[BLOCK]CHAIN-LINKS (Notes from 2029 - Everything is Different, NOW)

[WARNING! THIS IS A WORK OF SCIENTIFIC FICTION... ID10Ts WILL BE EXEMPLIFIED!]

We were arguing energetically about whether the world is actually evolving, headed in a particular direction, or whether the entire universe is just a returning rhythm's game, a renewal of eternity.

"There has to be something of crucial importance,"

I said in the middle of debate.

"I just don't quite know how to express it in a new way;
I hate repeating myself."

Let me put it this way: Planet Earth has never been as tiny as it is now. It shrunk - relatively speaking of course - due to the quickening pulse of both physical and verbal communication. This topic has come up before, but we had never framed it quite this way. We never talked about the fact that anyone on Earth, at my or anyone's will, can now learn in just a few minutes what I think or do, and what I want or what I would like to do.

If I wanted to convince myself of the above fact:
in couple of days I could be - Hocus pocus! - where I want to be.

Now we live in fairyland. The only slightly disappointing thing about this land is that it is smaller than the real world has ever been.

Everything returns and renews itself. The difference now is that the rate of these returns has increased, in both space and time, in an unheard-of fashion. Now my thoughts can circle the globe in minutes. Entire passages of world history are played out in a couple of years.

Something must result from this chain of thoughts. If only I knew what!

(I feel as if I knew the answer to all this, but I've forgotten what
it was or was overcome with doubt. Maybe I was too close to the truth.
Near the North Pole, they say, the needle of a compass goes haywire,
turning around in circles. It seems as if the same thing happens to
our beliefs when we get too close to God.)

A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants [LEFT] of the Earth - anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances. For example, "Look, you know Mr. X.Y., please ask him to contact his friend Mr. Q.Z., whom he knows, and so forth."

"An interesting idea!" – someone said – "Let's give it a try. "

And so the game went on. Our friend was absolutely correct: nobody from the group needed more than five links in the chain to reach, just by using the method of acquaintance, any inhabitant of our Planet. And this leads us to another question: Was there ever a time in human history when this would have been impossible? Julius Caesar, for instance, was a popular man, but if he had got it into his head to try and contact a priest from one of the Mayan or Aztec tribes that lived in the Americas at that time, he could not have succeeded - not in five steps, not even in three hundred. Europeans in those days knew less about America and its inhabitants than we now know about Mars and its inhabitants.

So something is going on here, a process of contraction and expansion which is beyond rhythms and waves. Something coalesces, shrinks in size, while something else flows outward and grows. How is it possible that all this expansion and material growth can have started with a tiny, glittering speck that flared up millions of years ago in the mass of nerves in a primitive human's head? And how is it possible that by now, this continuous growth has the inundating ability to reduce the entire physical world to ashes? Is it possible that power can conquer matter, that the soul makes a mightier truth than the body, that life has a meaning that survives life itself, that good survives evil as life survives death, that God, after all, is more powerful than the Devil?

I am embarrassed to admit - since it would look foolish - that I often catch myself playing our well-connected game not only with human beings, but with objects as well. I have become very good al il. It's a useless game, of course, but I think I'm addicted to it, tike a gambler who, having lost all of his money, plays for dried beans without any hope of real gain - just to see the four colors of the cards. The strange mind-game that clatters in me all the time goes like this: how can I link, with three, four, or at most five links of the chain, trivial, everyday things of life. How can I link one phenomenon to another? How can I join the relative and the ephemeral with steady, permanent things - how can I tie up the part with the whole?

It would be nice to just live, have fun, and take notice only of the utility of things: how much pleasure or pain they cause me. Alas, it's not possible. I hope that this game will help me find something else in the eyes that smile at me or the first that strikes me, something beyond the urge to draw near to the former and to shy away from the latter.

One person loves me, another hates me. Why? Why the love and the hatred? There are two people who do not understand one another, but I'm supposed to understand both. How? Someone is selling grapes in the street while my young son is crying in the other room. An acquaintance's wife has cheated on him while a crowd of hundred and fifty thousand watches the [MoneyBall] match, [Ray Kurzeil's] last novel bombed while my friend Q changes his mind about Mr. Y.

Ring-a-ring o' roses, a pocketful of posies. How can one possibly
construct any chain of connections between these random things,
without filling thirty volumes of philosophy, making only reasonable
suppositions. The chain starts with the matter, and its last link
leads to me, as the source of everything.

Well, just like this gentleman, who stepped up to my table in the café where I am now writing. He walked up to me and interrupted my thoughts with some trifling, insignificant problem and made me forget what I was going to say. Why did he come here and disturb me?

• The first link: he doesn't think much of people he finds
  scribbling.
• The second link: this world doesn't value scribbling nearly as much
  as it used to just a quarter of a century ago. The famous worldviews
  and thoughts that marked the end of the [20TH] century are to no avail
  today. Now we disdain the intellect.
• The third link: this disdain is the source of the hysteria and fear
  and terror that grips [US] today.
• And so to the fourth link: the order of the world has been
  destroyed...

Well, then let a New World Order appear! Let the new Messiah of the
world come! Let the God of the universe show himself once more through
the burning- bush! Let there be peace, let there be war, let there be
revolutions, so that – and here is the fifth link -

It cannot happen again that someone should dare disturb me when I am at play, when I set free the phantoms of my imagination, when I think!

Satirical Disclaimer**** THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION*

[Per Inner Notional Law, I voluntarily share
this information free of charge and with no 
expectation of subscription. You are free to 
do as you will herein. The author is licensed 
to practice poetic comparison for the sake of 
space and time. Written as Scientific Fiction 
from a CHARming ACTER. Creative Plagiarism by
ABRACADABRA, I AM a RAD ARTist.]