“Something’s going to happen. Something wonderful.”
I wish that were true. You see at the end of the film 2010, Stanley Kubrick’s sequel to the venerable 2001, an unknown force creates a new star out of Jupiter. Out of the moons, this alien entity forms new planets for us to inhabit, and Dave, the protagonist from the first film, in an enlightened state compels us to believe that the “something wonderful” is a gift to prolong the life and prosperity of our species. After all, by 2010 we are at the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union and all we really need for peace are more resources to exploit and more planets to annihilate.
Well now it is 2010 and our supernatural savior is not coming. We are not at DEFCON 1, our computer driven spaceships aren’t filled with useless blinking lights and that optimistic date is not the only thing Kubrick got wrong…
but it is what depressed me this morning as I glanced at the calendar. The end of the oughts have come and gone and we are closer to our oblivion than ever. Twenty ought eight and we hit the apex of our civilization. Twenty ought nine and I couldn’t stop shaking. Twenty ten and I packed my bags.
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You see, D.C. had nothing for me anymore. The only part it had to play in this end game was the antagonistic fool. Cold storied concrete filled with geared hands ticking away with no concept of the future. No eyes, only idle hands that had found someone’s work to do. This place was a prophet and it is why I began here. I needed to see our future, and this frigid March with scouring winds and septic ice was it. I was the Cincinnatus, for I could have stayed in the belly of our government and been hailed for my service to the mission and lauded for clearing the path for the country’s march to wealth and prosperity, but it was really nothing more than a death march. The soldiers and prisoners were equally ignorant about the end awaiting them. Some had brought along cooking utensils and others had pen and paper for letters home. All were immensely sad symbols of doomed hope. Anyway my work was done, and it was time to go. The elevator dragged me down three basement levels where I took my last ride on the metro hurtling beneath the surface and the prophesy for me was fulfilled. When the trees are gone, and the sky is black we will be living like this, moving through the earth guided by false light and knowing only steel and concrete and shadows.
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My desk had been cleaned out the previous week and I had just gotten confirmation of my new position as the IMNC for the NCCN PWR of the NPS. That last acronym is the National Park Service, which served under the Department of the Interior. Protector of the wilderness with the passage of the Organic Act this government agency was the one thing stopping the machinations of capitalism. The park I was headed to was called Dark Cedars comprised of 97% designated wilderness. The most stringently dogmatic of environmentalist laws protected that land. Not a single entrepreneur except possibly a climbing guide could profit from the immeasurable resources sequestered behind the Wilderness Act, and my new position was to be the observer of those resources. I was to observe the effects of wilderness left untrammeled, which meant the essential removal of Homo sapien sapien along with all his friends Equus ferus caballus, Canis lupus familiaris, Ovis aries, and Bos taurus from the environment. I was also to study the effects of the pollutants that entered the wilderness from the man made world. Those included exhaust from the rush hour traffic 40 linear miles away, night light from the cities up to 100 miles away, and invasive plant seeds that fell from the wheel wells of the hundreds of vehicles that streamed through the park’s non wilderness arterials each day. Even under the protection of some of the strongest eco laws in the country we couldn't really stop the flood of people. The park service like any great socialist idea had a conflicting mandate. We were tasked with keeping man from destroying the country’s non renewable natural and cultural wonders, yet we were forced to open up our most vulnerable parts to ourselves, so that we all could share in them equally.
Here I was a reformed bureaucrat on an adventure. My park was 2000 miles away. I had the Prius packed with my newly pared down life and my head filled with the most idealistic of notions. I pulled out from the underground parking of my former condo and was on my way.
Twenty ought nine, now twenty ten. End of the oughts, I don’t know what I’ll do but I know what I ought.
