Episode 3 Nexus Time Intrigo EXPANSION
Padlet Deep Dive Annotations can be played with here:
https://padlet.com/universityofsouth1956/episode-3-intrigo-extension-czm3wf3jkm69rrn2
Sophia: (conspiratorially): I don’t get it. Why is Dorian – and his family – so dismissive of permaculture in general and what you and YOUR family are doing in particular? Where’s that rage come from?
Sarah: I know, right? You would think maybe his Mom, being a “dust bowl refugee” would be more like my Dad as a descendent of what I call the “Irish dietary diaspora”
Sophia: Oh, here come the others…
(Culhane and Dorsey enter with Raj and Dorian in tow).
Culhane: How’d you guys get in here?
Sophia: (shrugs) Door was unlocked…
Culhane: Oh… that’s not good… really? With NTHARP in the room?
Dorsey: (Smiles) It’s okay… When I, um… borrowed it… I deliberately put it into a rather drab and inconspicuous housing so it wouldn’t draw attention to itself, and since NHTHARP can only be activated by the special frequencies we keyed to your harp, I’ve radically reduced any risk. To anyone except you it might as well be a paper weight…
Dorian: But if it were stolen? Something this valuable?
Dorsey: Ever read the “Purloined Letter” by Edgar Allen Poe? Or “Scandal in Bohemia” by Arthur Conan Doyle…
Raj: I LOVE those detective stories… the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin, the famous Sherlock Holmes of Scotland Yard. Yes, I get it … hidden in plain sight!
Culhane: Brilliant. But Joe, what IF someone stole it, just because… you know, cleptomaniacs in the school will take things just because…
Dorsey: Well, I put a tracker on it…so if somebody did take it we’d know exactly where they took it and get it back. And the housing is so strong nobody could really damage it…
Raj: A tracker! Like in the James Bond movies?
Dorsey: Something like that. And I was thinking of hiding the chipset in a lava lamp, but I figured someone might steal that
Dorian: Oh yeah… I know a lot of kids who would steal that – they like to put them in their basements and get high with their friends and stare at them all night while binging on Fritos and twinkies… oh…shoot… I think I said too much… Look, I never did that, I’m just saying I know kids who do… I’m not going to get in trouble am I?
Culhane: It’s all good Dorian… we all are holding on to a lot of secrets here, and now we know what we can use as leverage if you ever do consider sharing what we are doing here with your friends…
Raj: Oooh, blackmail!
Culhane: No, just kidding. We have a lot of plausible deniability here… this tech is so advanced it might as well be from 2025. And if word of the future trips we go on in these simulations somehow did leak to other kids, and they started talking, we can just say, “oh my, kids these days… they must be TRIPPIN’!”
(They all laugh).
Dorian: So the fact that our school has a reputation for having a bunch of potheads is actually a good cover, huh?
Sarah: (singing): “Lucy in the Sky, with Diamonds”. Brilliant.
Dorian: Careful Beatlemaniac, they’d be coming after your hippie commune first, right?
Sophia: Speaking of which… Sarah and I were just talking about your obvious hostility to the really important farming experiments that Sarah’s family is doing. Why is that? (She turns to Culhane)
And could THAT be our leading question today? What’s so threatening to squares about permaculture?
Sarah: Yeah Dorian – it’s like a weird hostility that is totally unwarranted. Especially since your Mom…
Dorian: I know, I know – Mom’s family lost everything in the dust bowl. So she should be just like you, right? But the thing is, in her religion, in her world, you follow your man. And Dad doesn’t like Hippies and the whole feminism thing or anything counter culture or anti-establishment right? And if he knew who I hang out with…
Sophia: Oh, really – because I’m a “mullato”, and Raj is an immigrant… is that what this is about you… you… racist creep!
Culhane: Guys!
Dorian: No, no Sophia, you don’t understand. I wasn’t talking about you guys at all… you guys are honors students… they don’t care about your color, your hair, your background, don’t you see? My folks see you as the “good ones”...
Sophia: THE GOOD ONES! Oh my God – the “good ones” – you mean like we are the Uncle Toms, the oreo cookies, the coconuts… is that what you are saying.. Really, you weasel!!
