The Senses Of Wonders
The Embrace Of One World In Detail
Welcome to fiction “From The Future” for this entry.
Congratulations, you have stumbled on a work-in-progress, it will not be emailed. It will change. What you see right now, will not remain the same. It will change.
This is also a new drafted chapter for a novel, “RETRIEVE”, being written this year.
Future + Fiction is the formula for everything, whether it’s an essay, story or chapter.
These long pieces are best read online, via the Substack App, when you have fifteen minutes.
Part 1 The Wandering
The wonders of wandering
The Stars, cosmos, one world
Part 2 The Landing
The embrace of one world in detail
Part 3 The Wondering
the best part of this dream is connection
The island’s true potential
To end the war of the Nodes
Part 1 The Wandering
The Mad One was like a child, as he stared at the sky. Aglaea looked over at someone who looked like an old man, with a spry step. The people on the street, ordinary everyday Carbons, had no idea who walked among them. They never did since his first venture among the first places of Man. He liked and kept it that way. It felt right, and he ignored his kindred elders.
“It used to be filled. It’s been blinded by the lights of Man. And I’m called “the Mad One” but I didn’t ruin the view. The wonders of wandering, for the Stars, down to one world.
He looked over at the barely more than girl, young one, who looked up at the sky too, and wanted to join in his reverie, his one last looks at everything, “it’s still beautiful.”
“The wonders of wandering
The Stars, cosmos, one world
The embrace of one world in detail
the best part of this dream of life is connection”
She grunted, “what’s in these rucksacks?”
He said, very low, “a reminder for someone who’s lost their way, and forgot who they were, trapped too long, alone, poor thing. And the best part of the dream… connection,” as he patted with a backward swipe at his own rucksack.
There was a honking/beeping. Their ride was waiting.
“An SLN SUV, how gracious. I wonder what took them so long to find us,” muttered The Old One as he handed over his and Aglaea’s rucksacks to the field agent covered in tactical gear.
He looked up at the sky again, before helping Aglaea into the SUV, and stepping in.
Part 2 The Landing
The Visitor ran a hand over the long table covered with the latest streaming statics, updates from SLN, and other feeds, news chyrons, which even if discounted for sensationalism betrayed real fear across the globe. The Carbons were panicked with the Island and among themselves for months before it appeared. She looked at an old parchment, recovered from the destruction of “The Ashes”. By Carbon standards a very old document, forged after years of fighting and death and disease.
This time, they may go too far, no one left to meet and regret and swear ‘never again’. It was time for a fresh new start, a calming of the waters of the mind.
She picked up a child’s notebook, recovered from the remnants of the grand archive, and read it. It was written with care, from a steel-point pen and inkwell, each written at right-angles to the prior:
The embrace of one world in detail
Earth orbits Sun at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour
Meanwhile it also spins, rotates, at thousand miles per hour
Inside they are spinning faster, over thousand thoughts in that time
—
We need space to breathe, time for breaks
Change before it's too late
Sit back, rest, recuperate
Help us stop running mad, to ponder
The racing that has cost our sense of wonder
—
It is said we live three seconds at a time
Our minds are racing, and takes us far afield
Focused, we go upward, forward, downward
We need some detours and delays first
—
Meditation, medicine for the grind,
moving away from the monkey mind
Contemplation, long walks, lost on old roads
Recreation, a sensation of play
Exertion, in-between rests of brief delays
—
Not enough time, pausing at life's stoplight
Means we’re overdue to recover and reignite
To help us stop running mad and to ponder
The racing that has cost our sense of wonder
Part 3 The Wondering
“The Visitor thinks there’s a way forward, even if they didn’t ask for “The Landing”, they are here, and they must make a change, for the better.”
“He’s coming.”
The Visitor walked into the ready-room of the safe-house, and began talking, as he handed out assignments to the team, "We don't choose our moment in history, it happens, and what we witness changes us. The island’s true potential, is to end of the war of the Nodes.”
Everyone looked at each other, but said nothing.
The Visitor waved a hand at a wall, a textured map rendered, and eclipsed what were a series of paintings, photographs, and expensive wall paper, “Ad Meliora, towards better things.”
“That’s what I’ve worked towards for a long time. Toward better things. To push past the window” of what is possible, there is a risk. We risk falling towards better. This time, however we cannot fail. We will not fail.”
“A long time ago, I visited the famed Crystal Palace of the 1851 Exhibition, which was officially known as the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations”. It was held in Hyde Park, London was hosted in what was, for its time, a futuristic structure of metal and glass. It was created by a gardener, named Joseph Paxton. His design and the methods of construction presaged and predicted the next century’s skyscrapers with their bones of metal, and curtains of non-loadbearing walls of glass. Its modular design, and component construction was pointing towards better things.”
The Visitor continued. Nobody ever interrupted The Visitor. There was always a reason and point for everything he did or did not do, for everything he said or did not say.
