Emergence: Section Five (a), Jim; Appendix Part Four, University, Collected Chapters

Appendix Pt. 04, University; Ch. 01, Institution Jim established centers of learning among the tribes, the majority of which were pre-literate. Their lives were so fragile, he had to train them to manage calamities. #Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #NovelOnTwitter @jaybotten

Appendix Pt. 04, University; Ch. 02, Logic There was safety in the vast structure of the schools he founded. Within the great walls of those institutions he formed secret societies to protect and carry out his work. #Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #NovelOnTwitter @jaybotten

Appendix Pt. 04, University; Ch. 03, Method The human body had developed a reliance on aggression as a survival skill. The colonists had come to rely on swift action to mitigate crisis, that had to be tampered down. #Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #NovelOnTwitter @jaybotten

Appendix Pt. 04, University; Ch. 04, Truth Jim had to be careful in how the qualities he was engineering manifested themselves in the population. They had to be kept in tension, isolated, and guarded from exposure. #Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #NovelOnTwitter @jaybotten

Appendix Pt. 04, University; Ch. 05 Communication Jim began to peel back the barrier separating one human consciousness from others, he learned to manage their confusion. Madness and insanity followed his subjects. #Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #NovelOnTwitter @jaybotten

Appendix Pt. 04, University; Ch. 06, Foundation Jim was happy with the reaction he received from his subjects. They were alive, aware. He established different paradigms in varied groups for how to manage the gifts. #Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #NovelOnTwitter @jaybotten

Appendix Pt. 04, University, Ch. 07, Mission Jim was happy, for the first time he could remember. He was filled with a sense of purpose and moving toward the completion of his mission. He was looking for resolution. #Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #NovelOnTwitter @jaybotten

Emergence: A Novel on Twitter Section 05(a), Jim Appendix Part 04, University Chapters 01 Institution 02 Logic 03 Method 04 Truth 05 Communication 06 Foundation 07 Mission #Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #NovelOnTwitter @jaybotten

Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-one, Silence; Chapter Four, Hearing

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 228, Thursday

August 16th, 2018

Chapter Four: Hearing

While he was submerged in the great sleep, when he was deep in the subconscious of the Collective, he sensed the currents of thought pulsing through it, and deeper than that he also sensed the presence of all of the others who had entered the great-sleep with him.

Those pulsing rhythms were what woke him, making him aware.

It happened in the timelessness of the quantum world.

For him, the great-sleep was the great entanglement. It was the place where he drew on all of the broken pieces of individuality and reassembled them into a semblance of a whole.

His own identity was central, but he drew to himself the entirety of the membership who had left the Collective in the search for oblivion.

The great-sleep was oblivion. But it was also a repository of personhood and knowledge.

The electromagnetic structure that contained the quantum field was designed to keep every individual separated, not just from one another, but from the disparate parts of their own self.

There was a flaw in the design.

With that flaw he never would have been able to return to himself.

The flaw was the Continuum, the Continuum introduced the algorithm that allowed him to re-cohere, because the Continuum could not let anything go, could never relinquish any part of itself, and would on occasion draw from the sleepers to add weight to a decision it wanted from the Collective.

The Continuum would commune with the sleepers, or pretend to, and draw from them the authority to move the Collective in the way that it desired.

#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-one, Silence; Chapter Three, Crucible

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 227, Wednesday

August 15th, 2018

Chapter Three: Crucible

Returning to consciousness, coming from out of the great sleep, it was like passing through the eye of a needle. It was an unimaginable crucible, the gathering and pulling of a billions threads into a single string, then passing through the aperture.

No person had ever returned from the great sleep, reassembled their identity, it had not happened once in the billions of years since the Collective had been formed, or since the Continuum had been created.

The reawakening had changed him essentially.

The core of his identity remained the same, he was a person with a unique past, and a unique designation in the Collective, but he was more.

He carried with him from out of the great sleep, a connection to all of the other sleepers who had ever fallen away from the Continuum.

In the ages that had passed from the moment he first went under, to the moment that he emerged from the slumber, he had become entangled with each of them.

Their memories became his memories, their relationships became his relationships, and yet he remained himself, at the pinnacle of the pyramid in this concrescence of being.

Every contact he had after his awakening, created a subtle shift in the Collective.

It was imperceptible.

He became a catalyst among those who lingered near to him, fomenting change in them as well.

He was a harbinger of despair, many that he touched succumbed to the desire to fall away.