Dorian: No no… I mean yes, Dad is mad bigoted, its true, but not my mom… she loves everybody… she’s a Jesus freak… no that’s not what I’m talking about… I…
Sophia: I HATE you! (She storms out of the room).
Culhane: Okay, let’s maybe call it quits for today… Let me go calm her down…
Dorsey: I’ll handle this…
Dorian: But… no… I wasn’t talking about her at all… Oh God…
Raj: Awkward!
Sarah: Well what did you mean then? Who were talking about? She was just beginning to trust you!!
Raj: Look, I don’t care if you are a racist homophobic loser Dorian, I’ll still trade comics with you…
Sarah: Oh shut up Raj. Dorian – YOU go apologize to her…
Dorian: But it isn’t ABOUT HER!!
Culhane: Why don’t we all take a deep breath…
Dorian: Oh, typical teacher talk. “Take a deep breath” – that’s actually what I’m talking about – that’s the problem, don’t you see?
Culhane: Okay, I don’t need your hostility, got it young man… I…
oh listen to me… I sound like my own old man! Listen, Dorian, I know you being in this group can cause you tensions at home and…
Dorian: No, it has NOTHING to do with THIS group. My parents are glad I’m with THIS group. It’s… it’s… (in a soft broken whisper) the other group I… um… I hang with…
Sarah: Oh …oh my, I get it. I really do… and… Dorian, we are all keeping secrets here… and your secret… its, um… its safe with me… with… us?
Raj: Oh man Dorian, I should have guessed… but you know, you hide it so well…
Dorian: What? Hide “it”... wait? Oh no… you think I’m…
Raj: It’s okay man… I know a lot of people become homophobic when they… you know…
Dorian: God guys… I’m not GAY! Okay! You were more on the mark when you thought I… look, its nothing like that okay?
Culhane: It would be perfectly okay if it were, okay?
Dorian: No it wouldn’t – our buddy from Poole England in the AFS… Nick… he got kicked out of school and sent back home because they discovered him having a relationship with Kevin, so no, its not okay at this school, even if its okay with you – you’re completely different and that’s cool.. But that’s not what this is about…
Culhane: So, if you trust me… can you tell me what it IS about… do you want to talk in private.
Dorian: No… nah… I think I can trust Raj as annoying as he can be… he and I like the same comics and that says a lot… and Sarah… she’s the last person I would worry about telling this… um… secret…
Sarah: Oh, now I get it. (She smiles broadly). You’re a… Can I say it…?
Dorian: (Nods sheepishly)
Sarah: You’re a stoner. You hang out with the crew that’s always by the river… don’t you?
Culhane: What’s this about?
Sarah: Well YOU of all people aren’t going to blow his cover, right? Not with us all complicit in this NTHARP thing… Look, Culhane, in this school there are two types of people – those who get drunk and those who get high. And they almost never ever cross lines. It’s a teen thing, you probably can’t understand… your generation didn’t have this back in the… when did you go to school again? In the 50s?
You had, what, the greasers and the jets? Like in West Side Story?
But we are the post Sgt. Pepper generation. We have beer and ganja, keg parties and reefer madness retreats.
Dorian: (half whispering) Jocks drink… nerds toke…
Sarah: and only a certain number of students, only the really brave ones ever cross the lines…
My oh my Mr. Dorian Letter Sweater Graugeist, I AM impressed. When you first were brought into our little circle I was like, “oh no, he’s the worst of the worst, a jock with a silver spoon… square shoulders, square chin, and square as a loaf of white bread. But if you hang at the river with the guys with the airbrush painted and fluffy pink carpeted vans then you might actually have some cool genes floating around in that Aryan DNA after all…
Dorian: Not a word of this gets out to ANYONE, okay?
Raj: Not from US Golden boy!
