Abstract
To cradle and crack an egg
Little’s latent creativity shone brightly in the night’s earthen darkness. Unconscious self-expression was all that remained after 2 months in the reconceptualization center. For the first time in Little’s life, the sun was now an unwelcome friend.
Little snapped up, relieved that a soldier did not see another missed recitation. “Knowledge is power. Power shapes spaces. Spaces are shared.” repeated his neighbors in the adjacent cells. Feigning calm, he centered himself on his meditation cushion on his cell floor.
Everyday felt the same to Little: a loop of recitation, metaphorical group activities, team building, journaling, meals, and meditation. Meditation. Meditation. “Why do you think we are doing this?” “What do you think this represents?” “How do you think this will be relevant when you leave?” “How can we open ourselves to collective eco-work?” Through it all the smell of the same rotten egg: the desire to control with minimal resistance.
At this point, Little had been resistive, but he had yet to decide if he would rot, crack, or hatch. Little watched the egg the Wiser held, imagining himself in the Wiser’s left hand. Rotting was a scary thought, but morbidly satisfying to Little—at least the Wiser would have to suffer too.
Little noticed a net in the Wiser’s right-hand. Nodding his head affirmatively, he defiantly thought “What is today’s metaphor? Was the net society? Was it meant to cradle and carry us or catch and crush us?” To Little, guessing was the best part of the activity.
“Little, would you hold this end of the string, please?” said the Wiser. “We are all connected, but we need just enough tension in the net to keep our egg safe. The string started to shake in Little’s hand as he thought about the last words of his fellow prisoner, “I’d like to go to India someday, isn’t that where this whole meditation thing came from?”
Catching himself, Little re-tightened his grip. Growing tighter, Little fumed internally “Reconceptualize or dematerialize, is there only one way? How could you ever reconceptualize if you knew that we still had it all wrong? If you knew white supremacy did not end with full inclusion? If you knew there are other ways of knowing and being, ones that worked, ones that sustained people’s wellbeing for thousands of years? How do you forget that? How do you forget the mounds of rusty wires, warped plastic, and discolored soil and waterways that all of this is built upon? They are still here and growing, even if we are testing out new ways to deal with them. What if these new ways are just the fruit of rotten roots?”
Two barbed punctures. One jolt. Little and the egg cracked on the floor. Somehow, he always knew it was about power and control, but the cold floor and his frozen muscles made him painfully aware that the meditation, the reflection, the constructivist approach to learning were undergirded by violence. He knew too much. He knew that none of this had to be this way. He slipped out of consciousness as he was lifted back to his cell.
Little woke up disgusted at his simultaneous and contradictory thoughts, “I wish we learned together as kids. Group activities and meditation are a lot better than the sing-song voice of a computer chip embedded in your glasses. Too bad our activities and meditation are created to destroy us.” He tried to get up, but was gently pushed down. He knew this hand.
“You know, you have a big head for someone named ‘Little.’
He knew that voice. He knew he could not trust her, but the small comfort of a listening ear in this space had forced him to open up on occasion. He knew it was a weapon against him, but Little did not plan on leaving, even as he wished he was one of those people who could.
“We have talked a lot about your relationship with your brother, but I have a feeling you don’t want to be fixed.” Little nodded. “I know I’m not supposed to ask until after your reconceptualization,” Chip said furtively. “But I am kind of mad at you for doing this to yourself. Why won’t you let us re-assimilate you?”
Acknowledging the risk, she took in asking the simple question, Little breathed in the dry air and nodded. Chip looked confused, but so was Little. He was not sure why he could not re-assimilate, but he knew he could not commit soul-icide even if refusing re-assimilation was proverbial suicide. In many ways, he liked the folks working here, he just could not love people who only loved the shell of him; re-assimilating your core to match your shell fills you and empties you out at the same time.
“You see…it’s kind of like growing..” He faltered. Laughed. “‘Narratives are for narcissists and their seditious stories’—do you know that’s what my learning glasses used to say to me when I would try to talk to them? It always felt so unfair.” Little gripped his throbbing forehead.
Chip chuckled, brow raised. “Narcissism does not seem to be one of your challenges, but it’s good to be cautious. Our glasses are embedded with what the Wisers need us to know, but as a kid it can be hard to see the wisdom for what it is: a generative gift.”
