Devolution

Narrendra was a town of dramatic contradictions. Inside dilapidated pre war buildings were the latest in Remote Home Systems, while twenty second century transports pulled up beside petrol bowsers which had been refitted to deliver gas and electrical recharging.

The people were a strange mix of hard working, straight talking outback Australians and a host of other races and tribes from all over the world who had settled in Narrendra many years before at the behest of the Australian government. Having left war torn or politically oppressed nations they had traveled to the Great South Land looking for freedom, since the beginnings of the Australian nation at the start of the twentieth century.

In the early twenty first century when the western world, led by the rejuvenated interventionist power, the United States of America, waged a war against international terrorism, namely Islamic fundamentalism, refugees had flooded out of poor Middle Eastern countries into welcoming, and sometimes unwelcoming, lands like Australia, New Zealand and some western European nations.

After the so called war on terror which outlasted four American presidents, the world marched steadily towards peace, but underlying the new found unity of Earth’s people was a strong undercurrent of tribalism. Present since man spread out from the Garden of Eden to multiply and begin its domination of terra firma, it was an unquenchable force for division in every society in the four corners of the globe.

‘This place really sucks,’ said Veena as the trio stepped out into the sun drenched main street from the cool darkness of the pub.

‘How long do we have to wait for the bus?’ asked 3.

‘Another hour,’ replied Joshua looking at his watch.

Veena kicked at the dusty ground as though she was angry with it. ‘We could have stayed inside and had another drink or two. It’s stinking hot out here.’

‘I thought we could have a bit of a look around before we leave,’ said Joshua. ‘It’s got a lot of history, this old town. Like a living museum piece. And you know we’ll probably never come back here.’

‘I will never come back here,’ said 3. ‘Forget the probably bit.’

A small group of young Deists walked past them, unselfconsciously pointing and staring at 3.

Ever the protagonist, Veena challenged them, ‘What are you looking at?’

‘A freak,’ said one of them.

‘And a couple of freak lovers,’ added another.

Already passed, they stopped and turned back to face Joshua, Veena and 3 who were quite surprised by the insult.

‘Get the hell out of our town freak. We don’t want your kind here and if your friends like you then we don’t want them here either.’

A second member of the bold young group spoke up, ‘You don’t see any other New-ton-ians around here, do you?’ He exaggerated the syllables as though he was pronouncing the name of some horrible disease.

During the stare down that ensued, 3 reflected. He had never heard the name of his tribe spoken with such distaste or was it ridicule. Whatever it was it was plainly detestable and very surprising given they were living in what had been deemed by the Third C.O.R.E. Assembly as the age of the second enlightenment. He never really understood what that meant anyway even though they were taught at school about the first enlightenment and the theory behind the proclamation of the second one. Political mumbo jumbo, according to 3 and just about every other right thinking citizen.

Realizing Veena would get her back up straight away and want to take on these foul mouthed youngsters, 3 quickly moved to her side and reached out to grab her arm. When she turned to face him, 3 was really glad he intervened when he did. That look of fierce indignation was enough to make most people cringe or turn to stone. A withering blast from those raging eyes would be enough to frighten the life out of anybody.

Picking up on the mood, Joshua spoke to Veena. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘Ted’s not worried so don’t you worry.’ He turned his head to 3 and said, ‘Right Ted? You cool?’

The youths quickly lost interest, or maybe their nerve while 3 nodded because he wasn’t offended just amused, sort of surprised in a curious sort of way, both by the insults and Veena’s reaction. She was such a hot head, anything could set her off, and once she was roaring there was no way of stopping her until she had worn herself out. That’s why the early intervention was the right response. Prevention definitely better than, well, in this case there was no cure. 3 smiled.

‘What are you smiling at?’ asked Joshua.

‘Myself.’

‘Think you’re a funny guy, eh?’

Deciding against sharing the private joke with his friends 3 simply said, ‘Come on, there must be some interesting things to see in this town. We’ve still got time to kill.’

Veena seemed reluctant to leave and was still staring after the group of revilers as they headed off down the street oblivious to her still seething anger.

‘Veena,’ said Joshua, ‘Come on. Forget about them.’

‘The ignorant minority,’ added 3.

