Two Seconds

[Working offline today – using the Writer app of OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 in honour of the free and open software movement that drives part of the electronic networking society].

Lately, I have found myself rehashing old thought patterns to reenergise the nervous system pathways and allow me to create new synaptic connections branching off the solid old ones.

At the same time, I learn of memories from my new friends such as a retired employee of a state government who in 20+ years of work showed up two seconds late one time and was docked six minutes of pay, even though she had donated numerous hours of “free” overtime and performed the job of three people because of her hard-driving work ethics.

Who are we to equate time to productivity?

Usually, at this time of day, I shut my eyes and catch a catnap. Like a baby or preschooler, I fight the urge to sleep - yawning, stretching, shaking my head, my eyes watering. How to stay awake ...

I encountered a friend of mine at lunch today in the Sweet Tooth Cafe, a woman who gets younger every time I see her.

How long have she and I known each other? At least 29 years, maybe longer.

A friendship without specific moments, two lifetimes intersecting, a “what if” or two hanging in the air between us, unspoken.

Why does no one want to take the Book of the Future from me? Because of moments like this, when you want to be a regular person, where any “what if” is possible, but you already know what's going to happen in your life, so no mysteries are left, only constant confirmation that the Book of the Future tells it like it is.

The Book of the Future shows no favours. The book grants no wishes. The book reveals anything and everything (some say it reveals nothing, if the future's going to happen despite our knowing in advance).

Do you work with HIDs (human interface devices)? Which is more prone to making mistakes, the human making the input or the device converting the input to electronic information?

When you think you hear an unusual portion of conversation worth remembering, do you repeat it to someone else and find out your version is not what you thought it was?

What are marbles?

Have you ever met someone who 'as a squirrel for a pet?

What is the difference between a mobile home, a trailer and a metal storage building with regular doors and a garage door?

A colleague asked me how much I would take to show a single page of the Book of the Future to one person untrained in the ways of reading of grains of wood.

How much I would take? Hmm ... I can't even give this away and you want to know what I would take to lift the cover to an unspecified leaf.

I guess my colleague hasn't been listening to me or reading these words.

I suppose you understand the Book of the Future does not exist, right? You see me hold up my hands, one palm toward you and one palm turned away, transparent skin, bones and all?

You don't?

How can I train you to read the book if you think the book exists?

Let's recap.

I have an electric pencil sharpener. I have some trinkets and a few words in a language I once did not understand. I have a crystal ball. I have friends, colleagues and computer programmers who've created a three-dimensional electronic network that simulates, emulates, conjugates and cogitates a parallel version of a seven-billion strong world of people. I have the universe in my hands.

The words you just read do not exist but they constitute the Book of the Future as it exists.

Now, are you ready to read the Book of the Future and take it away from me?

[PAUSE]

Let's think about this for a moment. The universe does not exist. You do not exist. Money and relationships and disease and poverty are labels.

Every story is true. Every lie is a fact.

Reduce the moment to states of energy.

“Reduce, reuse, recycle” – those words are there for you to understand what is really going on.

One more time.

Love is groups of one-celled organisms optimising chemical energy engines.

And still we think we're here to see a reflection of ourselves in a verbal mirror.

How do I turn off this treadmill?

Midnight at the oasis.

Because the universe does not exist, there is no universe that cares whether we exist. Once you understand, I mean fully understand, with absolute clarity, that concept, then and only then do you see what “seeing the big picture” is all about.

We are the forward wave of the viral growth of life in this sector of what we choose to call the universe.

When you hold the Book of the Future in your hands and cannot see it exists, you become the universal voice you always thought existed but weren't exactly sure.

How do I know?

Hahahahahahahahaha

If only I didn't know.

I held the Book of the Future in my hands once or twice.

How do I describe the complete loss of the sense of self while at the same time seeing all moments in time all at once and then seeing that none of what I think I'm seeing exists?

Let's concentrate on more concrete matters, like getting our species ready for space travel using nanotechnology to reconfigure the body for long stretches of low-gravity, low atmospheric pressure conditions (don't even pretend to know what the word “reconfigure” means).

Can you invent a living creature like us that has little in common with our set of amino acids?

Do you know what is the opposite of aerobic/anaerobic living conditions?

Are you stuck on the idea that carbon-based lifeforms are the only life around?

If only I didn't know.

Have you ever observed your colleagues purposely destroy a laboratory knowing someone unobserved nearby was smart enough to collect samples of a new substance that will redefine scientific studies for the next century?

Do you know what it takes to close your eyes mentally when you see a future that will destroy millions of lives in order to expand life off this planet?

Do you know how many billions have to be managed to convince them to become one large factory without really knowing why?

[Pardon me while I remind myself that life does not exist.] Rick, life does not exist. The Book of the Future has merely shown you what you already knew deep down in your thoughts, that what we have convinced ourselves to call life is a phenomenon, a side effect, an eddy in a pool off to the side of a river overflowing its bank in a flood that has no understanding of itself because it has not yet grasped the concept that eddies, pools, rivers, banks and floods are words / labels / concepts which are words / labels / concepts themselves, circular tautologies describing hot water heaters and increasing speed accelerators and nothing exists in the first place.

The illusion of illusions.

The word now's won backwards.

You know now to call a trick of the eye in another language?

I want to see the look of surprise in your eyes for what I already know is going to happen.

Love is. Isn't that enough?

How many leaders are willing to share their positions equally and become co[operating]-leaders?

Can you count what you're reading at the same time you're reading and counting? Can you sense the hidden rhythms and count the letters, words, word types, absences of meaning and full meanings, double meanings and sentenced sentences all at once and only get the message when you do all those things at once in the moment you first read what you're reading?

The Book of the Future is here if you can see it doesn't exist the first time you look for it. Otherwise, you're going back to chasing your tail along circles and spirals.