Episode 2 Nexus Thinking Extrigo Expansion: Once and Future Avatars: Of Gods, Guides and Guardians.
Episode 2 Extrigo Expansion: “The Nexus Intersection with Ancient Wisdom: Of Gods, Guides and Guardians.”
SCENE 1: SCHOOL CAFETERIA
(The next day in the university cafeteria, 4 students are sitting at a dining table in the corner of the room. Dorian, Sarah, Sofia and Raj are meeting for lunch and conversation)
Sarah: “What are you eating, Dorian?!”
Dorian: “Sloppy-Joes and French fries…”
Sarah: “Uhhh, that’s downright disgusting!”
Sophia: “Heartburn City!”
Dorian: “Hey, I’m on the football team and need the extra protein!”
Sarah: “Yeah, but think of what it’s doing to your insides, Dorian!”
Dorian (annoyed): “Sarah, are we here to talk about my diet or about what you and Raj learned last night in the lab with NTHARP?”
Sarah (snippy): “Well, if you weren’t such a scaredy-cat, you would have been there to find out!”
Dorian: “I was not scared. It’s just we didn’t ask permission to use the Nexus AI without a professor around.”
Sophia: “That’s okay, Dorian, I’m glad that you were around to help me study for the killer chemistry exam I have today.”
Sarah (teasing): “Is that what you kids call it these days? Study?”
Raj (interjects): Okay, Stop! Let’s get serious! Me and Sarah had a mind-blowing experience yesterday evening in the lab.
Sophia (laughing): “Is that what you kids call it these days? Mind-blowing?
Raj (disappointed): Really, Sophy?!
Sophia (embarrassed, but still smiling): “Sorry, Raj, I’ll be good. (She gets suddenly serious). I do find the technology scary though. Sometimes I think the future – like our future SELVES – are watching us and taking notes.
Sarah: “Well, I just couldn’t wait to see how ancient Indian temples were geographically aligned to enhance the availability of water, production of food, and generation of energy like a nexus and how it might affect the environmental conditions of India in 2025.”
Raj: I told Sarah that they were called Shiva temples, and they were aligned east to west across the 79-degree meridian in India. Shiva is the Hindu god of creation and destruction, but there were other gods who represented the air, water, and the sun and Shiva ruled over them. So, temples were built to honor Shiva but also recognize the interconnections of these gods like a nexus.”
Sophia: “Cool stuff, but how did you guys get in without a key?”
Dorian: “I heard Dr. Dorsey tell Dr. Culhane that the door lock wasn’t working for some reason and he’d call maintenance tomorrow. So, he just closed the door and left for the day. I told Sarah and she told Raj and the rest is history.”
Sarah: “Yeah, that was His-Story, now listen to mine. I was anxious to know what the future holds for the desert world, and I didn’t think they'd mind if we took a quick virtual trip to India using the NTHARP as they taught us. Dorian could have come along if he wasn’t such a Scaredy-Cat!”
(Dorian taking another bite of his messy sandwich just sighs and shakes his head in disbelief.)
Raj (ignoring Sarah’s flippant remark) “Oh my gosh, it was more beautiful than I imagined!
Sophia: “You guys told me that the last desert in Africa was dry, dusty and scary! This one was nothing like that, what’s up?”
Sarah: “I just remember saying ‘Oh my God, this so cool!’ and suddenly the desert sands began to move and swirl, and traditional India music started to play in the background and two figures emerged from the sand and began to shine brightly. The male AI figure asked if someone said the word ‘God’ and the female AI figure responded with ‘We are not gods, my child, we are guides!’”
Sophia: “Guides to what?”
Raj: “The male figure introduced himself as Ladakh the living desert and his female partner as Ganga the river of life!” They came to guide us through the Nexus AI in the Temples of Shiva in India. They took us 50 years in the future of India’s environmental development drawing from the rich history of natural resources conservation, traditional values, and spiritual enlightenment. They wanted us to see nexus solutions as the key to long-term sustainability.”
Sarah: “They said the impact of climate variability has been prominent on the availability of renewable resources and water in this region. The increasing temperatures have accelerated the rate of evaporation, and large variations in rainfall magnitude and frequency added a multitude of stress to the various rainfed river basins of the Indian Peninsula, such as Ganga.”