“A gift? A gift.,” Little corrected. He knew the injuries a misplaced question mark could fetch. “Yes, I can see how it was a gift. Certainly, I can explain anything to you about farming in my local area in a techno-scientifically accurate way, but I don’t know how to tell a story. Our lenses spoke to us and asked us to respond physically and verbally to instructions, but it was always informational. It worked; it was a gift in that sense.”
Little fought back unexpected tears, “You know, that has been my favorite part of being here. I mean not favorite, not a judgement…an observation, an observation of what feelings arise in me when I participate in group activities that involve stories…you know, it is the first time I heard stories openly told. Wisers seem to use stories like medicine, but I do not want to swallow their cure.”
“I appreciate your movement away from judgement. Your observation resonates with me too.” Chip affirmed. “I am not a great storyteller myself. I only learned storytelling during my advanced Specialist training as a psychiatrist specializing in Wisers. I am sure you would agree that trying to understand a Wiser without understanding stories is unwise.” Chip turned her head away from the cell’s hidden visual-to-data receptors. “Why don’t you start by telling me the first thing you remember the day you first began thinking about rebellion?”
Little breathed deeply and began.
Raised cage free? Liberation Days
Day 1: Celebrating liberation?
Little drew his attention toward his glasses’ shaky projection of the Liberation Day schedule. He was excited for his commune’s few soldiers, several specialists, and single Wiser to return home and shake up the monotony. Although he pretended otherwise he liked breaking up the day’s celebratory, if not senseless, fighting between the specialists and the soldiers. Truthfully, he had to. The specialists’ fast words had no chance against the soldiers faster movements. More than anything, he hated bullies and hypocrites; soldiers are supposed to protect others, not project superiority.
However, he was also achingly aware of the hypocrisy of his own life as a righteous, well-regarded farmer. Little loved hearing about the world beyond the central belt of communes. He yearned to fly past the scrappy forests outlining and connecting the circular communes. He had no interest in the Wiser’s elegantly, aerodynamic buildings at the Eco-Order’s center. He wanted neither the order embodied in the center nor the farm commune belt’s orderly patchwork. He had always been pulled by the periphery the soldiers spoke of. There past, the cookie-cutter, 50-km radii communes, he could move toward the external Dis-order. “If only the algorithm had been recalibrated before I took it, I would not be a farmer, but a soldier putting down wannabe warlords who want to overthrow the Eco-Order,” he thought.
“Beep, beep,” a new announcement from Davies Dee was available. “Today, soldiers, specialists, farmers, and Wisers will come together to commemorate our founding. There are many improvements to celebrate. Improvements to big data have allowed us to re-calibrate the youth program to better use modernist Western STEM to protect place-based ways of being in support of habitat harmony.…” the World Wide Wiser proclaimed.
Would getting a jolt from the chip for stepping out of my radius be worth it? Little knew that the world of the past could not be repeated; the natural law is the ultimate law and we already received its judgment. “Settlement requires us to be as settled as settlers,” Little absent-mindedly repeated to himself. However, Little began to wonder, “Why do I want to flee? Is this a natural feeling? Am I unnatural? Is our Eco-Order even natural? What does it mean to be natural when our structures are somehow in harmony with, but above an oppositional nature?” Exasperated over the sound of the humming insect drones, Little uttered, “I am a terrible settler.”
“Do you need help with your squash?” asked Wise-Eye.
“Yes, Why-Eye, these insect drones are so loud, I can’t even think.”
“I know how you feel,” said Why-Eye, sounding almost human. “Our algorithms always seek energy efficiency first and aesthetic appeal later, but trust that your Wisers and your specialists understand your frustration. Would you like to hear the news about our new insect re-introduction program in the Northeast?”
Little knew they were always listening. He had nightmares that Why-Eye would learn to read his thoughts. He often felt this stylish composite of bioplastics, wires, and a chip could never really understand him. He also worried that it could learn just that.
“Yes, please. I would love to hear about this incredible and life sustaining program,” Little retorted.
“Excellent! Thank you for your enthusiasm for our collective work.” Someday, they might pick up sarcasm. Not today.
