RICK TOOK A DEEP breath and peered up at the indirect sunshine permeating the room from the skylight. The terrain cameras indicated it was a beautiful day outside. He longed to leave his hovel to stretch his legs, which had grown anxious for exercise. Not the exercise of a stationary bike, or even the circle walking he did daily, but a firm, brisk trek over gravel and high desert.

He thought of his Chinese kung fu instructor, a great and humble master, and wondered if he was still enjoying Santa Fe, an odd place for him to live after spending so much time in Farmington. Rick knew he was there, still teaching, and he often dreamed of escaping this self-enforced isolation, even for a few days.

If he could, he’d go straight to Willie’s studio and engage him in an active push-hands session. But Rick was rusty at the exercise, having done no push hands with anyone for ten years. His body was a decade younger than it might otherwise have been given the anti-aging shots, and he might even prove a more worthy opponent. But then, that was dreaming, a dream of hope and longing. Rick had made his choice ten years ago. No longing would change the path he was on.

Like Rick, Willie was a Stoic. The pain of practice and general pains in life. Physical and mental discipline. Wanting little, possessing little, expecting less. Working day and night at times, hardly conscious of the difference between life and work.

Willie was visiting San Antonio when the Great Debacle occurred. The agent spread so rapidly that most people in the city died in the first forty-eight hours. Rather than risk going outdoors to investigate, Willie stayed in his hotel room, closed the door, blocked off the ventilation, and meditated, only breathing the dank air of his room during that time. No food. No water.

On day eight, when there were signs of life in the city, citizens were in the streets with bullhorns spreading the news about the causative agent, that its clock ran out and it was now safe to go out. This was Willie’s story, and, not wanting to dwell on it as was typical of him, this was the end of his description.

Indeed, all survivors of the event had stories, and every story was horrific. In hindsight, many of them might have preferred death to what they faced during the decades of the post-Debacle period.

It’s not that Rick didn’t occasionally take partake in life’s little pleasures, despite his Stoic lifestyle. He had Sofia, the essence of pure serenity to be around and a life partner in every good sense of the word. Beyond the pleasure of her presence, he allowed himself one daily soda, a modest dessert, and avoided ingesting the crap that others seemed to place within their bodies for the sheer, insatiable pleasure of it.

“I must refrain from these brief reveries,” he considered. “I wander to thoughts that have passed with the wind, and they are of little value. I have work to do and time is running short. I can no longer waste hours perfecting the platform construction and related processes while subtly rationalizing time away from narration. I must continue with the content, fulfilling the intent. Yes, my daily repeat of purpose.”

He fired up the sound mixer and microphone.

“My friends,” he began, “we have a common saying on Earth about ‘to each, his own.’ I try to stick to that, since it keeps my nose out of people’s business, and theirs out of mine. I understand what you hear from me may sound like a complaint about their business, and this is likely the case. Again, my purpose is not to complain. To expose, yes. To describe, definitely.”

“I hope you’ll take my words to heart. I try not to pass judgment, but only to be an oracle. Like a good engineer, I’m always assessing how to resolve a problem, which requires a critical analysis of contributing factors. Consider my views as that assessment.”

“Forgive the occasional repeats like this one, but humans were, as a lot, lazy and short-sighted. Slothful. I don’t doubt this may be something innate, even selected for in evolution. In fact, if you look at similar life on the planet, animals typically spend a large part of the day lazing around, resting, staring, and doing little other than foraging. The great apes, anyway, spend much time just lazing away.”

“Humans avoid painful things and gravitate towards that which is pleasurable. ‘Gravity,’ that’s a good term for it. The gravity of the pleasurable exceeds the pulling power of the good. There is a book of learnings called the Upanishads, and I’m paraphrasing, but it says to ‘tend to the good’ versus the pleasurable. Worth a read.”

“Therein lies the problem, though. Humans possess no ‘pleasure meter’ that tells them to shut off, that they’ve had enough and should get back to the positives of creation and growth and care of others.”

“Look, I can’t tell you this slothfulness wasn’t just a part of our fiber. We lived in caves and as hunter gatherers for many, many years before we started getting positive works done like substantial trade and commerce and industry. And during that time, those early humans were close equivalents to us today, at least in terms of gray matter, not accounting for the chippers, those humans augmented with active intelligence technologies.”

“Not to digress, but in their case, gray matter is antiquated when compared to their accessible databases and processors. For them, I assume human brains matter very little anymore.”

“I imagine we got by in those caves by not doing much, not thinking much, not planning, and living like my dogs do, always redirected to the need or pleasure of the moment. It must have been a good life, if not entirely useful. Had we stayed doing the same these last ten thousand years, I’d be sitting in a cave also; no different.”

“It’s not that I don’t lay blame, as we all must be blamed on the whole and as individuals. We watched in stupid silence as the risks piled-up. We knew about them, but we didn’t grasp their relative speed.”