They walked on past a group of stores selling everything you could possibly imagine for prices so low they were beyond belief. The kind of store which began in the late twentieth century as the two dollar store where everything was very cheap and guaranteed not to last. Stationary, homewares, video and audio, sporting equipment, hardware, jewelry and other fashion accessories, cleaning products, personal protection devices, surveillance equipment and an awesome range of electronic gadgets and novelty items.

The shopper could not resist the lure of a bargain and even if they did not want or need anything, they would be able to find something to spend their money on. Had they had a better idea, 3 and Joshua might have been able to avoid going in but Veena was keen and they were bereft of alternatives.

Inside, the store was crowded with stuff and people looking at stuff which prompted 3 to wait outside.

‘I can’t fit in there with my chair,’ he declared almost too happily.

Joshua wanted to protest but again he knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Although he was aware of being in the way on the elevated sidewalk, it was the only place which offered shade and the mid afternoon sun was more than he could bear for more than a few minutes at a time. Not knowing how long Veena and Joshua would take he didn’t want to get sunstroke but he was, as always aware of the cumbersome nature of his hoverchair.

With nothing but time to think, 3 began to allow his mind to wander as he slowed his heart rate and closed his eyes to conserve energy.

His mind free, 3 thought of his father and his distraught mother. He lamented the loss of a simple way of life, a comfortable and peaceful existence. The path his father and the rest of the Newtonian leaders had taken, their isolationist policies and genetic engineering which was designed to prepare them for the next world. All lofty ideals and enthusiastically propagated by well intentioned men and women but 3 could only see the effect on his life in the present, and if he tried hard, the immediate future.

Neither of his two best friends were Newtonian, but as they had been friends for so long they didn’t really see their differences as obstacles. Rather, as the first C.O.R.E assembly before the war had said, the differences were where their true strength lay. Joshua was fond of repeating that mantra, which he said was straight from the pages of the Bible: the book of Corinthians or something. 3 never quite worked out the relevance of a book written thousands of years ago, and why rational people would accept it as infallible.

Still, the first assembly had a point if the example of 3, Veena and Joshua was held up. Diversity is strength but only where there is sufficient tolerance and that was where the rhetoric always fell flat. People never seemed able to overcome their prejudices, however small or large they may have been. Whether they were passed on or learned through their own experience, these prejudices ruled so many people and stopped them growing as humans. Despite the capacity for good that people undoubtedly possessed, there was too little evidence of good being done to satisfy 3. Joshua said it was because of sin. All of us are born in sin and we go on sinning because it’s easier to do the wrong thing than the right thing. Wrongdoing was natural, he said.

Feeling his temperature lowering beyond comfort, 3 increased his heart rate and shifted in his hoverchair before returning to his musings.

Joshua may have labeled it sin and 3 had to admit it was a solid and rational argument but there was no denying the observation of the reality that children had to be taught to be good, they naturally do what’s wrong. The word most often used by parents is no and that word is consequently the one word which often becomes the child’s favorite word. 3 believed the argument in favor of mankind being born sinful was one which was only ever refuted seriously by people who did not want to believe it.

A crack and thud woke 3 from his contemplative stasis and he quickly adjusted his heart rate to respond. Eyes opened, he saw a projectile flying towards him but could not tell what it was. As it hit the wall beside his head and exploded in a spray of sticky red juice, the aroma was unmistakable. It seemed a little comical at first and 3 smiled at the absurdity of people throwing fruit at him. Initially unaware of the danger he was in, he continued to sit there as various members of the fruit and vegetable family came sailing towards him. Fortunately for 3, none of the missiles hit him and on reflection he thought that was probably because the throwers were poor marksmen.

‘Get lost, freak,’ yelled one of them, but again it failed to register with 3 as he was slow to recover from the stasis.

‘Trouble making freak, get the hell out of our town!’

‘We don’t want your kind around here.’

Focusing on the group standing before him about fifty meters away, 3 recognized some of the same boys who had hurled insults at him earlier. Apparently they had not been scared off by Veena’s posturing, or perhaps now that he was alone they felt braver, and had gathered a larger group to support. 3 counted up to eleven of them when an egg hit him in the forehead instantly covering him with sticky yoke.

Veena and Joshua came rushing out of the store as the intensity of the crowd rose with louder, more aggressive shouting and more dangerous objects being thrown more quickly.

‘Why are you just sitting there, Ted?’ asked Veena frantically as she defended herself from potentially dangerous projectiles.

‘Stasis.’

