The low, rippling mountains of New Appalachia surround the small town of Greenfield, buffering the isolated community from the outside world. Lush forests blanket the rolling, and sometimes jagged, mountains of New Appalachia, they are some of the oldest forest on Earth, partially protected from the ecotastrophe which destroyed over ninety percent of the world’s life in less than a century.
Tyc passes many medium to large sized building clumped close together on the southwestern side of town. These barns, silos, workshops, manufacturing labs and stables are where the flora and fauna are stored and either farmed or introduced into the natural ecosystems being restored. Over seventy percent of the population will end up making their careers among these buildings, and nearly a hundred percent will spend more than a quarter of the hours they'll work throughout their lives either in these building, the surrounding fields, or on the tattered edges of New Appalachia restoring the ecosystems on the borders and reclaiming the ruined land beyond.
An enormous old stone stable sits amongst the boulders atop a hill overlooking rolling pastures where livestock lazily graze. There are herds of goats, sheep, and buffalo munching on the tall grasses growing as far as the eye can see down into a small valley.
The boys sets his bike against the wall and enters the towns original barn. Inside the second largest building in the community there are dozens of stalls on the first floor housing various animals being monitored and attended to by the towns medical interns. Wren Silvanus, one of the senior attending physicians who chose to specialize in veterinary medicine, is leading around a horse who has been suffering from a twisted stomach.
"Mom!" Tyc calls as he enters the small door within the large wooden double doors at the front of the stone building.
"Tyc, do you have your theremin?" Wren asks her son as she attaches thin crystal sensors to a horse in one of the veterinary stalls.
"No Mom, I figured I'd sing the chy songs this time." Tyc answers his mother sarcastically.
The older chubby woman rolls her eyes at the boy as she feeds the young stallion some oats out of her hand.
"Is this the patient?" Tyc asks as he takes his pack from his back and extracts his theremin, still warm from his earlier performance.
"Yep." His mother replies petting the poor horse's head. "Hey, sorry I missed your performance but this old boy needed me to walk him around all morning." Wren explains as she continues to lead the horse around in a circle whispering to it reassuringly.
"Don’t worry about it." The boy says as he sets up his instruments stand. "Why do you have to keep walking him?"
"His stomach is twisted and he wants to lay down, but if he does he could die." The forty-five year old woman says as she pets the horse's muzzle. "The plan was to keep him up and walking in hopes his insides would straighten themselves out. The problem is he needs to relax for that to happen."
"So you want me to play a relaxing song while you continue to walk him around?" The boy asks as he plugs his theremin into the stables power supply so he can recharge his battery.
"Not exactly!" His mother replies as she looks over at Eric, an intern who is covered from head to toe in rain gear and approaching with a length of rubber hose in his hand.
Tyc follows his mothers gaze to the hose, then he looks back at the horse which is now being led away from him. As he watches the horses rump the use of the hose suddenly becomes clear. Poor guys! Tyc thinks, referring to both Eric and the horse, as he pulls out his songbook and flips through the relaxation songs he's written. He quickly finds one that with a field at sunset. Tweaking a few of the algorhythms he makes the grasses of the field longer and more lush for the horse's enjoyment, he begins to set the chy parameters. Coming to his favorite part, where a playful bear walks across the field, he eliminates it, quite sure the horse won’t find it relaxing.
Eric hooks the hose up to one of the nearby spigots used to clean up the stalls and give the animals baths. He sets the red crystal instant hot water heater to the horse's body temperature. Having just sanitized the business end of the hose in the barns purple crystal ultraviolet sterilizer he approaches the horses rear end.
"Ok Tyc, go ahead." Wren says as she stops pacing and pets the large suffering animal while continuing to talk to it soothingly.
Tyc begins to play the theremin and the immediate space around the horse dims as chirping crickets begin to drown out the noises filling the barn. Most of the physicians and interns not immediately occupied stop to watch the boy's show. Like his mother they all missed the earlier show and will have to catch it on the chy projector at the library.
Eric spreads some jelly on the sterilized end of the hose, and the darkened area around the horse slowly changes into a beautiful open field with flowing succulent grass growing as far as the eye can see. The horse seems slightly startled at first, but once the landscapes natural sights, sounds and even smells begin to flow over the animal it becomes visibly relaxed. And that’s when Eric inserts the hose and turns it on.
The large animal's protests slightly startle Tyc nearly breaking his concentration, but he quickly recovers and adds new depth and dimension to the phantasmagorical experience. Settling down quickly the boys masterful control over the wild beast is apparent as the animal relaxes and goes with the flow.