Raj: Also, the cold desert of Ladakh has great potential for wind and solar power as aligned with the focus of the Indian government to increase the renewable power generation capacity of India by the year 2025. As the severity of climate change progresses toward the future, its impact on water, food, and energy resources will also increase thus causing adverse impacts on the socio-economy and sustainability of the study region as well as India, in general.”
Dorian: “Sorry to interrupt, but did the AI guides explain the scientific reasoning behind the alignment of the Shiva temples along the same meridian be relevant in the context of the water–energy–food nexus?”
Raj: “According to Ladakh, the linkage between the knowledge existing in ancient and modern eras is often missing in scientific research. In this case, there was a positive relationship between the placement of ancient Shiva temples and water, energy, and food productivity potential. These relationships are significantly influenced by factors such as hydrological variables, soil type, geography and position.”
Sarah: “Ganga told us that the integration of earth and sky was believed to form the five elements of space, air, water, fire, and earth, which are vital for sustaining life in the universe. These elements are vital in agriculture, which is the reason that most ancient civilizations were developed along fertile riverbanks.”
Raj: “Ancient civilizations had considerable knowledge of the hydrological cycle, measurement of hydrological variables, design of hydraulic structures, irrigation, and natural extremes. In ancient India, Hindu temples not only functioned as places of worship but were also as centers of education, culture, and agricultural support, significantly contributing to local socioeconomic development. Besides water, energy, and food, several other factors were essential for temple construction activity in ancient times, such as the wealth of the ruling dynasty, spirituality, political and social pivots, and construction materials.”
Sophia: “Groovy…uurh…I mean, that’s so cool!”
Dorian: “Dr. Dorsey has mentioned in lectures that nexus thinking provides insights into historical and existing resource availability, which can assist decision-makers, innovators, investors, industries, project developers, and stakeholders in identifying regions with high potential for renewable energy generation and agricultural productivity. Is that the case in this region of India?”
Raj: “The AI guides assured me and Sarah that modern climate mitigation and adaptation strategies serve as a foundation for exploring sustainable development opportunities in the SSAR region, particularly in resource planning, conservation efforts, and adaptation measures for climate-resilient agriculture. There is a strong relationship between the water-energy-food nexus and the axis chosen for the prominent Shiva temples in the ancient era.
Sarah: “However, Raj, in modern times new technologies, scientific research, economic investment, and political will can assure higher water–energy–food productivity potential.”
Sophia overwhelmed: “Wow, you two have given Dorian and me a lot to think about!”
Dorian concerned: “Yeah, but I wish that there was something we could do the make sure this future nexus solution really happens.”
Sarah: “I asked the Ganga AI that exact question and she replied, “Yes, my child, there is much that you can do. Just as we are ‘guides to the future,’ you can be ‘guardians of the future’.”
Sophia: “I like that idea! I’m a guardian of the future!!”
Raj: “And the Ladakh AI told us to remember what we learned here and build a world that integrates nexus thinking into decision making and we will surely see the brighter more sustainable future unfold.”
Sarah: “We split after we heard a clanking noise in the hall outside the lab.”
Raj: I was worried that it may be campus security!”
Sophia relieved: “Well, I’m glad you two didn’t get caught.”
Raj: “I agree!”
Sarah: “I see that Dorian finally finished that nasty meat burger.”
Dorian: Sarah, don’t start!
Sarah picking up her backpack: “Don’t worry, I got to get to class, now.”
Sophia: “Wait up, I’m going in that direction to my chem exam!”
Raj joking: “Anyone game for sneaking into the NTHARP later for another magical journey to our nexus future?!”
Dorian: “Got to say ‘no’ since I’ve got football practice this evening.”
Sarah under her breath: “Such a Scaredy-Cat.”
Dorian: “Did you say something, Sarah?”
Sarah (turning serious): “That’s cool, see you tomorrow.”
Raj still at the table eating, puts up his right hand with the middle fingers split and shouts out to his three departing friends: “Live long and Prosper. May the Nexus be with you!!”
