Manhattan & Wild Strawberries in terms of narrative identity

Next week: fiction --- a short story in four parts, title: The Caves....

non-fiction: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Todorov -- or why philosophy isn't enough

Non-fiction: post 90s groove - Lebowski, Shrink and Lions for lambs

video here

Non-fiction: world outlook in the 90s: The X-Files, Blade Runner and The Matrix

World-outlook in the 90s: the grim view of X-Files, The Matrix and Blade Runner

This week I uploaded another video. The transcript is the one that I originally recorded, but during editing I deleted a good deal of it. According to Stephen King that's what draft 2 is all about: draft 2 is 'draft 1 - 10%'. 

MR. ED CHRONICLES - talk three with Michelle

Mr. Ed had watched the ice melt and he saw the debris that had come undone when it came floating up. It was all in the past and for that reason it was more like watching a late news report come in, rather than a drama that unfolds before a person’s eyes. There was a certain fascination though, because it was almost as if there was something there at the bottom of the sea that had a part in all of it. 

Mr. Ed had come of the opinion that Martossa wasn’t just a peculiar town, but that it was one of those towns that dragged a certain history with it. It was the kind of history that’s more subtle than the words of recorded facts and the stories that people told each other to try to make sense of what was happening all around them. But at the same time, it was more like those ancient stories, it was more of an oral history —the story changed over time and a lot of it had been washed away.

The town had gotten a hold on Mr. Ed and with each passing day this idea of the day that he would return to his old life became less pressing. It was almost as if some part of Mr. Ed’s mind had made up this history of Mr. Ed’s Frozen Pizza and it was slowly catching up on itself. It was almost as if it had come floating up when the ice melted and at some point it would either decay or go back down again.

It were the two women though that Mr. Ed found most interesting, much in the same way that it’s usually women that can both drive men to the brink of madness and to definite greatness. On some level both Phyllis and Michelle could have been Mr. Ed’s daughters: Phyllis was the kind of daddy’s girl with boyish interests, while Michelle harbored the kind of spunk of the kind of person that harbors something dark deep inside, which may violently lash out at some point —this made her very interesting, and also very relatable for Mr. Ed. 

1

The VR had become comfortable like an old leather jacket. At some point Mr. Ed asked himself whether it hadn’t augmented his sense of reality. He had started questioning things that had happened —bigger things than he might have otherwise.

Mr. Ed had never been much for conspiracies, but there was a part of him that was willing to believe that experiences in VR were more than an escape or an enrichment of reality. VR could very well be used for mental programming, since the total immersion would – in theory – make it easier to add subliminal messages, because there’s literally no escape, no chance to look away and for that very simple reason it might be very effective for indoctrination of any kind. 

There were these stories dating from the 90s, that this was done through tv, and that certain mind altering chemicals were added to food and drinking water. These conspiracies usually ended with the government wanting full control, turning people numb in that they no longer had any will, turning them into empty vessels that could be subjected to any will and whose minds could be filled with just about anything. 

Mr. Ed had always doubted that these stories were true to that extent, but in a way there was a similarity: both altered our sense of perception and our sense of reality. But it’s only VR that’s so immersive that it makes us want to forget about our condition and our predicament. 

2

Michelle’ssense of reality was definitely augmented by VR: she is in fullimmersion since she learned about a dark horror web in VR. It has scary AI-creatures running wild and it has the kind of interactive movies that were classified as too violent for regular media. There’s one in particular that’s called The Butcherof which it’s rumored that whole flocks of people have gone crazy after watching that channel. Murders, suicides, lapses into schizophrenia; all those short circuits were caused by it.

The Butcher is violent and vivid to such an extent that it becomes painful to watch and you start asking yourself what sick mind had come up with the fiction —and possibly worse, what kind of mind had turned it into a visual horror-fest. For the avid viewer it was hard to imagine that most of it was scripted and staged in such a way that itwould result in the maximum shock, which obviously meant crossing boundaries that were spiraling inwards until things became too shocking and causing an overload. 

