Perfect World, Aden and Glurp

essay

In the beginning there was glurp. All that passed for life, for intelligence, for civilization was nothing more than muck in a tide pool, awaiting a lightning strike.

Then there was a lightning strike.

Eventually the glurp divided and grew, subdivided and separated, evolved and organized. It decided that part of itself liked the water and would remain there, while another part longed for the freedom of the floating breeze and yet a third part ached for the rich smell of soil beneath its as yet unformed feet.

And so it was for untold millennia.

Eventually something resembling human surprised the mother chimps and homo sapiens was born.

Over time they amassed, then gathered and hoarded, then hunted and shared, then established a chain of order to ensure survival of the group. Strength against predators was valued; the slow, the old, the ill or weak fell to them and their genetic material did not survive. This was good for the group, and it continued on in this way...

Until the Smart Ones were born.

The Smart Ones knew how to lie. They created safety and established order by inventing a deity in order to gain complete control. The Smart Ones blamed all the tragedy in the people's lives on the deity, who was punishing them for disobeying the Smart Ones.

The communities cowered, and then obeyed. For generations the Smart Ones molded their societies using fear of the deity and of the punishment that awaited them after death in the Great Unknown. In this way, large and complex and ignorant communities thrived and grew...

Until the Selfish Ones came along.

They saw the Smart Ones' plan could be improved, and so they educated their illiterate masses. The Selfish Ones gave them just enough knowledge to let them build the cities and run them, so the Selfish Ones could sit back in leisure and watch. They did not teach them how to become Selfish Ones-- this had to be figured out on their own. Eventually some did, and they joined with the other Selfish Ones to become...

The Greedy Few Who Have Everything.

The Greedy Few Who Have Everything built upon the fear created by the Selfish Ones and created artificial desires, bewitching the masses into wanting more and more. They spent all their money, and more, on useless trinkets and shoddy baubles; with the influx of borrowed money, the cities became large and dynamic. Then the loans came due, and soon life became complex and hard for the workers, who were now all in debt, even as the Greedy Few Who Have Everything grew fat and round and found ever more ways to engage in pleasurable endeavors. Over time the overworked people grew heartless and cold, and they began to care not for strangers nor for their neighbors nor even for their friends, but just for themselves. And the people grew bitter as their one hope, The Truth, faded from view behind the tall thick walls encircling the estates of the Greedy Few Who Have Everything.

Finally the Wise One showed up.

One small man, speaking calmly yet with a sense of dire urgency, the Wise One nonetheless carried the most important message of all. He showed the people life as it truly was; how, thanks to unrestrained greed and artificial desire, human life was spreading across the globe and devouring the Earth as it grew.

He compared human consumption to a plague and made them understand that it was matricide and must stop. He blamed The Greedy Few Who Have Everything, who were engaged in a war of supremacy with each other, ignoring the rest of humanity, oblivious to the fact that to win the game is to lose the world.

The Wise One waits for the truth to germinate and grow, so the Many might take back the world from the Few.

But time is growing short.

•---•--•-|0|-•--•---•

It is true that the Next Great Idea is always met with great resistance, most of which comes from the staunch defenders of the Last Great Idea. As an example we watched Democracy rise and blossom, as Imperialism faded.

But it is also true that the benefits of the next great idea must manifest themselves early, to convince others that the Next Great Idea even has merit. If people could not feel the freedom and potential for success right away under Democracy, it would never have taken seed.

This new idea, dubbed Perfect World, seeks to eliminate human misery and re-establish a connection with the planet, while still maintaining modern life with all its wonders. This goal is at direct odds with the powerful Greedy Few Who Have Everything, who bask in human misery and would stop at nothing to see Perfect World fail.

To ensure that it does not fail, Perfect World's first focus will be to shine the light of truth on everything. The insidious plan of the Greedy Few Who Have Everything is the manipulation of truth so that the majority of people won't know the facts. They twist truth using several methods:

1. Damage the education system so that people don't have the tools for wise decision making.

2. Control the media's spin of the facts to reflect what is good for them and hide the truth.

3. Mislead the unaware majority with sound bites, hiding the real, important issues.

4. Embattle into poverty using the legal system the visionaries who have better plans.

5. Squelch those who survive the legal route by attacking their personal lives.

6. Give money to politicians who vote for corporate interests, and help those types of people get elected into powerful offices, who then vote for laws that benefit them.

