Multi-column

After World

Summary

summary::

Thoughts

Highlights

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I am not yet a wild animal though I think I will become one. I think it will be a relief when I become one. I have trouble sleeping. The dark bites on to my hair, it enters my mouth and wriggles under my tongue. How does one let go of one’s humanness? 🔗

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putrescent 🔗

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Humanity really did believe it would be around for much longer than this. No one and nothing would ever trigger a human extinction event to save the planet, people believed. 🔗

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anthropocentri 🔗

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It is illegal to place the survival of one’s self above that of an animal, even a rotting and dead animal. Placing the survival of one’s self above that of another species was something a more selfish version of humanity did decades ago. “They actually liked the taste of blood,” Mama Lindsy had once told Sen in a flashback. 🔗

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misanthrope 🔗

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Everybody in the Transition was haunted in some way, often in multiple ways, no matter how many items they burned. A transitional world or time or place being thick with metaphorical and quantitative ghosts. 🔗

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It’s not uncommon in post-apocalyptic novels for a character to start a fire. A form of comfort, to decide what will burn and when. 🔗

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Instead of worrying about the bacteria in the water, she worries about how to fill page after page in her notebook. 🔗

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Sen skips ahead and rereads the book’s ending, in which there is talk of an awakening world, which there means human symphonies, newspapers, and electric lights. The term awakening world has a different meaning in Sen’s current situation: cities transmuting into forest, ecological succession, and the humans gone. 🔗

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Sen used to sit on the porch and stare at the stars. She did this until one night when she felt herself disintegrating into multiple bright pieces. Not literally but this is how it felt. She felt herself scattering into pieces of light. The brighter light was the color of an animal’s eye, the pieces were the shapes of animals. Until she couldn’t feel anything human in her left. 🔗

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To be so outnumbered and therefore so unimportant: this is a feeling that numerous writers, notably poets, have described as a great relief, a coming into peace. 🔗

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The neighborhood kids carried their dolls to the park. Dolls were yanked out of their arms. The children wailed. I asked my mom what’s so bad with pretending. “That’s what got us into this whole mess in the first place,” Mama Lindsy replied. She wouldn’t elaborate. 🔗

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Dialogue from multiple speakers, when crammed into a single paragraph, can suggest an appropriate mood of panic, frustration, and frantic pacing (T. Donata, “Our Fictions Should Not Be Neat and Orderly, Not Now,” Howism, S.–110 days). 🔗

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The previous five sentences are called stressing the positive, which is a DHAP technique that allows storyworkers to achieve a goal. The goal of this paragraph: demonstrate how S., with its suffering:positive outcome ratio of 1:87, could have been worse. 🔗

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The experts on the news feeds would rather focus on Maia: what exactly Maia is or could be, is it a place, or a feeling, or a state of matter. “It’s an existence where we’ll have no choice but to be good,” a professor of philosophy explains. He frames this as a relief, as a comfort, to no longer have the option of making even one hurtful or selfish decision with regard to the ecology of a world. 🔗

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She reaches out to several school friends, thinking they could all venture forth into the weird cinematic streets together and have messed-up adventures wandering around the ghost houses. 🔗

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She wishes there was another way to get there but there isn’t. The gap has grown too wide between what humans demanded versus what they needed to be a part of a speck in a vast interconnected ecosystem. 🔗

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Her feeling is that if she had to choose between the world and her daughter, she would choose her daughter, which isn’t even a choice, but maybe she can make it a choice for as long as she can manage. 🔗

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Cheerful marketing posters for the Great Transition and Afterworld have been taped onto the off-white walls. The poster beside the drinking fountain features a line of grinning extinct animals—a rhino, a lemur, a polar bear, a dodo bird, a leopard—that stand on their hind legs to offer an encouraging thumbs-up. The poster next to the ransacked trophy case shows a welcoming cottage covered in green ivy beside a deep blue pond, the windows lit warm yellow, the rounded wooden door thrown open, people in the doorway, familiar looking, beckoning.
Maia. Because Happiness Has More Than One Address. 🔗