For some this threshold was low, even though these were also the kind of videos that were blocked in the conventional media. The first video that Michelle watched was one of those, but instead of turning her away it kept her coming back for more. This video was under two minutes and it started with a group of guys fooling around with martial arts. There was a bit of kick-boxing, Thai-boxing, k3. It started with the guys kicking each other, but then they moved on to objects, until in the final scene they moved on to a wall. 

This wall was made of 6 horizontal concrete slabs that were held in place by two vertical concrete rails. In this scene, one of the boys kicked the second slab in half. He succeeded, but what he probably didn’t expect was that the four remaining slabs came down and amputated the guys foot. You could hear the guy scream. The camera went to the guy and zoomed in on the stump, and then it ran to the other side of the wall to zoom in with all the connecting parts sticking out: bones, tendons, blood vessels, lymph vessels, nerves, skin, fat, skin. The whole lot. 

When Michelle had first seen that video she had dreamed about it. She wasn’t a hundred percent whether it was real, but the scene started to haunt her: guy kicking, slab coming down, stump, foot. It was just that she didn’t feel what any ordinary person would feel: she didn’t feel pain in her own limbs and pain in her belly. What she felt was a definite fascination that had more to do with precisely executing a task than by acting or responding in any emotional way. 

Michelle came back for more and thatwas how she ended up on the channel of The Butcher. In the first video a guy was tied in ropes on a table and The Butcher appeared and he saidI have been ordered to remove the hand of a thief. The guy was clamped in what looked like a medieval instrument which made it impossible for him to move. 

The camera zoomed in on the hand that was clamped in. The Butcher started with a swift incision around the wrist. Blood started sprouting, but what was more unsettling was the way in which the guy started screaming. It wasn’t just a scream of pain, but was agony mixed with a loss of hope and a loss of faith. The Butcher put the knife to the side and continued with a bone saw that did the rest of the job. After this The Butcher started pointing out the same parts that Michelle had observed in that first video: bones, tendons, blood vessels, lymph vessels, nerves, skin, fat, skin. The whole lot. 

The Butcher took a hot iron plate and grilled the stump to stop the bleeding. It was the first and the mildest recording and after that it all started spiraling out of control and into insanity. The Butcher continued with more limbs, arms, legs, separating the meat. 

Michelle watched with increasing fascination: there was something about the act of butchering. It was the kind of fascination that some young kids have when they are finished playing with their toys and they then decide to dissect them to see how they work on the inside. It was just that she wasn’t sure where her fascination would end. 

3

This time the setting is a modern lobby in a dark hotel: black, grey and silver. The light has the feel of a cold winter moon. Mr. Ed picked the location, because he thought it would be appropriate —if he wanted a real shot at figuring out what goes on below the surface, it might help to emulate a place where bad things happen just around the corner, and where few questions are asked. 

Michelle walks up to the bar and orders two drinks. She casually hangs around and for a split second she’s unsure why she wanted to meet again.(the thrill).

“Why did you pick this location?” Michelle asks.

“It might be conducive,” Mr. Ed says, “A more public space.”

“Where is this place?” she asks, “I mean, if it was any place real?”

“This here is the dead of winter,” Mr. Ed says, cryptically, “A farawaytown in Alaska, Iceland, Green Land —you name it.”

“Such a town….” she says, “A good place to hide.”

“I know….” Mr. Ed says, and he can’t suppress a grin, “Who in his right mind will hunt a criminal to this far end of the earth?”

Michelle thinks: he’s still fishing for the extent of my badness.

“You’d be surprised,” she says.

“Where will it all end?” Mr. Ed says when Michelle has settled down, “How will it end for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“When should you fold?”

Michelle thinks: he thought about me.

“Only when it’s the best play,” she says, leaning forward and softeningher voice, “Roll dem bones.”