“The Great Exhibition was over a 100,000 exhibits displayed in a building that was 400 feet by 1,800 in size, made with 4,500 tons of iron and 300,000 panes of special glass. It was made possible thanks to the repeal of a glass tax but also the failures of enough iron bridges, broken by the stresses of the railroad boom, to call for a Royal Commission to investigate and improve bridges. Those earlier failures led to better. Failures can lead to change too, if the stakes are high enough but it can’t be everything. You can risk an exhibit and park and embarrassment, but not the world.”
“Henry Cole of the Society of Arts, dreamed of a future promised by industrial revolution unfolding around him, and suggested an exhibition of arts and engineering. Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, as chair of a Royal Commission, agreed to Hyde Park but the missing piece was the building. It wasn’t a smooth process, 245 proposals failed, and reasons for opposition included a fear of promoting foreign goods, various theoretical health hazards, and the chopping down of elm trees.”
The Visitor walked over to the wall, touched it to show historical sketches.
“Paxton submitted his proposal two weeks before the deadline, thinking he had no chance, assuming more established experts had already won the project. Despite believing he had no chance, he was still excited enough to doodle a sketch while at a meeting, and brought them to engineers. A dream took hold of his mind.”
A sketch was reproduced and hovered in front of the Map of the Island.
“What saved the day was that the Illustrated London News jumped the gun and published Paxton’s design. That pushed the Commission to abandon an earlier official selection and choose Paxton’s proposal. The fact that Paxton’s design was simple, fast to build, and with reusable parts may have made the choice easy to make. It even included a section that would envelope the 90 foot elm trees that objectors worried would be cut down.”
“Despite the profitable results, expert critics of the era were not impressed despite its admirers, which included Queen Victoria, who visited dozens of times between May and October 1851. The building was such a success that there were new exhibits elsewhere inspired by what British magazine Punch called a “Crystal Palace”.”
“The Palace may not have been the first design chosen by the Royal Commission, it was the one that changed expectations of what was possible with metal and glass. It was a little ahead of its time. Great metal structures, with walls of glass hung like curtains, became the norm a century later.”
A century later, the International Style took the world of the Carbons by storm, as towers of steel skeletons and glass walls became a fashionable industrial norm, was a fitting successor to the Crystal Palace.”
The Visitor turned the lights down, and the room was illuminated by the Map hovering over the wall.
“This Island and what we will accomplish is a look forward. It may not seem that way, but we will change this world, ourselves, and the Carbons, for the better. That is what I believe, and that is what I have been striving for, for centuries. After the recent events, of the “Fates”, the clock has begun running. And that is when some of you were activated, and brought back in from the field. All of those long-term assignments have been rendered meaningless by this. If we don’t succeed here, then nothing you’ve done, nothing I’ve done all this time matters. Let’s begin.”
The Visitor’s debriefing began..
AFTERWORD
Author’s Notes on what’s going on:
This “Book #3” project, “RETRIEVE”, is meant to be a prequel to two other books, “Box Of Stars” and “Harvest” but this piece could be read as a standalone story.
The prologue for “RETRIEVE”, “An Impossible Island”, was submitted as a short story.
Prologue: “An Impossible Island”, Part One and Part Two, and Part Three, was inspired by writing prompts from the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) creative community, beginning with an STSC Symposium monthly theme of “Beach”.
Chapter 1, “Older Than Bones”, was inspired by the theme, “Dinosaurs”.
Chapter 2, A Love Trinity Denied, was inspired by “Romance”.
Chapter 3, “A Forgotten Circle Of Hades” was inspired by “Superstition”.
Chapter 4, “Reading The Room” was inspired by an image of a wall-sized bookshelf.
Chapter 5, “The Bittersweetness Of Deep Times”, was inspired by “Isolation”.
Chapter 6, “The Weaving Of Split Infinities”, was inspired by “Dreams”.
Chapter 7, “Dead Languages”, was inspired by “Propaganda”.
Chapter 8, “Path Not Forsaken”, was inspired by “Risk”.
Chapter 9, “The Last Word of The World”, considers words as worlds unto themselves.
Chapter 10, An Intimate Path Of Desires
Chapter 11, Absent Without Longing
Chapter 12, Lonely In The Same Room
Chapter 13, Children Of Daedalus
Chapter 14, People Of A Faraway Land
Chapter 15, Distant Shores, Distant Worlds
Chapter 16, The Rules of New Places
Chapter 17, Space To Breathe
Chapter 18, The Extra Air
Chapter 19, The Clash Of Selves
Chapter 20, The Last Meme
Chapter 21, Mistakes And Memories
Chapter 22, The Confusions Of Things
Chapter 23, The Senses Of Wonders
Chapter 24, The Gambits Of Curiosities
“RETRIEVE” chapter and notes will be posted in this Substack, while I edit books #1 (“Box Of Stars”) and #2 (“Harvest”). All will be in the archive, not all will be emailed.)