SEE US AT:
Earth: Lake Ozark: 5250 AD
"Mmm, would you smell that?" Anahere says, stretching and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "There's nothing quite like the aroma of breakfast drifting through country morning air, is there?" She takes a deep breath and sighs contentedly. "I haven't slept this well in ages. You know, I really should take little getaways like this more often. Hell, maybe I should just chuck it all, retire, and move somewhere like this permanently."
"Oh, I'm sure you'd be climbing the walls within a week," Joshua says with a hearty laugh. "What would you do without your crew to boss around?"
"What's that smell?" Janice wrinkles her nose, looking puzzled.
"That's some fermented stuff Mom makes," Jessica explains with a grimace. "Honestly, I think it's pretty gross too. Dad pretends to like it, but I'm not buying it."
"You know what? I'm absolutely loving all of this," Anahere says, her eyes lighting up as she surveys the breakfast spread that Suong has lovingly laid out for her guests. "The pork, the beef, the rice... even that pungent fermented stuff. It's all so wonderfully intense." She pauses, looking thoughtful. "I've been on this planet for nearly sixty years now, and smell is still the sense I'm getting used to. All those decades in the level 5 domains, scents only existed if you consciously conjured them up first. Here?" She gestures around them. "Here, the smells just wash over you - rich, complex, sometimes overwhelming - and they make you think about things you hadn't even considered. It's completely backwards from what I knew, but God, I love it."
"Alright, Grandma, you can continue your love affair with your nose later," Jennie says with a giggle. "Let's eat! Jessica's going to give us the grand tour of the town today, and we're going to meet her friends."
"Are any of these friends... boys?" Robert asks, trying to sound casual but failing to hide his parental concern.
"Well, yeah, some of my friends happen to be boys," Jessica says with a knowing smile. "But don't worry - they all understand the rules around here. Any boy who disrespects a girl in this town will have to answer to my Dad, and trust me, he can make people disappear."
"Oh really?" Nancy raises an eyebrow, her curiosity piqued. "So you rule your little village with an iron fist, Joshua?"
"Not at all," Joshua explains, shaking his head. "There's no need for that kind of control. See, we teach respect as something fundamental - not just a rule you follow, but part of who you become. After a while, it becomes as natural as breathing. Respect isn't something you perform; it's woven into your character." He grins. "Now, the myth about me making troublemakers disappear doesn't hurt, but honestly, that kind of fear-based motivation isn't really necessary."
"But if kids aren't afraid of consequences, how do you actually get them to behave?" Nancy presses.
Joshua considers this for a moment. "Fear-based systems work, sure - but only as long as the authority figure enforcing those consequences remains in power. And let's face it, every dynasty eventually falls. When that happens, communities built on external control inevitably collapse into chaos." He leans forward. "I believe it's far better to help people develop internal standards - principles that become part of who they are, not just external rules imposed from above. That way, the community survives and thrives even when leadership changes. Every re-population community on this planet was built around citizen education as its cornerstone. So far, it seems to be working here, and from what we hear, it's working elsewhere too."
"Those are beautiful words, Joshua," Robert interjects, his tone slightly skeptical. "But human passion - especially in young people experiencing their first rush of hormones - needs some kind of external framework to operate within. That requires rules, and real consequences for breaking them."
"Oh, I absolutely agree," Joshua replies quickly. "But here's the key difference - those consequences need to be natural, not artificial. The rules can't just be arbitrary entries in some criminal code. It does no good to criminalize what's essentially normal human behavior. The consequences have to be the ones that occur naturally from the choices themselves." He pauses. "For example, we teach our young people about what it really means to raise a child with someone you're fundamentally incompatible with. Spending years tied to someone you can't stand to be around because of one afternoon of reckless passion? That's a genuinely painful consequence. So we teach that reality to our kids, and we also help them develop the skills to avoid getting into that situation in the first place. We provide a supportive environment for making better choices."
"Here's a concrete example," he continues. "When Jessica gives your daughter that tour today, she'll be under the watchful eyes of dozens of adults throughout town. But here's the crucial part - Jessica doesn't fear their presence, because she knows there's no harsh judgment waiting if she makes a mistake.
"If an adult needs to step in, it's an act of love - a gentle reminder of what she already knows is right. It's not about dragging her off to some detention room for punishment. Now, we do have spaces where someone can cool off if passion overwhelms them and they need to be temporarily restrained - that does happen, especially with young people. But it's a place of love and learning, not punishment. There's no shame in having normal human experiences, like getting overwhelmed by sudden intense emotions. Any negative consequences come from the actions themselves, not from artificial punishments created by community leaders. So if there's any fear involved, it's fear of actual real-world consequences, not fear of authority figures - because those authority figures will always be there to help, never to punish."