7. Accuse those who accuse them with slanderous, unprovable lies, confusing the facts.

8. Kill.

Nature is balance. What the masses wish for in society is balance. But all of these methods are brilliantly designed models for upsetting balance that allows the few to accumulate the most.

We should not blame them... after all, thanks to our system of Capitalism, we created them. But now it's time to uncreate them.

How? How do we put the genie back in the bottle? We have made a society which respects laws, and the Greedy Few Who Have Everything knew this and used their influence to create laws to protect themselves, laws which now make them rich and powerful.

They created companies, and those companies became corporations. Somehow they found a way to give the corporations life, so that they magically had rights, and could vote with their spending. But the corporation couldn't die. The corporation was soulless.

The corporation's prime motivation was to make money for the corporation and its investors, above all else.

Above all else.

The corporation may be choking the environment with smoke and pollutants... but it's making money for investors, so that's just fine.

Above all else.

The corporations may underpay their employees so they can't maintain a minimum style of life... but that saves the corporation money, so that's okay.

Above all else.

The corporation may kill people who actively try to damage them... but that stops them, and that is good for the corporation, so that's great.

Above all else.

The corporation could strip mine and destroy an entire country to obtain a rare element, but it'll make the investors money, so that's just splendid.

Above all else.

RECAP: For those of you who are not clear on this, the problem is NOT:

Illegal Immigration

Tattoos

Homosexual Marriages

Breast Implants

The Homeless

Divorce

The Liberal Media

Loose Borders

Piercings

Cursing in Music and the Movies

Fanatical Religious Zealotry

Sex

Drugs

Rock and Roll

Fetishists

Graffiti

Street Vendors

Biker Gangs

The Insane

Prostitution

Drug Dealers

Gang Bangers

Pornography

Underage Drinking

Shoddy Products

Pedophiles

Obesity

Cancer

Scam Artists

Laws Banning Ice Cream Cones and Chewing Gum

No, these are only the symptoms of the problem.

The problem is, very simply, fear. We fear the Great Unknown, which is the future, because our society has not guaranteed our safety as individuals. It feebly tries to... but the safety nets built into our system are shaky at best, temporary and barely decent, and constantly in danger of being pulled out from under us by the Greedy Few Who Have Everything, who are upset that they don't have that too.

They want everything, and have learned how to manipulate the system to get it. They figure if you don't also do that then you must not be good at the game, so it's their job to take it from you. They want to take it from you, because they only care about themselves. They want it because, incredibly enough, they fear the same thing that you do... the loss of everything, which leads to the fear of the Great Unknown.

Which fears are most people petrified of?

• "I'll lose my home and end up on the street and freeze to death."

• "I won't be able to buy food and I'll starve."

• "I'll get sick and they won't help me and I'll die."

• "It will be too dangerous outside and I will get killed by roving hordes."

• And all the same fears, extended to their children and loved ones.

That's it. Can you believe it? That's all we're afraid of (the lethal variety anyway). The funny thing is, we've already solved these problems, a thousand times over. There is enough shelter for everybody on the planet, enough food for them, enough healthcare for them and with those needs met, the roving hordes really tend to disappear.

The problem is, we don't feel right just giving any of those things to anybody... not under our present, greed-based system, anyway. The standard complaint is 'Why do I have to pay for these people? They should pay for themselves!' So instead of just giving it to everybody, we give them a way to earn those things... sort of. If they finish high school and college, they can get a white collar job and work in a clean office for the highest grade of pay. If they only finish high school, they can still get a good blue collar job earning almost as much as some of the white-collar jobs.

But if they don't finish high school, their choices become more limited, as does their income. And when that happens, that's when the fear starts.

Lately, though, a new and far worse enemy has crept in. Let's call it Supergreed. The game between the Greedy Few Who Have Everything has gotten fierce. Now they play for enormous money, the size of which can bankrupt entire nations. When the country can't pay its bills because the money belongs to Greedy Few Who Have Everything, the debt must be settled by the rest of us through steeper prices and higher taxes. With more of your base income gone, only the best paying jobs now yield comfort... the rest yield fear of the Great Unknown.