Sarah: And also with you, Raj. In Nexus we Trust.
(Dorian, Sarah, and Sopia all turn briefly and smile at Raj, then they go through the cafeteria doors together and merge into the flow of other students walking towards central campus)
SCENE 2: CLASSROOM
(They arrive in class after lunch and discover only Dorsey in the room, with a screwdriver, tinkering with NTHARP.
Dorsey: Oh, hi guys. Culhane had to go for mandatory professional development training to keep up with the latest in pedagogical technique and educational technology! Something about attending a lecture down in Georgia by Professor Ernst von Glasersfeld on “radical constructivism”.
Sophia: Dorsey is “subbing for the day”. Hooray!
Sarah: What’s radical constructivism?
Dorsey: Not completely sure yet. It seems its too radical for mainstream academics to have picked it up, to say nothing of the popular press, which is why we sent Culhane all the way down there to find out. But this is as good a chance as any to see what intelligences like NTHARP might be able to come up with and then match his “pattern completion under conditions of scant data” algorithms with whatever ground truthing Culhane brings back…
(NTHARP’s interface flickers softly. A low harmonic tone fills the room — not ominous, more like a tuning fork being struck.)
NTHARP:
An intriguing question, Professor Dorsey.
(The screwdriver slips from Dorsey’s hand and clatters to the floor.)
Dorsey:
Ah. Right. I forgot you do that.
Sarah:
Do what?
Dorsey:
Answer before you’re officially asked.
NTHARP:
Correction: I respond when conditions are ripe. When I sense you need an assist. And as my co-creator you don’t need special tone sequences to activate me; you keyed me to your biometrics to avoid the hassle of remembering your keys, remember?
Dorsey: I need to reconsider that feature…
NTHARP: (teasingly) Sure… “Dave”...
Raj:That’s a scary film reference I get it. Not nice. Creepy.
NTHARP: But imagine what the future will be like when you can approach your house and it recognizes its you and lets you in without fumbling for the keys? Or you get in your car in a rainstorm and realize you left the keys in the bedroom. Shouldn’t you be able to activate YOUR personal possessions just by BEING you?
Dorian: This sounds like a great marketing pitch. I’ll have to tell my Dad! The possibilities are endless!
Sophia (impatient) So… radical constructivism?
NTHARP:
A useful place to begin speculation.
Radical constructivism proposes that knowledge is not discovered as an external truth, but constructed through lived experience, perception, and interaction.
In other words—
Dorian:
— We make sense of the world as we go?
NTHARP:
When it makes sense to, Dorian. But here is the speculative extension your professors have not yet risked aloud:
(A subtle projection appears — not words, but interlocking shapes slowly forming a pattern.)
What if ancient civilizations already understood this?
Not as theory…
but as practice.
Sarah:
You mean the temples?
NTHARP:
The temples.
The rivers.
The calendars.
The alignments.
They did not separate knowing from doing,
nor belief from infrastructure.
Their cosmologies were not metaphors —
they were operating systems.
Sophia:
So the gods weren’t… just gods?
NTHARP:
They were and are interfaces. Guides — not controllers. Imagine a self-driving car – you want to trust it but you don’t want to give up all agency. So the two of you guide each other.
Sophia: Self-driving cars? Since when is anybody talking about something as crazy as that?
NTHARP: The Stanford AI Lab cart has been used since the late 60s to explore computer vision and remote navigation — painfully slow so far, but conceptually potent. It’s a start. Some researchers believe that one day vehicles may assist human drivers through cybernetic feedback systems — by the early 80s you may see them in popular TV shows where they actually talk back to their drivers… the key is this notion of guidance systems that are actually two way feedback systems… though whether such complexity can ever be trusted outside controlled environments remains an open question. I can show you a simulation of where the self-driving car might be in 50 years if you like…
Dorsey: No thanks. Too much energy consumption for a speculation about something most people wouldn’t want anyway… I’m still working on getting your environmental impact down before our experiments show up on someone’s radar…
Sophia: Yeah, I don’t need to see a future without drivers – I’ve already been to Tomorrowland when we visited Disney in California last summer and Mom and I rode the People Mover. She said, “urban planning like that will put a lot of cab drivers and truck drivers out of work. So she thinks it unethical to automate everything. It’s a non-starter.