Mr. Ed thinks: she’s calculating and plotting right now.

“Never come clean,” Mr. Ed says, “That’s what my old man used to say.”

“Your prime directive,” Michelle says, trying to cornerMr. Ed, “Are you talking about you or me now?”

“Let me tell you a little story,” Mr. Ed says, “Let’s say there’s this guy and he has this really bad day —it simply couldn’t be any worse. He gets fired, he finds out that his wife is cheating, one of his best friends has suddenly died. If it was just one of these things, then it would mess us up pretty good, but this guy experiences all at once.”

“It’s shit to the max.”

“Right,” Mr. Ed says, “Now generally speaking different people respond differently to stress: some crumble up, while others fight to get from under it…. Now this guy, he was the latter: he literally lost everything and in his mind things couldn’t get any worse, ever.”

“So this guy flipped.”

“To say the least,” Mr. Ed says, “He went to a few crummy bars in a bad neighborhood, looking for a fight. In the first two bars they just laughed at him and told him to go home and sleep it off. In the second and third bar it was the same story: he was thrown out. The fourth bar was what he was after: He got into a fight with a guy who was playing pool. He was about to beat the guy and then another guysteppedin, then one of his friends, then another. In all his fury this guy who had lost everything won this fight. His fury burned so bright that he simply couldn’t be stopped.”

Mr. Ed takes a sip from his drink.

“In stories like these it might end up with the person getting over all his fears and achieving what they had only dreamed of until that point in time. It happened, but just a little different. This guy got stuck in this violence mode and slowly but surely this violence became the only way that he could function,” Mr. Ed says, “Scratch deep enough and you’ll find the true measure of a man.”

“So what did he do exactly?”

“He became a war tourist,” Mr. Ed says, “He would get the closest flight to war-zones that he could get, hang around, get guns and gear and set off. And this is where it became a beginning and the end: this guy didn’t go there to secure peace, or even for the thrills. This guy purely went there for the thrill.”

“To summarize: he found a way to tweak the system —he found a way to murder and butcher and not be caught or held responsible,” Michelle says, “So what are you saying? This guy was a dormant murderer all along?”

“Maybe,” Mr. Ed says, “And it links up with my premise: we’re violent by nature. Scratch deep enough and that’s all that we resort to.”

“That’s a grimview.”

“It’s the truth.”

“There’s one distinction though,” Michelle says, “A guy like that is a lone wolf. In a society violence serves the purpose of securing position and hierarchy.”

Mr. Ed leans back and there’s one thought on his mind: but that’s not what you think….

“You’re assuming that it’s always a means to an end….” Mr. Ed says. 

“When you get off on something….” Michelle says, leaning forward, “There’s an end….”

“What did you come here for exactly?” Mr. Ed asks. 

“I’m not sure,” Michelle says, “Maybe I came here to figure out what’s below the surface.” (the thrill of almostgetting caught!).

“….”

“It’s like a war by proxy: does funding a distant war make you guilty?”

“You’re in a position to prevent.”

“My point.”

“If I get my kicks out of watching other people do bad stuff, does that make me part of it.”

“Were you physically there?”

“….”

Mr. Ed thinks: did she see me? 

“What did you see?”

“It doesn’t matter….” Michelle says, “It’s a highly complex something and there’s no simple answer: there is a yesand a no, but it’s like telling a junkie that he shouldn’t drink.”

“….”

“It’s like anything else,” Michelle says, “There’s this outward appearance of sociability, society, human relations, art, and all that, but at the end of the day it’s all perception. It’s all individual. We can only grasp at straws when it comes to understanding what goes on in the mind of another person.”

“You want to know motive….” Mr. Ed states.

“It’s like this old story: there’s a man and a woman, they fall in love and live happily ever after,” Michelle says, “But that’s not how it works. There’s this vast undercurrent of human needs and emotions that’s like a hunger that doesn’t end.”

