Silos of Man

Chapter 32 - Piece de Resistance - Part One

When I awake, she's gone. I feel disappointment at first, and then as the reality of my life in its current situation floods back to my waking brain, I panic. I leap to the window, pull open the curtains and am overwhelmingly relieved to see Ryann on the lawn, close to the house, holding Warrior's Pose in the beaming sunlight. The sun is so bright that her silhouette in now on the wall across the room.

I can still smell her eucalyptus yoga-oil in the air of our bedroom. I look over to the closet and see my satchel again. She obviously didn't leave that long ago given the strength of the eucalyptus scent, and she doesn't look at all sweaty yet, so I've probably got at least half an hour before she's back in the house.

I realize that my hands are shaking as I reach down for the bag. My inner-brain is buzzing with a dread that this newest envelope could make the current sink hole I'm in, evolve into a black hole. I shake my head at my own stubbornness, because as every alarm in my mind is telling me not to open it, I pick-up the envelope and sit on the floor against the bed, on the side away from the window.

Inside this sealed envelope is another, much older one. It used to be white, but it has yellowed with age. It has a non-sticky piece of scotch tape on the top of the envelope seal, but it wasn't holding anything closed, anymore. Inside, I see a thick pile of notes stuck together with a large paperclip. I reach in to extract the papers, and out slip two small photos along with them. One is of a striking young person with a big backpack, standing in front of an ornate building with what my device confirms is an ancient Ukrainian flag, and the other is of a computer screen. On the screen is a genetic sequence.

The thick pile of folded papers looks like pages torn from a journal. The edges have definitely been ripped from a spine. They send chills up mine. I unfold the pile of papers and notice the faded outline of a paperclip on the first sheet, but it doesn't match the clip that's holding all of the pages together now. I then notice small paperclips holding smaller piles of the notes together within the main stack of pages. The texture of the last pile of pages captures my attention and I notice that it's ripped. When I examine the last stack of paper, the writing on it is angry. It's capitalized and half-scribbled. It's got underlines and circles everywhere and on the last three pages, the writing was obviously so forceful that it had ripped through parts of the pages. I can make out the words "eradicate evil" and "putin". What the hell does putin mean? It takes me a few minutes but then I recall that Putin was the name of some disgraced Russian president from the early 2000s. I tuck that pile of sheets back at the end of the stack of papers in my hands.

I compulsively start to examine these pages from front to back, in the order presented to me in this envelope. As I turn the first clipped set of papers over in my hand, another two pictures fall out. Both pictures are of a person. One of whom is older than the one in the first photo I saw, but with the same striking eyes, sitting in front of a computer screen with what looks to be the same genetic code as in the second photo I just saw. The third picture is of another young person wearing a lab coat, sitting at a table with a closed journal in front of her. The journal has a sticker label on it which reads THESIS NOTES. She looks like she's laughing at the person taking the picture. I recognize based on size perspectives in the photo, that the journal in this picture could be the originating source of the notes in my hand. More chills. They don't stop there.

On the first page of the first bundle of sheets are the following words:

Sept. 21/21

CONTRIBUTORY CAPITALISM – "CONTRIBUTISM"

And then beneath that over the next few pages is written:

Preface

Religion and nationalism are the two overriding globally experienced factors that prevent the equality of all persons on earth. Nationalism is a tribal notion that is a carry-over from humanity's under-evolved time. To separate humans into countries is like splitting them up into teams. They will feel the need to compete - to prove themselves better or more dominant than their neighbours. It's a human nature hold-over from when we were more animalistic. We don't need to be like this anymore. Sure, there are grouped people within countries who operate very differently in the carriage of their society than others, but without country boarders those differences would fade, and skew toward equality. In the absence of religion. That has to be stated, because these two changes would have to happen simultaneously. Discouragingly, theses two sentiments have been historically impossible to tackle because of how deeply they're ingrained in the majority of humanity, through millennia of conditioning, way back from our animalistic times, re: nationalism, and from our paganistic/ritualistic time when universal concepts were based on magic and myth, re: religion. Without these two influences upon humanity, the world could truly live at peace. With people coming and going freely, such that they aren't desperate to escape or leave a country that is impeding their self-realization, or even worse and all the more common, is violent and unjust. Without a captive public to draw upon, corruption would crumble.