Back to Paradise
It crept into existence, so slight, not even the keenest Hacker had noticed. There hadn't been a program to match it, or to counteract it.
It slinked through the information highway, chewing up and swallowing knowledge. No one knew where it started, who started it, or how to stop it, what they did know was that It had started in the summer of 2030 with a couple of power outages. The Edison crews worked hard and fast to get the power back and, as fast as they put the grid up, another was taken down.
It crept it's way into the education system.. There was nothing new to learn and no way to learn anything old. Some of the older schools still had text books. But when the yellowed pages of the books were opened, they crumbled.
All of the food houses had been shut down and had to be managed by hand, We had no way of taking stock or keeping track of how much was left.
Communication went next, satellites fell from the sky. A mile high hill of cells, Ipods, Mp3s, key boards, screens, cpus had been deposited at the city dump. There was no trade, no import or export, all travel routes had been decimated.
Hybrids sat along the sides of the streets, not really parked, just abandoned. Planes sat on the tarmac empty hulking monsters, a reminder of times past.
And water was running dangerously low. No electricity, no turbines.
And yet, the animals flourished..
What now? We couldn't push, flick, click, load up, down load, there was no wysiwyg or whatever.
We had no guidance from older ones no one here was that old. Our whole lives had spanned decades of computerization. When the last of the computers went down, the last cell beeped, buzzed, or played that song, we were pretty much in the dark, . If not for the archaic practice of burning candles we would have been literally in the dark.
It was tricky heating up the microwaveable food. Most would explode and we'd wind up scraping the remains off our shirts and nursing burns to our skin.
The children were amazing, they romped and played while we fretted and cried. And then, we paid more attention to the animals, these were the same beasts that had been mechanically fed, mechanically watered, electronically housed..
They ate from the ground, we followed them one day, they drank from the ground. They slept under a grove of trees.
There were steel structures, we decided to explore them.
They were the mecha of our world, the center of our universe and now they were quiet. We hoped they held the secret to our survival.
The House of Knowledge
The building was different from the others, it was a single story, it was not shielded in steel instead, it had been covered in creeping vines. Once we cut and pulled away the vines we saw a red brick building, it had double doors that had been chained and padlocked and it had something we hadn't seen in many years..glass.
Our mouths dropped, we pushed the doors open..a rush of air passed us from inside the building..
Books.. there must have been thousands of them, they were lined up along the walls, stacked on the floors, lying around on tables and, they were in tact.
We didn't find, anything electronic, no computer, no scanner, no printer, no cameras.. There was simply a building, filled with books.
We walked in slowly, amazed at the sight and there in the middle of the room, was a stand, it had a huge book in the center that had been enclosed with glass.
We moved forward, we surrounded the case and stared down at the book. There was a greeting... written in large gold script.
MY CHILDREN, IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THE AGE OF THE COMPUTER IS NO MORE...
WELCOME BACK TO PARADISE
Back To Paradise
We removed the book from the glass case, pulled up chairs and sat in a circle.. The eldest began to read..
Children,
You are here now, this is your way back to me and back to paradise. I have watched you for many years, I have allowed you to go your own way, to pursue your dreams, to stab yourselves all over with pains, trying to achieve that state of nirvana.. You strove hard but, you ignored the gifts I gave you. In your pursuits you forgot about a beautiful day, you forgot about your children, you forgot about.. the earth. You have left your mark on my heavenly bodies and claimed them as your own, you have made trade with all of the things I handed you for free, you built cities, you built empires but, you did not build the society, you did not appreciate what I lovingly gave you, My heart was glad and rejoiced at the thought of you enjoying what was here, then it rained my tears, when I saw how you had no love for each other and even more, no love for me. Now children, you will learn, I will teach, no longer will man dominate man to his injury, instead, learn and return..
That was our letter, that was the beginning of our lessons on, survival..