Mr. Ed thinks: she didn’t see me —she’s rambling about herself. This is all her, amigo! Brilliant and crazy and [BLEEP!]

MR. ED CHRONICLES: talk three with Marty

Mr. Ed needs to blow off steam and he heads straight for the establishment where he hung out on a few other occasions. Decent food and drinks that are endless and cheap abound, but best of all there are no nosy people around that are in this habit of asking too many questions. 

Mr. Ed had this nagging feeling that his stay in Martossa had made him docile. It didn’t make sense though, because he had unleashed his fury on that poor unsuspecting fellow that was finished by Victor Vaughn, who in turn was killed in a double murder by that other bad character named Malcolm Thompson. 

The nagging feeling that he had was more about Mr. Ed’s Frozen Pizza: he wanted to be back on the floor with all the hustle and bustle. He had lived in the big city his whole life, and even though a small town by the sea was nice and all, it didn’t really feel like it was his town and it simply wouldn’t be enough in the long run. 

1

It was almost as if those few nights that Mr. Ed had spend liquoring up had made him a regular. There were a few guys that nodded when he came in, the bartender asked him if he wanted a beer and the stool next to Marty was still empty.

Mr. Ed taps Marty on the shoulder.

“You again,” Marty says, “I wondered where you had been.”

“I needed to lay low for a while,” Mr. Ed says, deciding how much he was willing to tell, “Sometimes there are circumstances that dictate that kind of action.”

“Too much work, or too little money.”

“A nagging wife….”

“No….” they both say.

Mr. Ed sizes up the bar and he waits for his beer.

“You ever got this feeling as if you have got luck on your side.”

“Aaaah,” Marty says, “One in a thousand.”

Mr. Ed gives the number a thought. The bartender places the cold beer in front of him and Mr. Ed asks him to get another beer for Marty.

“I have had years like that,” Mr. Ed says, “But this last year it seems like I got at least ten in one year.”

“Getting a raise? Attention from a nice girl? Getting away with murder?”

“It really is that kind of lucky,” Mr Ed says cryptically. 

Marty thinks: he finally did it – he finally went apeshit and started slashing away….

“Explain,” Marty says, not sure how much he wanted to know exactly. 

“Maybe it’s more like winning the lottery.”

“….”

“Let’s just say that it has to do with business….”

“As long as you keep some cold ones floating towards me, I don’t care where the dough comes from….”

*

Mr. Ed needed to talk about what had happened, but he fully well realized that it would be more prudent to keep most of it to himself. 

“There’s something on my mind though,” Mr. Ed begins.

“Shoot,” Marty says.

“You know about this question that has been asked a million times by a million different people: can a man do the bad thing for the right reason?”

“It kind of sounds like a contradiction.”

“That’s what I thought,” Mr. Ed says, “But let’s say that something like this happens: you’re working late one night and you’re the last one in the office. Then an intruder comes in. This character holds a gun to your head and he says he wants all the money. Then there’s some sound outside and he let’s his attention slide for a split second. You manage to get his gun and shoothim then and there. He then dies of the injuries. Later on it’s ruled to be self-defense and you get out blame free.”

“I’d say it’s self-defense.”

“A guy is dead.”

“In that moment you don’t know what else he had up his sleeve. Maybe a second gun? A knife?” Marty says, “We simply don’t need those kind of elements running around.”

“In other words: it’s possible to do the bad thing for the right reason.”

“It’s murky,” Marty says.

“Ok,” Mr. Ed says, “Let’s say this happened back than in the Gulf War. You’re on sentry duty and after a few hours your mind starts to shut down. Your eyes are getting tired, you’re feeling fatigue, you’re getting thirsty, hungry —all that. Now let’s say that there was this Iraqi that was watching you for let’s say the last two hours. This guy patiently waits for an opportunity to get close to knife you down.”

“My fellow soldiers can’t see me….” Marty says, “I’d say that the same kind of struggle ensues and it ends with the death of that Iraqi soldier.”