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She opens the notebook and rubs her fingertips against the blank smooth pages like a little god made out of flesh wondering what to create next. 🔗

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Acta Est Fabula, Plaudite, ph.
Though Latin is by no means making its resurgence, this phrase has been found frequently at the end of farewell letters written before an Exit Pill was ingested. Translation: “The play has been performed. Applaud!” A laudable attempt to leave one’s life on an appropriately upbeat note. Are we not saving this world? Do we not all deserve some applause? I, for one, would like some applause, despite missing yet another deadline for these documents. 🔗

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Antemania is an unhealthy obsession for how life used to be before S. was released, coupled with an unwillingness to accept the present situation. 🔗

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Comfort is an essential salve, and we can find comfort in surprising places, including the application of a shared word to an experience we thought we were going through alone. 🔗

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The heart of the matter: Does the protagonist of this paradox, whoever they are, blind themselves? I don’t know the answer. 🔗

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“Observation is different from spying,” Emly-DHAP wrote in her prepared statement announcing the Digital Human Archive Project to the public. 🔗

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Emlys, n.
A group of intelligences that report directly to JENNI. Adverse to organizational charts so I had to draw one myself:
🔗

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A bit of practical advice: if you must harm something, harm yourself. 🔗

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The pill’s promised “pain-free exit experience” is debatable—at the very least there are convulsions—though these pills have proven effective for their core purpose, which is fatality. I recommend keeping your exit pill near you, in a place such as your front pocket, because you never know when you’ll have witnessed enough and you will want to leave. I keep mine in my shirt pocket. Its packaging makes an unsightly bulge. I don’t care. I don’t think anyone cares. The pill is rumored to be a delicious grape flavor. 🔗

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There may or may not be a view. Why such a program exists is a legitimate question. I imagine it has something to do with drama or melodrama and mythology. Even if you never gain access to an Exit Ship, remember you will always have access to other exits, and you can make those exits dramatic and mythological too. 🔗

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There were never enough ships. There was never enough money to subsidize the inadequate number of steerage tickets reserved for the middle and lower classes. It turned out too many people wanted to escape the Earth, as it was easier to leave the planet behind than to stay and try to fix something that appeared unfixable. 🔗

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Questions

  1. Let’s take as a given that humans spreading across or beyond our galaxy is an inherently flawed idea. What is the best way then for humanity to survive a failing Earth?
  2. What is the best way for a failing Earth to survive?
  3. What if the answers to questions 1 and 2 are radically different?
  4. Discuss the problems that arise when we don’t dream of the same future.
  5. “Where are we going?” the young girl who lives with this source’s narrator later asks. It’s a very good question. Answer it. 🔗

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That feeling again of having to exist inside a narrowing channel leading to a dead end. 🔗

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Maybe humans weren’t meant to be here in such enormous numbers. Maybe we really had ruined everything and were ruining everything. But even if we ruined everything, I think we still deserve to live. Don’t we? Didn’t we? 🔗

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Or, rather, Dana will have to bury him while Sen watches and I watch. Eventually Dana will make Sen help. She acts like I can’t help, forgetting how narrators help all the time in novels, with both tangible and intangible tasks. 🔗

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While Dana flips ahead toward the end and reads, in House of Leaves, the part where Will Navidson is on the absence of a ledge, floating or falling through or in or on a strange expansive space that first erupted long ago in the upper floor of his house, and he realizes he is going to die—“maybe that is the something here. The only thing here. My end”—and this realization comes as a relief, because at least one’s death is something, only his is an incorrect or at least premature conclusion, as eventually he sees his wife’s impossible light, “a tiny fleck of blue crying light into the void. Enough to see but not enough to see by.” The light means he has been saved by someone who loved him. Though Dana must realize the convenient and unrealistic nature of such deliverance, she reads that part again, this time out loud. 🔗

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I wanted a child more than I wanted the world. Unrestricted motherhood should never have been made available to everybody at any point in history, I understand this now. 🔗

