

"Commander, our trajectory has shifted 2' West in the last ten minutes. Shall I proceed with recovery procedure?"

The commander, a stout man ripe in age looked back at his pilot. He evoked a stern look, "Let our ship veer off its path", he said, "for it seems as if the path we have chosen was only our intended destination, but not the journey which our ship desires to pursue." 

The pilot was confused for a second. He looked back at the commander then back at the flickering buttons on his control-console. Hesitantly he moved back from the console and looked back at the commander.

"Sir, at this rate our trajectory will shift over half a million kilometres from Alpha-B112 on estimated arrival time." His perturbations bubbled up his throat as he made an effort not to look worried while speaking to his superior. "Are you certain of your decision sir?"

"I have seen many great deeds unfold before my eyes Haley", said the commander. "And I have looked deep and thought hard about all this. About the Universe we live in." The commander moved closer to the pilot and looked deep into this eyes. 

"Haley, have you ever noticed strange happenings? Have you ever been vigilant enough and witnessed atypical events transpiring in the darkness that envelopes our spaceship?". The commander now looked outside the circular window on the other side of the commanding room, behind the control-console. 

Haley followed the gaze of the commander and then moved slowly to the window. Peering outside he could see a black curtain dotted with white covering all the corners of the Universe he now looked at. To the East, Alpha-B112 appeared brighter than the neighbouring stars, but was still very far away. 

A lightning cracked to West in the darkness. Haley jerked back and the commander held him firm from his shoulder.

"Have you finally seen it?", said the commander.

"What was that William?", said the pilot, forgetting his manners towards his superior.

Commander William grinned delightfully towards Haley. "It is a glitch my friend. See, our trajectory is deviating from the assigned path and the Universe is not happy about our decision to not correct the mistake."

"But why would the Universe be unhappy about such a thing sir?", said the pilot worried.

"You see, chance had it, our journey was altered by a random event. Tell me Pilot Haley, have you been the one to veer the ship off course?" 

"Sir, I would never."

"Exactly!", snapped Commander William. "It is an act of God! A stroke of luck my friend. Have you ever asked why we always travel to already specified star systems?" The commander now stared blankly towards the middle of the ship's room. 

"Think very carefully Pilot Haley. We always follow trajectories. We have never failed to arrive where we have always intended to go. Yet, we never know why or how our paths have been chosen. We never ask, either. Now, you see, this is a freak event in the nature of our existence. Chance shaped our paths and we veered from our destiny. We are moving away from what had been chosen for us, and the Universe is not happy. I have noticed this before already."

"But sir, what was that lightning really?", asked Haley.

"It was a glitch. An error in the Universe due to our negligence to appeal to correction. It seems as if we are not supposed to keep to mistakes created by chance. We should always fix problems that occur randomly. But today we have not. Do you know what the difference is today Mr. Haley?"

Pilot Haley looked puzzled. "What sir?"

"Today it was me who took the decision."

Outside the ship, lightning started to crack across the black fabric of space. Pilot Haley rushed to the control-console and mashed three buttons in rapid succession. A whoof noise echoed through the room. The lightning spread across the window. 

"Pilot Haley!". The commander's voice was dampened by the echoing noise. "Today we shall touch the hand of God!"

As the pilot kept pressing buttons on his console, the lightning outside the window multiplied and grew in size. The stars once seen dotting the landscape now shuddered and fidgeted here and there across the Universe. A white plane suddenly appeared through the darkness, and through it Pilot Haley and Commander William could see a field of green grass and a blue sky.

"What in the world is that which I see?", asked Haley baffled. William looked deeper into the plane that now was expanding in front of them.

"That my friend, is another Universe. The door has opened for us to leave this matrix Mr. Haley."

"What about our mission?", asked the pilot in turn.

"Where one mission fails, another shall begin." Commander William pressed two buttons on the control-console and the ship took a jolt and accelerated forwards.

"There is no one reality that exist but many", said William, "The Universe we live in is a simulation. A conjecture of the Universe in which we are about to ascend."

And with those last words the spaceship in which they sailed dissipated into a white plane across a black curtain littered with lightning.

Across the vastness of this simple Universe a spaceship tumbles in the fabric of the matrix on its way to Alpha-B112.

"Commander, our trajectory's shift in direction has been accounted for and corrected.", said the Pilot.

Zombies

I saw in a dream the day the virus spread. It took over humanity so rapidly, and zombified most humans. Not the typical movie of a walking dead, but much the same and as scary. The virus infests a person's brain, confuses it and makes it want to socialise and come in contact with people. It transmits to other people through sneezing, kissing, open wounds and other bodily fluids.

An infected person has no control over his conscious decisions and is most of the times confused. An infected person seeks other people and feels lonely all the time. This way, the virus ensures that it can spread through the population. Loved ones are most susceptible, because they are more prone to come to each other and they usually cannot resist the urge to touch their beloved, even if they are infected. It was hard to see my loved ones get infected by the virus. How they all seemed lost in their thoughts, walking blindly around trying to find affection from others. It was even more painful to leave my wife when I realized she had become confused. 

