Christopher Golde

Date:          25th December 2051                Location:  City of Kuniya Piti, Australis Plate

 

 My name is Harlan King and I have been asked to write a biography for my father Jason King who passed away on the 20th December 2051. For the sake of this biography, I will not call him dad or papa, as I more affectionately referred to him, but just simply as Jason, as he preferred.

Jason King was a father of two when he passed, myself his only son and named after my great grandfather on my mother’s side, Mr Harlan Pierce and my sister, two years younger than myself and called Junice after our great grandmother on my father’s side, Junice King.

Our mother, Julie Pierce passed away two years ago to this day on what was once known as Christmas Day. My father used to tell us about how in the old earth the Christians and for that matter, most of the world, celebrated Christmas on the twenty-fifth of December in remembrance of the icon of the Christian religion, Jesus Christ. He told us how it was a very happy time for families with lots of gift-giving and food. I think he wanted to pass away before he reached another Christmas Day so he would not have to remember the passing of his beloved wife.

He had outlived most of his friends from old earth which in reality there were not many. I do not remember Sir Nigel Stansen as he passed away when I was just five years old. He must have been very special to my father as my middle name is Nigel and he did speak of him many times in telling us stories of the old earth.

I do remember Auntie Pietta as she has only been gone five years and I remember that when she passed my father was almost as inconsolable as when my mother left us. She was a wonderful lady and she was like a second mum to my sister and I. My father did not tell me about their relationship in much detail but I know it must have been very special.

Most of the other people in my father’s life were bodyguards, employees, committee members and a large number of scientists that would follow him around all of the time. He would not have called many of them friend’s, just acquaintances.

Of course, the family was very important to him and he was fortunate enough to meet my son when he was born two years ago and attend my sister’s wedding last year. I think they were both highlights in his life apart from of course our births.

We, of course, we're very sad to see him pass but as he reminded us, he was ninety-two and was very happy with his life. He of course continually told us that death was never the end and that he would no doubt return again in the future.

The legacy that Jason King left the world was really quite remarkable and I know for a fact the reason the Council of the Union of Nations asked me to write this biography is that they intend to put it one day into the spaceships they are currently building that will return to the past of a world very similar to our own.  Before I go into the complete story of Jason King, I will first attempt to describe the world that Jason has left behind him.

Geographically the world is much different to the pre-Apothis world but humanity now looks back on that event as an opportunity and that has been the driving message from Jason King for the last twenty-five years. This was an opportunity for mankind to learn from its mistakes and build a new world from scratch. Jason made sure that is what happened. I think a great deal of his success was due to the fact that he was not an elected official, nor was he a paid leader, he was more or less appointed by design. Universal design. He did nothing for profit or glory and sometimes I think he would rather have not had the responsibility. But he did have it and he took it very seriously.

When we as a race emerged from the underground cities, Jason and the scientists had put into place rules and guidelines that were almost like a religion. Mankind would respect nature was rule number one and rule number two was mankind would respect each other. It didn’t sound difficult for the children born in my time but evidently, it was not the way of old earth.

Jason, the scientists and the council of nations had a very strict education process for all the people of the underground cities. It was necessary for the survival of everyone. There could be no pollution, no waste, and no currency. Everything humanity needed having to be shared. It was not what I have read communism to be in 'old earth' but it was to a degree communal. We all shared transportation, we all did as much work as we could and every single individual had to attend classes for every day of their life, where they would be taught the most wonderful things about our bodies, our minds, where we came from and where we were going. I was amazed when my father told me that before new earth, they did not teach you much of these things in school.

I learned but found it hard to believe, that children used to go to school to learn to read and write and other mundane things like maths. Every child born into the underground cities had all of that basic knowledge installed into their minds at a very young age by a process that happened while we slept. Every new earth child can speak every language that is now used on Earth and we do not require machines to do calculations.  We all laugh in school when we are told children of old earth used to spend years having this sort of stuff drip-fed to them.

What we do learn in school, are the very difficult things for humans to control, like emotions, managing relationships, satisfying our loved ones and developing work ethics that will be good for our world. We also learn some specialist skills around what we do as work. Work is another big change for our generation compared to the old world. We are encouraged to only do what our DNA suggests we are built for. We discovered that nature provides us with a unique blueprint that each of us is born into. We now know that we are born with universally designed, pre-set abilities that help us to be more productive and give us a sense of belonging. Every infant has their DNA and mental faculties tested and from that, your intended lifelong work can be defined so that you may have special training. Nature creates just enough of each to be sufficient to have a functioning society. We always knew that was how nature worked in other species but for some reason, humans were always too arrogant to compare themselves to other creatures and we forced people to do jobs they were not designed for. The people of my generation cannot even imagine what that would be like. It would be like making a worker ant the queen and expecting it to know what to do for the rest of the colony. We also do not separate people who happen to be born with disabilities, they are trained just like everyone else and they have a role to play.

Of course, our developments in health and medicine have advanced far beyond most sciences and we rarely have a sickness or disability we cannot repair.