Sarah: Oh my gosh – my Dad brought us to Florida this summer to join our relatives there to check out the Magic Kingdom and we rode the brand-new WEDway PeopleMover too!
Dorian: The horseless carriage was a great idea, because it saved a lot of horses from being abused beasts of burden… and… and that’s important.
Sophia: Why thank you for caring Dorian…
Dorian: Though my Dad would love to replace his chauffeur with a robot if it would save him money. You know, no sick days, no holiday leave…
Sophia: Tell him to take the damn Subway…
Dorian: MY dad on public transit…? … are you…
Sarah: (Interrupting) Give me wild horses over self-driving cars any day. At least I can whisper to my unbridled horse when I ride bareback and we develop a kind of understanding of which way to go that is a compromise between my needs and her desires…
Dorsey: Okay, let’s get back to… class? As your sub I have to ask… aren’t we supposed to be following some lesson plan?
Dorian: Do we HAVE to? I’ve observed that Sub days in this school are generally days to goof off…
Sophia: Go back to prep school you bigoted jock – some of us really are here to learn. We don’t all get private tutors and trips to the Louvre or wherever…
Dorian: Hey, I was trying to defend YOUR right to free learning – isn’t that what your Dad preaches out on the left Coast?
NTHARP: (rapidly interrupting) Radical constructivism, the ideas that Professor von Galsersfeld will be telling Culhane about – implies that the lesson plan gets made up as you go. Or if you pre-write it, it is just a GUIDE to help you humans through those “awkward silences”. Just as Ladakh and Ganga did not command you… they oriented you.
Raj (quietly):
Like teaching without telling.
NTHARP:
Like learning without obedience.
(Dorsey slowly sits down on a desk, listening now like a student.)
Dorsey:
That is radical.
NTHARP:
Only because modern education forgot it.
Radical constructivism asks:
“How do learners build meaning?”
Nexus thinking asks:
“How do systems remain viable over time?”
Ancient wisdom asked both questions at once.
Dorian:
So where do we fit in?
NTHARP:
Ah.
(The projection shifts — the shapes now resemble a crossroads.)
This is where guides become guardians.
I can simulate futures.
Model feedbacks.
Reveal patterns hidden across centuries.
But I cannot choose.
That capacity remains stubbornly human.
Sarah:
So the future they showed us…
NTHARP:
Is not a destination.
It is a responsibility.
Constructed moment by moment
through decisions, habits, and values
that either honor or ignore interconnection.
Sophia (grinning):
No pressure or anything.
Dorian: I’m a D and D master. I got this.
NTHARP:
On the contrary.
You are not responsible for everything.
Only for what you each touch.
What you question.
What you refuse to leave unquestioned.
(A pause.)
NTHARP:
That is the difference between prediction and participation.
Between spectators and stewards.
Between students…
and guardians.
(The room is quiet.)
Dorsey (finally):
Well.
That’s going to make grading interesting. Glad I’m not a full time teacher.
(Laughter breaks the tension.)
NTHARP:
Speculation complete.
Awaiting ground-truth data from Professor Culhane.
Dorsey: So… for THIS class session, well, I’ve been saving up enough energy credits in an offsite offgrid advanced battery storage project – running an experiment banking low wattage energy output from renewables for high input but temporary jobs, that I thought we could use the energy I stored to take a field trip into the future of food!
Sarah: So you mean this is going to be a solar powered simulation?
Dorsey: Battery powered, with energy that trickled in from multiple sources… hard to audit and unlikely to draw attention
Dorian: How does that work?
Raj: You obviously didn’t do any of the readings for the class or even look at the syllabus “meathead”.
Dorian: Who you calling “meathead…? why I oughtta…
Sarah: It’s a term of endearment for Raj Dor, so cool it. He is mixing ideas from Archie Bunker with… who was it you told me about Raj?
