Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
Karl Marx
What Remains
Chapter 1.
‘The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.’ Hegel
I can’t tell you the time or date. There’s no prime minister or police anymore, like Nan says there used to be.
Since the Sovereigns overthrew the ‘government corporation,’ there has been confusion and chaos. Some claim we have liberty and absolute freedom from oppression. Nan says it’s anarchy. Tom says that when there is continual fighting and rebellion, there is no freedom for anyone.
It has been raining all day, and it’s becoming very smelly and stuffy in our hill cave, in what used to be the small town of Springwood in the Blue Mountains.
Our cave’s at the top of the cliff behind where Nan’s old house used to be, where my dad grew up, when everything was different.
Dad died in the conflagration, in the time of ‘all against all’ that my brother Tom calls a ‘power vacuum.’
Tom’s really clever. He’s always reading old sets of encyclopaedias and other rescued books. Because all of the writing and creations on the internet have been lost, it is the few physical books that survived the bonfires and being used for fuel that provide knowledge, portals to the past, imaginative yarns, and glimpses into other minds.
Tom tells me stuff that I find hard to believe. Like that, people once travelled in planes around the world for fun and stayed in hotels and took lots of photos of what they were wearing or eating. Things that are very far from our life today.
Young people had almost stopped having children, the bearers of human and cultural continuity, due to a loss of belief in the future and micromatter and pollution in the food chain. But, then, just finding somewhere to live was getting almost impossible, as we had become a marketplace open to the world. Our country had become a business, not a home, pumping more and more people in to make the pie of the economy grow.
Property developers were making a packet, building shoddy buildings that few young people could afford. Life was unsettled and precarious. Things were falling apart from different directions.
Repetitive and routine jobs were being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI), which was said to be obedient to us, and seemed to be replacing the human genius. Then, self-driving cars, trucks, and trains left others jobless. Accountants were next, followed by a flood of professions like doctors, newsreaders, artists, and many, many more. Though productivity increased and new jobs were created, there was confusion and chaos within the AI panopticon.
Once humans enslaved each other. The AI arms race promised to be an electronic slave, but in trying to replace the people it was supposed to serve, it came to nothing in the end. The Post, Post Modern Prometheus.
AI had a window into the mind and could sneak under the skin and also began to control how and what information was shared, which magnified both the algorithms of truth and lies. Social cohesion and cooperation splintered, as did the shared beliefs, stories, and realities. People forgot that they were citizens and had a stake in this society.
But, of course, if some people are just getting richer and you can’t even own a home, you have no stake in society and become a vassal.
But still, the government’s robotic line was: Disparity is unity, is, strength. Was it because the government was in hock to shady global billionaires, who believed that they were immortal and didn’t need to pay taxes and were invested in a worldwide market?
The fairytale of endless growth was killing us. And they forgot about actual unity and trust.
More and more, people lived in siloed strongholds of belief and virtual reality, forgetting that there are multiple perspectives and truths about human life. We all live with multiple identities, if only we knew it.
Some said that we were living in a never-ending entertainment game-machine, in the terminal age of bread and circuses decadence; that was another thread. Masses of people, overflowing with a sense of loss and loneliness, were tranquillised by medications, drugs, porn, and junk TV, living in a commodified culture of materialism, subjectivism, relativism, pessimism, insolence, narcissism, cynicism, and frivolity.
We all need hope to survive, though, in the end, perhaps, we all lose everything anyway.
Others said this was the age of freedom: freedom from the constraints of tradition, norms, social and family expectations, conservatism, and authority. A time of openness to change, with no more conformity and suppression, pure individual authenticity and self expression and identity.
Of course, the concept of self-expression and a True Self is an unverifiable and subjective judgement, impossible to prove. We are all made up of contradictions, with conflicting and complicated thoughts and beliefs.
The other thing that happened was the virus. Nan said there had been a pandemic before when she was younger, and life almost returned to what she was used to. Almost.
But then, another virus exploded like a bomb. So, lockdowns and vaccination were imposed, resulting in uprisings by amalgamated groups of Sovereigns who claimed that the government had invented the virus to reduce and control the population.
Many, many people died from the virus. I wasn’t born then, but Nan told me about it and how the state collapsed. Metamorphosis occurred as feral cities developed, along with no-go zones; infrastructure crumbled, and corruption was widespread as the vultures jumped on the dying body of the state with a manic hunger.
While the Sovereigns were fighting to kill the government, the people who emptied our bins, worked in our hospitals and schools, cleaned our water, and grew our food were dying too.
