Since That Time

A Tale for Year's Ending
© Judith Poole

Since that time, the hands have been frozen on the clock face, forever pointing to Roman numerals, hands spread, like a dancer indicating "surrender." They said, "The mechanism wore out." They said, "It would cost too much to replace it." But in truth, there were so few souls left who could read an analog clock that the town fathers felt the clock high in the tower was an anachronism.

Time itself had grown subjective. Appointment books existed only as an exercise in intentionality. If one intended a meeting with others, it would be recorded, then transferred electronically and networked into the world data bank. One would hope that the intent would be clear enough to synapse appropriately and result in the proper intersection of lives at the intended coordinates on the space/time continuum.

Hierarchy still existed, but of a very different sort, which some were hard pressed to understand. It went like this: Those whose thinking had the greatest clarity, whose beings carried the most light, rose to the top, but like feathers, like cream, so gentle was their rising. As they walked through the town square, others became more erect in their stance. The trance went deep.

Meetings occurred by chance, always auspiciously. Sometimes it was not necessary for the meeting to occur in the 3rd dimension. Those in whom certain states had been attained were able to appear in many locations at once, and, as more developed these facilities, reliance on telecommunications equipment diminished. A very strange topsy-turvy order resulted. Values shifted, so that, while there was nothing wrong with having a phone, it was considered far better just to transmit the thoughts, pure.

Because those lower in this hierarchical order had more need for things it was felt in the society at large that those needs should be met with larger cash sums. Those individuals who were still technology reliant tended to have more intellectual jobs. They had not yet discovered the degree of knowing they could find contained in the very cells of the body, and were caught in the efforting that had prevailed for most of the prior century.

This shift meant that money became disentangled from status, finally, and because of that many remarkable things took place with regard to the willingness of individuals to act in a charitable fashion, to make unselfish gestures. The younger folks caught on the quickest. Some would say they were born to this knowing, and had come to Earth to teach the elders. In any case, it was soon understood that the value of money, like the value of blood and of water, is in movement. Hoarded without flow, it becomes meaningless.

As this understanding permeated the land like a sugar syrup poured upon pound cake crime literally disappeared. There was no point in stealing things that would be given for the asking, after all. Since much of stealing comes of an impulse to outsmart others, that impulse was turned to the good. The competitive instinct was naturally refocused as folks sought to outdo one another in acts of generosity and kindness.

Many of the elders in the town remarked to one another on how gradual these changes had been, how much more pleasant life was, and what a contrast it made to the dire predictions they remembered from their childhood days as the prior century drew to a close.

Click here to read "The HUG", "Pansy Beds", and "I Am A Writer".

...Back to Write Now!