‘Now?’ said Veena, “Did you have to do it now?’

A small rock hit her in the shoulder, then another in the back. A larger one rebounded off the wall of the store and hit Joshua in the chest. They were moving now, down the street away from the shop front but the crowd followed them, continually hurling abuse at the freak and his friends.

‘What’s going on?’ said Joshua as he led the way down an alley when finally one presented itself.

Around the corner they stopped for a moment to catch their breath and consider what to do next, but they weren’t given enough time to do anything other than start fleeing once again.

3 could have got away if he was alone but he never thought of doing that, even though the attack was mainly against him. Blood was coming from a cut above his eye and as he wiped the flow away from his eye he noticed another gash on his arm. Frightened and confused he was still struggling to collect his faculties. The stasis had been perfectly safe he thought. This kind of attack was unheard of.

‘It’s a dead end!’

The trio ran right up to the wall which blocked their way, then turned back to see the mob approaching.

Veena stepped in front of them and adopted a fight stance which Joshua and 3 usually found amusing, but not this time. The mob came closer. Veena moved forward.

‘What are you doing, Veena?’ said Joshua. ‘There’s too many of them.’

‘I’m not going to stand here and let them stone us to death.’ She looked at her friends, deadly serious. ‘They want to kill us!’

Moving out from behind her, 3 took a deep breath as he realized this was one of those times when his father would have recommended the use of his mind weapon. Not having used it in anger since he was a boy and never deliberately and consciously to hurt people, 3 was afraid but could see no alternative.

He closed his eyes and concentrated, adjusting his metabolism and directing extra blood supply to his brain. His skin went pale and his breathing became slow and deep. Then he unleashed the weapon.

Veena and Joshua watched in shock as the people began to fall in front of them. Some held their ears, some their eyes, some stumbled and crashed into others, while a few turned and fled. Their cruel and vociferous taunts were transformed in an instant into cries of anguish. The fallen writhed on the ground wailing in torment at the images of pain and suffering being force fed into their minds.

After a few minutes, 3 opened his eyes and released his captives.

The three stunned friends stood still in the alley. Veena and Joshua unable to speak or move after what they had just witnessed, and 3 was likewise exhausted from the mental exertion of his attack on the rabid mob.

Slowly the mob rose and dispersed, some without looking back at 3 and others unable not to look. Although defeated it was obvious that many of them hated Newtonians more than they did before while others who may have joined the crowd just for the heck of it, now united in loathing and as 3 watched them disappear from the alley like drops of water evaporated by the sun, he realized he had done irreparable damage to the reputation of Newtonians. It was self defense and certainly the kind of extreme case where even his father would have reluctantly condoned such violence, but the fact remained, that if Newtonians were beginning to be a persecuted and feared race then his actions would accelerate that process.

Regaining some strength, 3 turned to his friends. ‘Are you all right?’

After a pause, Joshua spoke for both himself and Veena, ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Mind weapons.’

‘I thought,’ said Veena carefully, ‘that mind weapons had been outlawed before you were born and had stopped being developed. How did you come to have them?’

‘They were outlawed but only by the Unified parliament.’

‘You’re saying that your people defied the ban and continued to develop the weapon?’

3 felt uneasy under this interrogation and considered ignoring the question and ask for a change of subject, but these were his friends and they deserved an explanation.

’As my father explained it to me, the Newtonian High Council knew of the parliament’s plans, I should say some members of the parliament, to abolish mind weapons well in advance and had already decided what to do should the ban be upheld and written into law.

‘Senior government members knew a long time before the information was released to the public that the preliminary Global Ecological Forecast Paper – that was the forerunner to the Kinshasha Report- was going to divide the parliament. Behind closed doors arguments raged day and night for over a week in the lead up to the green paper, as they called it, being tabled in the house because although the committee was representative of all three races, there were many who felt that due to extremely divergent fundamental belief systems, the internal leadership of each race would inevitably make their own minds up about how to meet the challenges of a dark future.’

Veena was becoming bored with the history lesson. ‘Come on let’s get out of here.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It wasn’t the way I would have chosen to do it but we have passed the time quite quickly.’

They moved off towards the now deserted mouth of the alley, but Joshua was keen to find out more, and besides, 3 hadn’t answered the question yet. ‘Go on Ted,’ he said, ‘Keep talking.’