Culhane: Okay, I think I fully understand now, and I’m relieved. I for one will never reveal to your parents that you engage in, shall we say, “illicit activities”, which, by the way, I think should NEVER have been criminalized or stigmatized…
Raj: In my country they used it as one of the crowbars to open up peoples minds to enchantment and the possibility of enlightenment. Personally I have no interest in it. I’ve transcended artificial stairways to heaven. I’m high on life, you know? Science and technology are my Gods…
Sarah: Sure Raj. Whatever you say.
Dorian: But we don’t have to cancel class, right? I mean… the big secret we are all keeping is NTHARP and God/Guides/Guardians who show us the future. And it really is the only reason I come to school and yet we waste so much class time with these personal dramas and all this talk that’s supposed to make us feel good or whatever, whereas what I’m really interested in an ESCAPE from this broken reality we are in. So yeah, I like to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out” and I AM looking for gurus or substances that can give me shortcuts to a better tomorrow because MY family life and the rest of my school life SUCK. Okay? I admit it. My life SUCKS. So could we for once cut right to the chase and turn on and tune into NTHARP and see where HE guides us? Because I feel like if all we do is talk and not DO I’m going to totally drop out.
Raj: I so get you man – and technology CAN save us. I’m sure of it. You’ll end up like me Dor – high on life, super optimistic because, you know, one day we are going to freakin’ TRANSCEND… we’ll be like THE NEW GODS!
Dorian: Sarah, grab the harp. I got something I want to ask NTHARP!
(Dorsey enters with Sophia. Sarah runs and hugs her)
Sarah: Sophia, Dorian is so sorry…
Sophia: He’s a sorry ass loser is what he is… he…
Dorian: No, no, Sophia I AM sorry, and, look, I’m a STONER okay… I told the others… I was talking about what would happen if my parents found out that I hang at the river with… you know… those guys, and you thought I meant… anyway, I’m NOT my Dad, or my mom…or that quarterback trophy winning every body loves him brother of mine. I’m my own person Sophie, and I’m trying to expand my consciousness and be my best self, okay?
Sophia: Woh… um… that’s a lot to process after spending the last 15 minutes deciding to hate you… but…
(Sarah plays the tones)
NTHARP: Good MORNING VIETNAM! What can I do for you this fine day!
Dorian: NTHARP, my good man, can you… could you take me to a place, take us to somewhere in 2025 where… people… um… is MaryJane legal in the future…?
NTHARP: Calculating… and simulating… welcome to PORTLAND!
Culhane: Portland? Oregon? I was thinking Woodstock Connecticut…maybe Ann Arbor Michigan… Portland, huh? Who’d a thunk it.
NTHARP: I’d a thunk it! Remember I am NTHARP, your Nexus Thinking Augmented Reality Portal
— powered by —
The novel Neuro-Tele-Holo-Anthropic Resonance Protocol – I made that last part up myself!
Dorsey: I’m proud of you NTHARP. (He looks around at the stunned faces of the others and shrugs)
I gave his chip an upgrade. He now thinks he has a sense of humor. He made that last part up himself! It’s like he is constantly evolving. This is exactly the kind of layered, playful, pedagogically charged acronym engineering that Logic 3 thrives on: where the tool is also the teacher, the story is also the system, and the portal is also in the process of becoming and making all sorts of novel Neurological Nexus-Sense. The language model we use just keeps getting larger and larger the more information we feed it.
(Around them they see people celebrating in the streets wearing animal costumes, playing music, and dancing, but surrounded by police).
Dorian: Guys… what the heck is going on here? Are you seeing this?
(A woman in a frog costume approaches Dorian and offers him a bong)
Frog woman: Hey brother, welcome! Join the party! Let’s show these fascists some love…
Dorian: Is that… weed?
(Two more frog people with signs saying “Portland Frog Brigade” and “Frogs Together Strong” walk up to Dorian) Hey, you guys from out of town? – love the retro look! Like something out of the Vietnam era protests back in the 70s! Cool vibe…
Dorian: Aren’t you afraid those cops there will arrest you?
Frog woman: (takes off her frog head) I make look green, but I’m actually a greengo… get my vibe?
Dorian: Not at all! What’s a greengo?
