Temporal Exploring 101 - Deep Future

IV.12 Dancing in the rain

Where my conversation with Karen Baker had left me anxious and upset, the things Councilwoman Narbit had said in the hearing, concerning a possible permanent transfer of Natty Fogg to the 23rd century, had left me with renewed hope that I would not be compelled to leave my friend and roommate behind at the end of my First Temporal Assignment.

For now, Natty and I were to return to the 1960s and to St. Albert's, early in the morning on the following day. Not surprisingly, Natty was somewhat unhappy about that.

"Remember, I promised to show you around the campus of the university," I told her, in an effort to cheer her up a bit. "Let's do that now, shall we?"

"Yes, that would be brilliant," my friend enthusiastically agreed.

For the next few hours, the two of us walked around campus. Over winding paths that connected the university's institutes and departments, and over green lawns and small fanciful bridges that crossed the river which gave our City's university its name.

At one point, we entered the huge white building of the Department of History. In the entrance hall, about a hundred framed photographs were affixed to the walls.

Each photo showed a scene of terrible destruction: the ruins of huge buildings that gave the appearance that they had been smashed into rubble, the debris covering what looked like broad streets, the remains of cars and of big trees

Natty pointed to one of those photos. "Where was that picture taken?"

I frowned. I had not wanted her to see this. "New York."

Natty looked upset. "And this?" She pointed to another photograph. "And that one?"

"Moscow," I told her, and: "Beijing."

"And those?"

She watched and listened as I put names to the ghastly photos depicting the ruins of Sao Paulo, Tokyo and most of the world's major cities.

"But what happened?" Natty finally asked. "Was it World War III?"

"You could call it that, if you like," I replied. "We call it the Cataclysm."

"But why?" Natty wanted to know. "I mean, what caused it?"

"There is a lively debate going on among our historians about that. But most researchers would agree that globalization and deregulation played an important role."

With the worldwide opening of markets and a comprehensive removal of trade restrictions, especially in the financial sector, global markets and transnational corporations had gained enormous political and economic power, to the point where they were in a position to dictate their conditions to individual nation-states. They could, and did not hesitate to play countries against each other in order to coerce and in effect blackmail them into compliance with their demands.

To the corporations, globalization translated into easy availability of cheap labor in developing countries. It would have been a mistake to conclude that those corporations or their CEOs were 'ruthless' or 'evil': they were merely acting according to the inherent logic of an economic system based on the free play of global markets.

As a consequence, in the early 21st century liberal democracies worldwide failed and turned into authoritarian if not straight into totalitarian states.

People in democratic countries began to notice that regardless to which political party they gave their votes, the outcome when it came to the important decisions made by their political leaders would be pretty much the same. They did not realize that at that point they were in effect being ruled by a complex system of interacting global markets and their demands.

A major part of the problem was that none of the political parties ever told them as much. Instead, people tended to blame groups of society they labeled 'the elites' or 'the establishment' – those who to a certain degree benefited from globalization and deregulation.

It was the heyday of populist political parties led by self-styled and self-appointed 'great leaders' who claimed to have simple solutions for complex problems and to execute the 'will of the people'. Those parties kept gaining support and winning elections to the point where former democracies effectively transformed into one-party states.

Of course, neither those populist parties nor their leaders could actually make good on their promises to 'regain control' of their country or to 'make their country great again' or whatever, as they were of course quite incapable of decoupling an entire country from the world's globalized economy. Nevertheless, their failure had to be explained to the people.

Unsurprisingly, a country's self-styled people's party and their glorious leader tended to blame everything on the actions of external and internal enemies. Those enemies could be part of the judicial system or of the media if the latter dared to criticize the ruling party. These unfortunate individuals would be publicly denounced as 'enemies of the people' by the great leader and the people's party. However, the worst part of it was that a majority of the people tended to actually believe all that.

Natty had been listening in silence as I tried to explain this to her.

"So, in the end it was the people who failed?" she asked quietly.

"Yes, I am afraid that this is true. As it turned out, most people loved their glorious leaders who would tell them about how heroic and great their nation was and point out and denounce the external and internal enemies that supposedly were responsible for all the maladies their country was suffering from. People preferred listening to those comforting narratives to facing the harsh truth about the interplay between globalization and deregulated global markets running wild."

"What's more, they did not even mind if they found out that their glorious leader and the representatives of their people's party had lied to them. Such a lie would be considered a necessary tool to wield against internal and external enemies. At some point, the lie had been transformed into an integral part of the narrative that gave them identity and meaning as a people."

"People embraced the lie, they learned to love the lie."

"That's pitiful," Natty declared. "But how did all that lead to the Cataclysm?"

"Well, consider the scenario. You've got all those extremely nationalist countries openly competing on the global markets. They consider their competitors as opponents if not as enemies. They do not like the idea of cooperation. In fact, cooperation is regarded as weakness. Many of these competing nation-states are heavily armed. Under the circumstances, the development of military conflict is almost inevitable. Multinational organizations that could have helped by moderating peace negotiations had long since been discredited."

"I guess." Natty took one final look at the rows upon rows of photographs of destroyed cities and shuddered. "Let's get out of here, shall we?"

I think we were both glad to leave the building.

As we continued to walk around campus, the sense of doom that had settled upon us when faced with those pictures of devastation slowly left us.

I showed Natty the huge iron plaque at university's main entrance gate, with its inscription:

Students beware: enter at your own risk! This is a university, a place of concepts and ideas. Expect to be exposed to a plethora of competing ideas and opinions, many of which you are bound to detest. If you are lucky, some of your most cherished convictions and beliefs will be challenged and utterly demolished here. Welcome!

Natty laughed. "I love this place, Cathy!" she shouted. "And I do belong here. I really, really do."

It started to rain: a warm, pleasant summer rain. Natty took off her shoes and socks and performed some improvised little rain dance. I followed suit.

Spinning and laughing like idiots, we whirled and danced in the rain until we were both drenched to the skin.

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A  / N : Ending this somewhat gloomy chapter on a cheerful note ...

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