Children, many of whom were coddled and taught a mush of easily digestible drivel about goodies and baddies through friendly games and mind-stunting handcrafts, were either too fragile to respond or bent on burning down all the bridges.
The disintegration of society and pervasive anomie could not be stopped, though it has been said, ‘there’s no such thing as society.’ But as expressed in another time and place, ‘so inevitable but so completely unseen.’
Some Sovereigns were intent on retribution and revenge. Other Sovereigns claimed they’d never consented to paying taxes, licences, the legal and education system, or lockdowns. Others Balkanised into cultural, ideological, and religious tribes. We were rotting from within.
Civilisation, which had united tribes and provided broader meaning and purpose, seemed to have reached its use-by date. Had its boundaries stretched too far?
Most people just wanted to destroy the system, and burn it to the ground, motivated by insatiable hatred and unhinged derangement.
It had been said that we had too many old people to ignite a civil war. It seems that disgruntled people have no age limit.
On the positive side, at least we avoided mutually assured destruction. Even though many nearby nations had spent the peoples’ money on weapons to slay and slaughter at scale, the virus and delusion brought them to their knees too.
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‘Alright, sprogs,’ Nan said as she stood up and clapped her hands.
‘Get your black gear on ‘cos we’re going on a trip.’
Nan was small and springy, with short grey hair and a slow and cheeky smile. She called herself ‘a tough old bird.’
I was busy using paddlepop sticks, making a model of Nan’s old house, which had been lost in a firestorm. I was positioning the last wall, which collapsed inward. I looked up.
Tom, planted in the fierce afternoon light of the cave doorway, closed the book he was reading and adjusted his glasses. ‘Where are we going, Nan?’
‘To visit your dad’s grave at Parramatta. I think it’s time.’
Nan meant that it was probably Dad’s birthday, but she had lost track. When we lost electricity, all the timekeeping and such was lost too. Some people had watches and battery-operated clocks, but they stopped working some years ago. When your life is all upheaval and distress, dates can be forgotten.
Probably, some people know the date, but the Sovereigns wouldn’t accept ‘Imperial’ dates and wanted to remake the whole world. They ended up tearing it all apart.
Tom and I opened a plastic box and put on what we called our ‘petro outfits.’ These stretchy black tops and bottoms were made from petroleum-based fabric. Nan said that when she started school, it was a big thing when girls started wearing trousers as part of the uniform. When she was older, there were men wearing dresses. I never wear dresses, Nan said, ‘Just wear whatever you like! But remember to respect others and be clean and tidy.’
Synthetic clothes were once really cheap, and people used to buy them, wear them for a short while, and throw them away. Tom says that it takes 200 years for these clothes to decompose.
I should mention that we wear black and travel at night and try not to be seen or come in contact with the Sovereigns and the gangs, like the Brotherhood or the Commune. The Brotherhood believes people should share wealth and that they can treat all sickness and live forever by sitting under pyramids and eating herbs. The Commune, with their dogmatic purity, throw their people into the meat grinder in a fight. The individual is just cannon-fodder…. There are lots of these groups; none seem to see eye-to-eye.
One thing we don’t have to worry about is food, because there’s lots of it in cans in houses, but not so much in supermarkets, which were cleaned out in the early days of disintegration. Especially the toilet paper.
But if it’s not safe to go out into the streets for food, we climb down the cliff where we live and look for bush tucker. Nan’s grandmother showed her how to find yams and to trap brightly coloured crayfish in the streams. It feels wrong to eat the crayfish, but Tom says scientific objectivity tells us that they are food and therefore can be eaten.
‘What about if those crayfish feel pain and suffer and we are causing it?’ I say.
‘The evidence seems to show that these creatures are unlikely to feel pain,’ Tom replies.
Nan added, ‘My Granny told me that her clan used to hunt kangaroos, wallabies, and lizards, and they fished for mullet in the river. They didn’t take more than they needed, though.’
‘Of course,’ replied Tom, ‘only a very small population could be supported in this way, and vast areas of land were needed. And it was synthetic nitrogen fertilisers that gave us global food security. The full turn by governments towards organic farming resulted in dire consequences for us all. Romantic, environmentally friendly practices are all very well in theory, but crop yields plummeted everywhere.’
‘You need a re-education camp, Tom.’ Nan laughed.
‘Yeh,’ I said, ‘there used to be billions of people on this planet and factory farming, with animals systematically tortured and mistreated.’ I get angry about this subject and tend to blow up.