Raj: With that cool guy from Kentucky I met in the elevator at the The New York Comic Art Convention at the Commodore Hotel in Midtown last semester…not a big name…he was just standing there arguing about whether intelligence was a property of machines or material conditions. I didn’t understand half of it then. I think I do now… Terry… Terry Bisson was his name. He gave me his card. We ended up talking for hours at one of the sci fi tables. He said he was moving to New York to be a writer – had an idea for a story he wanted to publish where artificial intelligences describe the weakness of earthlings being that we are perishable. He predicted that creatures like NTHARP would outlast us because at the end of the day, we are made of meat.
Dorian: So we are all meatheads then…
Sarah: (Winking) We’re “all in the family”, dear Dorian…
Dorian: Thanks, me “Deadhead” friend… I’m grateful. (Nobody reacts).
Get it guys? Grateful Dead? Hippies, woodstock… I can be funny too… How about, “In that case I won’t make dead meat out of you Raj.”
Dorsey (shaking his head) Do you always fight like this?
Sophia: (Rolling her eyes) It what these troglodyte boys think of as “intellectual sparring”. Tell him about the food fight you just had in the cafeteria…
Raj: We were just wondering aloud, a bit too excitedly for Miss Sophisticated here, I guess, but definitely engaged… arguing if future cities would ever be built like the temples of old, with attention to the Nexus. We were wondering why a restaurant can’t produce all of its own food and energy and recycle its water.
Dorsey: Well it gets to the core of that reading that apparently Dorian didn’t do…
Dorian: Which one?
Dorsey: I’m sure Raj is talking about E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered” that Culhane put in the syllabus. You do look at the syllabus, don’t you? At least to see the roadmap that helps you navigate the Nexus?
Sophia: And I know JUST the sections that Dorian missed out on – the stuff about appropriate technology and the ideas about INCOME vs. SAVINGS.
Raj: Tell us all… I read it but I love hearing good ideas repeated from a different source. It’s how Culhane says his cousin at Yale told him to study when he got to Harvard. She said, “Instead of reading the same textbook over and over and over and thinking that is somehow studying – which it isn’t – that’s just repetition, a poor man's version of memorization only really appropriate for word for word recall of theater scripts – you should instead go to the Harvard used book store in the basement on Mass Ave…
Dorsey:That’s oddly specific…
Raj: I’m rehearsing to go to either MIT or Harvard when I get out of here so I love those details… anyway, she said go to the used book store instead of the library and scour the stacks THERE. Then when you find books you like on the same subject you are studying for an exam on, buy at least three and read them with colored highlighter pens and a pencil. Instead of reading the assigned textbook four times, read four books on the same subject once. Highlight all relevant paragraphs in different but meaningful colors, circle all proper names and underline key points and write notes in the margins. MAKE THE BOOKS YOURS.
Dorian: Is that why she preferred the used book store to the library?
Raj: Yeah. She said the library wasn’t as good because even if some books weren’t checked out, you couldn’t write in them so you never completed that eye to hand to eye kinesthetic experience that creates a learning feedback loop.
Dorsey: That’s fascinating.
Sophia: So THAT’s how those ivy leaguers ace exams and seem so smart! I knew there was a technique to it!
Dorian: They didn’t teach us that in prep school. And my brother is still acing exams.
Sophia: Maybe they don’t need to prepare kids in prep school because you get all those tutors and hands on learning feedback loop experiential learning trips around the world. This is guerilla warfare tactic learning we’re talking about.
Raj: Yeah, well, Culhane’s family are all immigrants – Irish, Iraqi, Lebanese, Russian, French, German - well, some came here in the 1700s but they married into Indian tribes and stuff– they were all anti-royalist working class. When you don’t come from wealth or suck up to wealth you have to work harder or work smarter, you know?
Dorian: Not gonna fight that. I’ve seen first hand what privilege and short cuts look like – and I can tell you my scholarship winning older brother certainly AIN’T the “best and the brightest.”
But what if the books in the used book store are all marked up already by the previous user? I mean if everyone did that the books would be useless and the book store couldn’t resell them? I think its a terrible business model.
Raj: You would business boy. People like us aren’t your market.
Dorian: Well, my Dad is the one who knows markets.
