Dream From The Future

Perfect World story (The NOW)

I arose in a bed soaked with sweat. Waking to a hot LA morning is something I know, but this wasn't it-- it was comfortable outside, a cool 65 degrees.

I'm twenty-one, done with college and like to party so these things happen, but there had been no party, either. Last night had been uneventful (I swear!) but somehow my sobriety-soaked brain had created the most vivid, weird, disturbing dream of my life. It was a hi-def DVD of strange playing in my head, a cut-crystal cloth of clear I wish I could forget. Here's what happened:

I was being chased around the sky by a large talking fish who soon snagged me with a net. I don't know what I did to that fish... I've never even gone fishing. Nonetheless, he forced me on an evil trek through places where dark and disturbing things happened, where I experienced depraved emotions that should have remained bottled up and was coerced to participate in unforgivably degrading events that would send Tim Burton babbling to the corner.

So yeah, my bed was wet with fear sweat.

I got in the shower wearing my jammys. There was no point in taking them off-- they were clinging to my body like wallpaper and smelled like old cheese. I did strip them off midway and left them on the tile to become home, down the road, for several malevolent species of mold.

Throwing on some old chinos and a torn tee I staggered to the kitchen and dropped deeply roasted beans in the grinder. I kicked it on and balked at the noise, a raspy crunch that sounded like the grinding of bones. Oh, I had to shake those damned dream images out of my head!

Coffee! I wanted to pour the dark brew directly into my brainpan to fire up the synapses, and to make me clear again, and especially to cause that odd translucent ball floating over my breakfast nook to go away, the one that crackled with electric surges along its surface, the one that, within it, had a man's head floating about.

Wait.

I scanned the room, left to right, one more time. Fridge, check. Stove, check. Arrowhead water dispenser filled with vodka, check. Weird floating orb thing with a head. I blinked. It blinked.

Huh.

I swear it wasn't there last night when I went to bed, although I may not have done a complete safety check before bedtime. Carefully, I sidled around it. The eyes followed me. Weird! I thought that only happened with black velvet paintings of enormous-eyed orphans. I reached in and smacked the head. My hand passed through unimpeded. The orb, however, jiggled like Jello made of clouds, then organized back into an orb. The head, once a head again, rolled its eyes.

I hated that. "Don't roll your eyes at me!" I seethed and disturbed the face with a finger, stirring it like coffee, swirling away the eyes. They came back a moment later, still rolling. I poked them like Moe. Nyuck, nyuck.

"Stop it, please."

I did stop. Not because the head asked, but because it spoke. Up until that moment I was certain this was an elaborate prank being visited upon me by my idiot friends, but the voice wasn't being pumped in through some hidden speaker somewhere-- no, it had come from the head's mouth. This had to be a figment of my imagination!

"I am not a figment of your imagination," he said, apparently mind reading, and then like an Olympian god he announced, "I... am... Broose!" I'm pretty sure I heard a reverberation.

I stopped cold. I remembered Broose. I once dreamt about a relative contacting me from the far future-- I was his 'great to the sixth' grandfather. "So then you are a figment of my imagination after all!"

"How do you mean?"

"You were a dream."

The head called Broose ahhed with insight and nodded. "A dream. That's right, it was a dream."

"See, I told you!"

"Yes, a dream... a dream that I sent back through time and placed into your head."

I balked. "That's not how I remember it at all. I remember receiving a letter that became a sheet of paper that became a computer that disappeared when I woke up."

"Fair enough-- I can see how you'd think that. I can prove I sent you that dream, though."

"Really? How?"

"I also sent you last night's dream about the big flying fish."

I dropped to the floor and scurried into the corner, panting and panicked. "Why would you do that to me? What have I ever done to you?"

The head was admittedly shocked. "Wha...? What happened? He was supposed to take you on a tour of the future!"

"Oh, no. No, no, no. That's not what he did at all." I shuddered. "He locked me in a room with his horny fat fish sister! I don't want to talk about it."

"My, my," he said wistfully, "So, so sorry. Fish aren't all that smart, even with my modifications. But this one was supposed to be obedient."

I got up off the floor, more surprised than anything right now. "You really sent a talking fish to my dream? Why? Did you know he forced me to pole dance for his friends? He made me wear a tutu!"

He looked embarrassed which, as a head in a fishbowl, I thought he'd have been there sooner. "He was supposed to fly you around my city and show off the future. He didn't do that?"

"He did not."

"Sorry, gramps."

"Don't call me that! I'm not even a father yet... and you look older than me. In any case, the fish floundered. Is that why you're here as a floating head?"

"I was going to fill in whatever the fish had missed... hey, I'm a floating head?"

"Yes, your head is in an intangible bowl floating above my kitchen table, above the E-Z squeeze ketchup."

"Oh, that must be disconcerting. Here, let me fix it." He looked down at his missing form and just like that, the rest of his body dropped to the floor... right through the table.

"You're stuck in my table."

"Righto. Here we go." He walked through it without a thought and stood next to me, a somewhat translucent, smoke-built relative. "That's better, yes?"

I looked him over. "I suppose. What the hell are you wearing?"

He sniffed. "A tunic. It's comfortable."

"It looks a little... oh, I don't know, Robin Hood-y." I grinned. "Do you future people also wear togas and muu-muus?"

He scowled, poorly. "Thankfully no. We still have blue jeans, though."

"Can't go wrong with jeans."

"Nope."

"Nope."

"And a lot of people wear skin-tight gauze fabric."

"Can you show me that, please?"

"Maybe later."

I was hungry. "Well, I'm going to make breakfast... and I need coffee. I think now I'm going to go for the Irish coffee. Some really strong Irish coffee."

"Really, really sorry about the fish."

"Never mention that again." I changed the subject. "The last time you left before answering my most important question."

"I didn't leave... your alarm went off and woke you. I came back to finish what I started."

"That was last year!"

"It took that long to develop this new tech."

"What new tech?"

"You're not dreaming this time... you're awake."

"Oh, right. I do find it weird that I'm talking to a relative who won't be born for like 200 years."

"I think it's weird that I'm talking to a dead man."

"Time paradox." I chuckled. "I could never follow science fiction stories about twists in time, and now I'm in one."

"You should know we visit you in the Grove all the time. It's beautiful."

"What's the Grove?"

"Your final resting place."

"My grave's in the Grove?"

"Yes. One of your brilliant ideas was changing the concept of cemeteries. It's done worldwide today."

"Wow! I'm impressed with me. What did I do?"

"You ended the traditional look of cemeteries-- no more headstones, no more wasteful caskets. Now each deceased is buried under a newly planted tree, and a detailed electronic plaque mounted on the mature tree serves as their biography."

"That is a good idea! I should write it down before I forget it."

"You already wrote it. Don't try scaring me with that paradox crap-- I did my homework."

I grinned. "I had to try."

"So you did. Anyway, entire forests are planted this way. You wanted your own family plot, the Grove, to be fruit trees. We come to eat the fruits and read the plaques. I'll be buried there one day myself."

"Which fruit tree am I under?"

"A widge."

"A widge? What the hell is a widge?"

"It's like a small, seedless blue watermelon that tastes of vanilla and honey."

"Sounds delicious. Your biotech must be astounding."

He laughed and doubled over. "Gotcha! There's no such fruit as a widge."

I frowned. "Cute."

"You're under an apple tree."

"The Tree of Knowledge... apropos! Where is the Grove?"

"In Aden of course."

I knew of no such place. "Aden? Where's that?"

"Oh right... you don't start Aden for a couple of decades yet. Give it time. It's the first city you inaugurate. It's in Nebraska."

I frowned. "Nebraska-- in the middle of nowhere? Why there?" And then it hit me. "Hold on... first city?"

He walked over to where I was preparing breakfast and advised, "Add more ground coffee. Don't you like it strong?"

I'm intrigued at my prolificacy. "I inaugurate more than one city?"

"Lots more. Twenty-one, actually. But Aden was always your home. Why don't you have six strips of bacon?"

I looked at him balefully. "Why are you influencing my breakfast choices? Are you living vicariously through me?"