‘Factory farming and scientific progress are how we escaped the Malthusian trap,’ Tom said earnestly, ‘allowing amazing material goods and food production and the development of ideas in philosophy, science, and politics.’
‘Then it all crashed down,’ I fumed, folding my arms.
‘Well, that’s the end of that, then.’ Nan added, raising one eyebrow, 'Yams for dinner, anyone?’
Nan went on to tell us how her granny’s people cared a lot about continuity of culture and passing on beliefs, values, and knowledge, which she had tried to pass on to us. She said that, ‘this culture wasn’t just about performing and wearing certain clothing; it had meaning and enabled survival.’ This made me wonder how I would act and think if I knew no stories about the past and nobody else did either. But the thing about stories as opposed to facts and data, is that they make you feel things, right down to your bones. Even if they aren’t true.’
Of course, Tom had to pipe up with his contrary observations. ‘But, Nan, how would you ever make technological, scientific, ethical, and social advances if you slavishly follow the old ways?’
Nan thought about this for a while. ‘Well, maybe we need a balance.’
‘Continuity and change, Nan, where needed,’ I offered.
‘Sounds like a shonky political slogan,’ Nan laughed.
‘The Ancient Greeks would say, “Pan metron ariston” (Παν μέτρον άριστον), which means moderation in all things,’ said Tom.
The he went on, his voice higher. ‘But I don’t want to just accept what people tell me and be confined to describing how something is. I want to ask why and investigate. And I want to be free to disagree.’
‘It’s not always about what you want, Tom,’ I snarled. But Tom just looked at me kindly with his observant and steady eyes.
‘All I know is that when people began to care more about Me than We….well, that didn’t work out well.’ Nan said as she stared off into the distance.
‘You’re thinking about Dad’s sister, your daughter, aren’t you, Nan?’ I asked gently, knowing that this subject caused sadness.
‘I suppose… yes..…Sylvia… insisted that she was an individual and that she had to express herself. When she came home with blue hair, I knew we had lost her. She insisted that she was challenging social norms and that she was unique……But then I saw her out with a group of people, and they all had blue hair, and I knew she’d fallen into a cult.’
‘Marge in the Simpsons has blue hair,’ I said, as I had a few old comic books. ‘I like it.’
‘I’ve seen photos of older ladies in the 1960s, and they all had blue hair, too. Was that a cult, Nan? just wondering,’ Tom pondered.
‘Probably,’ said Nan.
‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘people have to be free so that they can find themselves.’
‘Sylvia already found herself,’ Nan whispered, ‘in the mirror, mostly.’ Then, she burst into tears. After a while she said, ’I read all the childcare books and thought that if I followed everything they said, that things would turn out alright. I failed. There was too much I didn’t know. And things that were not in the books, either.’
Tom patted Nan on the shoulder. ‘Nan, just keep in mind that the world keeps changing, that truth when you were young may no longer be true for Sylvia. She was young in a world in which you were older. She’s lived in a different world in a way. What is her truth today may be a lie soon, too.’
The yams didn’t really fill us up, and they’re not very tasty, so, mostly because there are so few people about now, we can just go into the deteriorating houses and help ourselves. There are still packets of rice and biscuits in many of them. Stuff like that. We just have to pick the bugs out. Bugs are a way of life for us. We could hunt kangaroos and such, but we don’t have the skills and knowledge. The reality is that we couldn’t survive if we had to live like the Ancient Australians and get our own food.
The trouble is that these houses still have the remains of bodies, lying in beds and sitting in chairs, wizened and rotted. Sometimes, they’re just skeletons wearing clothes, with strange hairstyles. Others are mummified with their bodies covered with tattoos of cartoons or skulls, which makes me think that these things must have been very important to people before.
I should be used to the bodies by now, but I’m not. I never will be.
Sometimes when Tom and I go into the houses, we look at photo albums, at people who should have had a future but didn’t. We try on musty clothes and look at jewellery that once cost a lot of money. It’s worthless now.
It’s spooky and depressing in those houses, so we don’t visit them much anymore. Mostly, just when we need something, or when Tom wants a new book. The library got trashed and burned out by the Sovereigns. Tom can’t talk about that.
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We set out. It’s dark as the inside of a witch’s hat, as there are no streetlights or houses lit up. Those few houses with people still in them are hidden and camouflaged from predators. Lying low.
A sharp wind whistles right through me, and a shiver rattles like a scale up my spine. At least the rain is over. We walk along the old roads and footpaths, which are crumbling away, full of holes, and filled with stagnant water, through the desolate darkness.