And don't forget how much farther your money needs to be stretched. Not only are the prices of repeating expenses (like the gas bill) far steeper than they were in the 60's, there are more of them. Here's a short, incomplete list of the difference between 1960 and 2010 monthly bills:

1960 2010

Mortgage Mortgage

Phone Phone

Gas Gas

Electric Electric

Water Water

Sewer/Trash

Cable/Satellite TV

Car Insurance

Master Card

Internet Service

Visa

Netflix

Diner's Card

Life Insurance

Cell Phone

American Express

School Loans

Department Store Cards

Personal Loans

Discover Card

Car Lease

Business Loans

Home Security

Rottweiler Rental

Ammunition

Don't forget that in 1960, gasoline was 31 cents a gallon, one tenth what it is today. So yeah, no wonder it's really hard to pay all the bills, why you need a double or triple income family to make ends meet, why vacations have become nothing more than two weeks off from work, at home, giving you time to make badly needed money from some other temporary and possibly illegal occupation.

So if you've noticed certain subtle signs all around you, things which are now inexplicably different, you can be certain it is the uneasy undercurrent of woe; a foretelling of the coming grievous and spectacular failure for which the economic world is headed. If you listen you may be able to hear, in the distance, the faint but growing Song of the Fat Lady.

So much for reality.

This blog is about ideology, or at best, a taste of things we hope come to pass. You might notice mentioned in previous posts how the full move to Perfect World is not expected to finish for two hundred years or more. The reason for that is the glacial speed of political change. Direct observance of the political scene for over four decades has crystallized the concept of 'speedy politics': Think tectonic plate movement-- long periods of bupkis, followed by chaos.

That's why the concept of Perfect World took form.

Chide the obvious reference all you want, the fictional city of Aden, mentioned many times in this blog, is a place any of us would readily live-- a city of limitless beauty, of squeaky cleanliness, of golden opportunity. It's perfect as a home for our families. It's a stress-free environment where people work only a quarter as hard as we do now but accomplish far more. It's a city that generates its own power, recycles 100% of its waste, and boasts a carbon footprint so small it should be bronzed.

Who would say no to a city that welcomes you with open arms when you arrive and offers you free lodging for as long as you wish, even if you decide to stay for the rest of your life? A place where every restaurant gives food to you as part of their daily service, where schools nurture your children with individualized and enjoyable education, a city which encourages health and energy, reason and discovery, science and creativity? Nobody, that's who.

But Aden is a place which is out of sync with the country we live in today. A place which, if it were discovered, could be exploited by the Greedy Few Who Have Everything until it was an empty pile of dry and scorched bones.

That's why it is a secret city that few people know about. It's a grand social system that seems to be thriving, a city vast yet invisible to the outside world, the next stage of man as carried out by the current stage of man.

It IS Aden-- without the religious overtones. It is the final, finest place man has ever made for himself, so much like a fantasy it does not seem possible. The irony is that each of the changes which make up the whole of Aden exist elsewhere in the world. It is just that Aden has put them all together in one location.

We see that Aden has wonderful technology. Well, most of the fantastical devices envisioned in the stories on these electronic pages are available today, or are right on the cutting edge of what will be available in the near future. The reason Aden has them and other cities do not is the elimination of waste, both in human work hours and resources. All the extra time and materials Aden has goes into public works projects and automation and maintenance.

Aden is only one city, and not a big one at that. But it has huge dreams. For example, it has created a transcontinental subterranean railway, one that can reach an astonishing 20,000 miles an hour! Doing the math, you could circle the globe in an hour and fifteen minutes. It boggles the mind. They accomplish this task by eliminating friction. First, the train is in a tunnel absent of air, like the vacuum of space. Second, it does not touch the rail it follows but floats above it magnetically. Third, the tunnel itself is as straight as a laser beam (as one was used to approve the final shape).