Ever since the last software update, Little knew to be very careful about rolling his eyes—so he didn’t. Instead, he closed them, as if to meditate upon the Wise-Eye’s playback of Words from the Wiser: “The insect re-colonization program has been our dream ever since the fall. Insecticides, amongst other problems, led to a mass extinction of insects. Today, we continue to rely on insects, albeit in drone form. The natural law is the ultimate law and we are proud to bring insects back into the natural order. As we saw, when the natural order collapsed, our social order collapsed. As our littlest servants, insects will need our service, before they can serve us once again. Let us be the patient masters that we failed to be before our fall…”
Little turned his eyes quickly toward a mound he knew was only visible at this time of the day. For less than a second, he could see the impossible: a guarded mound of bioplastic insect drones decomposing near his commune. Little snickered at Wise-Eye’s and the soldier’s hypocritical deception.
“The fall, has it really stopped? How did we land? Face first, underneath these soldiers biodegradable rubber boots? Mounds of bioplastics are still decomposing in front of us, and when the wind is right you can smell the methane. How are the Wisers so sure this aberration of bioplastics is not the next microplastics, which nearly destroyed our waterways, nor the next pesticides, which killed our fertilizing insects?”
“Pause,” Little pleaded. Emerging from Wise-Eye’s failed, false visual, he saw someone familiar. Finally.
“Ira! Ira! Ira, you’re back! When did you return? Last night? The one night I went to bed early.” Ira had been away on a military mission, the kind of faraway mission that Little imagined when he closed his eyes and resisted meditation. “What did you bring me?”
“The commune’s hall is where I left the souvenirs, kiddo.” Coming in for a hug, Ira tapped Little on the side of his head, knocking off his glasses. “Where were you last night? You weren’t in bed. I covered for you, but you cannot do things like this. What is going on, friend?”
“I passed out again. I don’t know what’s going on with me.” Looking down at his flashing glasses, Little panicked. “You have to de-activate Wise-Eye’s alert system if you want to talk privately”.
“Okay, okay. Nobody has time to monitor you anyhow,” Ira said. Pressing her fingerprint into the sensor, she ordered: “Disarm, soldier maintenance assist requested.” The device flashed green and then powered down. “See, you’re not who we are worried about, my faithful Farmer.”
“I do my best to serve from my humble place of service,” said Little, relieved. He put his arm around his old friend Ira and playfully put her in a headlock, which she deftly escaped with a jab to the kidney. Little had forgotten how competitive Ira was. He raised his arms up toward the sky. “I do my best to serve from my humble place of service.”
Forcing Little’s arm behind his back, Ira teased him. “I have never known you to be humble when you have those glasses off.” Releasing him, she smirked, “Let’s go and see what toys are left for my favorite kiddo.”
All that was left was a yellowish rectangular prism. Putting it in his bag, Little shrugged his shoulders at his luck and hugged Ira. “Hearing about your missions and seeing you is what I have looked forward to the most. I did not know when I would see you again. Now this is truly a great Liberation Day.”
Day 2: Waking up to liberation?
Everyone slept in the day after Liberation Day. It was supposed to be a day of reflection, but most of that reflection seemed to be done in an unconscious state. Little was never a great sleeper. While he found his life dull, his dreams shook him. Plus, Wise-Eye’s had finally reconnected and its small internal fan was humming: another update.
The new interface reminded him of the one he experienced learning as a youth. It was predominantly an information-assistance interface and definitely not the standard issue for farmers. He recognized some of the visual-assistance overlays from his youth: interactive, solitary lessons in learning how to farm organically, compost, forage, and live well in relation to the local ecology. From geology to wellbeing to botany to history, it was you, your glasses, and the environment.
Some things he was more unfamiliar with. “I-de-ol-ogy finder,” he said, testing the word. The overlay went red before requesting an 8-digit code. Little knew this was soldier-stuff. Frantically wondering what had happened, Little’s mind raced to make sense of how this could have happened: “Have I been re-assigned? No, no they are pretty direct….Ira! She powered down Wise-Eye with a fingerprint override; it must have reloaded with a soldier-profile…her profile? She is here for 3 days. She won’t be using it…”
Little frantically tapped the air with his index finger, 01-13-2114. Wise-Eye blared red, “ERROR, lock out warning, attempt one of three, 30 seconds.”
“30,29,28…,”.
Little typed it in a different order as rapidly as he could. “2114-01-13.” “ERROR, lock out warning, attempt two of three.”