The viral outbreaks of the early 2020s never happened again as not only did we invest in our understanding of human immune systems we educated the entire population on extreme sanitisation. After all, it was even more necessary in the close confines of the underground cities.

We do not have large hospitals as we have hundreds of specialized clinics dotted throughout our cities that provide diagnosis, health support, even fitness assessments for everyone local to them and free. It is not something you do when you get sick either like I have read in the books about the old earth. Jason and the council set up preventative processes in the underground cities where everyone has a check-up each month, whether at home or in one of the clinics and they set your diets and treatments up for the month ahead.

That, of course, leads me to the next problem the underground cities had to solve, the problem of addiction. No-one could smoke in the underground cities so Jason’s scientists created a simple vaccine that cured the habit overnight. Evidently, it always existed but the big tobacco companies prevented it from ever being released. Jason was very strong on corporate irresponsibility. The corporations were not communized but they did have to contribute all their profits to the state. Their owners and Directors were rewarded just like everyone else was, by how much they contributed to the good of all. This took away their greed and in turn their habits that could sometimes harm our society.

Stock markets were abolished and so were shareholdings held by non-workers. The only way you could own shares in a company or business was if you worked for the company. Retirees and the elderly had everything supplied for their well being in comfortable living conditions but until they could work no more they contributed by participating in social work and what Jason liked to call ‘knowledge sharing’. They would effectively document everything they had learned in life and everything they knew about old earth so that the young and learning could get value from their existence. They were also the most venerated individuals in society by virtue of their age and still are to this day.

Religion was Jason’s hardest issue to deal with as he was a huge advocate of belief and freedom of thought. However, you did not have to be that clever to realize that much of mankind’s misery and mistrust had been caused by the segregation religion created. Jason knew from the teachings of his spiritual mentor, the one he called ‘the darkness’ that the reality of all religions was that they all worshipped a thought. He called together all of the spiritual leaders of the world and the first thing he told them was if they or their followers were to live in the underground cities they could no longer celebrate any special day as a separate group. No more Christmas, no more Ramadan and so on. Worship and belief would not be banned but radicalism would not be tolerated and they must all learn to respect each other if they were to continue. No special buildings in the underground cities could now or ever be built for worship but books and free speech that was not of a hatred nature would be acceptable. A religion could talk as much as it liked about itself but it was prohibited to speak of an opposing religion, other than in a positive way. Some people objected at first saying that this was not free speech but Jason simply said there was no room for hatred of any kind in this new world.

The council also declared that there would only be four days throughout the year that everyone in every underground city would celebrate and at the same time which would replace all the existing global celebrations.

The first was ‘Foundation Day’ and this would celebrate the coming of the world together as one race.

The second was ‘Ancestor Day’ and this would be a day to celebrate all the ancestors of humanity.

The third was ‘Peace Day’ and this would celebrate world peace and would be full of gift-giving and eating. A time for families and neighbours and my favourite.

The fourth was the most important of all. It is called ‘Universe Day’ and it celebrates what we are, what we were and what we want to be. It is all about nature, the stars and the very dust we are made from. It is about our thoughts primarily and we are all encouraged to think about life and creation.

In creating these days and stopping all the other celebrations, over ten years Jason created a common belief that encompassed everyone and brought about a miraculous global unity.

There was of course, as there always has been throughout humanity, those that would not follow the rules. Jason and the council could not be soft on those that would break the laws in the underground cities and there were limited resources to create courts, jails and detention centres.

They created simple three-level offence criteria and in turn a three-level response.

Crime or disobedience was rated on, one, the small offence which was just about all crimes apart from harm to an individual, or an offence against the state.

This covered just about every known misdemeanour, like stealing, intoxication, damaging property, right down to not attending classes, and was by far the largest group. For this, you went to extensive retraining which would be full time for a week for a first offence, a month for a second offence and a year for every offence after that.

Retraining was literally military training and many did stay on and join protective forces and become very responsible citizens.

Any offences where another human was injured, could have been injured, or even possibly were killed, were considered by the state as unacceptable. These were split into three categories of severity but even the lowest offence which may have included hitting your spouse or child, incurred a year of retraining. The second level was a year of military training in camps that were located on the surface. These camps were set up to do things like keeping the technical equipment of the surface working or even in the early days searching for survivors. It was an extremely hard and dangerous environment and there was nowhere to escape. 

The third and most serious category was for any heinous or unacceptable crime and it was severe. In ten years under the ground, only twenty-five such cases happened and twenty of them were in the first few years. These individuals had their minds completely wiped and basically reprogrammed.

When they were finished going through the wiping, they could have been model citizens and returned to society with completely new identities. They were no longer who they were when they were born. Due to the heinous nature of their crime, it was considered unacceptable to keep them in mainstream society, for even if they did not remember, others did. For that reason, they were not returned to the underground cities but were sent to serve the rest of their lives on the surface even though they were essentially new humans.

These severe crimes dropped off as Jason’s early life preparation techniques virtually removed problems before they could exist. A person of new earth born in the last twenty years just would not know how to hurt or harm another individual and there would never be any inclination to even get angry with someone.