Broose's head dropped. "Yes. My partner's got me eating more healthy fare. I miss my nitrites and caffeine."

"Let me guess... she's feeding you oatmeal and fruit."

"I wish. Protein powder and ascorbic acid."

I shuddered. "What's so perfect about your world?"

"Sometimes I wonder. So will you take the tour of the future with me?"

"Sure! But... how am I going to do that?"

"Watch." Broose fiddled and his appearance field expanded. I could now see beyond him and into the futuristic room.

"Is that a lava lamp? I love the colorful waxy blobs."

"No... that's a clock. It's 8:15."

"Strange. How about that thing there... is that a computer?"

"No, that's a fish tank. Here's the computer." He said, "Jolie, be impressive," and the room's back wall fell away in crumbling bricks to reveal a view from miles in the air!

I developed vertigo and grabbed for support. "Whoa. What am I seeing?"

"A trick of the eye. My house is still at ground level. We have special paint-- if you want a computer, just paint a wall. I've done my whole house with it. Outer space, Jolie!"

"You keep mentioning her. What is she, your secretary or something?"

"Not really. She's the city control software, the one that organizes everything."

"Everything?"

"Just about, yes."

"Wow." The scene changed and we were now in the nose of a space craft, shuddering with power as it broke Earth's confines. Deep blue sky became black and the stars blurred for a moment... and we were orbiting Jupiter.

I was amazed. "Is that another visual trick, or do your space ships actually move that fast?"

"Faster. Jolie mocked up a scene from space flight during your century, but we don't do it that way anymore. We can go anywhere we've placed a Null door, instantly."

"A Null Door?"

"A device that utilizes Null Space, which connects one door to the next. No matter how far apart they are, the travel between them is always instantaneous. It's like the doors are separating two adjoining rooms in your house, except the other room could be anywhere in the Universe."

"Double wow. How far away have you gotten? Pluto?"

He smiled primly. "Andromeda Galaxy."

I winced. "That's over two million light years away!"

"Two and a half million. We found a wormhole and chucked a Null doorway through it," he confessed.

"Makes sense... you can go wherever it takes you because of the guaranteed return ticket."

"Exactly."

"So what's out there? Have you found many habitable worlds?"

"Hundreds."

"I guess that solved Earth's overpopulation issue."

"Of course. There were lots of volunteers for colonizing... billions, actually. And thanks to Carbonite molding technology we weaved entire cities onto those planets in only months. "

"Weaved?"

"Carbonite is a gooey long string molecule, similar to your emerging carbon nanotubes. Machinery literally knits a building, or a bridge or any structure, then solidifies each section with a burst of high-intensity ultraviolet light. It's the closest material to indestructible we've found."

The way he spoke, the future sounded promising! "Have you found any sentient life on any of those planets?"

"No, not yet. But there are some sub-sentient species that are pretty smart. There's a creature on Elshanar called a Nork that's pretty intelligent on its own. It looks like a small centaur with a rabbit face. It has four legs, and two arms with 'hands' that fold like dinner plates for grasping. They live in villages made out of the bones and sinew and pelts of an enormous airbivore called a Mowoon that grows to be over three hundred feet long."

"Huge! What's an airbivore?"

"It survives on the organic molecules found in that planet's atmosphere. Humans can't live there-- the air, well, it changes us."

"Into what?"

He shuddered. "Into Mowoons." I shuddered, too. Brightly he chirped, "But we found a flat planet!"

Astounded, I gasped, "You... are... kidding!"

"Flat as a plate. And it spins like a coin and turns like a wheel simultaneously. Cortare has a 36 hour day and a 292 day year. That's the same number of year-hours as Earth."

"How coincidental! Funny that it's shaped like a coin and you named it after one."

"Cortare?"

"Quarter. It has Washington's face."

He was surprised. "I never realized. You know we don't have money anymore, right?"

"Maybe not, but somebody knew something when they named it. So, can you fall off the edge?"

He laughed. "A lot of people wanted to know that. The edge is actually five hundred miles thick, and it seems like a dangerous cliff when looking over. But the moment you step off, some odd gravitational effects go to work, because instead of falling you cling to the ground... and suddenly you are standing sideways! There's a famous picture of a couple standing on either side of the edge. They're toe to toe, but are at 90 degrees to one another-- show us, Jolie!"

Broose's background expanded some more, until I was part of his scene. My kitchen disappeared behind the realistic image. His wall displayed the picture as though we were actually on Cortare, standing at the edge. Thanks to computer paint on the floor of Broose's house, when I looked down I was also on the edge of that endless precipice, and I involuntarily scrambled back. "That is odd!" I said, much more composed than I felt.

"Watch this!" Broose laughed, and stepped over the edge. There must have been some major calculating going on as the computer tried to display an impossible image-- Broose slipping into a 90 degree angle to me and his bedroom and my kitchen, and all within a photograph of Cortare. Somehow it worked, because he didn't fall to his doom but instead walked sideways to the motionless image of the woman and put his arm around her. Eerie!

"How about that tour of future Earth?" I hinted, wanting to get away from the weirdness.

"Back home, Jolie," he said, and everything righted itself. I sighed relief. We were now in a pavilion overlooking a gorgeous modern city. "Welcome to Aden."

I gasped, gazing at the clean white superstructures and lush grounds. "So this is my city?"

"Your concept, yes. It's everyone's city."

"Of course."I was astonished. "Look at this place! It is flawless!"

"What flaws it had were long ago eradicated."

I squinted, taking in far-off detail. A thin ribbon wrapped around the huge superskyscrapers and passed between them in a graceful arc, continuing on like an unwound ball of twine until too far to see. It looked familiar to me and I had to ask. "Is that a ride?"

He nodded proudly. "Roller Coaster Transport. The first public roller coaster peoplemover. Now all cities have them. It passes every point in Aden and climbs to the top of each megascraper."

Intrigued, I asked, "How long is it?"

"Thirty-five miles around the city. If you take the express you can be back at the same station in a half hour."

"Now I'm jealous."

"The first one will be built in about 20 years from now... your now. Just wait-- I predict you'll be riding this daily. Let's move in closer. Jolie?"

"Yes, Broose?"

"Let's take a gander from the front car's view."

"I recommend sitting first."

"Thanks." He walked over to a couple of easy chairs and sat down, gesturing towards the empty one. I'm not sure if he was planning a joke or if he was just forgetful, but when I sat down in his chair I went through it, ending up on my own kitchen floor, rubbing my ass. He bit his lip. "Oh, crap! I forgot. Are you all right? You probably should sit on one of the chairs in your own house."

"I'll do that, you..." I said, standing up and glaring. I was about to issue a eulogy of emphatic epithets but my thought process was cut off as our position changed with a blur, rushing from our viewpoint in the pavilion right to the front coaster car in perfect time... just as it rounded the pinnacle towards the first drop. If any of you enjoy the rush of a well-designed modern roller coaster the way I do, well, then you wouldn't have been ready for this either. Today's coasters are breathtaking things, and they achieve that with a high speed plummet towards the ground from ten or fifteen stories in the air.

But this coaster had just climbed to the top of an Aden megascraper, buildings which start at 150 stories. This one was two hundred. Imagine going to the observation deck of the Empire State Building... and plunging off. Well, you'd only fall half as far as we did. And while it started out as a straight drop, this coaster had other plans for us. It took us into an extended whirling corkscrew. It wound around the skyscraper in tight circles and at one point took a shortcut through the building, in what I hoped was a tunnel built through it and not the first part of an accidental freefall drop which would conclude with our mutual deaths. We didn't die (not that I would have, as an intangible visiting his world). It did barrel rolls and loop-de-loops and then hung us upside down for an hour (or maybe ten seconds) to stare at the thousand feet of air between us and the ground. That was a perfect location for me to vomit, and puke I did.

Regardless of where I chose to throw up, it ended up on my kitchen floor. Fortunately I hadn't eaten yet and my stomach was nearly empty. Broose shouted to me, "If you get nauseous, try closing your eyes... this is all an illusion, after all!" His own eyes were wide open to match his mouth. I thanked him internally for his tardy advice and stepped out of the screamingly fast coaster car to my doom, or at least to clean the floor.