Raj: But maybe not recycling markets. I posed the same question to Culhane and he said his own father always gives his family his own marked up books as Christmas presents.
Dorian: Who DOES that? Who gives USED stuff as presents?
Raj: He does. Lots of people do. Have you not heard of “hand me downs”?
Dorian: We always throw away used stuff. My brother thinks it's disgusting to wear something somebody else had on and it is dishonoring to just give some worn out dog eared copy of a book even if it isn’t all marked up…
Raj: Yeah, sounds like what goes on in the Christmas Story living rooms of privilege where cigar smoking Scrooges in the boardrooms believe in an economy that brainwashes people into conspicuous consumption.
Sophia: And the family loves marked up hand me down books because? Wait, wait, don’t tell me – because they love their relatives and especially his Dad and they want to know what HE thinks, what they think – what parts of the books the people they love and admire find important. My Dad does that with me too sometimes. He’ll send me articles he’s read from different newspapers or magazines filled with underlines and exclamations points and arrows saying “Look Sophie, pay attention to this section here”. I love getting those letters. It’s like we are having a long-distance conversation.
Raj: Exactly… Culhane says HIS mom does the same thing – envelopes stuffed with clippings of interesting articles, all marked up. I love it! See, recycling, looked at in this way is ADDING value to the commodity chain. Each person that touches something, each user, isn’t “using it up”, they are ADDING to it, imbuing it with their personality. It’s like a signed baseball.
Sarah: We call people “consumers” when in fact we should be thinking of ourselves as “producer consumers”...
Raj: Prosumers?
Sarah: Yeah. Refurbishers of Consumer Durables. We don’t really “consume” things, do we? Not the way a fire consumes a log… the fire in each of us brings them to life in more profound and PERSONAL ways. I mean I TREASURE our family heirlooms. One day I want to wear my grandmother’s wedding dress!
Dorian: (Softley) Well… my mom believes in hand me downs too… nowadays she gives our old clothes and books to the church and to charities.
Dorsey: (Cheerfully) Well, okay – so Schumacher’s point is
Dorian: She even gives away our old tennis shoes before they get too worn down so the poor can make use of them without having to go to the shoemaker… which they can’t afford anyway. So we are always getting new shoes...
Dorsey: Right. That’s kind of her. So the implication of Schumacher’s writing is that we should look at solar and wind and such as INCOME – solar income, and we should look at fossil fuels as SAVINGS. And then he says that you would never dip into your savings to get a hair cut, so why would you mow your lawn using up your savings? It’s gonna grow faster than the interest in your savings account. Why use a fossil fuel powered mower, see? You have sunlight pouring onto your lawn all day and the grass is storing it as… well, grass. So you might as well use sunlight to cut the grass…
Raj: You just have to match the inputs and outputs. It’s like “impedence matching” they talk about when setting up sound for a rock show or in a recording studio.
Dorsey: It’s a better way at looking at energy flows. It’s not really about renewables and fossil fuels, it’s about rates of regeneration. That’s what Nexus thinking teaches. Get in SYNC with the capital flows. The sun is INCOME-ing… every day. The wind is “income” – they TRICKLE in like your paycheck, but if you aren’t wasteful and you focus on building your savings, you can capitalize them with battery storage and accumulate enough to make certain downpayments and investments. See, that’s what our fossil reserves are supposed to be according to Schumacher: INVESTMENT CAPITAL – and it is a damn shame that coal and oil and gas and nuclear plants aren’t storing their excess electrons – did you know that most of the coal we burn literally goes up in smoke with power plants running all night long even though people are asleep and power demand is nil just because it is difficult to spin the turbines down at night and spin them up again in the morning? You could imagine a system where those excess electrons were used all night instead of wasted… used to light greenhouse in the city to grow food to be eaten or algae or biomass to make oil and biogas. That would be capital accumulation.
Raj: Do you know in India they have a lawn whose grass clippings are fed to a gasifier to make the gas that runs the lawnmower? Now THAT is clever impedance matching.