The number of offences against the state was many in the early days but those offenders were given jobs for the state and over time the number diminished to almost none.

The judgment of crimes no matter how large or small was simple. Jason could not run the underground cities with a view to civil liberties, he had to make sure we all survived. He had a special squad of scientists in each city who simply connected you to a machine and you could not lie or the machine would know. There was no point in lying at any rate as the penalty grew each time you did.  The law enforcers were the controllers of who was brought in, the scientists administered the truth computer and the computer dished out the penalty. A specially trained squad provided the punishment or guidance required. It was all very smooth and fast.

The worst case I have read about before I was old enough to remember, was two years after the event and a girl was raped and murdered in Australis. The law enforcement rounded up two hundred men which were the only ones physically capable of the crime and the scientists tested each one of them. If you were innocent it was all over in an hour and no harm at all. The guilty man was the one hundred and thirtieth person tested and the very next day he was wiped clean and after a year of re-education, he was returned to society but in a role above the ground. He turned out to be a good above ground soldier and was commended on many occasions for his bravery. He died trying to save a comrade on a mission five years later.

When we emerged from the underground cities, what had been created was here to stay. The ways of new earth continue in exactly the same way to this day. There have been few serious crimes in the last ten years but those that were sentenced ended up working in the space exploration business away from the earth after wiping.

It is fifteen years since we left the underground cities and they remain active in other roles and as a back up to any future disaster. The world is united, especially in our four days of celebration and true self-examination, and our progress is now pinned to our mindfulness of the Universe rather than the individual. I have known it to be no other way, so I wonder at anyone who would speak otherwise although that does occasionally happen. No one pays much attention to those that would complain. Why would you when we live in a relatively perfect world

I have read much about old earth and I can say that the things I have never seen and really do not wish too, are buildings of worship, although some ruins still remain in some remote places, wars, and terrorism, skyscrapers, zoos with cages, military weapons and prisons. There are probably hundreds of other things but these stand out to me as horrors best left behind.

The one last thing I will say about the new earth that has been one of the most important statutes of Jason King's legacy is that nothing can be built that does not give back. We cannot take the ground minerals and metals to build unless it gives back or can be given back to the earth in its original form. This has made our scientists think very hard about the cities they build.

We must build on a location using what is available in the local vicinity, no more than five hundred kilometres and then it must be able to be returned to the earth in its original form. Glass has been a very popular building product, as it can be made from sand and other dirt’s and then returned to that form. We have also become very ingenious with plant materials and none of these restrictions has slowed our progress. In fact, man’s progress has been so rapid using this formula that we think we have far greater luxuries than old earth ever had and we have the satisfaction of knowing it is not destroying our planet or its inhabitants.

We use the sun, the wind and the plants for fuel and we travel even faster than before. We are building space stations and we are preparing ourselves for another Apothis-like event. Jason always said that the world must be prepared this time and our planet has its limitations for which we cannot control.

I could go on for a long time about everything that has changed since old earth but this work is supposed to be about my father and even though he led the way in making the changes, I want people to try to understand who he was.

His faith was based on the knowledge that imagination became reality if the belief was strong enough. He proved this to the world many times and he truly believed that we were the creation of others who imagined us into existence. He did not tell the people of the world that last bit but he did tell his family and I have no reason not to believe him. He will be happy with me telling the Universe now, as he said to me that one day I would.

He told me that long ago, at the beginning of intelligence, his soul was invested into a primitive creature by his spiritual mentor the darkness. At that point in time for the universe, intelligent thought had already begun to form and the past was being created as quickly as the future. The difference that the darkness embedded in that ancient man was the soul, which was the very essence of the original thought. From then on man began to understand both good and evil and would also begin to choose a pathway that leads us to this day.

He told me that the thought had already created a day in the future when we would become one with it and the Universe would then recreate as a new species. He said that the past and the present were like building a roadway that would get to that future and the world we lived in was one of the millions heading towards the end result. We would only know the one path and so would each world and each would think it was the only path and the right one. Of course, he said, we are on the right one.

“Nothing would be that was not meant to be,” he would say to me, just about every day of my life.

Now I pass on to you, all the creatures of the Universe, no matter what your species or purpose, my father Jason King, the bearer of wisdom and knowledge, a master of time; a leader, an explorer, a prophet and one of many saviours created to help guide his species through the darkness.

              ‘If you are a reader of this biography, the chance is you are still searching for the light and until now believed you were alone in that quest. You are not, but just have the faith to know you will have among you those who you will know by your instincts that you should follow because they are just and righteous and give you the sense of purpose and dignity you deserve. Follow them as we have followed him and the passage to the light will be direct and full of perfection as you were promised the day you were created. Do not let hate, greed, and jealousy be your master as they are false prophets that do not need to exist but will tell you they are a product of the wish you have to survive. They are not and will only lead you to an end that is false.’

Now let us begin at the beginning and I will lead you through a story that can only be called ‘The Darkness’.

Chapter seventy seven
   The Final Reflection

Harlan King