"End, Jolie." His room returned with no sign of Aden or the coaster. "Too much for you, huh?"

"The realism is astonishing. Honestly, I felt like I was skydiving without a 'chute. And nobody gets hurt on these train cars of death?"

"Hang on, hang on-- I didn't say that," and then he grinned. "But no, they don't. Safety first!"

"Safety first," I agreed. "And in Aden, heart-stopping fear, second."

"Heh, heh. Let's give you the two bit tour, from a tram this time. Jolie, please."

"Watch the tram car doors, please. Please watch the tram car doors. Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times. Pick up your missing hands and feet at the Lost and Found after the tour," Jolie droned as the scene changed to a Universal Studios-type tram route through the heart of Aden. I laughed at the silly joke and wondered if the computer was this human-sounding all the time.

The city was lush and verdant. There were wide lanes but no vehicles, unless you counted bicycles and other self-propelled machinery I had no name for. People were taking their time, greeting each other and hugging. Large grassy fields were swarming with activity coming from the young and healthy populace.

"Where are all the old people?" I found myself asking.

"Some of these people are over a hundred."

"Who?" I demanded, not seeing anyone that looked older than perhaps forty.

"Let's see... umm, her." He pointed at a woman in a bikini climbing a rope without using her feet.

"Who are you bullshitting? She's only 25!" I was drooling a little.

"We take pride in our appearance and to that end, take care of ourselves and take the recommended supplements to reverse skin and organ aging. You can look whatever age you wish."

"Nobody seems to be overweight, either."

"Well... that's just good old fashioned exercise and healthy eating."

"Oh... bummer."

"Did you know we've copied the McDonald's Big Mac? Our version tastes the same but only has 180 calories and 2 grams of fat, fewer calories than an apple and a glass of orange juice."

"Well, that's a diet I could be on. I love apples."

Broose looked confused. "When we aren't working, most of us socialize, and when the weather is nice we do it outside. When it's cold, dark or rainy..." Jolie took the cue and changed the scene, and we were inside of a gymnasium whose back wall was so far off I couldn't see it. There was sophisticated exercise equipment, some which involved multiple people to operate. There were traditional courts; basketball, volleyball, badminton and tennis plus a few that I did not recognize.

We rolled down through the ginormous gym and I realized this must be a virtual vehicle, as we were driving right through people who didn't see us-- I almost caught a ball as it was thrown by me, but it was immaterial and passed through my hands. Now we were at indoor fields-- baseball, football, soccer and others, one after the other with no end in sight. "How big is this gym?"

"Big. It's a donut shape that's completely underground and encircles the city."

"Isn't it too big to get around on foot?"

"Sure."

"so how do they get around?"

"Outside of the gym, in a bigger circle, is the underground transportation that moves everybody around."

"Is that why I saw no cars up on the surface?"

"Yes... they're all down here." He directed the tram to pass through the outer wall; when we did we were suddenly on a big racetrack. The floor was metal and the vehicles resembled bumper cars, lightweight and without roofs, which were whizzing around in organized pandemonium. I noticed that, although some were careening disruptively, all the others simply steered around them. There were no angry horns or collisions or even the sound of tires shrieking to an unplanned stop."What gives?" I asked, gesturing at the mania.

"Jolie. People just enter their destinations and then take a nap if they wish, she takes over and guides the vehicle."

"Impressive!" I said, impressed. Then I pointed at the disruptive car. "But what about the occasional dingleberry... like that guy?"

"Some people want to try driving themselves. And they can, up to a point. Sometimes Jolie takes over to, you know, prevent death and mayhem, that sort of thing."

"How do you leave the city without outside cars?"

"The motor pool has regular cars when needed. Check out a car to hit the open road between cities, visit small towns, see the wonders of the world, etcetera."

"What about fuel? If you don't use money how can you refuel on the outside?"

He grabbed a virtual window and called out some specs, and a 3-d model of a vehicle popped up in front of us. He manipulated it with some finger motions; it expanded until we were inside the engine compartment. It was empty except for some small rectangular projections fastened along the inner walls. Broose 'opened' one and 'handed' me virtual goo. "We don't need to. Power gel."

I handled the glowing lump, turning it over. "How does it work?"

"We organize vast numbers of electrons into a solid mass, held in place magnetically. What you're holding will power the vehicle for 50,000 miles."

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, since they had 200 years to figure this stuff out. I was surprised anyway, though. "Do you still use airplanes for travel?"

"Well, there are still a couple of air vehicles. They are risky, as you know, and noisy, and spew pollutants into the air, although they now largely run on water vapor. Mostly we use trains to get everywhere."

"Like in the 1850's?" I was surprised, but waited for the twist.

"With a couple of differences. These are underground."

"O-kay," I said, scratching my head. "Underground railroads. Just like the 1850's. Do you rescue slaves, too?"

He laughed. "But here's where the similarity ends. These are maglev trains running through a tube with no air. Those suckers shoot at speeds of 352,000 UPH."

"That's crazy fast, I think. 352,000... wait. UPH? What kind of measuring system is that?"

"Units per hour."

I frowned. "How big is your unit?"

He feigned shock and said, "Now that's a personal question!"

"I just need to know so I can compare it to mine. How long is it?"

"Just because we're family doesn't mean you can get familiar!"

He was toying with me and I was completely oblivious, and getting irritated. "I need to know yours so I can hold it next to mine and form a ratio between them."

"Hey pal, there's no way we're crossing swords."

"Swords?" I was confused until I reviewed the last minute in my head. I let out an exasperated sigh and said, "Keep it in your pants, horndog. It's good to know the future still has bad comedians."

He guffawed, "Cock jokes are always funny!"

"Real answer this time, please... Shecky?"

"Okay, okay. A unit is about 300 feet."

I did some quick calculating. "Thats over a million miles an hour!"

He stared at me curiously. "It is not over a million miles an hour. Use a calculator."

I grabbed one and let out a whistle. "20,000 miles an hour? I can't wrap my head around that speed. They're closing in on 1,000 miles an hour at the Salt Flats and that seems crazy."

"A free running land vehicle moving at 1,000 miles an hour? That was insane alright."

"Agreed. But a train going 20K an hour? You must miss the platform a lot."

He let out a chuckle. "If that happens, we get shot out of top-mounted cannons and float to the ground on parachutes."

"Sounds like hell if you're bringing the birthday cake. So is Aden the best city on Earth?"

He snorted. "Practically the worst."

I was astonished. "The worst? That doesn't seem right! Just look at it-- it's the finest city I've ever seen!"

"Oh, it's beautiful all right, but don't forget that Aden was the first Perfect World city. That makes it the oldest. You would not believe some of the fantastic structures we've put up around the world since then."

"Really? Like what?"

"They redid the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Metal fatigue got the old one."

I frowned. "That doesn't sound so fantastic."

"The new one's bigger."

"How much bigger?"

"When you reach the top you're effectively weightless."

I was stunned. "Wha...? That's gotta be over two hundred miles above sea level!"

"Even more. And the Ohm Tower in New New Delhi is a three hundred story building shaped like an upside down 'U'. The towers stand a mile apart at their bases, and are connected with an immense multistory bridge w-a-y up. Some joker decided to make the bottom floor of the bridge in Crystanite, the clear version of Carbonite, but most occupants prefer to cover their floors rather than look half a mile straight down to what would certainly be a very hard landing."

I shuddered. "I'm with them."

And then there's the Pacific Rim Bridge, which is a continuous roadway that connects over 900 islands with the continents of China, Australia and North and South America."

"Wow. You'd definitely need one of those power packs and a month to get around."

He laughed. "Yeah. Or use the bridge train and get there in minutes."

I shook my head. "There's so much to see in your world, I mean, your worlds. I would love to actually visit, none of this smoke and mirrors stuff."

He smiled, a little sadly and agreed, "It would be astounding. Sadly, I don't know how to make that happen. Nothing solid gets through."

I frowned. "What about the Null door?"

"What about it?"

"If it can transport you through any two distances instantly... "

His eyes widened with insight. "Then maybe it'll work with time, too! You really are a genius! Wait here. I'm going to propose this to the Big Heads and see what they think."