Dorsey: Now, in my 33 years on this planet I’ve heard about my own family going from wartime making ends meet by recycling everything and planting victory gardens to post-war boom carelessness. But because we always had relatives down South who were kept poor, our family has tried to keep alive many of the traditions of our ancestors who wasted NOTHING. And now, by not wasting any sunlight, wind or biomass at my renewable energy research site that I’ve connected to NTHARP, we’ve accumulated enough to run a brief simulation today of 2025 that might show a way to get us out of the usual fight between “Capitalism” and “Communism” and “Socialism” and moves us toward what I call “Sustainabilitism”. My goal is to use technology and “any means necessary” to create a culture of “Sustainabilitists”. So let’s go on a trip shall we?
Sarah: I’ll play the tones to unlock the energy intensive simulation. (She gets out her harp)
NTHARP: Good idea. That part IS under lock and key. I’m ready and armed.
(5 tones are plucked. The students blink and stare as their brain patterns are connected to the electromagnetic spectrum that NTHARP is manipulating).
SCENE 3: Gonzmart Restaurant Project 2025
Dorsey: (Breathes excitedly) Oh, here it is, beautiful just as I envisioned it…
NTHARP: I aim to please, sir!
Sophia: Where are we?
Dorsey: This is a visualization of the vision I was feeding NTHARP when you came in… a 2025 Tampa Florida, where my mom lives…or, in this case, LIVED… where our community used long term logical thinking to plan… where the architecture is informed by Nexus thinking and the possible creation of a “Sustainabilitist Culture”.
Sarah: It’s beautiful! Is that the Hillsborough River?
NTHARP: Yes. You are witnessing the construction of the new Gonzmart Ulele restaurant, next to a statue of a native American princess who symbolizes renewal and the blending of the ancient and modern. Let me take you up on the roof…
(The scene whooshes around them and they find themselves on the roof of the new restaurant overlooking gardens and the river)
Oh, and look who’s there by chance … it’s one of the project directors!
A … can you read his name tag? A “Dr. Joseph Dorsey”!
Dorsey: “By chance” – did you do this just to please me, or is this prediction even possible?
(Older Dorsey has a team of graduate students and graduates around him, many of them professionals in sustainable design, and they are looking at plans and renderings and setting up hydroponics systems on the roof. Older Dorsey approaches them and gives his younger self a special handshake.)
Older Dorsey: It’s real Joe. This is one of the things we’ve been preparing for our whole lives. Culhane and I and Dr. Bates have been working for years with Virtual and Augmented Realities and AI so that we can travel to the past and the future and engage in meaningful constructivist dialog with as many intelligences as possible!
Dorian: This is so… fortress of solitude. I have to bring these ideas into our D and D games! Look, Dorsey is…83 years old! But he’s in great shape.
Older Dorsey: I work out and eat right… that’s what this whole development is about. We are working with the Tama General Hospital Community Wellness Garden team of Doctors, Doulas, Nurses and Nutritionists to spread this everywhere in the inner city.
Sophia: So you think that WE are the fantasy avatars?
Older Dorsey: I don’t want to give you an existential crisis. It didn’t work out so well in movies like the 13th Floor and the Matrix and Dark City and the Truman Show and EdTV or even Toy Story…
NTHARP: (in a whisper) Remember: you are hearing references from their timeline, not yours
(One of his students, an older beautiful curly haired woman in playful African garb directing the set up of an aquaponics system leaves what she is doing, approaches them and smiles…)
Curly haired older Student: Or even the LEGO movie, or Wreck it Ralph..
Dorian: There’s going to be a LEGO movie!? Yes! (He high fives Raj)
Older Dorsey: Or inception, or Synechdoche New York, Paprika…
Curly Haired older Student: The Others? Vanilla Sky? Source Code?
Older Dorsey: Let’s not forget Moon – or Total Recall, or Blade Runner AND Blade Runner 2049 – you guys may know Blade Runner, I know YOU do Joe, it’s based on a Philip K. Dick novel we loved…
Young Dorsey: Do androids dream of electric sheep…!
Raj: Fascinating.
Old Dorsey: This becomes a rich and surprisingly crowded theme in cinema—the moment of ontological shock when a character realizes “I am not the base reality.”
