Monday, August 20, 2007

Musing on the Future 1.3

In my opinion, one of the great paradoxes of my wife Alice, for all her natural born and sensible aversion to things "throwback" old fashioned, is her adoration of some of the reconstructed audio CDs I have managed to decipher. When we were dating, I was very much into this process, and I had many complete songs from certain prominent artists cataloged and playable. I had hit the jackpot with an artist called Frank Sinatra.

So after I am awake and we have talked, Alice leaves the room for a moment and them comes back with the Sinatra song "Let's Take it Nice n Easy." and we are together for a long happy moment while it plays.

Pater and Ani hear this, when they come into the room I can see they are both happy and relieved that I am awake, but I can tell that something else is concerning Pater. Alice has started another song, and I don't want to interrupt it.

I listen to the song and as I watch Pater, Ani and Alice, I feel an emotional wave. I suppose it was all coming back to me, lottery, bond fires, etc. But this passed, and when the song was over & a decent iinterval of silence had passed, Pater gave me the news.

I have been cleared of any wrongdoing whatsoever -- in fact, a security CAM a few miles away happened to be at the right angle and with two satellites the whole incident was carefully analyzed. Maalc1 st33, a youth from the neighboring work combine BAT22 was the offender, not even of the village was the attacker which was to everyones immense relief. Maalc1 was subsequently rounded up when he checked in for a morning work detail. The knife was found in a hedge.

The downside was the news of the assault on a T1 by a T5 after winning the WWMML was almost as big as the news of the village winning the WWMML. There were waves of negative editorializing, some of it quite scathing in the UK. But for the Media, the combo was irresistible, and nothing like this had happened for quite a long time. The stops were being pulled out. while I was unconscious all kinds of commentary (some of it shockingly conversationalist/ semi-sympathetic) was coupled with news of spontaneous protests and counter protests that were springing up all over the greater Reconstructed Western Hemisphere --people were debating and talking about MicroMacro economic issues, discussions of economic realignments and job assignments, scoio-generational livelihood structure debates...with all this news, I felt almost embarrassed, like I had somehow broken the camel's back.

Pater, Ani, and Alice all say, don't worry about this -- it will blow over, and I know it will...

August 15

The village has surprise us with several things this morning. Firstly, they have given us a hundred hours of energy. Also, an apology from the mayor for the attack, even though the perp was from BAT22. Alice and I demurred, when it came to assignations of fault, saying that we were just visitors, and that everyone we had been in contact with in the UK and especially Wales were friendly and hospitable to a fault. That pleased the UK media.


I, in turn, surprised the Media, and the village (but not really Pater and Ani, nor Alice) by stating that I would not be pursuing charges against Maalc1 st33, partially because he was 15 years old, but more for "personal ethical reasons". That took some of the wind out of the local constabulary's forces a bit, but it did win me a grudging respect with the T5-3s and the local magistrate who was anti-lockup punishment. I then surprised everyone, including Alice, when I said I would like to meet Maalc1 st33 in person, as soon as it was possible, and the magistrate agreed.

I hope this isn't one of your "saintly experiments" said Alice when we were alone. These country T5 bumpkins can be quite dangerous.

I told her, I didn't know what I was doing, but for some reason I felt compelled to meet Maalc1. I might ask him why he did it, I said.

And what if he doesn't feel like sharing the answer to why, asked Alice. People just do things. Sometimes these people do terrible things. Sometimes.

Hmm. Sometimes.

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