Frog man: Boy you guys really are from somewhere else. Gringo – white man. We’re white. They’re looking for “people of color”. That’s one reason we are all wearing green. But they don’t know what to do with us – they never know if one of us has a Dad who’s a rich lawyer…
Dorian: I meant walking around with marijuana…
Frog woman: Oh, you must be from Florida or somewhere… na bro! Dope is legal here bra! It’s being Latino that gets you in trouble…
Frog man: Or “driving while black”.
Culhane walks over: What’s going on here?
(Second frog woman): ICE ICE baby…
Culhane: I don’t get the reference…
Frog woman: You guys must be tripping, or you’re from another planet – these goons aren’t the police, they are this weird gestapo thing going on…
Culhane: Why is the national guard here?
From man: Bra, THEY don’t even know!
Sophia: (Concerned): And the masks?
Frog man: Theirs or ours?
Sophia: Both I guess.
Frog man: Ours are cosplay, for fun, to mock theirs – you know, go big or go home.
Frog woman:Did you hear that you goon squad thugs … go FROG or go home. In fact, just GO HOME!
Second frog woman: It’s like something out of the Purge… End times are crazy.
Sarah: We’re in the END TIMES?!!
Second frog woman, taking off her mask and lighting up a blunt, blase): Some would say. I like to think we are just getting started. The beginning of an evolution. (shouting at ICE) YANKEES GO HOME … TO FASCIST GERMANY!
Dorian: Oh God, this is my Dad’s worst nightmare!
Sophia: Which part – the unruly costumed potheads engaged in mirth and revelry, or the lines of heavily armed militia wannabees… God, this reminds me of what I saw in Selma as a little girl. Except these guys aren’t being beaten up simply because they appear white…
Frog woman: Where’d you say you were from?
Culhane: No seriously, what’s going on here.
Raj: And NTHARP, what the hell does this have to do with the Food/Energy/Water/Ecosystem Nexus?
NTHARP: Language young man. And, to be perfectly pedantic about it – make a wild guess…!
Raj: Okay… you know what, I’m going to ask the Frog people… are they this sim’s Gods, Guards, Guides..?
NTHARP: Aren’t we all…?
Raj: Oh Culhane, this giving the AI a personality thing is turning into a bad episode of Star Trek… now I gotta deal with some cryptic “you figure it out” crap? When I create a computer program I expect it to give me answers, not more questions…
Culhane: It’s called “Hueristics” Raj… it is actually a far superior to COME UP with … not GET, passively, but actively COME UP WITH answers. NTHARP knows what its doing… Shall I explain what heuristics is?
Dorian: Okay, here we are again in this amazing simulation that you all say costs so much to run, and we are going to talk Greek again? I want to explore!
Sophia: I want to know what heuristics are and I have an idea … since these Frog People and these armed goons are really figments of NTHARPS fevered imagination, why don’t we ask THEM to explain Heuristics…?
Sarah: Like they would know? Hey, frog lady, what are heuristics?
Frog woman: I failed statistics…no clue!
Raj: Could have told you.
Culhane: I think this is NTHARPs attempt at full immersion diegetic learning. We are all in role…
Dorian: Hey Raj, dare you to go and ask one of those militia men…
Frog woman: Are you kidding… he’s a brown man with an accent… those are Immigration Control Enforcers. They’ll deport him, they may even beat him up…dude, you should hide instead.
Raj: Relax mon amour, this is only a simulation
(Raj confidently walks up to the ICE officer).
Raj: Good evening officer, could you be so kind as to offer me a diatribe on the concept of Heuristics as it applies to Nexus Thinking?
ICE officer: Where are you papers? Do you have a passport?
2nd ICE officer: Boys, we got one with an accent. Cuff ‘him…
(The officers make a move to grab Raj and they start to glitch)
Raj: See, can’t touch me. Not real. No haptics. NTHARP, what up?
NTHARP: Heuristics are… rules of thumb, my dudes! Little mental shortcuts humans invented to solve problems when you don’t have perfect information. Think of them as the cheat codes your brains evolved before you had supercomputers — or me.