"So if you fell off a cliff tomorrow, this community would just carry on without missing a beat?" Nancy asks pointedly. "Don't you think some kind of authority figure is necessary to keep things from spinning out of control?"
"I like to think this town would do just fine without me," Joshua says with a laugh, "though I'd certainly hope they'd miss me at least a little." His expression grows more serious. "But here's why they wouldn't spin out of control: they're not actually under my control to begin with. They're in control of themselves because of who they've become as individuals, and that control comes from within them. It's not something I impose from the outside - it's something I help them develop so it becomes part of their core identity. Sure, they might wobble a bit if leadership suddenly disappeared, but new leaders would emerge naturally, and life would continue peacefully."
"But this system didn't just materialize out of thin air," Robert points out. "Initially, you had to be in control, you had to have them under control to get it all started. This kind of teaching takes time."
"Exactly. It's like raising a child," Joshua nods. "At first, you have total control over them - you have to, for their safety and development. But as they mature, they begin to control themselves, and you absolutely must allow them to do that. This is the same process we use to build community. It's not perfect or foolproof - every community has its troublemakers, and every individual has their bad days. But problematic behavior becomes the exception rather than the rule. So far, it's been working. Those who conduct themselves well far outnumber those who don't, and we've built in systems to handle the misbehavers." He pauses, his expression growing more concerned. "But here's where things get tricky, and where our communities have to be extremely careful. Each community is reaching a critical transition point. The founding leadership is hitting retirement age, or simply getting too exhausted to keep managing everything. Meanwhile, the communities are growing beyond the size where a single person, or even a small group, can effectively oversee it all. So self-governance has to take over, or the whole thing collapses into chaos. And here's the rub - human nature being what it is, those in power tend to want to keep that power, while those being governed often feel safer staying in that dependent role. At the same time, especially with adolescents, there's a natural tendency to rebel against external control. It's a incredibly delicate transition, and frankly, not every community is going to successfully navigate it."
"That's exactly why Nancy and I have been trying to convince Anahere that it's time to start rebuilding some kind of regional council structure," Robert says, leaning forward earnestly. "Initially, it would just connect the communities we're in contact with on this continent. But as our technology improves and expands, it could eventually become a world council, just like we had in the before times. Anahere has been... resistant to the idea. But I believe you might be able to convince her to reconsider."
"I think I understand her resistance, especially if it's meant to be 'just like' what we had before."
"What do you mean? What was wrong with our previous system?"
"I've studied thousands of governmental systems throughout history, and they've all failed - and for fundamentally the same reason."
"Failed? Our council system never failed."
"Only because it didn't last long enough to complete its inevitable cycle," Joshua explains. "In the before time, when Sally and Patrick were kids attending those peace rallies, your system was barreling full-speed toward an interplanetary conflict. The only thing that prevented that inevitability was the destruction of all life in your solar system. Before that was the great conflict of 2053, which killed ninety percent of every living thing on the planet. And before that? Endless conflicts stretching back through all of recorded history, many of them global in scale. The hard truth is, it never really worked, and following the same model, it never will."
"So what is this fatal flaw you're talking about? How can we fix it?"
"The fatal flaw is the fundamental assumption that control can be effectively imposed from the outside. Think about it - you're a married man. Does external control even work in your own family, with your wife and daughter? If you think it does, you're kidding yourself. And if you expend the enormous energy necessary to force it to work, it will consume everything you have and rob you of all the other opportunities life offers. Now scale that up to the community level, then regional, then to nation-states, and finally to a planet full of competing nation-states. It becomes not just difficult, but impossible."
"And the fix?"
"The solution is recognizing that real, lasting control is internal. It has to be developed within each individual, not imposed by outside forces. With only a few brief exceptions, the entire history of humanity has been characterized by a few people - usually patriarchs or strongmen - enslaving the many. Slavery can only exist in an environment of rigid external control. But here's the thing: every single one of those enslaved cultures eventually revolted and destroyed their masters. Most of the time, that plunged their society into a dark age that just resulted in another strongman enslaving them all over again - the same cycle, repeated endlessly." He pauses. "The real solution is respect for the individual. It's the education and empowerment of individuals, then their communities, then their regions, then their nations, and finally the planet - in that exact order, not the other way around. So if you want to establish regional councils, that could be a very good thing. But they absolutely cannot be 'just like' before. They must be fundamentally different from what came before, or they simply will not work."