“Same basic situation.”

“Same outcome,” Marty says.

“And I must say I feel as bad for this Iraqi soldier as I do for this mugger,” Mr. Ed says, “Meaning: not at all.”

Mr. Ed takes a sip from his beer and he thinks it over. 

“One more,” Mr. Ed says, “This one is from an old movie. There’s this guy. A rich guy. He has this younger secretary and she comes with him on business trips and it’s not long until they have an affair. From the beginning this guy kept telling himself that he shouldn’t let things get out of hand —but then they do. Now this secretary is getting fidgety and she has come to believe that there’s more going on than there actually is: she believes that this guy will leave his wife over her.”

“This is about you?”

“It ain’t,” Mr. Ed says, and he reads the expression on Marty’s face, “What can I say: it’s complicated.”

“…..”

“So this secretary wants to go public and she gives this guy an ultimatum: tell the wife before the end of the month, or she will,” Mr. Ed says, “So on the ride home this guy’s mind is on his predicament, because this woman has become a serious jeopardy.He can only think of one way out of it.”

“So this is where it becomes the same story as the one with the mugger and the Iraqi,” Marty says, “But still this one is different.”

“Because there’s a young lady that’s good in the sack?” Mr. Ed asks, “It will destroy his life: his wife will divorce him and go with half of the money and he’s convinced that she might even drag down the company with her.”

Mr. Ed gives it a thought.

“Never come clean,” Mr. Ed says, “That’s about the only advise that my old man gave that was any use to me. And that’s the only thing that I can make of this strange story.”

“It’s interesting,” Marty says, “I mean I would never be in a position to have a secretary, so this situation would never come up —for me. But still it’s tempting to imagine that it does.”

“My point exactly.”

“I would like to say that I would do the right thing, because that’s what we’re programmed to do,” Marty says, “But I doubt that I will...”

*

“Back to my initial predicament,” Mr. Ed says, “It isn’t like the mugger, the Iraqi and the broad, but it’ssomething like it. There was a situation that I had to deal with and then it resolved itself right before my eyes.”

“No loose ends?”

“Not one string.”

2

Marty hadn’t given Mr. Ed’s predicament much thought until the next day. After all, how much did he really tell? Then his mind started going over the way he said right before my eyes.

The glimpse that was in Mr. Ed’s eyes revealed that he still saw it before him and that’s when Marty realized that it wasn’t just a figure of speech. All of a sudden it gave him this eery feeling. A few months ago, this guy Mr. Ed comes to town. His gut tells him that this guy is bad news, but then nothing really happens. 

What if he was a witness or he had something to do with those two bad elements that murdered each other at the edge of town. That in itself was the kind of bad thing that became good. What was it that this Mr. Ed guy had to do with those two?

MR. ED CHRONICLES - talk three with Jep / Antaris

Nothing much had happened for another week and it made Mr. Ed feel good. By now he could be sure that he wasn’t spotted on the kill-site and even if he was, Mr. Ed had his story ready. He just took a walk and he had just ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn’t have much of a reputation yet in Martossa and for that reason it made sense that that statement would be enough in itself. 

Mr. Ed was eager though to have some more work on his hands. For the time being he had relayed the operation of Mr. Ed’s frozen pizza to his number two. This guy had worked for Mr. Ed for over twenty years. He knew the ropes and he was well skilled in the same type of negotiations that Mr. Ed needed to resort to from time to time. 

The only question was why? Why did Mr. Ed feel this sudden need to chronicle his wisdom? There was more to it than the heat that was brought on by his daughter that had pressured him to change his ways.

1

As long as Jep can remember he has been writing stories. It had always been an outlet, although he had never seriously considered letting anyone read them. When he was young —Jep and his friends Tony, Frankie, Jim and Phyllis were obsessed by this super-hero that they created by the name of The Shadow. At the time, they were sure that it was a superpower in human form, but later on their attention and interests drifted to booze, girls and having a good time.

