New visitors to the chronicles from the future may first wish to visit the past, by reading the earlier hologramletters. (see the older listings on the right, go to the bottom and click the link to the earlier hologramletters)
NOTE The following is an adaptation from the soon to be released book ‘Letters From 2030’. To register interest on its release, or to order a copy email Bob Williamson via this link.
It was approaching the time of day he looked forward to the most. His daily receipt of hologramletters.
He walked to the bank of video screens and turned on the main monitor. Who if anyone would he hear from today? The screen came to life. There was what seemed like an eternity as he stood and waited. He feared today would be one where he was left alone with only his own thoughts.
Then as he was about to give hope away, a transmission came to life. The image took his breath away as he looked on the face of a friend he had long since thought he would never see or hear from again.
The voice and images sent were from Suzanne.
As he listened to the voice seeing the images of where she had found refuge from the world’s problems his spirits soared.
He switched on the other monitors and now he could walk with the pictures as if he were there.
A diary of her daily life, her personal trials for survival were now unfolding before his eyes.
Although the message was brief he could pause to see on the various screens the scenes she was describing.
He could see as if through her eyes as she recounted her memories and her life as it now was.
The hologramletter read.
Hi Bob! It’s Suzanne here.
Dear Bob,I'm amazed that I have found you, after all these years, you're the first that I knew from the past that I've seen.
It seems forever since I've had the luxury of electricity. Only a few short days ago did I find the last part needed to repair a broken-down generator I found once able to make my way back to what used to be a metropolitan area.
It's been a difficult road this almost 2 decades - the hardest part of survival being able to find clean water and food supplies to sustain me through this journey. I've been in this city for several weeks now, cautiously exploring and yet to find no other living souls. I have a few plants growing up here in this office suite I've settled my residency in. It must have been a high paid executive's office.
Sitting here looking out over the desolation, (it's obvious that this city was deserted long ago, maybe even before the cataclysmic change at the end of 2012) I can't even imagine what the previous resident of this office may have been thinking as things were coming to an end.
So here I find myself, now scouring through what little is left of world wide web, the most expansive communication network at the peak of our "technological" age finding more of a ghost town than the one I find myself living in. How stable this connection will be I can't say, though I will keep in contact as often as I can.
It's funny, I can still remember how mind-boggling and overwhelming the technology that was going to change the world (and of course did as we witnessed our own destruction)... now it seems not much more than a shattered shell of a memory, and all the kings horses and all the kings men that which consumed every possible natural resource, polluted and destroyed civilization, could not fix it and put it back together again.
We saw it coming, and I joined your cause to enlighten the world ~ we tried to get them to listen, take action, and change their ways, but as we sit here now, we know it was too late.
Oddly enough, I still have hope that there will be redemption, that life can survive and once again flourish on this planet ~ we've made it this far, however few of us there are, where no one was supposed to make it at all. Maybe, just maybe, now we have the chance to teach those that are left so that nature can heal and live again, albeit not in our lifetime, maybe in the centuries to come.
If only in our dreams...
Ever in friendship,
Suzanne (ByDezin)
Posts
got here following a tweet chain. This news story seems relevant to this writing:
ReplyDeletehttp://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warming-could-cut-population-to-1-billion/
The following communiqué cane vie hologramletter post:-
ReplyDeleteDouglas F. Williamson 03.14.09 at 9:25 am
Hey Bob,
Happy New Year!
Nice name by the way. Greetings from 200 yards below St. Louis. Our hermetically sealed underground habitat is thriving. Don’t regret so much, it’s bad for your mood. Thanks for the message though and stay strong.
Douglas F. Williamson
Good to hear you’re still well & safe Douglas, all be it with a life far different to that we all knew in 2025. Did any other of my distant cousins make it to the shelter?
ReplyDeleteGod willing I will write again tomorrow, but remembering the words of John Bradford, the martyred English Protestant reformer who penned
“There but for the grace of God go I,”
Now we know he may have signed off with
“There for the grace of Man go all.”
Bob Williamson
The following communiqué cane vie hologramletter post:-
ReplyDeleteDear Bob,
I caught a random transmission that came through my window on the wind (the only window i can open, the others are wedged shut). I rarely open the window these days, but today the sky was radiating a strange calming blue and i was intrigued, but cautious too, as the blue dust that settled upon everything is still strong in my memory. Now I am amazed to hear another voice in the quiet of my restless days. It’s been so long since i have heard anything than my own mad utterings filling this suffocating silence.
As i write i can see a little play of light in the distance. Others have survived? how good this hope feels.
I pieced together from your intermittent hologram, that you are surviving in hermetic digs. Do you remember the sun? how it shone on our arms when we would drive somewhere humming songs from our youth.
~lily
The following communiqué cane vie hologramletter post:-
ReplyDeleteDear Suzanne,
It was with great curiosity that i watched a play of light dance towards my shelter for nearly a whole week, to find it, thankfully and delightfully, unfold in story of yet another survivor of the blue dust end. Or what we thought was the end, how odd and surreal to live through and beyond ‘the end’.
The town i stumbled upon in my hopeless state, had stockpiled cans of food in anticipation after the great warning, if i can, i must find a way to get some to you.
Forgive, but your plants are my envy, outside they barely sprout, then die quickly. oh to see a plant grow to fruition like the seedlings i once planted yearly, long long ago. In hindsight, i was too blase about the ones that didn’t make it. Do any of yours flower?
I pray you find the sustenance you seek, and Bob too, and if at all, any one else still scarpering for senses of life and hope and survival.
~lily
Via hologram - via [what's left of] the web:
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing to me that those few of us who have survived are able to still find hope in each other.
That we tried is evident only in the stories we left behind, I can only hope that due to the holographic nature of our universe we can indeed influence those reformers from before the meltdown to act now, to shout even more loudly from the rooftops and marshall the forces of each and every citizen of the www to speak now in one voice: "We want change to happen now. Think in future terms rather than in what I can have now. Put the green back into our green earth. Grow a future for our children's children!"
What a blog! Looking forward to following. An anthology of this would make a great book.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog, Bob - looking foward to following it. These posts would make an amazing anthology, or maybe even a screenplay - it could happen!
ReplyDelete