"There's a serious problem with that concept, Joshua, and your own experience should tell you what it is," Robert responds with growing frustration. "This is a dangerous planet where bad things happen regularly. Even though we have underground systems that help mitigate disasters like killer storms, droughts, sudden climate changes, and the like, these things will still occur. There will be famines, and communities experiencing them will spin out of control. There will be despots - that's just human nature. And despots always want to rule the world through armed conflict. There will be times of great stress when the resources to educate and empower individuals simply won't exist. What then? How do we prevent that from happening?"
"You don't prevent it. You deal with it," Joshua says firmly. "Yes, bad times will come, and communities will go hungry. But what's the better approach? Build walls and fortify your community against attacks by starving masses? Or plan ahead for such inevitable events so that you can feed your neighbors in their time of need, knowing they'll do the same for you when your turn comes?" He spreads his hands. "That would be the appropriate function of a regional council - preparing for those inevitable crises so that everybody can survive them together. Otherwise, you get war, and I know from many lifetimes of experience that war only produces losers."
"I can see that my trip here was wasted," Robert says, his voice heavy with disappointment. "My purpose in coming was to seek your assistance in building a defensive militia so we can defend ourselves when the need arises - and it will arise. But if your idea of defense is throwing food at your attackers, I don't see how we can possibly proceed."
"Don't write me off quite yet," Joshua says, raising a hand. "I may indeed be willing to help. But let me ask you this: in your scenario, the goal is to protect your food and resources from starving hordes that might attack you. To accomplish that, you need a defensive militia and the weapons necessary to fend off an attack. But what happens if the situation is reversed? What if you're not the community with food? What if you're the community that's starving?" He lets that sink in. "What good is your defensive militia then? What will you use your militia and weapons for? The truth is - and you know this - you'll become the attacking horde, taking food and resources from another community. I'm absolutely willing to help create a defensive force that's well-armed and well-trained. We live in an uncertain world, and we don't know where threats might come from. The defensive shield around our planet might not be perfect. It could be penetrated or fail entirely, and then who knows what kind of hostile forces might try to exploit us." He pauses. "My only criteria is this: a militia should be created to defend and preserve a community or region. A militia should never be used to wage aggressive war against neighbors. I'll gladly participate in creating such a force. But first, I want to help make some fundamental changes to human consciousness. The training has to engage the mind as well as the body. Otherwise, the aggressive tendencies of our species will simply return this planet to the ravages of war."
"Changes to human consciousness? Are you serious?" Robert asks, his expression incredulous. "Even if evolution somehow sped up by orders of magnitude, we're talking about millions of years for those kinds of changes to occur."
Joshua smiles knowingly. "That's assuming evolution is going to handle this at the individual level. It isn't. It can't. This isn't something that can happen just in the animal mind. It has to happen in the collective mind, at the level of culture - a fundamental change to the society we are, above and beyond individual transformation. That's the real evolutionary leap: from individual consciousness to collective consciousness. It's happened on this planet before, and it needs to happen again."
"Before?"
"Look at what you are right now," Joshua explains patiently. "When life first formed on this planet, it existed as individual organisms - what we call single-celled organisms. After eons - billions of years - these individual cells learned to cooperate and function as collectives. They began forming polymorphic and multicellular organisms. After even more time, they developed into highly complex organisms composed of trillions of individual cells, all working in perfect coordination. But fundamentally, they're still what they always were: collections of individual cells cooperating for the benefit of the whole. You are a collective, and all the trillions of cells that make up your body have learned to cooperate so seamlessly that you actually experience yourself as a single individual. But you're not - you're a highly complex collective of individual cells working in harmony." He gestures broadly. "That same polymorphic transformation is happening again, except this time our human bodies are the individual cells, learning to cooperate in the creation of a larger collective - and that collective is humanity itself: our society, our culture, everything we are together. It's the consciousness of that collective that needs to evolve. Our individual animal consciousness has developed about as far as it can go. It's the consciousness of the collective - humanity as a whole - that I'm talking about, which must change and grow so we can finally create a planet of lasting peace."
"And we accomplish this how, exactly?" Nancy asks, her skepticism evident.
"We do it through education of individuals," Joshua explains. "That's where cooperation begins. That's where specialization starts, so that all the functions of society have the skilled workers necessary to keep the culture healthy - the same way our cells have specialized their forms and functions to keep individual humans alive and growing. Just as the body has an immune system to fight off infection, we need what you're calling a militia to defend against invasion. What we have to guard against is what would be, in the body, a malignancy or an autoimmune disease. Cancer and autoimmune disorders consume the body from within. We must learn to prevent or treat those same diseases when they manifest in human society." He nods toward Robert. "So yes, I'm enthusiastic about helping you with your militia. We just need to agree on its greater purpose: the continued evolution of humanity itself."