The haunting call of a boobook owl echoes throughout the long night as we walk along and don’t meet another soul, only kangaroos, like statues, and other night creatures scrabbling about. We hear packs of wild dogs barking in the distance, but thankfully, they stay away.
We steam through a cloud of insects, which get in our mouth, eyes, and nose. I was thankful when we passed the swarm by. But then I noticed a white light illuminating the sky. ‘What’s that, Nan?’
‘Perhaps, it’s the Min Min light,’ Nan said softly.
A sudden flash of lightning flames in the sky, and we take cover in the old Arms of Australia Inn. ‘It was built about 1826,’ Nan said, looking about at the stone walls. ‘When bushrangers were about, another inn at the top of the hill would hang a lantern out to warn the coaches and travellers. You feel like you travel back in time just being here.’ We both nodded; you could feel the history swimming in the air.
After a while, when there was no more lightning, just the same humid weather, we continued on.
The pink fingers of the early morning sun flavoured the air as we came to Emu Plains, where we will rest. Nan knows a place near the river where we can ‘doss down,’ as she calls it. Tom says that a man called Charles Darwin crossed this river in 1836……whenever that was.
Darwin was known for the theory of evolution by natural selection, which explains how animals and other organisms change over time.
Tom is always talking about Darwin and some words he wrote, something about ‘There is grandeur in this view of life…..’
Nan doesn’t really get it either, but that’s alright. Nan stays in her lane; she knows her strengths and weaknesses.
Tom said that many of the Sovereigns refused to believe in science. Some only believed in their ancient stories, and others refused to believe that we were overheating the planet. Look where that got us.
The government, too, stopped aligning with reality and spouted a ‘…collection of ready-made lies.’ The people clocked the lies and then stopped believing in anything told to them.
Objective truth was assaulted by propaganda, mind wars, mental gymnastics, and ideologically motivated deceit. People formed tribes and fell down rabbit holes. Consensus had given way to intimidation, and truth to ignorance and falsehood, from left and right.
And all the while, the people and the weather became more crazy and extreme. Floods whisked people away to their death, and heatwaves came and went like a repeating chorus of a song, along with death.
We thrust through scratchy bushes and tall grass and step into the hallway of a simple building, smelling of mildew and decay. Nan pushes a door open, and we enter a room that is dry at least, with some fairly clean leatherette lounges lining the walls. I close the blockout blinds, throw myself onto a lounge, and in a moment, I’m asleep, in the land of oblivion.
Slowly, I wake to something cold and wet sliding along my arm. I’m dreaming, I think. But no, to my creeping horror, the wet and slippery gliding thing happens again. I sit up, and my hand shoots out. It’s warm and furry, and the realisation floods through me that it's a small dog with a swishing tail.
The dog is all over me now, licking and jumping up in a friendly manner.
Nan gets her pull-cord torch out, which belonged to some grandfather, who, according to Nan, ‘fought and died for our freedom’ in an old war, long ago. Her grandfather would say of Nan’s generation, ‘You lot don’t know or understand the lessons of history and are destined to learn them again the hard way.’
We gaze at a small brown dog with floppy white ears and brown eyes flecked with gold like polished stones, who looks at each of us hopefully, wagging its tail.
Nan looked the dog over and nodded with satisfaction. ‘He’s friendly; you don’t see many of those about these days. What shall we call him?’
I didn’t have to think about it, as I‘d always wanted a dog, and I’d planned to call it ‘Bunyip.’ The word comes from Ancient Australia, for a mythological creature with supernatural powers. I like the sound of the name. Nan’s grandmother, who was called ‘that old lady’ because of the taboo, told her about the bunyip when Nan was young. I would have liked to have known her too.
We have a bit to eat, sharing what we have with Bunyip, who seems hungry. Then, I give him a drink before we all stand up. Evening is approaching, and it’s time to continue our journey.
We slip silently around the back of the crumbling building, surrounded by a motley collection of old sheds and a thicket of shrubs gone wild, when Nan lets out a muffled shriek. A person lies face down wearing an outfit that looks like an old hessian bag. He has an arrow in his back, many handmade tattoos of animals, and is obviously dead.
Bunyip whimpers and nuzzles the person’s head gently.
‘I think we know who Bunyip belonged to,’ Nan says, sadly.
We walk away; there is nothing we can do. We know from the clothing that this person belonged to one of the Earth cults, who believed they were gender-neutral.