“…10, 9, 8…,”
Racking his brain for an answer, he shook his head, “No, no, no…military time…day, month, year, 13-01-2114.” Ding. “Welcome back, Sergeant. Initiating Ideology finder. Begin scan.”
Nothing seemed to be happening. Moving outside, Little scanned the fields, nothing. Digging into the ground, Little saw rocks and a worm, nothing. He scanned his collection of pressed flowers. “Weaponry discovered, would you like to switch to the weaponry overlay to scan for bioactive components?”. Swiping this option away, Little continued searching through his room, nothing. “Nothing here registers as id-eo-logy,” he said.
What about stuff from “not here”? Little scurried back inside. Finding his bag on the floor, he hastily pulled the yellow rectangular object out of his bag. Scanning the object, its brittle pages fanned out along a horizontal spine of sorts. Little noticed more written text in one space than he had ever seen. It was hard to read and the fan on his non-military grade glasses were humming to keep up. “Open front of object, please,” requested a more formal sounding Wise-Eye. Scanning, a progress bar emerged, as the screen rapidly cross checked the text with other text heavy objects. A new reddish, but artistic overlay appeared on top of the yellow rectangular object, and a question: “Would you like to hear Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought by Sandy Grande?”
Yes, he would. Overwhelmed by the amount of text available, he tapped on the chapter with the shortest title “Red Land, White Power”.
From “sure?” to surge
Little knew where he was. He knew his most recent settler ancestors did not, at least not in any meaningful sense. That was part of the problem. He could name any plant or other-than-human being in his area, describe how they interacted, and, in particular, how they impacted his purpose as a farmer harvesting food in harmony with the land. They had forgotten that, but his progeny would not.
Little also knew that a lot of food was imported. He knew from the broadcasts that pesticides, the same ones that killed off the insects the centi-drones were now mimicking, were still used in limited areas to supplement feeding the masses. Everyone knew that half of the year they received half of their food from these “limited areas.” Sure, 25 percent was relatively limited, at least in comparison to the past. Pesticides were still necessary; transitions did not happen overnight, but two pages in, one paragraph was bothering him.
“Replay the last text block,” Little commanded. “As ‘anti-Indian’ environmentalists pore through archival materials, searching for documentation of waste and overkill, and ‘pro-Indian’ environmentalists obsess over ancient Indian myths, rituals, and traditions for windows into the magical and mystical powers of the Native eco-guru – the contemporary struggles of Native peoples are virtually ignored…” (Grande,
Little had never thought about why these devastating ecological changes happened so quickly. In 300 years? Or was it in 600 years? Was it when the first Europeans showed up or from the start of the Industrial Revolution? More to the point, if wastefulness and exploitation of the Earth was endemic to the human experience, then this collapse surely would have happened sooner in human history? “It would be racist, or at least untrue, to assume that the peoples Indigenous to this place and, even my own ancestors from Europe and elsewhere, were less intelligent than we are now. Why didn’t they destroy the Earth first? Why did it have to be us?” Little caught himself saying in frustration.
Grande’s (2015) digitized voice played on as Little rubbed his forehead in existential angst: “….One of the primary effects of the contemporary environmental debate is that it obfuscates the real environmental struggles of Indigenous peoples (access to and control over tribal lands and resources) and the real source of environmental destruction (colonization and the ill-effects of its consuming habits)” (p. 95)
He began to wonder what the Soldiers and Wisers were really up to. “Has anything truly changed?!” Little exclaimed in frustration. That was his first dangerous thought, but he had already taken a lethal leap by playing with these glasses.
Little’s mind raced to replay the daily broadcasts in his head. “Colonization, colonization, colonization….The Soldiers call it a re-occupation and the Wisers call it a re-colonization. The insects, they are re-colonizing?! Aren’t we the ones who engaged in the ‘consuming habits’?” How could Little forget? Every time he learned about natural history of this place, they always started with the “original colonization” of this place by early plants and other-than-humans. “Colonization is not natural. Colonization got us here. Why do they insist on calling this re-introduction of species, necessitated by colonization’s consumption of our environmental, re-colonization?” Even the old science documentaries from the 2020s that Little used to watch, the ones that showed him far-away places, used the term colonization to narrate how far-away habitats came into being.