He disappeared and I was left with a big gray irregular view of the future in my kitchen. I sighed and began preparing breakfast.

I was finishing my sixth strip of bacon when he reappeared.

He was wearing a long beard and stared wistfully at the succulent smoked meat as it dropped down my gullet. "You couldn't wait?"

"Look who's talking! How long have you been gone? It felt like fifteen minutes."

He snorted. "Try two years. That was quite an idea you had. Gimme five!"

He held up his hand to receive a slap, and to humor him I launched my palm quickly through his gossamer digits. Only they weren't the wispy smoke I was expecting, and stung when they contacted.

"Ow!" I stared at his arm reaching through the gray fringe into my kitchen, my mouth unhinged and wide with shock. With a deft motion I grabbed him and pulled. To my disbelief he shot towards me, and we both sprawled onto my kitchen floor. He didn't move and I thought he was unconscious, but I could hear him breathing deeply; he said, "Mmmm... bacon."

I stood and pulled him up. "You did it! You are now standing in the early 21st century, Broose! Man, I cannot wait to try that Roller Coaster for real!"

He said nothing and looked around awkwardly, then mumbled something incoherent.

"What was that? I missed it."

With deep embarrassment he repeated himself, barely louder. "You can't go."

I felt lightheaded and filled with profound loss. Sitting heavily I asked, "Why not?"

He sat beside me, chair scraping against linoleum with a grunt. "I'd like to say it's not you, but it is. See, you're the impetus of the future. You create the staggering change that saves the people and the planet."

"So I should be welcome there, then," I said, trying to keep the plea from my voice.

"Oh, you would be... only by the time you got to the other side of the portal, it would all be gone. The portal would probably be gone as well, and you'd be trapped in a future of uncertain design. I wouldn't exist, either, since you would never meet your future wife before you got stuck in 2295. So," and he put his hand on my shoulder, "I'm sorry, but it's just impossible."

I stood up and paced. "That's just crazy. How could I create this massive change you speak of? I'm just jotting stuff into my Codex, about what's wrong with humanity and how I think society should be alternately structured. I don't have the drive to change a world of people... I like my SDR too much."

"SDR?"

"Sex and Drugs and Rock."

He chuckled. "And you think that will stop if you become serious? Don't you write about a world designed perfectly for the people who inhabit it? Why do you think any of that would stop if you went on, let's say, 35,000 college campus lectures over the course of your life, inspiring millions of brilliant young minds to follow your teachings and help make this goal come to pass?"

"What? 35,000 whats?" I wasn't following yet.

His eyes shone. "Say you wrote an inspiring tale to make them think, make them dream of a better future. Maybe you tempt them with the future you saw here today, presented in terms of possibilities. Perhaps you spelled out a plan, one that took them from their grim present and propelled them forward viscerally, like the shifting of continents, irrevocably towards your goal. You could lead by example, find your most promising volunteers and allow their own potential to widen the reality. You don't have to do it all," he smiled and grabbed my arm, firmly. "You just have to get the ball rolling. People are looking for a change, but they don't have a cohesive plan. You do."

I exhaled heavily and recounted his thought process. I admit I'm a smart guy with good ideas, but the one I had next was anything but. He may have seen me as some kind of savior for the world and all, but I'm just a barely graduated college kid with a water cooler full of vodka, and I was probably a little selfish in my desire, but all of that sounded like nothing I wanted to spend my life toiling at. "Let someone else do it!" I shouted, and sprinted into the vortex!

I had no idea what to expect as I dove through. Watching Broose get pulled through it looked like a simple journey through a doorway, but I guess he was right about the paradox of my being there; the portal shuddered violently as I entered and Broose's marvelous computer-painted room shifted from solid to translucent, completing its transition to gone at about the same time the last little piece of my body crossed the event horizon. Even Broose's pleading cry of 'Noooo!' became insubstantial and echoey, melting rapidly into silence like a candle dropped into molten steel.

I fell a few feet to the ground, knocking the wind out of me. The last thing I saw was the beautiful city of Aden blowing away into nothingness, a city of steam become insubstantial.

I arose in a bed soaked with sweat. Waking to a hot LA morning is something I know, but this wasn't it-- it was comfortable outside, a cool 65 degrees.

I'm twenty-one, done with college and like to party so these things happen, but there had been no party, either. Last night had been uneventful (I swear!) but somehow my sobriety-soaked brain had created the most vivid dream of my life. It was a hi-def DVD of strange playing in my head, a cut-crystal cloth of clear I know I could never forget. It doesn't matter what happened; my path in life has just been chosen for me.

I ran to my Codex, unlocked the heavy wooden binder and put pen to paper. I had an idea for a speech that might just change the world.

Copyright 2010 Bruce Ian Friedman

The Founder of Perfect World Doctrine

Perfect World story (The ILLUMINATION)

Reprinted from The Encyclopaedia Galactica

First Edition, AD 2295

There has never been a more telling benchmark for the advancement of human civilization than its system of government, the reason being that an enlightened administration comes from an enlightened populace. Nowhere was that more evident in modern times than the advent of Perfect World Doctrine in the late 20th century, better known as World Family, the accepted social architecture for modern humanity. Unlike the Bible, which was a document forged from the tales printed by a thousand hands, the Aden Codex (the decorative book surround housing Perfect World Doctrine) was penned by only one, a man known as the Founder.
The Founder's true identity is not known to this day, largely because of his concentrated efforts to that end-- he believed that linking the Codex to what he called "an imperfect human, warts and all" would diminish or even destroy its impact, and he felt the work "must survive so that humanity could". Dozens of awards ceremonies held in his honor over the years went without its keynote speaker as the Founder vigilantly avoided any kind of acclaim and instead sought isolation with only the company of his closest confidants. The few persons who might have been privy to his personal information were allied with him and destroyed any documentation of his birth and early life, and his genetic information was never collected. Still, many families have unsuccessfully claimed him as being part of their lineage based on known parallels between individuals in their family with the sketchy information of his life, but one or more conflicting factors has eliminated each of them and the truth of his life is no closer to being discovered than it was during his influence.
It was established the Founder never intended to be treated as a deity nor even as a sage; he often commented that he created the Codex with the intention that it be discovered only after his death. In a public interview he stated that "Once the warning signs of humanity's impending descent into oblivion became painfully clear to me, it forced me to spread the plan earlier." While the Doctrine would eventually prove to be the right path for humanity's salvation, he stressed that he did "not want the Doctrine to be treated with reverence, as with a Bible nor with fear of punishment, as with a Lawbook but as a guide or 'an encyclopedia of the human condition'." His comment that he designed it from "a dash of decency, a pinch of pornography and a whole lot of common sense" was seen as evidence of his unique perspective on what it meant to be 'human'.
The Founder observed that "there is a potential in the human heart to be selfish, a capacity which is enlarged by suspicion and fear," and recognized that fear, although a natural product of Earth's organic 'kill or be killed' dictum, should not be used by society as a tool of manipulation but rather as a benchmark to decide which social policies do not work and must be eradicated, and which ones better humanity and therefore must be implemented.

To that end the Doctrine called for a dismantling of the current political structure. He understood the debilitating effects of power and reverence on individuals and how a slow behavioral change inevitably creeps into the psyche of a leader which negatively alters their perception of themselves and their 'subjects'. This perhaps explained his own desire to stay clear of any position of power and to remain anonymous. His comedic quote, "I don't exist. And that guy who wrote the Bible, that Lord guy, he doesn't exist either. I know because we go to the same gym" actually demonstrated his aversion towards becoming a holy figure, preferring to ignore his pivotal and undisputed role as savior of the race and of the planet.

Considered to be equally prophet, genius and philanthropist, the Founder was a student of social evolution and often censured the widely held belief (at the time) that Democracy was the final step in the socioeconomic organization of man; to that end, he spoke at colleges across the country (and on many campuses in countries which would permit it) spreading desire for his concept, which was first (and always, by him) called 'World Family' [see main article]. Most of his initial followers were passionate followers of the Doctrine and became the seed populace in the first Perfect World City. With the unlikely name of The Farm because of its disguise on the surface, this city was built in a series of naturally occurring underground caverns in Northwestern Nebraska [see main article] and housed upwards of half a million people before its destruction.