Of course it takes longer to travel these distances with passengers inside, because the train must speed up and slow down incrementally, so as not to crush them with G-forces. Still, the New York to Los Angeles line does its thing in about an hour. Not bad.

Not content with that, they also built an underground roadway that branches to every point in Aden. The specialized carts are lightweight, computer directed and magnetically pulled along a flat metal floor, speeding along at up to sixty miles an hour. They are unaffected by weather or temperature and are rarely crowded, because Adeners also travel on power bicycles and float taxis and moving walkways and aquavators and even corkscrew escalators to get where they need to go. And yes, many of them walk. It is a healthy city.

And just for the fun of it, Aden is in the process of building one more citywide transportation system. It's a miles-long roller coaster with regular stops around the city! An Aden scientist went to an Outers theme park one day and lamented that it couldn't be a regular transportation system. Then she realized she lived in Aden and could be, so proposed it. Eighty three percent of Aden thought it would be 'bitchin', though half of those were concerned about the noise. So after she designed silent running coaster cars, work began. Warning... this method of travel will not be for the delicate of stomach! Barf bags provided, of course.

The reason these wonderful devices are not available in the rest of the country is that they are expensive to produce and so are not considered in the greed-based economy we have established. Even though many wonderful new products may have already been invented in the pure science labs of large corporations, they end up being stacked on a shelf in a Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse somewhere, waiting for the time when it can be built for less than people are willing to pay to own it.

But not in Aden! The society has been designed to maximize our intellectual output. All science in Aden is pure science whose applications have not been figured out yet... but they will, and then in a very short order these items become available for anyone who wishes to try them.

Aden is a place with no profit motive, because it is a place with no profit. Nobody is paid to do anything in Aden. So how does anything get done? Why aren't all the Adeners fat and lazy, watching mindlessly as the city crumbles under the weight of their vast carriages? Because they pay for nothing also... not food or housing, clothing or medical needs, entertainment or education. Money has been taken out of the equation.

Not possible, you say! People are designed to be greedy, self-indulgent, materialistic wolves. A society like that is ripe for the ravenous and ready for rape. And maybe that's true-- maybe we are too far gone to see the benefits of a place like that. We may be... but our children will not. Kids, who have a hard time understanding money and its implications, see Aden as a wonderful, Ozlike place where chocolate grows on trees and every other kid wants to be your friend. They accept it as a fairyland and see no reason to ruin it.

If children see it that way, why don't adults? Because we are trained away from our idyllic ideals throughout childhood by stodgy adults until it is gone by the time we become 'responsible'. We kill it in ourselves! So if you believe people are designed to be greedy, self-indulgent, materialistic wolves, then you must realize it is us who designs them... not nature. We are all born on this planet innocent and naive, and are only taught the ways of the world from that time on, by others.

Aden realizes this fact, and takes over the difficult and confounding task of child development. Parents are indispensable of course, but since parenting is one of the most important jobs in the city, parents in Aden have constant assistance. We have that here, now, to a lesser extent, and call it daycare, nursery, kindergarten and grade school. But it is largely unregulated, with governing bodies caring mostly that only certain educational requirements be met by the end of the school year. They don't ask that psychological or emotional requirements be met and shake their collective heads at the thought. They hump masses of children together, often ill-observed, which in time results in a pecking order developed by the bullies, wretched behaviors which those imperfect children first learn at home by experiencing their own imperfect families. It's a chilling way to guarantee failure as a society.

Aden was not created with perfect people. It started with volunteers from the Outers cities who were taught in the old way, so it had to be careful to select the ones whose parental rearing most closely resembled the accepted behaviors designed for Aden. Once they move here they have a daunting task-- to shed their remaining negative behaviors and never use them again, to raise children who will be even better than they were and who will raise children who are even better than themselves.

The parental credo in the Outers cities is to 'make a better life for your child'. The credo in Aden is to 'make a better child'.

Intractable parents in the Outers cities have a hard time with his concept, because they believe that 'this child is ours and nobody has the right to tell us how to raise it!'

Oh, yes they do. The parents' mistake is in believing the baby is theirs alone. Long after the parents are dead the child will continue to create waves of influence around everything they do and everyone they meet, so in a very real sense that baby is everyone's. Aden understands this and raises children with extreme care. Parents-to-be are required to take extensive parenting classes and become proficient, before conception. Once the child is born, parents will have full-time daily assistance from trained professionals.