Pausing the recording for a few seconds, Little took a few deep breaths. He felt the tension creep up in his throat, “what a fraud we are…continue playback of Grande (2015).” “In a time when the dominant patterns of belief and practice are being widely recognized as integrally related to the cultural and ecological crises, the need for understanding other cultural patterns as legitimate and competing sources of knowledge is critical. In this context, the voices of Indigenous and other non-Western peoples become increasingly vital, not because such peoples categorically possess any kind of magical, mystical power to fix countless generations of abuse and neglect, but because non-Western peoples and nations exist as living critiques of the dominant culture, providing critique-al knowledge and potentially transformative paradigms” (p. 95)
“Wisers are stubborn when they are wrong,” Little mused, “they have the power to not learn, not understand, to not change their perspective.”
Little started to think about the technology resting on the bridge of his nose. Was this all there was? Was this the only way to see, hear, feel, sense the world? Was this the only way to be? Where were the Indigenous peoples?
He had heard about Indigenous nations, but it is almost like his Wise-Eye tried to erase them and replace them with him as some sort of neo-Indigenous person, something that was factually, relationally, all-sorts-of-ally, not true.
Who were the Soldiers putting down in faraway places? Were they Indigenous nations? Were they fighting for alternative ways of being, seeing, doing? Who were these Modern Maroons that the Soldiers were talking about last night? Little started to imagine joining them. Were they aligned with Indigenous folks here? Were they aligned with non-Western peoples? He knew by the hesitancy of the soldiers that the Modern Maroons were not White like him. Society was diverse and integrated, but certain folks still did not like talking about old terms like White or Black, Western or non-Western. It still mattered socially in ways Little felt, but was taught not to talk about. However, economically and politically things seemed different. Were they different though? If they were so different, why would there be Modern Maroons? Little was confused.
“Replay last Grande (2015) word set,” Little ordered, with less certainty than before: “The construction of a grand narrative organized around change as progress and progress as change not only legitimates the path of whitestream ‘history’ but also sustains the hegemonic goals of capitalism (wealth accumulation) and colonization (appropriation)” (p. 98).
Change and progress. Wealth accumulation and appropriation. Little knew change was possible, but folks were not happy. He was not, he was miserable. His biggest source of interaction was with Wise-Eye, the same ones that broadcast promises of change and progress through modern Western technology. The same ones that allowed him to virtually tour his nation’s new shining capital with rounded, naturalistic, yet artistic structures. He was farming, but who was building these structures? Where were their materials from and why did we need this ecologically framed extravagance? Certainly wealth was still being accumulated by an elite few, but what about the appropriation of land? Where was Ira spending her time? What do Soldiers do? Are they appropriating these resources from other lands? I mean they always bring souvenirs back, like it is normal to go somewhere, take from others, and bring back the spoils of war. Whose lands? These lands? Other lands? Both?
His time was limited with Ira’s militarized interface and he did not want to forget Grande’s observations. Little ruminated on her articulation of the deep structures of colonialist consciousness. “OK so, number one, ‘progress as change and change as progress’…change as measurable progress, but faith cannot be measured. And two, ‘belief in the effective separateness of faith and reason’….but, this eco-society demands faith and we destroy our habitat with our reason, our Western technology and science, our new faith. I mean, we still think that an eco-Western STEM can fix everything and that by engaging in it we will become masters of the universe. Faith, unproved faith. Three, no ‘divine attributes’ to the universe, just us; science was our new divinity and still is. We meditate, but to reconnect with our individual selves, not a wider cosmology. Four, I think I already got this one with meditation: we certainly act like everyone should be as independent, autonomous, and as self-sufficient as possible. I mean, I guess our productivity factor score, encourages us to ‘go beyond one,’ to provide for others, but we go at it alone….we are still deep in it, an eco-colonialism” (Grande, 2015, p. 99).
Five: “‘belief in human beings as separate from and superior to the rest of nature’ (Grande, 2015, p. 99).” Little pauses, catching the shortness in his breath as he refills his lungs with the same meditation techniques he just scorned. “OK, so at least we acknowledge that we are not separate from nature, but we certainly still act like nature, even insects, serve us. After all we have done, we are still superior to those we need? Superior to those we desperately need, but that techno-science accidently exterminated?” Little stood up straight, puffed out his chest, and began mocking a recent broadcast’s moralistic framing. “As our littlest servants, insects will need our service for a short period of time, before they can serve us once again. Let us be the patient masters that we failed to be before our fall…” Little laughed out loud. “…get out of my head!”