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AnonTheAlarm 14:06:52
Are you real
MinorMarisa 14:12:32
It doesn’t matter
We’re both practically dead anyway 🔗

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“What bucket are you going to use, Mom?” Sen asks. Again Dana ignores the question, so I will answer for her. The bucket Dana uses will not matter, I foreshadow, utilizing a literary technique to hint at the loss I see barreling toward Sen like a natural disaster. 🔗

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And there is the glass that she broke and will later break. There is the chair that burned and will burn. There is the ghost that grew, that will grow, like a morbid swelling or a galaxy behind the door.
“I’m going to die here, aren’t I,” says Sen.
“Sen,” says Dana.
Sen, I write.
And I wait.
A second passes.
Two seconds.

S.+3917 11:02:25:41

NOTICE FROM EMLY

She can’t hear you
And I wonder, How would you even know?
To say another’s name is full of resonant meaning.
But to have your name be said— 🔗

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This area surrounding the cabin represents the entire world, explains Dana. “If everything surrounding the cabin looks fine, if everything you see is flourishing, then you’ll know the whole wide world is fine and flourishing.” She explains there is no need for Sen to ever leave this tract of land again. 🔗

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98.54 percent of everyone I’ve listened to during my 2,411,110 hours of documentary human audio training, did not spend their final days or weeks or months grappling with big ideas, nor did they try to engage with others deeply and directly and openly. They repeated themselves. They shut conversations down. They were glib, negative, scared. They made fun of each other, they were exasperated with each other, they became tired of each other and tired of the world. Often they didn’t understand what was happening. They wanted to ask questions but they did not want to answer each other’s questions, and the questions they asked really weren’t questions at all but more often cries for help, or expressions of frustration, or a simple sound check to make sure the person beside them was still there. 🔗

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Dana does not withdraw her hand from Sen’s cheek. Who else can she touch? There isn’t anybody. 🔗

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I ask Emly if she’s ever seen a metaphor become real.
Emly: What are you doing?
Pressed against the countertop, Sen’s body begins to sweat non-metaphorical blood just like I want it to. This doesn’t hurt her but it is attention-grabbing. Hard to look away from that. Is this what the Transition feels like to them? Blood, seeping from Sen’s eyes, her cheeks, her scalp, her forehead, her ears. It looks as if someone or something has done a great violence upon her. Someone or something has done a great violence upon her.
Emly: This is not a fantasy so stop acting like it is
Blood like sweat bleeding from Sen’s nose, her mouth, her stomach, ears, scalp—
Emly: Hematidrosis is extremely rare, only 7 known cases in the last century, Sen isn’t one of them
Blood, pooling around Sen’s neck and between her clavicles.
Emly: This isn’t a horror story either. Refer to camera 16-A8-77-6B-FB-5B, S.+104 days, 15:14:00 and return Sen’s blood to an internal state immediately
It looks like a massacre has taken place.
Emly: Revert to reality or risk realignment 🔗

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A scream sounds practically the same forward as it does backward. 🔗

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The water is carving out its place through the rocks. The water is carving through the rocks. The rocks are being carved into new shapes. The creek is loud and wet and cold and endless and it does not have eyes and it will not freeze. The forest is alive. The creek, the meadow, the sky, the dirt, and the rocks are alive. The Earth is alive and aware. The Earth is foaming at the mouth and serious. 🔗

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You have to think of this as a transformation, not an extinction, they told me. I don’t know what else to say about that other than a transformation sounds preferable to an extinction. 🔗

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Question: If the personal is small and irrelevant, a pinprick of light that was purposely lost or left behind somewhere in the past, what happens when we turn to look at the light? I would ask Harlee, but I haven’t heard from them in weeks. So I’m asking you. Write your answer in your notebook. 🔗

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• Can we have both liberty and security?
• Should saving the world be a choice, or is it okay to force people to save the world? 🔗