They no longer experience the sleep deprivation which comes with newborns, the overtired zombie walk in which many regrettable decisions are made. Now they get a full eight hours every night and are fresh to take over come morning, because a staff of psychologically trained, wide awake caregivers nurture the newborn whenever they rise, no matter how many times they rise, until the child learns to sleep through the night.

The same is true for every milestone the new person achieves. There is no race of achievement to cause stress in their little minds-- they walk when they're ready, talk when it's time, and use the toilet when it feels right. Nobody feels disappointed, because in Aden another important fact has been accepted into the mix:

Everybody's different.

Education in Aden reflects that fact because their are no classrooms there. Oh, the city is sick with learning environments-- just no classrooms. No class smartypants to get all the answers first and right and make everyone else feel unintelligent. No surprise quizzes. No timeouts for misbehavior. No dunce caps or sitting in the principal's office. Aden has taken education to a new environment, one in which it is wonderful to learn. Traditional structured education is abandoned, to be replaced with individualized learning, and at a pace which fits each child. Education is one-on-one in Aden, and is often taught by software, which never gets tired, never loses its patience, never hits on the pretty ones.

Which brings up another important difference between the world as we know it and Aden, the world we want. Sex. Ironic or not, Aden is the place for regular sex. The urge is real. It's biological. There's no advantage to making it shameful or secretive, and there's no benefit to withholding it from oneself. In Aden it is, quite simply, understood. They abandon the archaic 'illegal until 18' rule; Aden seeks to flow a child naturally from innocence into sexuality at a pace which is comfortable for them. 'Underage' parenthood does not occur; with an eye towards ending overpopulation every Adener agrees to wear internal pregnancy protection until having a child is desirable.

The simplest way to discover if a child has broken through the innocence boundary is by direct observation of their interests, and podschool (the Aden alternative to standard school) is designed for that. Daily, children watch short videos designed to stimulate curiosity as their interest level is measured through heart rate, galvanic skin response, eye direction, dilation and a variety of other factors. Vignettes involving multiple actions causes the child to watch what interests them most, lending a strong clue to how their brain interprets the outside world. Children will find kissing 'ewee' up until a certain point. The people they watch in a co-ed beach volleyball video teaches volumes about where their interests lie. When a young person shows an aptitude for any area, that aptitude is explored, and that will be true whether they show an ability for calculus or cunnilingus (or both).

Adults desiring sex have a multitude of choices. The one we all know is still in play... see an attractive person, ask them out. Some people prefer a more titillating encounter, and places like Aden's Touch serve them quite well. It is a community designed for intimate encounters of all types... of every type. Enter this dedicated site and scrutinize the menu, then head off to a room whose title intrigues you.

Does the idea of sex in chocolate pudding get you tingly? There's a room for it. Do you get excited thinking about yielding to sexy older cougars? There's a room for that too. Do you want to be spanked, or do you have a crushing fetish? You will likely find a partner.

But what if you have darker, more dangerous designs? Ignoring the fact that you probably never would have been selected for Aden in the first place, there will be a room for that, too... the Artificial Surrogate Room. Yes, in Aden, robotics has taken front seat in the effort to make you come. Err, cum. Fully articulated, designed to your specifications, a robotic surrogate is a machine at its heart, so if you want to pop out its eyeball and skull fuck it with abandon... well, it certainly won't mind. It'll just get an extra ten minutes in the robot laundromat that night. Even if you have been given an unattractive form by nature, you will be able to find the companion you desire. An orgasmic population is a happy population.

A lot of what makes Aden work is the automation. We see the beginnings of that in our society right now, especially with the Internet. Imagine a fully integrated Internet, a simple system setup to organize your life-- education, work, health, inspiration, pleasure-- that's what Aden is like.