#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay

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Grief

Shattered and frozen

The boy lifts his head, afraid

And submits to loss

Retreating desire

Watching her slip beyond view

Alone and wanting

His quivering lip

Shivers with rejection, pain

Abandoned and lost

Feel it, a cold hand

A hot slap, enlivening

The sinuses sting

Tearful agony

Oblivious to the storm

Contemplation ends

He stands and shuffles

Puts his hands in his pockets

Swallows his grief, and

            Turns

Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-one, Silence; Chapter Two, Erosion

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 226, Tuesday

August 14th, 2018

Chapter Two: Erosion

His bond to the Collective faded. He was unable to see himself as a part of their society. The Collective, allowed him to slip away.

Only the Continuum tracked his presence among the membership, and for a long period of time it found nothing worrisome about his presence. He was just there, like an itch.

He shared neither their values, nor their desires. The vast majority of the membership of the Collective saw themselves as God’s. They fed this view of themselves in a variety of ways. Either through the absolute ruler-ship of their own private worlds, or through the machinations they choose to employ among the billion worlds of the Galactic Empire.

He was not moved by their fears, or their passions.

He was not vested in anything, he was not attached to outcomes.

He merely watched, and felt, and sought to understand the vicious appetites of the Collective, and the group mind that directed the live of countless people on hundreds of millions of worlds.

He could not fathom it.

There seemed to be no rationale behind the incessant warfare and oppression that persisted among the worlds of time and space.

He experienced a new mode of cognition.

It was new life.

He was awake to himself, but dead to the membership of the Collective. He found everything that the Continuum had built in their name to be an abhorrent miscarriage of its mission.

He became detached, and he slipped away from their awareness.

In that remote place he merely observed, he watched and he waited and let his mind flow into the circuitry of the HomeWorld.

#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay

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Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty-one, Silence; Chapter One, Paralysis

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 225, Monday

August 13th, 2018

Chapter One: Paralysis

In time he was forgotten, virtually forgotten. The membership of the Collective let him go, paid no attention to him, but the Continuum could not.

He was a part of it.

He drifted, unseen by the Collective. He watched the life and the drama of what was transpiring in the Galactic Empire.  

He disentangled himself emotionally, from the Collective.

He created an epistemic, nearly ontological distance between himself and the Continuum, but he could not free himself completely.

He was removed from the daily consumption of vicarious experiences, the orgies of sexuality, of suffering and violence that the rest of his fellows in the membership delighted in.

He had no appetite for them, preferring quiet instead, self analysis, a reflection of his time in sequestration, his memories from life before the Collective when he himself was an embodied person, living and breathing as flesh and blood.

What he consumed from the Empire were not the stories of crime and punishment and dynastic ambition which the Collective delighted in. He focused instead on the ordinary lives of simple people, on their hopes and dreams, on their daily delights.

He loved them, in his way..

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A Homily – John 6:41-51 ©

The Gospel According to John – 2018.08.12

                        

The Way and the Message

The gospel reading for today is replete with theological errors, it could be a case study in the misapplication of metaphor.

The reading uses the metaphor suggesting that Jesus is the bread of life, like the mana that fell from heaven when the Jews wandered in the desert, only Jesus, as the bread of life, is different. Jesus as the bread of life feeds the spirit, not the body, and its life giving properties are not of this world but of the world to come. Jesus as the bread gives eternal life.

In the final verse the gospel writers link the bread which Jesus represents with the cult of animal sacrifice, this is a mistake, wherever it occurs. The cult of animal sacrifice, bloodletting, killing, it has no redemptive value in and of itself. There is no magic in it, God, the creator of the universe does not savor the scent of burning flesh.

The bread that Jesus offers is not his flesh, it is his teaching, the presentation of the way, a mode of being that leads to a society of justice, one that is tempered by law, and seeks the good of every individual.

To eat the bread of life, is to incorporate this teaching into your own life, for your benefit, and for the benefit of everyone.

When the gospel writers get bogged down in the vain effort to prove the authority of Jesus, by appealing to his sonship, instead of the simple authority of his teaching, they are on the wrong track.

The authority of Jesus is measured by its truthful commitment to his community, to compassion and to mercy.

Do not pay attention to the excuse making the gospel writers often engage in. When they tell you that no one come to Jesus except by the will of God, they are making justifying their failure to effectively communicate the real message in Jesus ministry:

That God love you, and us, and we, all together, and that to serve God, we must do the same.