The other reason why Jep hadn’t let anyone read his work was the fact that he had never considered that he really was any good. Out of their gang, Tony had always been the one with the wildest imagination, and even during the reunion in West End Mansion Tony was the one that came up with the most outlandish stories. When he was back in The West Jep realized something though: those stories were all accounts of tales and legends that had been around and it hadn’t originated from his imagination. And even though Jep thought highly of Tony, he just didn’t seem the type that would be able to pull through and write a full blown novel. 

Jep was sure that he would have the stamina and ideas to pull through.

2

Writing is hard to learn and even for those who have the inspiration and stamina to jam out a full blown novel —chances are that the work doesn’t sell, eitherbecause the work isn’t that good or it just doesn’t generate the kind of traction of the next big thing. 

Mostcontemporarywriting doesn’t have the spark: it doesn’t have strong, memorable characters and the events are plain boring. Writing should always be larger than life, it should interesting, and even when it isn’t, there should at least be this anticipation of the reader that things will pick up soon.

To some degree writing starts by analyzing popular works of great writers and then to dream that one day you yourself wouldbe able to write something of the same caliber. To wish is to hope for, to dream is to have seen the possibilityis what Jep thought to be a quote from a great science-fiction series (he later found out that it was almosta complete fabrication). 

Reading and enjoying and hoping, wishing and dreaming is the beginning. There should be the enjoyment at the level of entertainment when reading these works, but ultimately that’s where it begins and ends. Writing is one of those occupations in which you need to have some skin in the game: there’s some of the writer in it —call it passion, imagination or anything, and it filters through on the page and the reader picks up on that, mostly on a subconscious level. 

The point is this: a writer needs to work hard to find his own voice, recurring themes, world view etc etc and that makes writing one of those things that’s very hard to learn, because it takes a lot of effort for many years and even after all that there’s no guarantee that the work will be any good. If you can find anything else, do it, if not: writeis one of those other famous quotes that’s more air than substance, because writing takes a lot of work, yes, talent, yes, but also luck.

Jep didn’t know about all of this, but he knew of this without knowing and that’s why he had never considered writing to be more than a hobby. 

3

In his writings Jep had always leaned towards science-fiction, not so much the hard-boiled kind that’s completely disconnected from our current times, but the kind where a few things are tweaked and then the story analyzes what exactly will happen next. It’s a way to speculate how the problems of our times will pan out on multiple levels: individual, society, technological. 

There were the things that were discussed in the sessions with Mr. Ed, although Jep realized that most of those were brought up by himself, either by stating it as a fact or by association. They also weren’t necessarily the stuff of great novels, but they might be a place to start. 

The first real issue that Jep had discussed with Mr. Ed had been the murder of the girl at West End Mansion. You can’t run from lifewas what the advise came down to, which in a way was an open door, because it could be applied to anything, but it was also exactly what he needed to hear at that time. In a way it could also be seen as one of the problems of our times: we want to stay young, we don’t want to commit etc etc. It almost links up with the borderline times: the inability to control anger, extreme black and white thinking, an existential emptiness. 

Jep coined the whole depression-anxiety-thing during another session with Mr. Ed and while talking he stipulated that more complexity (on the level of society) wasn’t the answer to the problems of our times. It may be actually be the opposite: a simpler life, or to put it another way, a re-wilding. Then there was the notion of that retired shrink who stated that the distinction between those who pull through and those who sink away in insanity has to do with how effective they are at employing coping mechanisms that work. There’s a definite link here: complexity gives stress, which requires coping mechanisms. Re-wilding means less complexity, which (in theory) means less stress and less coping mechanisms. There’s one remark here though, re-wilding requires skills to grow food and an ability to lead a more frugal life with much less entertainment (vacations, big cars, the newest gadgets etc etc). It might not be for everyone. 