“We were far too distracted by the divisive politics and policies and personalities of the minute. We did not discuss or debate or embrace the things that bound us together. No, those cohesive norms and behaviors only generated the most tepid, palest of emotions. They are far less interesting and reactionary.”

“To our everlasting misfortune, human minds are attracted and activated by the inane, the outlandish, the outrageous. The media caught onto that centuries ago, and in today’s hyper-tech world, the important and fundamental principles of living together as a species are subverted and subjugated as our minds are shotgunned by the absurd.”

“Humans have an unparalleled ability to procrastinate and rationalize away unpleasant things. We hope others will take care of problems and resolve common issues, while we sit back, wring our hands, and complain. We procrastinate, failing to act or make changes unless we are sorely pressed to do so, often when it’s too late. Climate change was a case study, but more on that later.”

“I can describe the last four decades for you, but you’ll get a dose of that history in the other information I’m sending. The history focuses on facts and speculation, and, like the lazy ass humans we are, we prefer to analyze the symptoms, talk about the symptoms, react to the symptoms, and shame the symptoms, because the symptoms are easy. Pleasurable endorphin highs are aroused by frustrations, complaints, and confirmation that others in the cave think like me. Rarely is pleasure gained from hard things like work, effort, vision, and planning.

“To net this out, we are fearful, lazy, rationalizing creatures, with an innate sense of inadequate self-worth. This is not a good underpinning for developing a long-term plan of viability for the species.”

“Sloth is a thing of entropy. Soaking-in the latest news or targeted advertisement, or even kowtowing to the latest commands from someone or something, including AI somethings, is so much easier than thinking for oneself.”

“Combine it all together, and you get a sit-back humanity that lets others rule them and tell them what to do. The tugs today on our nose rings are both devious and subtle, and they come from so many directions, our minds are feebled and clouded consciousness with many voices vying for attention. You lose track of who or what is in control.”

“At this societal stage, with the demigods augmented beyond my understanding into different planes of intelligence and power accumulation, it is possible everyone on Earth is enslaved by the oligarchs’ overarching and highly effective efforts of control, especially via the media.”

“The insidious noise of the media became grossly amplified at the beginning of this century, leaving the human brain overpowered, outstretched, and exhausted. As a result, the mind holds little quietude and easily surrenders to the siren’s call of entropic pursuits.”

“Technology arose so fast, and humans are so overwhelmed, they scream to be guided by a larger hand. They give up their free will, willingly, lacking faith in their ability to guide themselves. It’s a self-induced, relinquishing hypnosis, with little conscious awareness that their power has been ceded to the dominating other.”

Suddenly, a small lizard darted out to the corner of his desk, its back to him. There were hundreds of these lizards in proximity of the house, but Rick couldn’t risk the possibility of this one being a monitoring bot. He grabbed his glass, poured the water slowly out on the floor, then captured it.

Surprised at its transparent prison, the lizard was frozen for a moment. It then tried to run, spinning in circles around the edge of the glass. Rick halted recording and watched with amused interest.

“I should kill it, just in case,” he considered, “but it’s bad karma if I do.”

He pulled out his desk drawer and searched for the brass-plated magnifying glass, seldomly used since his eyes were now much improved. Lifting it to the water glass, he saw the lizard was nearly translucent, and blood flowed visibly through its veins.

“Your lucky day,” he affirmed as he raised the glass.

The lizard scurried away. “Wish I could join you, wherever you’re off to,” he expressed as he resumed recording.

“We create societies steeped in laws but not in rules of humane treatment of each other. This is particularly true as applies to my transhuman or posthuman hybrid friends, of which I’ve had many. Bigotry and blame are heaped upon these augmented humans who have become unfortunate scapegoats for the Debacle. As usual, I diverge too much and may cover this topic later.”

“Though you will find considerable history on the Great Debacle, I’ll tell you what the historical writings do not say. Our laziness caused it. This slothfulness caused the lack of a single ethic to ensure and guarantee the long-term survival of our species and the planet we inhabit.”

“That was our deadly mistake in 2037. It continued to be our mistake as we went through the abhorrent post-Debacle period, and it remains front and center as the progenitor of our imminent species annihilation.”

“The fact that you are listening to or reading this monologue implies that you are at least somewhat inquisitive and visionary. You might look at yourselves and think you are sufficiently industrious and shouldn’t worry. Maybe you have previously been schooled with the wisdom and understanding of how you can contribute to the greater good of your species. Perhaps you already have a more perfect society. A well-oiled machine.”

“Even so, please heed my words. Any society that gets to be as big as ours, as widely dispersed on the face of the planet, as fearful and clannish and entitled as ours, as disconnected with each other in a world overwrought with interconnections, is destined to meet the same doom we will soon experience at our own hands.”

He sighed. “Minutes ago, a lizard ran across my desk and caused me to dump my glass of water on the floor to capture it. I’m sure you are bored to tears on this topic, and my throat is dry. I’ll resume later on a different topic."