Not surprisingly, the laughter did not last for very long. “Did the youth program do this to us? Did it make us this way?” Little fumed. “I guess we are less separate from nature now, we know ‘natural law is the supreme law’, but it is still not clear that Grande’s critique does not stand: ‘The value of nature is therefore only derived in terms of its ability to serve as a distinctly human resource, carrying no inherent worth or subjectivity’ (2105, p. 115). Lies! Are we really the only species to transform our material and social condition? On the one hand, Wise-Eye told me we were uniquely capable of social transformation, on the other, Wise-Eye showed me how other beings related to space, both transforming it and improving it with their actions. Are we the only species to destroy everything else in the process of transforming it? Or is it just those with a colonialist consciousness?”
Grappling with himself, Little continued on. Another list of five, “Schooling and Colonialist Consciousness” (Grande, 2015, p. 100). “One. Independence – two. Achievement – three. Humanism – four. Detachment from local and personal knowledge – five. Detachment from nature” (Grande, 2015, p. 100–101). The alignment seemed too close. Little wiped the sweat from his brow “At least we could tell Grande (2015) that ‘the world is [no longer] studied at a distance’ and that ‘real learning occurs [not] indoors’” (Grande, 2015, p. 101).
There was little relief. “One, two – independence and achievement. Learning was still independent and achievement oriented.” From the time Little put his glasses on, he knew he was in a big data, algorithmic race to prove his worthiness as a Wiser or Specialist. It was awful, the glasses sounded neutral, but the worse he did, the more alone he truly was. Farming your plot was highly solitary. The more creative Little tried to be, the more he found himself without others to create with. Ira knew better, she told him to just tell the glasses what they wanted to hear. Little found that too boring.
“Three, four – humanism and detachment from local and personal source of knowledge. Are we really ‘masters of their own destinies’ (Grande, 2015, p. 101)? It was not anyone’s local and personal sources of knowledge that created the financially sophisticated, energy-intensive, technically facilitated exploitation and destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems that brought about the fall. No, it was the same techno-scientific knowledge that is currently creating and hiding guarded mounds of decomposing bioplastic insect drones outside the confines of our commune.”
“Five, Six? Well…we are not detached from nature. We are outdoors and very close to the earth, other animals, and plants. But, maybe there is a six? We may be outdoors, but we still want to be on top of nature, to conquer it before it conquers us.”
Arrested development (of another sort)
Ira did not even knock. She was not alone.
Snapping the glasses off of Little’s face, Ira’s captain inspected the glasses before putting them on. They quickly recognized his face, clearing him for access almost immediately. It took just as much time for him to make his judgement, “Sergeant, he hacked your soldier permissions. Arrest him. That will be your last official act for now. You are suspended pending further inquiry for inciting incendiary thinking.”
Ira pressed her face and fists together holding back her rage for Little, “I know you hate your life and I’m sorry the algorithm did not pick you to serve, but you can’t just play soldier. We risk our lives, defended our eco-civilization from Indignants and Marauders, why would want to give up our way of life?”
Little snapped back, “You mean the Black and Brown Maroons and the Indigenous? Maybe they are right? Maybe we are fundamentally, at the deepest level, wrong-headed. Like building from an angle that is just off, no matter how straight we build out, the further we get from our starting point, the more the distance between how we need to live and how we want to live grows.”
The soldiers looked shocked. Little knew no one talked about race anymore. The soldiers present were from a very diverse squadron. Society was integrated. Captain Cole had enough. “Tase him now. He’ll have plenty of time to run his mouth in a reconceptualization center.”
Ira paused, “Reconcep, Cap? Is that really necessary? He’s just bored.” Captain Cole nodded.
“I was bored, now I’m just not on board.” Little droned. Ira kicked his shin and Little snapped. “I may be a failure in your eyes, but this whole project is a failure. The energy use of these glasses, flying bioplastics fertilizing our crops, and we are still trying to silence the voices and lifeways of ‘Indignant’ Indigenous folks and ‘marauding’ maroons? Even the framing is racist….and colonialist, can’t you all see that?”
