I/Tulpa: the Seven Year Girl

chapter 15

"Is it my soul that calls upon my name?"

The cowgirl walked out onto the prairie, dropping her end of the rope, and came around shooting into the air. He was so mesmerized by the cowgirl at first, it seemed as if he was stuck in a mini montage where she was posing for invisible cameras, locking in poses as she advanced on him, weapons holstered, hands akimbo, alternative flexed knees, pushing the hat with a six shooter, different coy smiles, various flirty eyebrow configurations, approaching in jumps instead of a fluid advance, and then she was near him, looking into him as if trying to decide if he was still in there. In the background, traditional plains animals roamed, but manta rays pushed blithely through the skies, and clouds of birds rolled before them like wave crests. In non-jerky real time, Cowgirl looked back at the sky and then back to Jon.

"You like my world?" Cowgirl asked.

"This is your world?" Jon asked.

"Yeah, can't have these critters in the city," Cowgirl said. "And, the Origin you're on, well, that world is hungry and it would likely eat them, and look at that. That's a reasonable population of buffalo out there, exactly the way nature would have it if man didn't interfere. Any place where there used to be an abundance of life and greenery where culling was introduced to micromanage and 'preserve,' you will find a desert. The reason it was full of life was because of the abundance of life. The animals ate and roamed, but they also pissed and pooped and in the wake, new stuff emerged. Did animals ever over eat? Sure, but that imbalance corrected itself faster than man corrected it. And don't get me wrong, I am not dissing man. In the effort to preserve, he sustained sustainability through the decline so well, that they couldn't see it was time to step back and let nature recover on its own. Now, that world needs magicians. I mean, some serious, real magicians. And some fake ones. The world needs tech masters, and nature masters, and spirit masters, and animal masters, and people like you and me. Nature will get what it wants from what's available, and on that planet, the greatest resource is the human population. People will be called to step up and step out. That's the way this works. This is where the evolutional tangents of man will begin. From here the species will diverge into specialized pockets, some indistinguishable from man, and some that will be unrecognizable, maybe even frightening."

"Why mess with it at all?" Jon said. "It's clearly reasonably stable. I mean, really. There is a hundred billion people on that planet? That's huge! Clearly, people are getting along well enough, or things would be worse, and a lot less people. I mean, even my origin which was just at what, ten billion, is still engaging in wars and all, but when you consider that most people are law abiding citizens, just wanting to do right by their families, the malcontents and the problem makers are the exceptions, which is why they get news time because, well, different is fun and scary and it's what people focus on as if that's a way of reminding ourselves this is not us, even though it is us, just not the majority of us."

"Aww," Cowgirl said, pinching his cheek. "It's so nice to have a male magician in the house. I miss the rambling incoherency of a twitterpated male."

"I am not twitterpated," Jon said.

"Aww, you're so cute when you're defiant," Cowgirl said. "It's okay, Jon. One of the reasons you're doing so well on my Origin is because you are capable of conversing, like actually completing a whole sentence while maintaining eye contact. You don't know how sexy that is. People carry their cell phones like an appendage badge, and will talk at people sideways, while texting another. Increased multiplicity, decreased efficiency. They're already phasing in bioelectronics with direct neural interfaces, but right now only the wealthy can afford it. Evolution of tech is unstoppable. What most people don't get is how the apps and the phone are actually taking advantage of biological, sociological, psychological, and spiritual behaviors and drives. People are hardwired for interaction, and the devices increased the rate of intangible rewards, allowing people to collect points for pics and comments and participation. It would be a mistake to believe the artificiality of the money concept was created as a means of controlling people, but rather was initially a way of balancing the social arena, trying to bring equanimity to the population, not equality, there is a distinction. Money is a reflection of the social currency that has always existed, but in its original form it was much more subliminal, people just responded to it, but people made it more tangible through hard money, but it can't stay there so it evolved into credit cards, and which evolved into a point reward system attached to your phone number. So, see, even that cycles from where it started in a real place, the ether, to an unreal place, the physical realm, back to an 'unreal' real place, the spooky etheric place. And, wait wait wait. Magically lost again." She closed her eyes and tracked something in her head, waved a fly away, returned. "Why am we here? Oh! Jon! It's nice to meet you. I have heard so much about you."