In order to create enthusiasm and fervor for World Family, his end goal was not simply the building of a single city which fully implemented his ideals; he wanted the entire civilized planet to recognize the logic and so strove to build at least one new city in every major nation. Each city's goal would be to turn around the strength and economy of their host country once each government complied with a few simple nationwide behavioral changes. The first city to be recognized, Aden (which was built to replace the destroyed Farm), made itself essential for the United States by creating a steady stream of modern technological advances whose profits (amounting to trillions) were offered to the financially strapped government in exchange for modification of the nation's educational system (schools), penal system (prisons) and infant training system (parents), to Doctrine standard.

The Founder operated under the premise that Perfect World would be a generations-long project which could best benefit a society educated to recognize these advantages. With the successful trading of renewable energy for podschools (the Perfect World alternative to traditional schooling [see main article]), it was finally possible to 1) create a youth culture sensitive to the logic of Perfect World 2) convince the host nation to stop using old technologies and 3) sever ties with backwards yet economically powerful cultures. Following that radical change the United States experienced an unprecedented enrichment even as the rest of the world suffered the most desperate worldwide economic period in a hundred years. Additionally, facilitating other necessary upgrades to the national profile launched the country back into the stratosphere of world leadership.

Early Life

Information regarding the Founder's early life is hearsay-- the facts of this information are not known. The Founder was said to be born in a city on the East Coast of what was then the United States of America. A single remaining recording of his voice proved that he spoke with an accent attributed to the Northeastern part of the country, most likely Boston or New York City, indicating that (whether he was born there or not) he lived there during the dialectic formation period of his life (ages 2 to 10). Additionally, his first college rally began in New York City, at Queens College in Flushing.

He is said to have been an only child; at the time it was unusual for a family to have only one child, unlike today where it has become the norm. His life was described as 'happy' but he was often considered a 'troublemaker', often speaking out of turn in classrooms (when schools taught generalized education using a single technique to children in rooms with more than one student) and refusing to believe many accepted social theories. He was reputed to have been thrown out of at least two schools prior to college because of his disruptive tendencies.

The first indication of his beliefs arose (according to reports from his early followers) when, in junior high school, he organized a sit-in (a 1960's protest method in which protesters sat en masse to block public movement)

of the students in his 8th grade political science class, which was designed to impede access to the school's main office until the administration agreed to remove specific text from the course.

The sit-in was ultimately doomed; the administration denied their demands and the underaged protesters were removed by their parents. According to the Founder his own parents were proud of him for 'sitting down' for his beliefs, but took away television viewing as a punishment. This action gave him much more free time and cemented his commitment to the Doctrine, the fundamentals of which he was already outlining.

In place of television viewing he took on a series of hobbies and studies, including woodworking, bookmaking, political theory, physics, biology, public speaking, degridding (the act of deleting oneself from all public records) and music, and he absorbed all the information he could find on alternate realities, sociology, psychology and political science, which lent fact to his theories, and ultimately lead to acceptance of them by the preeminent scholars of the time.

A Jarring Influence

The Founder's parents died in a construction accident when he was 15. He rarely spoke of the events leading to their death, but according to Jake Reston, he mentioned once that his parents had been killed when a crane broke loose and crashed onto the streets of Manhattan.

He indicated that it happened when they had been on their way to attend a parent-teacher conference to discuss his latest misbehavior. The Founder felt he was the cause of his own parents' untimely demise, according to Reston because, had he not been a troublemaker, they would not have been on that street when the accident occurred.

The foolishness of his rebellion-- distributing custom toilet paper around the school with the principal's face printed on every sheet, with a slogan reading 'Clean Up Your Act', was an irony not lost on him. Although later in life the Founder was heard commenting that his parents died because his principal got 'shitfaced', the gravity of that event stayed with him to his death. Reston added that the few people who were aware of this fact not only kept it in confidence, they attempted to relieve the Founder of his burden with any number of reasonable explanations, but reported that he 'would hear none of it'. Many surmise that his complete renovation of construction practices when building Aden were reinforced by that early life trauma, along with the shocking events of the Farm; he campaigned (with little success) to bring the stiffer building practices to all Outer cities as well.

Following the tragedy of his parents death he became very serious about his studies and never again disturbed classrooms. But his idea about a 'Better World' had been set into motion, and the remainder of his high school classes and all of his college courses were chosen to help him in his quest to fully design this new social system. He researched societal organization from the earliest recorded tribal behavior; he conducted exhaustive studies of current systems, including postmodern influences on human behavior in Democracy and its descent back to precivilized norms, due in large part to a push by the ultra-rich to roll back the laws controlling social reform.

His writings, which were copious studies of the human condition, fleshed out with fiction stories of the world he was planning (many cities of which were designed and built to those specifications before his death) went into a tome he called the Aden Codex [see main article]. It was a large wooden book surround which he designed and constructed while in high school, made from hardwood and leather and metal parts from a variety of sources, including an oversized three ring school binder. While somewhat crude and very worn, the nature of its contents made it an impressive item to view as it stood in the foyer of every home he would ever live. The Aden Codex survives to this day and is on display at the replica of his final home at the Founder's Museum in Aden.

The Two Visions

The Founder did attend a four-year college and was known to have completed his studies in three. Though this remains a pertinent clue to his identity, an exhaustive study using worldwide data mining found over 100,000 people who had accomplished a similar goal during those same years (1975-1978). Further corroborative data has been sketchy and future analysis has fallen into the bailiwick of historians and archaeologists.

While committed to his cause, he nonetheless behaved in the schizophrenic manner consistent with other students of the day, involving himself deeply in academia; and also with parties, drinking and sexual liberation. During the height of his debauchery, however, he had a self-described epiphany; he claimed to have been visited in a dream by his 'great great great great great great grandson' from 200 years in the future, who had a long conversation with him regarding social changes the Founder had been positing since high school, which inspired an abundance of the Doctrine's early chapters.

In the dream he received an envelope which sprang into a page when touched, that answered any question he said aloud or in thought, in real time, moving text. He ascertained that he was speaking to a descendent living two centuries hence, and proceeded to grill him about the society of the future.

The relative relayed to him that many of his ideas did come to pass, including the most grandiose and unlikely one (moving the human race into a Perfect World social system), and answered many of his questions except for the one which had been beleaguering him since the beginning: What driving impetus had he discovered that shifted the entire human race over to Perfect World? He knew that the wheels of social change moved at a glacially slow pace and had trouble envisioning a circumstance which would cause politicians to vote away their own livelihoods, especially the crooked representatives who had benefitted so much by graft and payola.

That most important answer had been interrupted by his alarm clock, which ended the 'dream' and severed his 'connection' to the future. It has been surmised that the very fact of his frustration was the tipping point in his quest to find the missing link-- the action which put in place the Founder's philosophy.

While it was that important revelation that invigorated his desire to see Perfect World through, he rationalized that the dream was just a dream and that he had no way of knowing whether anything he wrote about would ever be taken seriously, let alone that the Aden Codex would become the vade mecum of future man. But any doubts he had about the efficacy of his plan were laid to rest a year later, when he was revisited by the same relative, albeit in a different manner. His prior unanswered question was finally given deep consideration, which it is presumed caused the second major push of hyperopic writing that manifested in him until his death nearly a hundred years later.

Johnny Ideaseed

He realized that the gravity of this project was much bigger than one man (although it was conceived by just one) and so resolved to eradicate his identity and create a new, ambiguous one. Using his privately developed talents of degridding, he methodically eliminated any trace of himself in written, photographic or computer records, to the point that there was no evidence of him ever having been born. What few pieces of evidence the Founder missed were confiscated and destroyed soon after discovery by assistants, who respected the Founder's desire to have no traceable roots.