Ira and Little were both tackled and tased. As Little started to convulse, he heard this, faintly: “Is he right?”
“Get them out of here!” ordered the Captain. “Does anyone else want to challenge the Eco-Order today? They can go with them!”
Silence. More silence, then sleep. Fitful sleep, but sleep nonetheless.
The almost rhythmic climbing of the speed bumps awoke Little. He was in the transport vehicle. In the horizon, he could see even grayer gates. He had arrived, alone.
Not a cracked egg, an omelette
Chip was shaking Little as if he had been asleep, “Little! Little! Are you there? Little!”
Seeing the panic in Chip’s eyes, Little touched her hand “I’m sorry, I blanked out. I don’t know why. Sometimes, I just get really deep in thought and forget where I am.” Chip seemed relieved, but a bit annoyed. How long had Little kept her waiting? What had she asked him? “Right. Right. Right. How I got here….I’m not telling her that” Little thought. Speaking again, Little moved to change the subject “Chip, can being tased effect your memory?”
Chip forced a laugh, “No, Little.” Covering her mouth again, she asked in a muffled voice, “How did you get here? I mean what led you to believe all this foolishness? Why won’t you let us re-assimilate you?”
Little had seriously considered telling her the truth, but when he hit the cold floor earlier that day he had cracked. He decided that he would neither die here, nor commit soul-icide. He decided he would neither be a delicate egg or a cracked egg, he would be a vegan omelette. He would cook the pandemonium of his contradictory insides and emerge as something different, neither a chicken, nor a fragile egg, but like a tree, rooted as a plant and camouflaged like a plant-based delicacy. He was ready to go along, to get along, and to get out.
From now on, he knew he would pay attention to what they were doing, so that he could be a better asset to the Modern Maroons he had heard so much about. He knew they would not take anyone, but he had been vetted by another prisoner with a similar plan. First, he had to get out alive, get home, and then follow the stars to join the cosmic cause.
“You know, I am not sure why I believed all that foolishness for so long” moaned Little as he forced himself to sit up across from Chip. “Maybe I just wanted to feel special? Like I somehow knew something that even the Wisers did not know. What arrogance! I was so wrong, Chip.”
Chip was surprised, but all too eager to latch on to this “breakthrough.” “That is understandable. There is no need to judge your misconceptions as right or wrong, but it is important to recognize the source of your misconceptions and to hold it as it is.”
They made a lot of progress that day. Measurable change, but not meaningful change. Chip gladly measured Little’s changes in disposition, actions, and statements over the next few weeks. Little’s heart did not change, nor did his head, but his hands had and measurably so. He became good at cradling the egg, meditating, repeating phrases, writing reflections, and even telling stories.
Just as before, Little actually enjoyed a lot of it. He could still see how it was engaging, effective, and expertly performed teaching, some of which he hoped to bring with him to his new life amongst the Modern Maroons. He could see how with a different purpose, a lot of these learning techniques could work. The soldiers and Wisers knew our prior experiences. They were good listeners, kind and firm. They built from what we knew and engaged us in interesting collaborative projects. Almost everything involved a whole-body engagement: “How are you feeling? Where do you feel it in your body?”
Given who got shocked and what for, it became clear to Little that the soldiers were excellent at taking Indigenous and other non-Western knowledge, carving out its core, and filling it up with their own purposes. Racism and colonization were off the table for discussion. Calm, idealized, scientific rationalism was the only way. To those who did not know any better, learning felt holistic. But if you knew where to look, the unnaturally perfect sphere was hollow and seemingly unshaped by the gravitational pull of other ways of knowing and being. However, ironically, its perfect spherical shape was what gave its particularity away: nothing can resist gravity, not even the oceans, which bulge in relation to the moon, and yet this sphere they concocted was actively reshaped from the inside to project a spherical, platonic shape.
Little knew all of this, but weeks of good reports had worked. He was given a commendation and was to be moved to a new Commune to resume work. He still knew how to follow the stars and he knew how to refuse this new satellite’s temptations to land short of his star. Regardless of his hidden resistance, he would miss some of the folks here, even the soldiers. After all, he was only human. The problem was, they did not seem to share any cosmological humility.