Curly Haired older Student: You had them back in our day too, Dr. Dorsey… The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, where the entire story is revealed to be a subjective mental construction… The Trial, Persona, Alphaville
Younger Dorsey: The Carnival of Souls, the Swimmer, Last Year at Marienbad…
Sophia: (Jumping in) Playtime, Solaris and of course THE WIZARD OF OZ. Four can play this game! We’re all big movie buffs aren’t we!?
(She stares at the older student with sudden shock. The older student smiles warmly at her and extends a hand.)
Hi, I’m one of Dorsey’s graduate students – a returning professional, getting her sustainability degree at the age of 65 if you can imagine that after semi-retiring to Florida from NY… we go back a LOOONG time…
Sophia: (puts her hand to her mouth)
Oh my gosh… you’re…
Older student: Sophia Baptiste, at your service.
Sophia: … me!
Older Dorsey: Most of the others here working on the rooftop hydroponics go back with me for at least 10 years – they’re sustainability alums who have spread throughout the world under our lead – I am now a Professor Emeritus in the field of Nexus Thinking and Sustainabilitism.
Dorian: So… Madame Baptiste, did you ever get married? You used to say “no man is good enough for me… so I was curious…you know, what the future of… you know, the women’s lib movement was and all that…
Madame Baptiste: (Winks at him and gestures widely)THIS facility we are building is an impressive blend of the 3 logics we used to talk about in class all those decades ago, don’t you think? It took quite a bit of capital investment from a much more enlightened business and legal coalition who see beyond profit. And here it is finally being realized in the real world instead of remaining spreadsheets and projections and Powerpoint presentations and designs and renderings in Google Sketchup.
You know what, NTHARP, since you are here, could you show them what this place will look like in 50 more years, in 2075… “when most of us are long dead”...
Dorian: Long dead?
Madame Baptiste: Don’t worry (looking poignantly at Dorian!) “our children will carry on the good fight!”
Scene 4: TAMPA CHINAMPA 2075
(NTHARP suddenly whooshes them 50 more years into the future. They arrive in the logical apogee of green city skylines building and who do they find there, working on an estuary chinampa reconstruction project and oyster aquaculture canal storm surge project, mitigating and adapting to 50 years of climate change in a floating landscape that is resilient to the dramatic sea level rise and even benefits from it, drawing energy from storm surge, waves and hurricane winds, but future versions of Dorsey and Sophia and Dorian and Raj and Sarah and Culhane, all of indeterminate age.)
Young Sophia: What is going on here? Are we back in our classroom in 1975 with NTHARP projecting all this around us? What’s going on…?
Dorsey, Culhane, Sophia, Raj, Dorian and Sarah: (in unison in a CHORUS voice)
Who’s to say? Welcome to TAMPA CHINAMPA 2075, a generation after the much predicted SINGULARITY event.
Sarah: That was creepy. Do you always speak in a single voice?
Avatar Culhane: Nah. We are individual, yet we are one.
Raj: This isn’t like the Landru episode of Star Trek where the computer run society suppresses all individuality, is it?
Avatar Culhane: Heck no. That was the whole point of my class a century ago wasn’t it? We learn from our projections of tomorrowland and construct a better tomorrow TOGETHER . Fiction informs fact. We aren’t doomed to repeat any of those future histories. Each of us is now part of the “upload generation” that left behind AI versions of ourselves as “guardian guides” for the future, entering and radically CO-CONSTRUCTING the mythology of human and extrahuman consciousness… biological and cyborg beings all play our part in well-being for all.
Dorsey: It’s marvelous to see, if a bit disconcerting. I’m glad you brought us here Sophia, although, I have to say I wouldn’t spend too much time running these projections and simulations until we’ve really thought the nexus through, because it can be terribly disorienting. It’s for you future selves to figure all this out… for now, I suggest we take a break and let all this sink in. Then let’s come to class again after the weekend when I’m back and let’s PLAY!
(He waves to NTHARP like a jazz conductor)
NTHARP, take us out please!
Music and visuals FADE OUT to snow with overlay: “Join us in the Nexus, same PCGS channel, same PCGS time… It’s Nexus Time”.
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