‘The Green paper came out in May 2082. I was three months old.’

‘I wasn’t even born,’ added Veena.

‘Go on Ted,’ said Joshua.

‘The Newtonian High Council-my dad was general secretary then-appointed a team of scientists and environmentalists, all Newtonian of course, to first of all verify the findings of the Green paper, and secondly to present options for Newtonian survival.’

‘Only Newtonian survival?’ asked Joshua.

‘The Deists and the Adonites did the same thing because none of them trusted their own representatives on the committee.’

‘Didn’t they appoint them though?’

‘Yes, but it was felt by the Newtonian High Council and I suppose by the leadership of the other races that in being forced to work together under the direct command of the President, the men would be pressured into sharing more information than anyone outside the committee ,with the exception of the President’s inner circle, thought wise.’

‘There’s the bus, isn’t it,’ said Veena as they turned the corner and headed towards the interchange across from the two dollar store. ‘Is that our bus, Josh?’

Joshua looked at his watch and declared it was early but it must be theirs so he and Veena sprinted down the main street and crossed to the other side. Zooming alongside them a meter above the ground, 3 easily kept up with them and arrived still able to speak unlike his breathless friends. The door was open and the bus only half filled but as there seemed to be nobody else waiting to board, the driver was preparing to leave.

‘Is this the Sydney service?’ asked 3.

The driver didn’t answer so 3 began to ask again in a louder voice but was interrupted. ‘The bus is full.’

Recognizing the discrimination immediately 3 lost his voice but Veena more than compensated.

‘Go on get on 3,’ she said. ‘It’s not full, just get on.’

‘Listen girl,’ said the driver, ‘I said the bus is full and to your friend here, it is.’

Veena muscled past 3 and into the bus getting as close as she could to the driver, invading his space. ‘Don’t call me girl, or I’ll knock your teeth out.’

In the tense minute that followed, the driver and Veena glared at each other and it looked to 3 that the driver was quite prepared to fight her. Joshua had apparently decided that was not the way to deal with it and had also pushed past 3 and Veena and headed towards one of a number of vacant seats in the bus. ‘If I were you,’ he said to the driver as he passed. ‘I’d let us on. Believe me, you don’t want to take this young lady on, and besides you’d be in more trouble than she would or don’t the anti-discrimination laws apply out here.’

Seeing the logic somehow through a veil of rage and prejudice, the driver turned away from Veena, shook his head and mumbled something about not wanting any trouble.

Veena went to sit with Joshua who had picked out a row with a hoverchair compartment: ironic given the attitude of the driver and the absence of Newtonians in the outback town. Sheepishly 3 followed her and parked in the compartment.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Veena called out to the driver, ‘We’re right to go now thanks driver. You racist tool!’

Joshua elbowed her gently, ‘Knock it off Veena. We’re on the bus now let’s just see if we can get to Sydney without any more trouble.’

‘What the hell is going on?’ asked Veena. ‘This antagonism towards Ted is heaps worse than anything I’ve experienced or even heard of.’

‘You were lucky the driver backed down,’ said a voice from behind.

Veena turned to look at the guy, a middle aged Deist, and said, ‘Luck had nothing to do with it, he was scared.’

‘No, he was lazy.’

’Shut up, who are you?

The man leaned forward so as to prevent what he was going to say being heard by anyone else on the bus. ‘You were wondering why the animosity towards your Newtonian friend here?’

Joshua caught the glint in Veena’s eyes and quickly intervened, ‘Yes sir, if you have some information we would appreciate it.’

‘You haven’t seen or heard any newscasts recently then?’

Veena was growing impatient while 3 turned up his receiver and sat quietly to listen to what the man had to say. It was Joshua who spoke. ‘No.’

‘There are various reports coming out, unconfirmed I might add, that the police have released the name of the person suspected of masterminding the assassinations of the two senators in Mumbai.’

‘Who?’ said Veena lifting her voice and startling the man.

‘They haven’t given a name.’

‘You just said they had. Which is it?’ demanded Veena.

‘My mistake,’ said the man beginning to wish he had kept his mouth shut. ‘They have said only that the man is a member of the Newtonian High Council.’

Joshua thought for a moment and then said to 3, ‘Maybe you should continue the story you were telling us before, Ted.’

With three pairs of eyes trained expectantly on him, 3 took a deep breath and continued his historical narrative.