Then what is? One of these is the deliberate decision no to be effected by what goes on around us. And you can take this very literally: do I let events tear me apart or will this experience make me stronger (or at least find a way to deal with things)? In somewhat different words, it was also what Nietzsche said that the strugglewill end up making you stronger.

Then throughout it all there’s that whole idea of the narrative identity: literally rewriting of apersonal past into such a story that it allows you to go on living with yourself. Even then there’s that statement that hovers over all of it like a dark cloud—the cloud and that statement are both about thatvast, cold unloving universe and how it’s ultimately us who invest it with anymeaning. 

Fuck, Jep thinks, How can I make this into a story? A science-fiction that’s interesting to read and that may stand at least an iota of the test of time.

4

At the end of that week Jep had reached out and Mr. Ed had accepted the request for another session. It was in VR, which made it more easy to accept, kind of.

This time Mr. Ed had logged in before Jep. When Jep entered Mr. Ed looked up from his notes and gestured for Jep to take a seat.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Jep?” 

“The usual,” Jep says, “Maintenance.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Art,” Jep says, “Artistic endeavors.”

“As in what? Painting?”

“Writing,” Jep says, “I have been writing on and off for as long as I can remember. I’m thinking about a science-fiction: introduction describing a problem and a character that’s bound to solve it, a description of technological advancements. Then the middle where the problem is played out. The ending where it’s resolved.”

“I see….” Mr. Ed says, “What kind of problem?”

“I don’t know yet,” Jep says, “The problem might be the space travel itself, the middle where they arrive at a new place, struggle, then when it seems that everything will work out something bad happens.”

“Murder?”

“Danger,” Jep says.

“Terror?” Mr. Ed says, “Like acrazy guy in a clown suit whostarts terrorizing without any purpose or reasoning.”

“Then there’s the question of the kind of people that are willing to give up their lives, possibly indefinitely,” Jep says, “Which is very interesting, because if you think about it: which kind of person would do that?”

“If it was just for a short stretch, then it could be a sense of adventure,” Mr. Ed says.

“That’s the whole point: it isn’t short —space travel to distant planets will take years…. Then there’s the problem of time dilation: even if those space travelers somehow make it back to earth…. Everyone that they know will be dead, because for them, being on a space ship traveling near the speed of light or at high warp means that time for themwill go faster.”

Mr. Ed thinks about that one for a second.

“If you look back athistory there might be another element:” Mr. Ed says, “Those that were on the Mayflower didn’t just have that sense of adventure, but for many there was also a necessity, because a good number of them were struggling through poverty in Europeand the US was a fair chance at a better life.”

“Then the riches of space travel can never be expressed in US Dollars, since the riches that can be brought on a space ship will be very limited. Unless you bring technology that can create other technology that will be able to extract natural resources and literally build a new society.”

“Robots.”

“And a whole lot of them,” Jep says, “I’m just not sure yet about the poverty, because being poor now or a hundred years ago is very different. Back then it was more likely to have meant famine and starvation, these days it’s more about having little money and having limited means to change that situation.”

“You mean that back then there was still a way out and these days there isn’t?”

“There’s still migration, obviously, from Africa to Europe, South to North America, but one thing is very different: there’s already scarcity in the places where they’re traveling to. Back then there was opportunity and abundance.”

“Which is what space travel to a new home world might also be about.”

“Opportunity and abundance.”

*

They continued talking some more and by the time the hour was up, they hadn’t discussed anything that would have been discussed in aregular therapy session. 

Still, Jep had the feeling that he had gotten something out of it. 

5

Long after Jep had logged out from the VR, his mind stayed with his unwritten story. He was still looking for its larger than life theme, but at the same time it needed to be relatable and contemporary: possibly something about what keeps us going (although that one might also be considered to be a sub-theme)…. 

The main theme is more straight forward: struggle and then to overcome. The story will take place in the future, possibly with a small group that’s trying to survive on a distant new world. 

He had already had a name for the new home-world: Antaris.