Dear John

An Alternative Vision of 2043.

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Previously, a gaggle of remarkable authors wrote the following visions of 2043: The Return of the Hero - John Carter; Stories for the After Times - Harrison Koehli; The Silver Rule - Mark Bisone; The Zookeeper’s Guide to Wild Americans - The Good Citizen; How To Predict the Future (Part 3) - Karenland FUPAZ 2043 - Yuri Bezmenov.

My former piece is here.

In honour of their creativity I thought I’d whip up a follow-on piece and include their world views (as much as I could in between all the ideas spinning around in my head):

Dear John,

My sincere apologies for such a long silence my dear friend. It’s hard to believe we are at 2043 already. We’ve seen the Yosemite Sam in the night sky once again so I assume Tom is back. Looking forward to more news from you. I trust Chole and the rest of the family is well. If you ever get back into contact with that guy… you know, the one who couldn’t find his cat, I’d love to know. Last I heard he was in one of those southern squalor hell holes trying to survive after the war - so different to our worlds. Hope he’s OK.

Where do I begin?

Firstly, thank you for the recent delivery of books from your contacts in Sydney - such rare gems worthy of preservation! I particularly love the pre-2020 edition of the Oxford dictionary, but of course all of the classic literature is so valuable. Very surprised, but delighted, you could still get your hands on these, especially after the purge during The Great Election Wars of 2024 to 2028. A welcome addition to my room, which now looks very much the 19th Century study, distinctly lacking technology but immersively “old world”! Maybe it’s my age, but I’m enjoying the slower pace and earthy realism all the way out here. Man, I must have wasted so much time in front of a screen in the old days. Remember us on Substack in the early 20s? Who would have thought things could change so much in 30 years. By the way, I gave the runner five 1oz silver coins for the books plus an additional coin for himself. I trust he made his way back to your contact with that gift.

Our schooling program is going well - History, bushcraft, and music are the most popular topics with the kids. By 12 each one of them now know how to survive a week in the bush, avoid surveillance, and find their way home. They are also well versed in the classics, are taught the truth about the great cull of the mid 20s, and have all manner of practical skills under their belt - all without a single moment in a virtual classroom! We are teaching our girls to become women and the boys to become men - so radical, right? Very proud of what our school has become.

There was a circus, of sorts, came through the area a month or so ago. A Doctor Jean-Paul Lecomte from Lyon was doing a tour with some incredibly fat people - Wild Americans, the show was called and the French guy was promoting a book,The Zookeeper’s Guide to Wild Americans. It was obscene. They may think in the Northern Hemisphere this sort of thing is entertaining but down under it’s just weird. Anyway, we know they are all crazy in New York, which is where I think the show originated.

I hate to think what the children of the cities are now absorbing in their virtual classrooms, being indoctrinated with the latest abstractions completely divorced from history and the real world. From the rhetoric coming out of the UN death cult right now I can see why so many kids are opting for assisted suicide rather than going on - there’s little hope coming from the new order. I understand there are some effective outreach programs by the underground church who have saved many kids from making that fateful decision. There remains hope!

As you know, one of our runners, “Kenan”, was arrested on the outskirts of Melbourne in February with letters, gold, silver, and other gifts for the collective in the high country. We didn’t find out if it was an ID scan gone wrong or some other anomaly - “Peter”, a very generous sponsor and technical advisor, assures us that Kenan’s bio-ID was sound and that he wasn’t carrying anything to betray his true identity. Besides I think he looked as anaemic and sick as any city dweller lol. This episode, of course, caused a great deal of anxiety for the high country collective given the letters Kenan had in his possession. Nevertheless, after 10 months of those letters in the authorities possession, it seems nothing has come of it. A testament to the sound letter writing protocols we established in the late 30s and still serves us well.