The problem of trying to find an omelette in an egg hunt
“Hey, Little!” exclaimed a group of new neighbors. Little was not surprised they knew who he was, getting a new person was rare and fun. He knew folks would speculate as to why he was there. Was he a spy? Was he a retired soldier, retrained as a farmer? Little knew that the answer to these questions would affect his ultimate reception, but he was not looking to stick around for that.
An elder Farmer swiped in his direction and Little received his room assignment and access codes. Little was trying his best to keep up his image and, even though they may have thought he was a dreamy spy from a faraway place, he knew that he was the one being watched. “Thank you so much! I am so grateful!” Dodging their advances, he clasped his hands in thanks “I look forward to joining you later tonight! What a trip!”
Little’s new glasses certainly made him stand out. In some ways he felt important. He was new, with new glasses, newly pressed clothes, and one of the newer rooms in the Commune. He shook himself internally and began tapping in his new code. It was all nicer than he expected. “Had I lived like this before, I would never have left,” he thought. He was grateful for their hospitality and for having the clarity of mind that he could no longer stay. Laying down, Little quickly fell asleep on his fresh sheets.
It was later than he thought. Little marvelled that the Farmers did not try to wake him for his welcome dinner; he had nearly slept through it. Although he would need sleep for his journey ahead, he did not want to draw attention.
Little was never one to draw attention to himself, but this time he nearly overdid it. The reconceptualization center had made him a much better storyteller, a better listener, and a more energetic person. The Farmers were starstruck. Little knew he was different now, but he had not realized how much the center had shaped his hands. Now, he anxiously wondered if it had also reshaped his head and heart.
Walking home from his welcoming, there was a real buzz in the air about him. He noted that it was the first time he felt special, like he could thrive in the Commune. He also knew he could not stay here.
They would look under rocks, in the trees, in the tall grass—everywhere and anywhere they could imagine someone who does not know where they were going to be. He knew that the search for him would be like the Spring equinox egg hunts he used to enjoy as a child. However, he knew where he was going. Their Equinox-egg-hunt search would put them far behind.
He left in the night, through the trees. They looked for Little, but he was never seen again.
Epilogue
No one knew how Little’s story ended. He had refused to continue the false narrative. He knew that, although this new Eco-Order was less harmful, it would, if brought back to scale, collapse our ecosystems once again.
Sure, someone knew how his story ended. There was no evidence that Little died; the Eco-Order’s soldiers would have found him. It was clear that he had refused to return, to have his story intertwined with theirs.
Maybe he made it to a Modern Maroon cooperative. Maybe not. Surely, wherever he was would have some interaction with the Eco-Order. The Eco-Order was too powerful for a whole society to evade.
However, his absence in official interactions between the Eco-Order and other nations, cooperatives, and organizations baffled the Eco-Order. Little had been re-trained by their best. They assumed that if he did go elsewhere that he would, due to his superior training and knowledge that he would rise up their ranks.
No one knows. However, the Eco-Order kept looking for him. Even after they gave up hope of recapturing him, the arrogantly presumed their training had made him superior to any leader he would encounter within his adopted society. In almost every treaty he became a talking point; they would look for him, ask for him, and even offer compensation for his presence. Even when he never showed, they always assumed that he must be moving the strategic strings behind the stage.
After all, even though Little never knew it, they had made him a Wiser. It was going to be officially proclaimed the morning after his welcome dinner in his new commune. Little was their bumpy start to their piloting of community-based Wisers. Years later, contrary to Little’s actions, the program seemed to work out. His actions were probably an anomaly.
Wherever Little was, he did not know this, nor would he have believed it. Even when Chip told him that she was a psychiatrist specializing in Wisers, it never registered why she was talking to him. In his mind, he was trained as a farmer, left the reconceptualization center as a farmer, and fled the Eco-Order as a farmer with knowledge of how the Wisers worked, but not as a Wiser.
His case baffled Leadership. Other Wisers who were sent as spies to other nations had been successful in co-opting several large-scale attempts at embracing alternative ways of knowing and being. Of course, many never returned and were presumed dead. But how many were actually like Little?
Wherever he was, Little was neither the protagonist spy they held out hope for, nor the empowered antagonist they feared could incite an ignorant mass. That was the part that bothered Leadership, that their training did not make him universally superior. It flew in the face of their core assumptions. They tried to crack him like an egg, but for anyone willing to look closer, he had cracked their façade.
ORCID iD
Paul E Madden https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0299-2328