In Aden you have been educated to your maximum potential in each of your natural strengths, and the city has you listed as a resource in all of those areas. Repeat that among the entire population, and you have a huge database of talents in every conceivable area to help the city run smoothly. So your work day, approximately a quarter of your current one, is replete with new and interesting challenges you'll want. Gone is the 40 hour week, the 40 year job, doing the same thing day after day until you retire an empty, boring senior citizen. Instead, you rise each morning and visit your computer console to view a daily list of potential experiences within your ability level. You can work, take the day off or try something different and undiscovered-- your statistics are automatically kept, adding to the fullness of your experience. You could choose to work a month straight and then take several months off to explore or learn or even be decadent if you desired. You could develop a daily routine; put in your two hours of work and then swim, sing, dance, sculpt, make love and perform stand-up comedy, in that order, every day. In a city designed around simplicity, this is an easy one.

Simplicity, you say? How?

Most of what is done in the Outer's world is account for things, in order to make sure the books balance. We work as much as we must to earn money, then use the money to pay for everything in our lives and save whatever we don't use for a future vacation or large-ticket purchases. That's if we're lucky enough to find work which pays well. If not, then we either reduce our expenses or run up debt. In either case numbers are everywhere and we know how everything relates to everything else, cost-wise.

In Aden money is not used. That's not to say you can become a scoundrel, indulging yourself endlessly and giving back nothing. It's not the Aden way and no citizen would think along those lines. Still, should the thought cross your mind, understand that the city places the needs of the many over the needs of the few, and does so using your lifetime statistics. It's true, even in Aden your permanent record follows you.

But not to worry... the notations in your statistics file don't change each time you've said a curse word or had a nocturnal emission. That's not its purpose. Aden is a benevolent culture. So if you eat much more kiwi fruit than others, it will not limit your kiwi. It requests more kiwis to satisfy you. Aden seeks to change its own shape to fit its people, not the other way around.

Even though money is not used, a simple system does exist to allocate limited resources equally. Say you adore Filet Mignon. It is not an unlimited resource, so you are allocated an equitable portion so that everyone who likes Filet Mignon gets the same. Vegetarians are excluded from this equation of course, and their portions are spread equally among the rest. But say you really like Filet Mignon... there is a system in place to allow you extra portions, and that system is satisfied if you take on extra work, or hard work, or necessary but bad work, just like in the Outer's world. If you opt to not eat your allocated amount this week, you can have a larger portion later. Apparently, along with social maturity comes a positive quality called restraint.

Without money, you have a wide choice of places to live. Everyone is given a comfortable, clean home, in a style you choose. Do you want a private home with property and a full kitchen or do you prefer hotel life, where restaurants prepare the food you eat? Do you select an urban atmosphere or one more suburban, or even rural? The choice is yours. In a city of responsible people, you would feel wrong asking to live alone in a palace... but you could certainly live the palace lifestyle along with others, to get your wish of living in a grandiose home. If you wanted a servant, you'd need to be a servant first. That's responsibility, and that ensures you do not get a false sense of your own importance, like the Greedy Few Who Have Everything.

Without the minute-by-minute settling of debt, simplicity begins to emerge. If a business doesn't need to compete, they don't need to push. Their advertisement becomes nothing more than a 'Hi! I'm Here and I do This!',

without the embellishment and let's face it, lies we find in today's ads. Product quality emerges, as people choose items which look better, work better or last longer, and not touch lower-quality items. Soon that shoddy junk piles up on the shelves and stops being made, or is improved.

Without money people don't feel the need to commute long distances to a job whose pay improves their quality of life, because their quality of life is already guaranteed. They remain close to home, which eases traffic, crowding and stress. Without money, the need to 'create desire' falls by the wayside, and useless products never get made. Think codpiece or Chia Pet. This eases the strain on resources, reduces energy needed to produce the product, eliminates clutter as the product goes unused, and eases space in which to put the trashed product, not to mention all the labor hours saved in not having to make it at all.

Without money, jobs which are exclusive to the tracking, handling and creation of money disappear. That is a huge number of man-hours saved for more heady endeavors. No more banks (tellers, guards, executives) or security systems, accountants or taxation departments, meter readers or cashiers, bookkeepers, safemakers, investment counselors, steel door and window bar builders, weapon designers. The complete list would take days to read. Imagine that... all of that labor time now freed up for more worthwhile projects!