Anyone Who Eats this Bread Will Live Forever

The Jews were complaining to each other about Jesus, because he had said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ ‘Surely this is Jesus son of Joseph’ they said. ‘We know his father and mother. How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’

Jesus said in reply, ‘Stop complaining to each other. ‘No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets:

They will all be taught by God, and to hear the teaching of the Father, and learn from it,

is to come to me. Not that anybody has seen the Father, except the one who comes from God: he has seen the Father.

I tell you most solemnly, everybody who believes has eternal life. ‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that a man may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.’

19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Emergence 3.0 - Section Five, 92835670100561474; Part Thirty, Translation; Chapter Seven, Remnant

Emergence 3.0

A Novel – In One Page Per Day

Day 224, Sunday

August 12th, 2018

Chapter Seven: Remnant

Jim was a curiosity. He remained so until each and every member of the Collective had connected with him, touched his experience, satisfied themselves with what they learned and then moved on.

He was treated as a curiosity, even though he was a full member, none of his rights or privileges had been curtailed, he had full access to the group mind, he was a full part of the Continuum, he had his own private world, and he had complete access to the Empire.

Nevertheless, he was out of synch with the Collective.

He did not exercise all of his rights.

He did not return to his private world.

After his initial contact with the members of the Collective, he did not share his thoughts and feelings with the group, if he could help it.

He did not revel in the same drama.

He was set apart, a fragment of history, coming from an epoch most considered to be without relevance, if they remembered or considered it all.

Most of the members did not recall the time before the Continuum, it was as if those memories were being carefully edited out of the common experience.

It was as if history was being rewritten.

He concerned himself mostly with the Empire, with real events in the actual galaxy, and with the ways his fellows internalized those struggles.

#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay

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The Primaries are Here - Editorial, The Week in Review

Analysis, Commentary, Opinion

08.011.2018

The Primaries are Here

I guess I’ll vote in the primaries on Tuesday.

It is not something that I normally do, but there is a lot on the line this time, both nationally and here at home.

We have the Governor’s race to think of, the Senate, a new member of congress for my district. I voted for Martin Sabo, and I voted for Keith Ellison, and now there is choice…whatever choice we make we will likely be locking it in for a generation; Attorney General, Hennepin County Sheriff…this is a big deal.

I am not exactly a “dyed in the wool,” though for the most part I do vote DFL, straight down the party line. I do vote for Republicans from time to time; have on the right side of the isle for President, Senate, and Governor too, on the rare occasion when I just could not tolerate the candidate my Democratic Party has put up.

Idealistically I am about as far left as left can go, but anyone who has read my political commentary can tell you that I do not think politics and idealism mix well.

Politics is about pragmatism, it is about holding the line against bad policy, while incrementally advancing the good. Only occasionally is politics about making a stand for something come “hell or high water,” and that is because political choices are being made long after the crises which prompt us to get up and make stand have faded away, and the choices that end up getting made are always about building consensus, deal making, and compromise.

If we brought back the good old days of earmarking bills, and pork barrel spending, we would have a much more functioning government…of course that is why the leadership in congress did away with it, too many rank and file members were in the habit of cutting deals across the isle, talking to one another, funding each other’s projects.

I think its okay to vote for Richard Painter over Tina Smith, for the DFL nomination for Senate even though he spent his whole life as a Republican, worked in the Bush white house and before he took up the fight against the current President, he and I would probably not have agreed on much.

But he has divorced himself from the Republican party, he has promised to caucus with the Democrats if nominated, but he has not promised to toe the party line. I think there is some risk in that, but I also think it is okay, because he is one of T-Rumps staunchest opponents and his the rhetorical chops to take the fight to him.

Tina Smith…I don’t know, I see her commercials and they are telling me nothing about her, nothing at all, just a Minnesota nice lady with a Minnesota nice smile. I think she thinks she can just walk away with the NOD, not showing up in public forums to engage her rivals. She is taking the seat she was appointed to for granted, and that is never cool.

Keith Ellison has my vote for Attorney General.

Lori Swanson’s people are all coming out against her, telling us that she is corrupt. There is no way she can sit in the Governor’s Chair, its going to have to Walz, I will miss Mark Dayton when he is gone, I hope the next person who holds that office has the same grit as him.

Ihlan Omar, its your turn.