After completing college, the Founder made his living primarily from poorly paid speaking engagements in colleges across the United States. Firsthand witnesses maintained he would go onstage with no speech prepared and ruminate about the life of the citizenry living in a Perfect World city as if it already existed, exciting a student body wary of the treacherous life for which they were training. It was not unusual for him to begin with a licentious statement like, "Boy, we have fucked it up big time," or "Your parents have screwed the pooch," endearing himself to the young audience. They also appreciated his countercultural attire: Long beard, long overcoat, dark glasses, wide-brimmed hat... he was the embodiment of the social outcast movement, and he was their leader. He often quipped, "It's a good thing I don't drink Kool Aid or wear Nikes," referring to the recent charismatic but zealous religious cult leaders who won their followers over... prior to instigating their mass suicides.

Afterwards he would be inundated with questions from students rushing the stage and would consent to hold an impromptu 'rap' session in the lobby of whatever hotel he was staying; it was from those most passionate students within the after-hours meetings that his ultimate inner circle was formed. Many of those dropped out of college soon after attending his talks, preferring to work full time making the Doctrine of Perfect World come to pass.

Together with his 'lieutenants', in his life the Founder reached over 30,000 college campuses worldwide, recruiting over one million people as permanent residents of the first three Perfect World cities: Nebraska's The Farm (whose inhabitants moved to nearby Aden upon the Farm's untimely demise), Pacific City in northern California, and Brazil's Vivacita.

There were twenty-one Perfect World cities at the time of the Founder's death, and he had been actively involved in creating and building each of them, but always preferred living in Aden, commenting, "It was here that I was born." He was almost 40 when even the Farm was first built, so it is presumed that he was speaking metaphorically.

His view that it was necessary to use Capitalism as the shoulder upon which to launch Perfect World caused him to seek out and to draft a small number of progressive-leaning billionaires (exactly one) into the cause prior to receiving money from the profits on inventions perfected by FutureTech (Jake Reston's shell company and Aden's later connection to the Outerworld economy). Many believe that Perfect World might never have come to pass, were it not for that essential application of large amounts of capital at the right times and in the right places. Ironically, the politicians who accepted bribes in order to pass this legislation never realized that by doing so they would not only be guaranteeing the demise of their very occupations, they would also be making their accumulated wealth all but worthless in the future.

First Follower- Professor Leonard 'Len' Thackery

[see main article] The Founder had discovered the passion of college students with his first speech, and it was at his first speech at Queens College

that he met a 14 year old genius/college student, young Lenny Thackery. There is little doubt of the gigantic contributions made by Thackery to help implement Perfect World Doctrine. Unfortunately, it was disputed beyond doubt that his sociopathic tendencies also put the program into serious jeopardy a number of times.

Early Contributions

Attending school only at the behest of his parents (theoretical physicist Theodore Thackery and microbiologist Ellen Rhys-Betoire), Thackery refused for reasons he would never acknowledge to attend any school that was far from home (it was presumed he was intimidated, being fourteen) and settled on the nearby but completely unsuitable Queens College. His innate knowledge was already far beyond any scientific theory taught there, so instead spent most of his time in the laboratories inventing incisive new technology, at first concentrating on nanotech manufacturing techniques.

Until his paper 'Self-Replicating Robots', robotics engineers had been locked in on the idea of designing tiny assembly lines to build nanomachines. Thackery turned the fledgling industry on its ear with his design of the Motherbot/Cannibot pair. The first Motherbot was a building-sized robotic machine with all the appendages, parts and tools necessary to duplicate itself... but at 50% original size. The huge Cannibot then went into action, dismantling the larger Motherbot, using those materials to fabricate identical but smaller parts for the new Motherbot to use in creating two copies of itself at half size. The Motherbots dismantled the Cannibot and made two at half size. The new and smaller Cannibots then reduced the second Motherbot into new parts for the two Motherbots to to make four smaller Motherbots, and so on. The final product could be any size, from meters across... to nanometers.

This pairing concept launched modern nanotechnology and the founding principle is still used 200 years later. There could be no artificial human brain, with its quadrillions of neurites, without it.

It is a matter of some dispute how Thackery became the misanthrope he did, but he showed only limited evidence of it in college. He was a rabid believer of the Founder's, however, and brought three separate technologies to the cause which ultimately earned over a hundred trillion dollars together, enough to build every Perfect World city, a contribution which is inarguably the reason for the Founder's early success. If workable cities could not have been built to prove his theory and garner high praise, there is no question Perfect World would have been delayed, if not scrubbed entirely.

These technologies were 'donated' by Thackery to FutureTech, a corporation shell begun by the Founder's next inner circle member, Jacob Dylan 'Jake' Reston, along with the Founder and Thackery. While actual products would be produced under the FutureTech banner, its main purpose was to funnel money and raw materials back to the Farm and Aden without alerting the public to their existence. All products were actually made within the cities for use outside, to satisfy the complicated agreement they had with OuterWorld (the nickname given by Perfect Worlders for 'anyone else'). Ultimately it was decided that Reston should be on the Board of Directors as the only one of the three with any desire to run the pseudobusiness, and he managed to parlay its unique structure into the single most profitable corporation in the world until corporate earnings (and rankings as well) became moot.

In addition to nanobot design, Thackery had invented a dual hyperjet engine that recycled the high temperature, high speed 'spent' gasses from one engine to boost the performance of the second by a great percentage. That second jet in turn supplied heated gasses for the first jet, boosting its output tremendously.

He had, in effect, created a near perpetual motion flying machine which reduced fuel needs to the point that a fleet of new jets could run on the fuel formerly reserved for a single older jet [see main article].

Thackery did not simply invent these technologies but also implemented their integration into existing designs, as was evidenced by his third invention for FutureTech. He created a new type of building material (called Carbonite) which, at the molecular level, was both metal and carbon but at only a fraction of the weight. He then designed a process to quickly fabricate beams and supports from the new material, on site. The Outers' scientific community were skeptical of a support product that light in weight, so to prove his claim he and a small crew of five built a single beam bridge across a mile-wide section of the Hudson river in three days, then drove an enormous earth-mover across it... successfully.

Later the material was employed in the first, and then in every 200 story megascraper in all original Perfect World Cities, buildings which are still viable 250 years later, even as new and even better materials have been implemented.

Carbonite had superior compression statistics without being brittle and was far more elastic, a property which could be vastly increased or decreased using the appropriate application of specified energy. This attribute enabled a building made entirely of Carbonite to survive unscathed an earthquake of over 13 on the Richter-Xenon scale, a level with vibrations strong enough to powder concrete and friction that could melt carbon steel. Other Perfect World scientists took his original design and developed another molecular structure of Carbonite which was transparent (Crystanite), which paved the way for today's 'intangible' structures including the vast Phobos/Diemos Transitory Tube, designed to connect the wobbling moons and keep them from crashing into the newly terraformed Mars,

as well as Earth's nearly invisible space elevators, now numbering over 100 and spread all around the planet's equator.

Closest Friend- Jacob Dylan Reston

[see main article: 'Jake Reston and the Founder'] If Len Thackery was the Perfect World's 'black sheep', then Jake Reston was its 'Golden Boy'. Discovered by the Founder just a month after meeting Thackery, Reston quickly became the Founder's public face, and by extension the Perfect World's mouthpiece as well. Outgoing and friendly, Reston was a natural Outerborn Perfect World citizen, a carbon copy of the Founder's concept for a human raised entirely using Doctrine guidelines.

The Founder met him at Coastal Bend Community College in Texas, where Jake was an unremarkable student but enormously popular among the campus population. He was voted class president four years consecutively, a first in the school's history, and was personally responsible for convincing nearly a thousand students from the small college to join Perfect World in the first year alone.

Although the nonexistent political structure of Perfect World had no leaders, Jake Reston was unofficially the spokesman for Aden due to his even temper, urbane charm and marksmanlike insight and maintained the position until his retirement. He was the foundation of Aden; its designer and builder (along with a team of brilliant visionaries); its moral center and the torus of its most unflappable ebullience. Any unsolvable problem inevitably landed on his desk and became a solution in moments-- he had a way of getting to the meat of the matter immediately, then working it like a pugilist until it relented an ideal response. Even Jolie, the vast and personable Aden computer, modeled her behavior after Jake's careful and cordial weighing of every input, no matter the source. As evidence, he built the unique and vastly popular Roller Coaster Transportation (RCT) System after hearing the idea coming from a six-year-old girl, spawning his comment, "From innocent minds come the cleverest ideas... if we would just listen."