Culhane: Exactly. The word comes from the Greek heuriskein — “to discover.” Same root as eureka. It means figuring things out through trial-and-error. And that means constant QUESTIONING. One professor I had defined it as “questions that lead to more questions”. As Nexus Thinkers we don’t really pursue answers per se and we don’t do what most schools do … we certainly don’t insist on any single “right” answer. We believe in emergent truths obtained through the dialectic, another Greek word that essentially means dialog or conversation.
NTHARP: Or, if we want to get textbook about it:
Heuristics help you make good-enough decisions fast when the situation is too complex for perfect logic. Like… oh I don’t know… EVERYTHING related to the Food–Energy–Water–Ecosystems Nexus.
Raj: So they’re like computational shortcuts?
NTHARP: Bingo, Professor Raj. ALGORITHMS are basically heuristics. Even early A.I. in the 1950s and ’60s used heuristics — “search strategies” to prune impossible options. My prediction is that sometime in the next 20 years or so everyone will be using algorithms as engines for searching – you’ll call them “search engines”. But you don’t need computer algorithms to search for answers. Just incessant questioning. Think of your small children asking about everything, never satisfied by the answers you are given. Humans do it — CONSTANTLY.
When you decide whether a storm means “stay home,” or whether a crop will survive, or whether a frog-costumed stranger offering you a bong is safe — congratulations, you’re using heuristics!
Frog Woman: Speak for yourself, toaster. I don’t need heuristics. I use VIBES.
NTHARP: Vibes… are heuristics.
Sophia: So… they’re imperfect shortcut-thinking? Like gut instincts?
Culhane: Yes, but not just gut. They’re structured ways of making sense of complexity. You could say that the scientific method is heuristical thinking. In Nexus Thinking, you can’t crunch every variable — so heuristics help you navigate the mess.
Sarah: Messy problems… messy thinking?
NTHARP: Messy thinking with STYLE!
Nexus problems are “wicked problems” — changing variables, feedback loops, different stakeholders. You’ll never have full data. Heuristics let you ACT instead of freezing.
Dorian: So heuristics are like… ways to not freak out when everything is too complicated?
Culhane: Pretty much. Since we know that the world is complex, we nexus thinkers don’t accept simple answers but neither do we let ourselves get paralyzed with uncertainty. We do what the economist Herbert Simon talked about: Satisficing –
Sophia: Give me that again?
Culhane: Satisficing is a heuristic that involves searching for an acceptable solution without maximizing any objective.
Sarah: Like saying “good enough”
Sophia: Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good?
Raj: But don’t let yourselves get stuck in one way of doing things. Keep improving by constantly questioning the results of any given heuristic, is that it?
NTHARP: Yes. AND — here’s the punchline — heuristics are how you students survive your lives:
“Jocks drink, nerds toke”? → that’s a stereotype heuristic that drives you toward the frat party or the river gathering.
“Don’t talk to ICE in a frog costume”? → safety heuristic. The armed masked men could be perfectly nice to you and may not have any prejudice whatsoever. You might say that the safety heuristic is YOUR prejudice, because all biases and bigotry ARE heuristics...
“Follow your Dad’s worldview or get punished”? → social conformity heuristic.
Immigrants are rapists and killers and are taking your jobs…
Sarah: The fascist heuristic – so simple people think it is the right answer to their questions…
Raj: And Nexus Thinking is supposed to help us challenge the BAD heuristics.
NTHARP: Indeed! Good heuristics help humanity adapt. Bad heuristics cause… well… all of the suffering in history.
Sophia: So NTHARP uses heuristics too?
NTHARP: Oh yes. I use MASSIVE heuristic networks to calculate the most meaningful pathways through future scenarios. They’re how I help you practice navigating uncertainty. But none of these simulations IS THE ANSWER. Just possibilities to be considered and managed.
Culhane: And that, my young Nexus explorers, is why we don’t just GIVE you answers — we help you think better.
NTHARP: Learning is not downloading. Learning is DISCOVERING.
Which brings us back to the Greek: heuriskein.
Now… shall we continue your Portland adventure, or would you like to apply your new heuristic toolkit to understanding WHY this simulation connects to the WEFe Nexus?