"Oh my goodness, I can practically see Robert's head spinning," Nancy laughs. "So how can we, from a little village in the middle of this enormous planet, with no way to communicate with most other settlements, possibly direct the evolution of human consciousness?"
"We can't do it all by ourselves, but we can each do our part," Joshua answers thoughtfully. "Many years ago, when I was just a kid on Earth, I was driving to school in College Station, Texas, in one of those old vehicles with rubber tires. Suddenly I smelled burning rubber, and I got that sinking feeling that it was my car having trouble. After a few seconds, the odor faded, and I felt relief knowing it was someone else's vehicle, not mine. But even as a young person, I noticed something troubling: I felt no compassion whatsoever for that other poor person stranded with car trouble. So I deliberately tried to feel compassionate. It didn't work. I simply didn't care, and I couldn't make myself care." He pauses reflectively. "When I arrived here on this new planet, I tested my compassion again. Still didn't work. Even though I had been an ascended being, a coalescent dissolved into and unified with All That Is, I still could not feel genuine compassion for a stranger in trouble. So I worked on it. I practiced. And with consistent effort, I learned that skill. Now it's second nature." He looks around the table. "Those changes can be learned, and they can be taught. In this new incarnation on Earth, the seeds have been planted - not just in the collective memory of a ruined planet, but also in the education we provided from level 5 before we came here. That's why it's absolutely crucial to continue that education and pass along every bit of wisdom we can to emerging generations. Robert's right that it will take time - more time than we have in these physical bodies, even if we live for hundreds of years. But if we guide our children along the path they need to follow, they will eventually reach their destination. Or maybe they won't - that's not for us to know. Our job is to show them the way to the place they're heading, even though we'll never see it ourselves."
"None of this would be happening if not for that disastrous election of 5190," Nancy says bitterly, staring at the ground. She knows she's stirring up a hornet's nest that's probably best left alone, but she can't seem to stop herself. "We should have suspended elections until after the transformations were complete."
"Oh really?" Anahere's eyes flash dangerously. "You're still angry about that? You lost, sweetie. The fact that my mother Sally was elected president and my father Pat took your job as speaker - I'm sure that still stings, but that was the will of the people. That was a long time ago. It's time to move on."
"We had a constitution already written!" Nancy says, her voice rising almost to a shriek. "But you, Anahere - with all the influence you had with the Council - you convinced them that we had to let politics emerge 'naturally' on the planet. All of this could have been resolved beforehand! Everyone could have memorized the constitution and brought it with them in their memories. That's all we would have needed for stable politics to develop. The rule of law, liberty, and freedom would have been taught to every emerging generation, and these conflicts we're having now would have been completely unnecessary."
"I'm sorry, Nancy, but I think I have to agree with Anahere on this one," Joshua says, trying to defuse the brewing fight. "In my previous incarnation as a human, I lived under a constitutional government. I pledged allegiance to it every day in school. I swore to defend that constitution when I joined the military. It was a good system, and it lasted for almost three hundred years. But it wasn't good enough. It failed to evolve with changing times and became an anachronism that was no longer effective. It was corrupted and eventually forgotten." He shakes his head. "Anahere's advice, on behalf of the First Ones, was that trying to rule level 3 from level 5 simply wouldn't work. The planet and life itself are evolving, and the form of government that can actually work has to evolve along with it. Maybe a constitution is exactly what we need. But we need to write it here, now, based on our current reality. Most communities have printing presses now. Maybe this is the right time to start that effort - to get it down on paper, to establish rule of law based on a constitution that fits the world we actually live in, not a world we only imagined from a different dimension. I'm confident we can do that, and I'd be happy to help. This is a seed we can plant. This is how we can educate our future generations."
"I don't share your confidence, Joshua," Robert says, still staring at the ground. "The uncertainty on this planet will always create conditions that disrupt the continuity of that education. Whatever seeds we plant will be surrounded and choked out by weeds soon enough. Without a strong hand constantly tending the garden, that's always how it ends up. This is probably all just a waste of time."
"Oh no!" Anahere responds emphatically. "Even if all we've accomplished is what we have right now, in this moment, that's more than enough. We have lived, and laughed, and loved. We've made love, made babies, watched them grow up to have babies of their own. We've enjoyed the Earth - the trees, the fruit, the water, the incredible richness of existence that this planet offers. Time is never wasted when it's truly lived." She stands up, smiling. "Now, let's help Suong clean up these breakfast dishes and go explore this beautiful little town."