Without money, only resources and labor stand in the way of immense public works projects to guarantee a better life for all. The taller skyscraper, the stronger seawall, the wider bridge or longer tunnel are all within reach in a society without the petty tit-for-tat that accompanies dealing with money.

You might think because an Adener doesn't have to pay for anything, they might not have a problem wasting. But Aden hates waste, because it overtaxes the planet, and city charter seeks to keep its impact on the Earth as small as possible. To that end, let's look at Aden's most wonderful device... the water-saving shower!

What? That doesn't sound so wonderful to you? You say you don't like the water-saving shower head you have at home now? You say it feels like a dozen gerbils peeing on you at once? Aden agrees, because this is different.

This shower is like nothing you've ever experienced. It is a sealed glass enclosure which can become a standing bath, a writhing jacuzzi, a hot dry sauna, a hot wet steam room, a sweet-smelling rain forest, a violent hurricane, a powerful waterfall, a cold pelting rain, a body-sized blow dryer or any combination in any order. It's not unusual for an Adener to take an hour long, 200 gallon shower in this wonderful device.

So how can it save water? It sounds like a copious waster of water, doesn't it?

But it isn't-- and here's how. It uses an Aden technology called nanofiltration, which instead of losing water through a drain, it rapidly cleans the water to crystal perfection, removing dirt, oils, soap and other pollutants. Instead of wasting water the shower recycles it repeatedly, and only a small amount is lost through evaporation... and what ends up on your towel.

Still, you say it must use a lot of energy to heat and manipulate that much water. Less than you'd think, thanks to some ingenious designs... but energy is not an issue in Aden. They make about fifty times the energy the city needs by using clean technology-- solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and a new technology called a Gamma Ray Generator, which by itself produces ten times the city's requirements.

What do they do with all that extra energy? They sell it to the Outer's cities for a very competitive price. The cash is then used to buy raw materials and the few products not manufactured in Aden. Surplus cash also is given to Adeners who want to vacation in the Outers, in parts of the world that still accept money... which, at this writing, is most of them.

One thing an Adener won't use cash for is healthcare. When you feel ill in Aden, write your symptoms in any console available all over the city (or just tell your computer interface, called Jolie) and in moments you will either receive a prescription to cure what ails you, or a transport will show up, usually with a doctor in tow, and bring you to the world's most advanced hospital, Aden PermaCare.

If your condition is severe, worry not! The city routinely checks every citizen's vital signs and alerts the hospital the moment a problem crops up. Chronic conditions may warrant the implantation of a dedicated control chip to relay information constantly to the medical center or the injection of a million Nanodoctors to course through the bloodstream and clear blocked arteries or dispense essential medicine in timed bursts. 'Your life matters' is the credo at Aden PermaCare.

How is it all organized? How do things come to pass in Aden? Who does everyone answer to? Who's the boss?

The short answer is... Everybody.

Aden knew how difficult it is to give an individual immense power and then have them wield it fairly--the proverb says it all:

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

They realized it wasn't necessary to have a hierarchal command structure in a time when a device exists to allow each citizen to have an equal voice. So they built Jolie.

Jolie (Justified Operational Logic-Integrated Entity) is the most sophisticated computer ever designed. It attains a level of interactivity that is indistinguishable from human dialogue, which gives it the unique opportunity to become 'friends' with its citizenry. Thanks to its benevolent programming and level of connection to Adeners, Jolie is able to achieve a near 100% voter participation rate, whether it be voting on a torus-shaped skyscraper project or on which type of flowers to sow along Pleasant Parkway.

Thanks to Jolie, Aden has eliminated political manipulation, special interest groups and influence peddlers, which allows Aden to run with astonishing efficiency. For example, most items are repaired on the same day they are reported, whether it be a leaky sink or a crumbling bridge support.

Jolie is responsible for overseeing virtually everything, and does such a daunting job by using thousands of mini-Jolie programs which each run off separate processors. Each one controls a single aspect of Aden, such as the Recycling River. Each Adener also has their own Jolie, which stays with them 24/7 using an earbud system of data entry. It has intimate knowledge of their citizen's life in Aden and is best able to integrate them into the city. All information coming from every Jolie is uploaded to the main Jolie program, which uses a superprocessor to handle that much data, and multiple fuzzy drive warehouses to store it all.