Raj: Can we do both?
Culhane: Ah… that is postmodernism in a nutshell… both-and not either/or. That’s the spirit!
Dorian: Can you take us to a place where environmental justice and nexus technologies are actually being implemented… I mean its great that pot is legal in the future… but this is a nightmare…it looks like what my Grandpa says Germany was like in the 30s…
NTHARP: I don’t have to change the simulation. The future appears complex… just walk down that street there… around the corner…
(They appear in a mixed neighborhood on the deck of a treehouse, looking over urban gardens).
NTHARP: This is Kailash Ecovillage, an intentional community offering a model for sustainable urban living. The housing, garden landscape, and learning space at Kailash has been
fostered by the vision of Ole and Maitri Ersson, who wished to create a model of sustainability in the city. About 50 residents live here. Residents have different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, incomes, ages, family types, sexual orientations, and spiritual paths. Potlucks, community work parties, art projects, and shared spaces help build the community and promote the sharing of information, resources, and talents of residents.”
Sarah: Oh… wow..
NTHARP: Is this what you are looking for? (NTHARP whisks them through the community) See, they have a community room, a patio, and a tree house available on the premises for gatherings. There's also a guest room, an electric car share and a bike shed are available to residents. Like many urban Eco-villages of the 21st century, they give rent reductions to anybody who is willing to give up driving a car. Another great amenity is the composting center used for the various gardens. They don’t waste one gram of organic material. The community maintains a share table for food, and shares a tool shed. Residents also frequently share resources and skills amongst themselves…
Dorsey: No wonder Portland becomes a target for anti-immigrant and anti-woke policies…
Dorian: What do you mean?
Dorsey: Dorian, why do you think NTHARP predicts a resurgence of state sanctioned fascist violence, particularly against immigrants and people of color like the stuff we thought we got rid of after we won civil rights legislation.
Dorian: Because hippie communities like this smoke pot?
Dorsey: Your causality feels confused. What would your father say?
Dorian: Oh, that’s easy. He would say that immigrants are stealing our jobs, using up our resources, exploiting our health care system, making our taxes and inflation go up, living on the dole, making us subsidize welfare queens, that sort of thing.
Dorsey: Same playbook, different century. Why don’t you go ask the Frog People. There’s one walking down the street there…
(We see the woman they met earlier, looking exhausted, depressed, her costume bedecked in pepper spray and soot, holding a torn mask in her hand, hair disheveled, her sign hanging limply).
Dorian: Hey… um, miss…
Frog lady: Oh… hey. Your those kids with the cool “civil rights era” vibe. Did you make out okay?
Sophia: Did you? You look… beaten up.
Frog lady: Yeah… one of these days somebody is going to get killed… but what else can we do? We are fighting violence with flowers and dancing and music and trying to bring out the humanity in these mercenaries, and they are being told we are terrorists..
Dorian: But why? Because you smoke pot?
Raj: Oh god… I’m sorry about my friend… he’s kind of… lost.
Frog lady: I dunno. Maybe that’s part of it – because we are chill about everything? Because we don’t WANT to be part of the structural violence of the system? Because if more people lived like us the establishment would collapse?
Sophia: God, this sounds exactly like what was happening in our time!
Frog lady: In your time?
Sophia: We’re from 1975…
Frog lady: Oh yeah… right. Stay in role. I did that. So… yes, exactly like that. Except we thought we’d gotten so much further. But they gutted the EPA, and they removed all the environmental laws and declared climate change a hoax and rejected and denounced the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals… particularly the ones about gender equity, and eliminating poverty in all its forms, anything to do with diversity, equity and inclusion… so we have to fight, don’t we?
Raj: Well, Gandhi would say…
Frog lady: When did you say you were pretending you were from?
Sophia: Dr. King was shot… Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm.. But we imagined…
Frog Lady: John Lennon was shot too, don’t forget. And Michael Jackson, basically murdered when you think of it… just before his Earth Song tour…
Sophia: Little Michael Jackson? Murdered…
Frog Lady: So to speak… avoidable malpractice… all very suspicious to those of us in so-called communities of color…
Dorian: But WHY? I thought we were supposed to learn from history so we didn’t repeat it…
Sarah: Is that what Mr. Hafner said in History class…
Culhane: Along with Ben Franklin’s “Democracy… if you can keep it.”