‘This group gets spiritual inspiration from non-human life forms, finds truth in personal feelings, and rejects the idea that 1+1 = 2. They don’t believe in the idea of linear progress and believe that society and history repeat in cycles. There are not many of them left, as they generally don’t manage to have children, either,’ Nan says. Then, saying a little prayer. Nan has seen a lot of death; it’s nothing new to her.
‘“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” Tom states, to no one in particular. Then added, ‘Science and maths are just finding out about how the world actually is. Humans often try to control what we can say or think, regardless of what is true.’
Making our way down to the river, walking with great care through the thick vegetation, alert for snakes, we come to an old boat shed, which lurks disguised in the steaming gloom of tall trees; grey hardwood walls, paint long ago gone.
Pushing the creaking door open, we find shelves of dank-smelling rowing boats. Nan selects a flat-bottomed skiff with oars, and we wordlessly begin to take the boat down and carry it towards the water.
We get the boat into the water and tumble in. Nan presses an oar against the dock and steadily pushes away, whispering ‘Let her fly’ into the fresh flowing breeze of the falling night, with Bunyip, up on a seat beside me, black nose sniffing the air.
There are two sets of oars, so Nan and Tom manoeuvre the boat into a calm spot of water, lean back, and begin to row with ease.
‘I used to live over there,’ Nan tells us, pointing her nose to the left. It’s a story we know well. ‘My grandparents and cousins lived in the same street, and everybody knew everyone else, and we never locked our doors.’
We now live hiding in a cave on a cliff, so there’s not much we can say.
Nan goes quiet as we glide along, through inky shadows, musky night aromas, and patches of glowing moonlight. We see a campfire and hear drumming. A few figures are dancing about, naked, though the night is cooling. We hear a shout, and I feel Nan and Tom push themselves harder. Soon we are streaking away, like lightning, through the dark.’
I should mention that I can’t row, as I was born without my right hand; it’s a condition called Symbrachydactyly. My hand looks very neat, just like it was cut off, without even one finger. It doesn’t worry me much.
Although, recently, I picked up Tom’s book called The Republic. There was a section about the ideal state and how the guardian class needed to be ‘children of gold.’ The auxiliaries of silver, and all others bronze or iron. I on the other hand, with my lack of hand, was ‘of defective birth’ (kakophneis). This sent a shudder through me.
Tom found out about my hand in the encyclopaedia. It was a relief to know that it wasn’t my fault or caused by an evil spirit, which one girl I met said.
‘She just doesn’t understand,’ Tom stated. ‘That girl believes a spirit caused your hand to be different because that is all she knows. Magic could not cause your hand to be like this; it would break the laws of physics.’
Tom’s a bit pedantic and long-winded sometimes, but I can spend days thinking about the stuff he tells me, though I don’t always agree. We can easily talk about things and listen to each other, which helps. The key to conversations, says Tom, is not to ‘straw man’ claims and ideas. Which means misrepresenting and distorting things and then arguing against that, which is not cool at all.
Nan said that there was another type of ‘strawman’ used by some Sovereign tin foil hat types, who claimed that the government made fake corporate identities for all people: the strawman, but these cluey Sovereigns rejected this and declared themselves separate and outside the legal system. ‘Bonkers,’ Nan sniffed.
We pass decaying buildings, dark shadows, masses of trees, carparks of rotting old cars, with only the sliver of moon for company. I can tell Nan and Tom are getting tired, but they will not stop yet.
We reach Parramatta and jump out of the boat, pulling it up the ramp onto land and throwing an old piece of earthy-smelling, leathery canvas over it. Nan looks up at the velvet blackness and ocean of stars. Light blazes across the sky. ‘Ah, that’s deadly,’ she sighs.
My legs are trembling and shaky, but we have to move before daylight arrives.
Following Nan, we head up a wide street with once grand ornamented buildings. I walk under a ladder and look up at broken windows, whose eyes of jagged glass look upon us; dirty blinds judder in the breeze.
In the middle of the road pockmarked with gaping holes lies a rusting tram, with bullet holes splashed across it. I put my head through an open window and see the remains of disintegrating bodies in seats holding shopping bags and umbrellas. They’re not going anywhere, though, ever again.
We have to find another street, as the one we usually travel was flooded by a burst water pipe, that sprayed a fountain of foul brown water. Who knows how long it had been like this?
We began circling the monolith shopping centre, with old men, which no sun could warm, slumped in dark doorways, surrounded by bottles and cans. Rats run over one man, with one chewing his arm. He pushed the animal away and began snoring loudly.
'I think we are in ‘rats' alley/ Where the dead men lost their bones,’ Tom whispered.
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