Ideas occurred to him instinctively and reflected his visceral understanding of the human condition, beginning with his Aden In The Dark program, which caused each member of Perfect World to endure without Aden's modern conveniences for two straight weeks each year to keep them connected with nature and to foster creative thought.

He was known to be forever respectful of the man who had brought the Doctrine to fruition-- and maintained this closest of friendships with the Founder for over 80 years.

The Tragedy of his Wife

The Founder met the only woman he would ever marry while at an undisclosed rally at a college somewhere in the northern hemisphere. The only fact known for certain is that it was a university in a small town surrounded by farmland, a situation which commonly existed at the time.

The tale is that a stunning young woman with flowing red hair attended one of his late night hotel discussion groups and hung on until the last person left, which is when she made her passion and brilliance known to him. She opened up her dossier and showed him her design for an underground city she had been working on for over a decade, one that seemed destined to be a first Perfect World city-- secret, secure and obdurate. They retired to his room together, where they continued to merge his Doctrine with her Designs, thrusting them more deeply together until they were as one.

They were inseparable after that. She understood his need for anonymity and as a gift to him on her own, degridded herself and donned her own hat and large sunglasses. They married after only three months while giving a rally in Las Vegas, using created documentation. He was now Joe Founder and she became Bertha Founder née Bublé. If he ever knew her real name he never mentioned it.

She became his agent, his handler and chief organizer; she worked long for both his cause and her own and could always be found nearby. Her genius was in systems and she used it to design Aden's social architecture, which was vastly different from anywhere else on Earth-- it was cooperative and Green and focused on matters of visceral importance to man: Art, science and discovery as well as peace, care and freedom. Although she was unable to bear children she designed the city with the loving care of a mother and created a place of learning, safety and beauty; a university and resort wrapped around an island of scientific curiosity.

The pair were a dynamo, unstoppable, and the talent she brought to the team was a crucial component of Perfect World's success. She was his cheerleader, number one fan and occasional coach as well, organizing a step-by-step plan for bringing both of their dreams to fruition, and as the pieces drew nigh she was there to help coax them into place. Soon the vast and remote land had been secured and the essential seed money was funded, donated by a wily Internet billionaire who had been bedazzled by her charms and secretly aroused by her revealing gauze dress.

The Doctrine's followers grew; when 100,000 solid commitments had been reached it was time to begin. The money bought construction machinery and raw materials to build the immense metal barns which would serve as their first home. Farming vehicles were purchased and loaded the land with food crops for miles in all directions. Inside one special barn an industrial elevator was bored through two hundred feet of solid granite to reach the immense chain of caverns below; discovered from space using ground-penetrating radar designed for that very purpose, it was exactly the home they had hoped for. Eroded over millennia by the action of a surging underground river, level-floored cavern rooms like a string of pearls now continued for miles before ending at a vast abyss, as the once-great waterway still sent a million gallons of pristine water every minute over that gloomy edge, plummeting to incalculable depths towards the center of the Earth. One day they would explore and utilize the river fully but until then it was only used for drinking water, as a rich source of hydroelectric power and as a spawning ground for the delicious cave lobster discovered down there, actually a giant shelled mollusk.

With electrical power now surging through the caverns automation began, and structures began sprouting from the floors like stalagmites. Building materials had been discovered all around them; a new mineral was found to have remarkably resilient properties and they converted thousands of the enormous black boulders into billions of bricks to be used in construction. The rock was flexible, absorbed shock energy and could survive astonishingly strong earthquakes without damage. In the end 618 of the city's 627 buildings were made of the mineral, called Vulcanite.

It was decided that a name as grand as Aden should be reserved for a beautiful city thrusting its pinnacles skyward, not a dark and hidden city populated with low squat buildings and so dubbed it the 'Farm' after the diversion growing above them on the surface. Name notwithstanding, the Farm was still a magical place; no other city in the world could claim such a unique and interesting design, and it was a delightful experience living there.

Ten years into the city's life tragedy struck. It began small, as one structure began to lean for reasons which were unclear until the damaged bricks were inspected microscopically. The scientists were shocked to learn that they were infested with a previously undiscovered bacterial parasite that were in fact, consuming them, and voraciously so. They concluded that Vulcanite was not a mineral as was originally thought, but instead a tightly packed food source for this bacteria. Soon they found that the bacteria was everywhere; in every cavern room, on every piece of equipment and on every building. The bacteria disturbed nothing else; its only food was Vulcanite, but for that they were insatiable.

It was not easy to evacuate everyone immediately; the elevators were not meant to carry so many people, but the bacterial attack was moving far faster than anyone had realized and the push was necessary. The first building, which was situated nearest the advancing microbes, came crashing down in hours once breached. Other buildings fell soon after, filling the air with a thick black dust. In the panic lives were lost as people senselessly entered condemned buildings to collect their plants or pets; one collapsing building snagged the elevator shaft emerging from its roof and pulled it, full car and all, crashing to the rock floor several hundred feet below, with no survivors.

In 36 hours time all but 9 buildings were little more than piles of black rubble, and almost 1000 people had lost their lives. It was the biggest catastrophe nobody ever heard about.

It was said the Farm's destruction proved to be too much stress for Martha-- watching her life's work, and that of her beloved husband's fall into ruins was like watching all of her children die at once. Worse than that, she had lost her best friend LaShamra Johnson in the destruction. Later that day she collapsed in her husband's arms, clutching her head in pain. With the Farm's hospital facilities and clinics now rubble and the nearest hospital two hundred miles away, the doctors could do little to help her and she died that evening of an aneurism, with the Founder by her side.

It was often repeated that the Founder proved his leadership that day; after losing both his dream and the love of his life and on the same day, anyone could have expected him to retreat into grief. Instead, he stood high upon a podium in the huge barn and gave a stirring and impassioned speech to his saddened citizenry, relaying hope and inspiration and dismissed their sorrow, assuring them that years hence this shall be seen as only a minor setback for the first Perfect World community. He calmed them with his vision and energized their resolve with a glimpse of the future, showing how, if they had lived in a world devoted to the Doctrine, there would have been help from all sides and a new city standing before the end of the year. He guaranteed they were going to do it all over again, and better, and this time out in the warming light of sunshine. He declared right then that the new city, to be built just a few miles away, would be of a design that Bertha had been creating, a futuristic vision with soaring megascrapers and smooth transportation, a Perfect World city more perfect than the last. He declared this new city would be Aden in name and characteristic, and that to commemorate those who died here this day, construction would begin in the morning. And such was his influence that on the morning of the next day, construction began. From that day on, though, the Founder became reclusive, never to be seen by anyone except Jake Reston and a few trusted others.

Xiu-Xan Ximone

Although he had reputedly taken many lovers and several partners and a wife (Bertha) in his life, the Founder never had children. "Just doing my part to reduce the population load on Earth." His philosophy of family, of course, was that it did not stop at the nuclear nor at the genetic; his plan was moving humanity towards a world of family, a planet where any two strangers who meet feel immediate trust for one another. To that end he 'adopted' thousands of people in his life, acting as father and guide to them even as he restricted himself from physical access to most. He instead chose selective video conferencing, addressing his entire 'family' at once on their individual feeds and using the city's computer Jolie to categorize and present their many responses. His own comments would then be fed back to the correct asker, whether they number one or five hundred. He could carry on many conversations simultaneously that way, though some with unique questions needed to wait longer for a response.

One young girl he adopted stood out; her questions were both unique and clever so often that no others came close and it made sense to speak with her, one on one. This young girl was Xiu-Xan Ximone (zhoo-zhan zhi MOAN), age 10, IQ 221, the smartest person on Earth at the time.

An orphan in Nepal, the story is told that she heard about Aden one day while hacking into the school computer. She had then slipped away from her orphanage and tricked her way across the globe, convincing ticket agents and station clerks using guile and innocence to receive passage on busses, trains and airplanes to get there.