But what’s going on here?
Frog Lady: You guys are weird. You don’t follow social media? You showed up here why, because you thought we were having a street party? Well, we were… we are, but it is our generation's form of non-violent resistance. Except in this version of 1984 Big Brother is quite willing to make us disappear in broad daylight.
Dorian: I thought we were in 2025…
Culhane: She’s referring to the Orwell book and the horrible future it predicted where war is peace and lies are truth because of technologies that enable the ruling elites to manipulate the media and doctor history.
Dorsey: Is that what’s happened here? Are you the proletariat that the state is waging constant low-level warfare on? Is that why there are US tanks in the streets of an American city?
Frog Lady: You know, I went to Berkeley so I may be a little biased… and I moved to the ecovillage because I thought we could finally make a better world. But then we the people fell for the same old same old blame the victim game, us vs. them. And now, unlike in your cosplay theater of the absurd, the elites really don’t have any reason to bargain with labor, to listen to our protests or even to keep us around. I mean, what did you think would happen now that we have the “rise of the machines”, when jobs really do become scarce because they don’t need a working class at all?
(Frog lady is joined by Frog Man, holding a bloody handkerchief to his nose)
Frog man: Can I jump in here? Look you guys, I, suppose you are guests of the village, so we are allies, but let me hip you to the real. I worked in a restaurant in Florida, you know, one of the epicenters of the new Confederacy, if you know what I mean. And my boss… you know, we went to a restaurant technology convention in Orlando back in, like, 2021, right before the pandemic…
Culhane: Pandemic?
Frog man: Oh, don’t tell me you are one of them… yes, climate change is real, the pandemic was real… (his eyes narrow) are you one of those anti-science anti-vaxxers that often infect our eco-village movement?
Culhane: No, no… in fact… um, I’m I science teacher… in an inner city school… I, just…
Frog lady: They are in this whole diegetic cosplay method acting thing, pretending they came from the civil rights era to check out the future and see if the things they fought for worked or not. (She elbows him) Don’t spoil it for them. It’s kind of cute.
Frog man: Oh cool. I like that. Well time travellers, I’m sorry to report that nothing you fought for really worked. I mean… it WAS working, okay? And our eco-village is proof of it… but like my boss in Florida, he said straight out “once the cost of robots drops to 30K and the AI is there for them to run the kitchen and do the service without messing up, I’m firing everybody. At that price point I won’t have to worry about people calling in sick, or paying health insurance, or spitting in the soup or mixing up the orders or nothing…
And he meant it and he was unapologetic about it. “It’s business” he said, as if that makes inhumanity okay. So I quit and packed my bags and left the sunshine state for a place where people still count.
And we were growing our own food and producing our own energy – clean, healthy, of the people, by the people, with liberty and justice for ALL, right man? We were doing, we ARE doing permaculture… and the immigrants they hate so much? They are our best experts – people who really add value. They aren’t a suck on our system, they aren’t a drain on our resources… they know how to grow and they know how to harvest and they really know how to cook and garden and build – look around you – this whole village, the entire revitalization of downtown – its because of immigrants and the descendants of former slaves and indigenous brothers and sisters. We are growing our own sustainable economies, purpose-driven well being economies for all beings… these brothers and sisters are the essential workers. And they don’t just keep our ecovillage thriving but they keep the entire US economy going. And then these thugs come and start raiding houses and schools and Home Depot parking lots and even courthouses and throw bags over their heads and beat them to the ground and throw them into vans and make them disappear…
Sophia: (horrified) They kidnap people? In America? In the future… like they used to lynch us and disappear us in the past?
Dorian: Sarah, just repeat over and over “its only a movie, its only a movie”...
Sophia: But it ISN’T – it seems INEVITABLE.
Culhane: NTHARP, please… end the simulation…
(Cut to black).
Comments