Talking about Peter, he sent us a new technician, a young guy, fully de-identified, was part of the great hack of ‘39 apparently. Anyway he’s brought with him new protocols for our PayDay project - seems the new CBDC (sorry the ‘DC’, or is it just ‘C’ now?) has more back doors than anyone could have imagined and so we are able to keep a step ahead. He’s also helping us with more secure GovEm Starlink connections - we were emulating a small regional department, but current wisdom says we should emulate a major department or even a UN organization. The great audacity, it seems, is a paradoxical cloak of safety! We desperately need this help as our precious metals are almost depleted, and as you know trading is fraught with dangers. Gaining some digital credit for our non-existent members of the collective through these back door opportunities is the primary way we are staying resourced. This kid is a smart cookie and hope to have him around for a good while.

Last month one of our people said her grandchild has a new computer-brain interface requiring no invasive procedures but merely HUD glasses that wrap around to the back of the head - the resolution, apparently, is as good as those system embedded right into your cortex - the 7G version is supposed to be even better, if that’s possible. Seems you don’t need to be a cyborg to get full resolution extended reality now! But the frightening thing was, this grand-kid, in augmented reality mode, could see that his grandmother was throwing up some serious red flags from her biologics. His mother pulled the thing off his head when he started to ask some probing questions and said that Grandma had to leave. We don’t know what the data was but it has placed the grandmother under our quarantine protocol until we know the coast is clear. She is, understandably, concerned about her daughter and family.

In your last letter you said most of the smart cities in Europe and North America have fully converted to 7G with near ‘total transparency’ in each of those habs! Thankfully, due to bureaucratic bungling and mismanagement we are still a few years behind. Not that any of us go into those places, bar a few runners now and then.

We are still enjoying the solitude for the most part. The local authorities leave us alone as long as we continue to look after the police chief. We do have drones coming over from the city now and then, watching our crops no doubt, but as far as we can tell our registrations and certificates must still look legitimate to them. Getting very difficult to maintain our original genetic lineages for most of the crops. The new seed we have been able to get is no good - supposed pest resistant strains are worse than our old heirlooms - typical! But we are no threat to the cities vertical megafarms so we remain off the radar. We are probably some of the very few left who actually grow food in the ground!

John we’ve seen a company of soldiers (Chinese UN?) traveling the lower pass in July without any support vehicles or air support. We estimated they were going 10 miles per hour and we tracked them for 4 hours without a break. They were flanked with a number of humanoid robots, but the troops were definitely some sort of Asian UN outfit. We were wondering if they were a new generation of cyborgs given the distance they would have had to have marched from Yangoolandel to the old mine or even to the coast. Any information you can give us about UN troop movements in our region would be appreciated. I know you guys have eyes in the sky.

And on the topic of cyborgs, we’ve news that the gene mod LIFE 3.6 promises an average life expectancy of 120 with military grade resilience! Are they really rolling out those military enhancements for the general population? Or rather for whoever is rich enough and stupid enough to get the mod? My understanding was the genetic anomalies of the military enhancements were too great a risk for the general population - but nothing it seems will stop these people from pushing the boundaries. Remember Gattaca? Seems like the whole world is going down that funnel.

I see Pantheon Lab is celebrating a second decade of total domination in the news sector for AI content and presenters. Absolutely no human journalism or reporting for 20 years now, not outside DarkNet at least. Just amazing - as incredible as the whole Brock Cocksman’s PresBot insanity in North America. We tell the kids stories about how journalism used to be done by real people, that journalists would spend many hours, sometimes weeks, researching and writing articles. No AI, just hard work research by reading, making calls, travelling, and so on. The kids can hardly believe that people went to such efforts to bring us the news or report on things happening in far away places. At least our school teaches the ‘old school’ way of things and there is an appreciation growing in our kids about using your head, your heart, your feet and your hands to achieve something - as opposed to being just a passive consumer of AI output or just another node in an AI feedback loop.

I hear also that Inner Cosmos now providing a cure-all implant that they claim preemptively diagnoses and treats most of the psychopathology DSM-Online catalogue, except personality disorders. It is truly unbelievable that people are getting this implant given their disastrous malfunctions in the 30s and 40s. Don’t they realize the ‘preemptive’ part is just to get rid of the dissident mind? That the ‘cure’ is no better than a chemical lobotomy? The stupidity of people never cease to amaze me.

Anyway, hope this gets to you John and I wish you all the best for the year. Please write soon.

Yours,

WS