Arriving in New York she read newspaper after newspaper until it caught her eye-- it was an obscure advertisement for peace and contentment and a life free from stress. It was a long ad, heavily worded, and as she read she noticed syllabic stresses creating regular glottal stops when reading. That suggested a code pattern, and soon she was able to pull an address from it. This led her to an Aden elevator, which dropped a heart-pounding 350 feet below the street to the secret BLUR hypertrain. In twenty minutes she was in Aden Nebraska, a little orphan girl with a giant new family.

The Founder was always happy to accept her calls; she became a valued phone friend, even at that tender age. "I loved being bested by a ten year old supergenius. She was so much smarter than me that I wanted her help improving the Doctrine. To her young credit she said it was already perfect, which I think is when she officially became my granddaughter."

Once she completed podschool education (which had very little to teach her, he wistfully remembered), the Founder had her help Jake Reston plan the next stage of Perfect World: Planetwide city construction in remote areas of twenty promising countries: Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, South Africa, India, China, Russia, Israel, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Poland, Italy, New Zealand, and five large remote islands. By Reston's own admission, his reaction to the young girl's input was at first polite but dismissive, most likely because he did not see the value of a child apprentice. His reaction reversed after observing her finessing design concepts; creating entire cities to implement the geographic features of each site, designing it to operate symbiotically with nature, creating power systems which were both delicate yet powerful. Reston declared her a natural and left the primary design work in her capable hands, knowing that she was the perfect future for Perfect World.

She excelled at Aden's Teen Challenge, which is where she met the future father of her children, Jake Reston's nephew Jean-John Reston. Rocky at first, the two forged a relationship which remained steady for over 80 years. They were both exciting young daredevils, as well as strong believers in the Doctrine; when given their choice of cities to supervise, they both independently chose the same one, another example of their lifelong compatibility.

She was still a teenager when she shipped out to Brazil to oversee construction of Vivacita, the Perfect World city where she eventually settled with Jean-John. Her sacrificial actions over the next four decades brought the entire continent of South America into Perfect World alignment without building another city and she was hailed as a champion. Like her grandfather, she refused any acclaim and additionally requested that nobody enshrine any image of hers, a request which went largely ignored because she was also a devastatingly beautiful woman.

Xiu-Xan Ximone died at the age of one hundred (1999-2099), at an age still considered young for the time. Biological therapies like Nanodoc delivery of antioxidants had kept her physical body the pristine age of thirty for most of that time. She might have lived another hundred years but tragically disappeared off a mountain while extreme skiing in Antarctica. Her body was never recovered. Others in her ski party said it was 'as if she had fallen off the face of the Earth'. She was survived by her husband and her children; daughter Sharell Tanthe (2037- 2256) and son Seth Corell (2072- ).

The Founder's Later Life

Once the Perfect World cities were operational around the globe and were producing solutions to global problems, the next stage of the Founder's Doctrine began-- worldwide acknowledgment and acceptance. He published the Doctrine in abbreviated form and again began a speaking tour, this time for much larger audiences, and often televised. Buzz about 'Perfect World' had gone on for years without any official Outer's recognition, and millions of people were intrigued with the concept without realizing that there were already over a dozen brand-new cities practicing Perfect World Doctrine as he spoke. The word spread quickly and the public, frustrated with their own lives, demanded from their representatives what was being promised by the Founder and his revolutionary book.

Politicians were concerned for their own survival-- Perfect World would unseat them and the dissolve the power structure which kept them in high style-- and to that end began fighting back. Many conservative agencies tried to paint him as a demagogue but the facts of his message were beyond question, even as the lying media, in bed with politicians, denied the facts. Still they tried, as was the party ordinance of the era, using propaganda and outright lies to attempt defamation.

Undaunted, he proceeded to disburse any information he felt was valid to his belief system, considering highly disputed articles of the time as documented fact proving his theory. Publicly his writings were dismissed as being seditious, while privately political leaders plotted ways to remove him from public speaking entirely.

This policy proved to be a fatal mistake for the system of democratic politics due to a potent weapon held by one man, who wielded it swiftly and with great precision. Most politicians or pundits who attacked Perfect World or the Founder soon suffered great public humiliation followed by forced retirement, thanks to this weapon. It was widely believed but never proven that the ammunition for these reprisals was obtained using a device created by Len Thackery called the 'Time Television' [see main article], which was purported to use a powerful telescope-type device to visually record formerly private moments in history. Any attacker was soon dethroned in controversy when incontrovertible video evidence of their guilt in some matter or other became available on the Internet. The Founder remained uninvolved.

No evidence of such a device has never been found, and following the complete change to Perfect World Doctrine, the importance of such data became moot and was no longer pursued.

Now free to complete his life's work, the Founder engaged with gusto. Even though he was of advanced years the Founder did not retire; he kept on delivering advice to all the World Family Councils right up until the day he died. The Founder used Nanodoc antioxidant delivery to look a healthy sixty even at a hundred ten years old, picking that age because of the respect it commanded. He thought that if he looked any younger he might be taken less seriously and if he appeared any older, people would focus on the message of his age and not his beliefs.

The massively televised dedication ceremony of Aden finally brought the secret Perfect World cities into the public eye. The Founder was 86 for that event, and it was the last televised public appearance he ever made. He made his final home in Aden and died there, at the age of 111, of a sleep disorder known as apnea (which has since been eradicated). His private physician acknowledged he had suffered the disorder for several decades but always refused any kind of treatment. His statement "Dying in my sleep seems like a great way to go. I'd be a fool to prevent that" is today seen as prophetic.

His Legacy

While worldwide transition to Perfect World was not smooth everywhere, in 50 years time an estimated 80 percent of the world's population were confirmed World Family. The rest were mostly zealots, living in the last few cities worldwide which maintained Capitalism and unrestricted religious expression. These cities were kept separate for another fifty years until the last holdouts died. The empty cities were then dismantled and recycled. Replacement cities were erected in their place, often with duplicate structures (but made of superior materials) to maintain their uniqueness.

Afterword

Since the change to World Family the planet Earth has been at peace. There is no more scrambling for superiority between competing nations; borders have disappeared. Competition, once hailed as the sure road to superiority, has been completely eliminated. Cities have been streamlined now, and square miles have been returned to nature; thanks to Attritive Reduction and Otherworld Relocation there are only a billion people left and that number has been holding steady for over 75 years, giving the Earth a new lease on life.

The Founder's final two Doctrine contributions occurred after his death, which were ideas of great ecological significance fully deserving of the world's attention, and the world attended to making them happen with relish. For his first legacy, enormous strip mining vehicles were taken out of mothballs and set to the task of emptying the world's many and vast garbage dumps, done with care by identifying and converting every item back into raw materials for reuse. When only bare ground remained those sites were re-planted in a unique new way, which was the Founder's last bequest: Green Cemeteries.

The Founder wanted to change the look of graveyards, from miles of rolling hills dotted with identifying stones carrying short cryptic messages into vast, accessible forests. With Green Cemeteries, the departed were placed directly into the soil without a wasteful coffin to become nutrition for a new tree planted on their grave. On the adult tree was mounted a computer plaque detailing their life and accomplishments. Some chose to create an Avatar of themselves to converse with visitors for all eternity. The planet was healed that way, turning one reclaimed garbage dump at a time into a beautiful woodland.

The giant Sequoia and Redwood forests were also replenished and enlarged with new life, guaranteeing the honored dead a place to display the comprehensive story of their lives, so they may be remembered for thousands of years in well tended and accessible living mausoleums.

As for himself, the Founder went one step further and asked to be buried under a fruit tree, so he might truly give back. His family decreed it would happen, and that each of them would also be buried beneath a tree which bore fruit. The Founder's Family Grove, with thousands of trees is now visited by millions each year, who are all instructed to choose and eat a fruit from a tree, to partake of the Wisdom of the Ages infused, many believe, with the Founder's DNA.

And for his final giant irony, the Founder requested that he be buried under the original 'Tree of Knowledge'--

An Apple Tree.

Copyright 2010 Bruce Ian Friedman