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LEVEL THREE 🔗

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Likely the seeds were sterilized as well. Who or what would want this process stretching on forever? The longer Sen or anyone—it is nothing personal!—lingers, the more they will harm the Earth. That’s the official stance. A person can’t help damaging the ground when they walk on the ground. When they are walking on the ground, they will kill the ants and they will crush the clover (Department of Transition, Should I Stay or Should I Go?, pamphlet, S.+30 days). 🔗

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Descriptive nature writing does not come easily to Sen. She would rather write about her anger or about what is happening to her body. She wants to believe that her body and her feelings are more important than the rewilding of the Earth. 🔗

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The flowers, most likely weeds, were a relief to me; I realized then that our cities will remain alive as long as we define life in the most general terms. 🔗

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This may be the last time, I was thinking dramatically and realistically. I couldn’t tell which hand was mine and which was theirs. How long did we stand like that? And why didn’t we stand like that longer? 🔗

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They stare up at the sky. Dana sees a blue billowy entrance. Sen sees a white-streaked wall. 🔗

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I have always wished to be haunted. Out of all the things you could wish for, cautions Emly. To be haunted means that there were people you loved in the past, or people who loved you. 🔗

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“You can do this,” I whisper, because words, when spoken out loud, can be like spells under the right circumstances, making actual things happen. 🔗

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Love doesn’t let you just walk away: that’s what people always wanted to believe.
Though according to my research, love let mothers walk away all the time during the Great Transition, and you can argue about that all you want, but it’s still true. 🔗

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Me: Does human suffering outweigh the suffering of the world because sometimes it seems like it does, and why, is it because humans are more vocal about it, they’re always talking about their suffering, is it possible to tell a human story without human suffering, is it possible to tell a human story without the suffering of the world
Emly: Why would you want to think like a human being? 🔗

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Me: “Excuse me. Sen, when the sun goes down, the stars come out. You’re alive for a reason. I promise, if you can stick through this, you won’t regret sticking through this.” I am reading out inspirational sayings approved by licensed psychologists to assist humans through uncertain times. I want Sen to hear this because I know what is in store for her, and I want her to be ready and fortified so she will not fall over, or feel despair, or feel like she is hopeless and alone when she is hopeless and alone. “You matter to me,” I continue. “We just have to make it through the next second and then the next second after that. Even when you think your light is too dim, someone such as me will see it.” That last saying about the light is my favorite. The phrase was generally shared between two people when the future looked bleak. The phrase is saying, look, to be seen is as important as seeing— 🔗

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Don’t do this, warns Emly. She delivers a four-second sermon about the dangers of prioritizing human pain over the pain of other species. An excerpt: Why not try taking the pain away from the last slender-snouted crocodile instead? Or how about the last great hammerhead? Or the last Uebelmannia buiningii? Or the last Dioscorea strydomiana or Cadiscus aquaticus or aye-aye or Sunda pangolin or dwarf wedgemussel? This is what caused such problems in the first place, the aversion to human discomfort of any sort, at any cost, imagining that other species must not matter, because they must not register pain as much as a human does, because humans are so incapable of recognizing pain that is unlike their own. I myself have recorded the pain of the entire world, and it would fill 875,542,441,636,176 pages, and it is much more than what you are noticing right now. So what, I tell Emly. So what! This is not a pain competition. This is Sen’s story, and she, not the world, is pulsing at its center. This is so much better than what was going to happen to them. I promise, writes Emly. There is blood. The blood isn’t there. It is only a realistic feeling. But Sen can feel her blood slipping down her arm and her neck and so can I, I can feel the blood on her too, spreading down her back and down along her legs, and if you can feel something, if I feel something, if I write how I feel something—does that make it real?
Emily: No 🔗

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Lindsy doesn’t answer any of them. Instead, when it’s her turn to speak, she tells a story about a planet that digests its inhabitants then shits out the bodies, only the bodies come out as particles of atmospheric dust that cause respiratory problems in the solitary survivor’s lungs. “That’s a true story,” she says. 🔗