All it took were three days for the virus to spread so rapidly. The virus itself is not lethal, for it does not impede normal bodily functions or destroys cells. However, it removes our conscious identity. An infected person is like a newborn trying to understand the world in which he has arrived. That person can still do normal tasks though. Infected people will still go to work, drive a car and cook. They usually do not even realize they have become infected. For when they lose their self-awareness they act like highly intelligent animals without a superior motif in life.

FutureLabs could not do much to fight the epidemic. They had made the virus themselves, but unintentionally. And the speed by which it spread and its subtlety (for no one really realized until day two what was really happening around the world) was unaccounted for. No cure was available. Those of us who managed to live the third day sought each other and tried to avoid the infected. But the infected craved for us. They drove to us and phoned us, cried for us to be with them, for them not to be lonely. And we had to try and explain to them, as in explaining to a newborn in a confused sleep-like state, the situation. Our efforts to make them realize their state was of course futile. We escaped, and we came here, to the house upon the hill in the woods. 

There are 30 of us here and we are ready to fight the infected. Whether we will have the courage to do whatever it takes to keep them away is our biggest struggle. How can we prevent them from approaching us when they do not consciously have control over their decisions? When they do not understand what it means to "stay back"?

Yet, here they come. From the window of the attic I could see around fifty cars driving towards the hill. They are coming for us. Their loneliness has overtook them, and now they seek conscious company. 

They drive into the open field in front of the house and out of their cars they come. They look around confused, as they normally do. They look at each other and at the sky and then at the house. They moan and say mumbled words between them. Then they walk towards the house crying for us. 

"Why do you leave us?", they cry, "Why are you hiding from your families? Are we not also humans?"

Some of us in the house shed tears. Those people outside were once like us, normal. Some of us even recognized their family members. And then, amongst them, I could see her. I could see my wife wondering about the cars outside looking at the sky, confused. I felt like a knife stab me in the heart. 

More of them came. There were now over a hundred zombified people walking around outside the house. 

We could not let them come close. A single breath from one of them would immediately infect us. One hug, one kiss, one tear from these zombies is all it took to come in contact with us, and destroy our consciousness. Human identity would be lost forever.

They knocked on the door. We looked at each other. One of us came out with a knife from the kitchen. We would have to defend ourselves. We had to kill these humans to survive. I went to the pantry and got a long pike the previous owners used for their garden. The door knocked again, and the zombies were now shouting at us for not letting them in. 

Suddenly, the door burst open. One of them had kicked it in. For a moment, the 30 of us looked at the door, and in the doorway a dozen men and women looked at us back with blank stares. I could see no soul lurking within them.

One of them took a step forward and said "Don't run from us please, all we want is to be with you". That is all he said before I saw a knife protruding out of his forehead. One of us had threw a knife at him, and hit him straight where he aimed. The remaining zombies looked at the dead body and showed no emotion whatsoever. 

They looked back at us and one of them said "Why did you have to kill him? Please let us in, we are lonely. All we want is to love you. All we want is to be with you."

They all started moving in. Our group hesitated. Then we all realized this was our last chance to live. To survive the infection and live to be humans. I charged a man and piked him on my stick. Blood gushed from his neck and he screeched with pain. Tears shed down my face. These were all human beings after all, even if they had lost their identities. 

We fought them off. There were hundreds of them now, coming in few by few in the house. I tried to look for her but I couldn't find her. I couldn't find my wife. Then she appeared in the doorway. I could see her beautiful brown hair tied in a ponytail and her eyes. They were once beautiful and she always smiled. But she was now sullen and appeared lost. 

I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to kill her. And I wanted to be the one to end her life and not someone else. I moved two steps forward.

The zombies suddenly turned, and walked away from the house. My wife immediately took a step outside and I lost her from my sight. All the zombies went back into their cars, and one by one they drove off away from the house on the hill. 

What had happened?

A few days now passed, and there were new reports being aired on the television. Something had killed the virus. Some said that the virus was not adapted to living in humans and so it died off naturally. The most saddening fact, however, was that the infected had remained confused. They were human husks, empty from inside, no emotions, no purpose in life. The government collected all of the zombies into "camps" for rehabilitation. There was said to be psychiatric help given at the camps, but what really happened in them was not very clear. I do not know where my wife is. I do not know if she still lives, but I will find her. I've heard rumours that some conscious people that I know had seen her drive off to the south. 

I'm driving there now, to one of the largest psychiatric camps in this country. I will find my wife, and do whatever it takes to be with her. I do not truly believe whoever she was is lost. I do not believe she has no soul. I still have hope. I still believe in her. This is my purpose now, to find her.

Not just to find her unconscious walking body, but to find her and all we shared together, our memories and our life again. That person I once loved still lurks on this world, and I'll do whatever it takes to go to it and reclaim it back. After all, what makes us humans? Isn't it to hope and love, and to give to those who have lost all they've got part of what we still have?