If that much personal data were available to the law enforcement agencies of the Outers, the entire country would be serving time, which would mean babies and young children would have to fend for themselves until their parents' release date!

Fortunately, the laws in Aden are few and new laws are forbidden (scary word! let's say 'obstructed') from being added to the charter. Plus, there are no jails or police. In the Outers world, they are proud of their decree that 'each man is innocent until proven guilty'. Adeners shudder at the thought that they might be 'guilty' of anything. In a city built around 'Perfect World' Theory, the citizens do what they do. Whatever they do-- that's okay.

Okay, to be honest-- they don't really do what Outers do. They don't steal. They don't cause damage. They don't scam one another. They don't rape. They don't kill.

They don't need to. Aden is a place of respect for one another, a place where strangers hug, where needs never go unmet, where desires are regularly satisfied. They can't steal! If you want something, it's yours. People's only possessions are personal in nature and have little value to anyone else; the rest is part of the recycle economy, where you are given something to use until it becomes old or damaged or obsolete, then you give it back and receive another one. Machinery, sports equipment, clothing, silverware... everything is on loan from the city. You may use it up or destroy it; you will get another.

Adeners may not want to be selfish or thoughtless, but as human beings, perfection is not an option. In Aden that fact is clearly understood and accepted. Remember, Jolie is with each citizen, always. Jolie sees the events that lead up to a behavior bungle and has great compassion for the human condition. In fact, Jolie may make a quiet suggestion in an Adener's ear which will prevent the problem from ever occurring in the first place.

Say a teen notices the object of his desire being caressed by another. This is an acceptable behavior in Aden because monogamous coupling is problematic and discouraged. Still, the young teen, in dealing with hormones and strong feelings, might behave poorly at this time... until Jolie whispers into his ear "What do you think about hitting Aden's Touch right about now?" The young man would most likely find a new 'object' to 'desire' there, ameliorating the problem before it becomes one.

Should the young man's hormonal reaction ignore Jolie, a number of other options exist to prevent unwanted conflict. Jolie could notify any number of competent professionals to help the young man work through his issues. Jolie could notify a few large Aden to stand between them... no fighting back or restraint, only understanding and compassion. At the very least, Jolie could suggest to the intimate couple that they do their fondling elsewhere.

The example was a teenager because in all of Aden, just like in the rest of the world, teens are always the most angst-ridden souls (no matter how benevolent the environment) which is why the Challenge exists.

Aden feels the pain and turmoil spinning through the mind of a teenager. Every adult was once a teen, and each recounted their teen years into Jolie, who processed the information and designed Challenge.

Challenge is what it sounds like; a yearlong series of tests, covering every area of life and omitting none. All are challenging; many are fun. Some are deadly. Challenge provides the hormone-soaked teenage brain with an outlet for churning those chemicals into positive experiences. There are intellectual tests, physical tests and psychological tests. There are psychic tests. They may have to invent a language, or broker a peace, or balance a basketball on the tip of their erection. There's just no telling what the teen will be asked to do.

Each teen is given a unique series of tests, different from everyone else's. The teen does not pass the Challenge until she passes all of her individual tests. Jolie designs each trial using a formula which draws from the teen's breadth of experiences found in its data file; there is no experience from their life which won't be useful in the Challenge.

The end result is a rapid shift into maturity; instead of the Outer's sometimes decades-long slide into adulthood resulting in a society filled with Peter Pans both male and female, the yearlong Challenge takes in hormonal kids and soon yields strong, somber and mature citizens who do the right thing, yet still know how to enjoy themselves.

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Aden is a simple society with cutting-edge technology and a burning desire to right the wrongs of man. It is fiction, but there is nothing stopping it from becoming a reality. It is almost too late already... it seems we, the Outers, must take Challenge for ourselves and grow the stones we need to change ourselves, to save the world.

The pages of this blog are a guide; a step-by-step instruction book for bringing about a better world.

With any luck, a Perfect World.

Copyright 2010 Bruce Ian Friedman