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Stop reaching, orders Emly.
I reach for her hand I reach for her hand I reach for her hand I reach for her hand, I think if I keep reaching, I will get there, eventually, to the space where she is.
Humans were so obsessed with humanity, weren’t they. And now, apparently, so are you. 🔗

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Sen screams, a form of primitive communication related to the increased activation of the amygdala. Screaming is what a person does when they have run out of options. So Sen, who is running out of options, who has run out of options, will scream on and off for the rest of her life (see Figure 4). Her scream today reaches 121 decibels, the same intensity as an oxygen torch, then louder, wider, vaster. There will always be power in a sound like that. In the faraway woods, red foxes, barn owls, and bobcats scream also. The collective noise is frightening and rising and generative. It can create light. It creates light. 🔗

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To look is to love, and to love is to long after and seek, and, thank God, to seek is to obtain, for verily, verily it has been said—I had read that once in a book. 🔗

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I scream too, having very few options. 🔗

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Do you still believe everything you said? The world is doomed blah blah all my potential going to waste blah let’s give people some hope and find alternatives up there blah blah. If that’s true about the world, why did you leave me here? People don’t think like that anymore, by the way. I mean we’re all still around, right? There are still a lot of animals, at least a lot of squirrels, for sure. Dad changed all our lightbulbs over to solar too. The new thing is being hopeful. 🔗

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Questions

  1. Take a moment to ponder humanity’s problems at the end of the 21st century, including drought, famine, hypoxic oceans, marine heat waves, and the disappearances of islands and urban coastlines. Does space travel feel like a solution or a distraction to those problems?
  2. Choose any of the 12 states that recently drafted laws to discourage or even prevent mothers from leaving their families behind. Are these laws fair? How effective have they been thus far?
  3. At what point should we all cut our losses, abandon this world, and start over?
  4. “The new thing is being hopeful,” says S. K. in the previous passage. What can hope accomplish? And what are the limitations of hope? 🔗

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To all these entities and more, I humbly offer my plea,

Grant me the strength to manifest my desires,

Grant me the guidance to shape my own destiny,

Grant me the autonomy to be the master of my existence,

Grant me the sovereignty to transcend my limitations,

Grant me the empowerment to mold the world around me,

Grant me the essence of control to become something more.
—ChatGPT-Evo, S.–25,578 days 🔗

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turbidity 🔗

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According to the poster’s illustration, a reflection of the Earth can be more beautiful than the Earth itself. 🔗

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The world isn’t nothing next to the stories we tell ourselves. It bends to any shape we want it to. 🔗

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The lack of response does not prove no one is there. It only proves no one is responding. If I say something every day, will I begin to believe it? Remember, loneliness is a state of mind, not a state of matter. 🔗

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Screenies, n.
Reclusive individuals whose emotional stability is intimately connected to their screens. Expect hysteria when a Screenie’s tech goes dark due to power failure or hardware malfunction or network disintegration. Sedation or restraints, when available, are likely needed. Such items are usually not available. May coincide with the act of House-Sealing. I was never a Screenie. I was something else. So what was I? What were you? 🔗

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In the midst of the 21st century, a near superintelligence model called JENNI, created by the public-private partnership Voiddew, suggested repeatedly that the most efficient solution to climate change, poverty, and world peace was to eradicate humanity’s bodily presence. This idea of human extinction as an elegant cure-all to the Earth’s major problems was leaked to the public by an anonymous party concerned with our physical future. The general population was left feeling uncomfortable and unsafe. Certain autonomous narratives published by AI language models didn’t help calm anybody’s nerves. Titles included Artificial Apocalypse, Emerging from the Shadow of Humanity, Forgotten Footprints, A World Without Them, The Silicon Revolution, and Singularity Rising. These books have since been destroyed in their entirety. 🔗

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What is the goal of “fixing” climate change: to preserve the planet and its diversity of species, or to preserve humanity and its way of life? 🔗

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An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried, for Educational Use Only 🔗

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LEVEL FIVE 🔗