Tyc tries not to watch after he sees Eric shaking off like a dog who just came in out of heavy downpour. So he concentrates on his instrument and plays.
Tyc takes his time riding to his next destination. It is just past noon and he has not eaten his lunch yet. His stomach growls as he passes the young crops of vegetables, most of which are way to unripe. But when he gets to the baby spinach he stops.
Laying his bike out of the way on the side of the road he enters the spinach field and begins to pick a medium leaf from each plant. He picks a hand full and then places them in the cargo pocket of his shorts.
"Mmmm... Fresh spinach." He says to himself as he walks back to his bicycle. He gets back on his bike and rides towards a cluster of homes on a very steep hillside. His grandfather is working near the treehouses. Unfortunately for his grumbling stomach he promised to help his gramps before lunch.
It is a beautiful day and Tyc is basking in the warm glow of a job well done as he rides through the hilly fields. He resists the urge to smile, the clouds of insects pelting his face and crystal amber shades dissuade him from opening his mouth at all. As he enters the trees he suddenly feels a sharp inhalation of inspiration. The high noon sun shines through the thin young leaves around the boy making the forest a fiery fairyland. Amber filtered sunlight fills every niche of the luminous landscape fading the green to a pale off white.
It never ceases to amaze him that everything surrounding him is their due to nurturing chy energy, sunlight. It’s almost as if life is just an imaginative way for the sun's energy to flow from a one form to another. Simply put, nature is actually just another anomaly in the natural order of a universe where all energy is flowing towards entropy.
Just then an owl swoops down out of the trees and flies in front of the boy down the path through the forest. Barely pedaling at first Tyc quickly begins to speed up as he follows the fowl. It is a large speckled brown owl whose wingspan extends the breadth of the wide bike two-lane path. Exhilarated by the chase Tyc reaches his top speed, about twenty-six miles per hour, just as the owl veers off the path and flies over a rocky outcrop above a steep decent. Tyc slows way down and takes his bike off trail and onto the outcrop. Gripping the handlebars tightly he stands on his pedals and flexes his knees as he hops over the craggy rocks until he reaches the edge. The boy stops and watches the magnificent owl fly high over the forest below until it dives into the canopy and is lost among the maze of leaves.
Tyc stays only a moment as he takes in the beautiful view. Turning his bike around he heads back to the trail. Energized and full of endorphins he quickly speeds up and covers the remaining half-mile of his trek in less than three minutes.
An expansive old tree comes into view as Tyc reaches his destination. It is a large oak tree which is twice the age of the small man standing beneath it. The nineteen year old boy rolls up to his seventy-six year old grandfather.
"Good, at least you showed up!" The old man says without looking up as he moves between several mobile crystal control panels which have been set up around the large trunk of the old tree.
"Sorry I’m late Gramps. How did you like my performance?" The boy asks as he stops his bike and dismounts. The old man stops and looks up at the boy.
"It was fantastic my boy." The old man says with a large smile which divides his thin fairly smooth face with an endless array of wrinkles.
Thomas Byron beams with pride as he looks upon his grandson. He truly did enjoy the performance this morning, but even more he is amazed at the boy's talent and abilities. Since before Tyc was even a year old Thomas knew he was going to be a chy poet, but he never let on how he felt until the boy decided he wanted to study chy. The old man wanted the boy to make his own decisions in his own time and he couldn’t be happier with the results. Never in his wildest dreams did Thomas think Tyc would become one of the greatest chy composers by the age of eighteen.
"I thought you said Professor Arronger was coming to help." Tyc says as he leans his bike against a smaller oak tree nearby.
"He was supposed to be here an hour ago. Did he say anything to you?" Thomas inquires knowing the boy saw his professor earlier.
Tyc shakes his head no. "Maybe he forgot. You know he is getting old!" He says with a smile knowing full well Professor Arronger is five years younger than his grandfather.
The older man quickly glances up and scowls at his grandson before returning to his work. "Well regardless we need to get started if we’re going to get the full use of the sun. We can do it ourselves, I just need to preset a few songs. Here Tyc you take these three stations and I’ll take those four."
"Okay." Tyc replies as he starts checking over the first crystal computer. The teenager is is familiar with what he has to do, he has been helping his grandfather for the past five years. Utilizing his chy expertise to help farmers and ecosystem restorers are the way the boy spends his mandatory communal chores. Most of the time he's helping his mother with the animals both on and off the farm, his grandfather with advanced chy applications throughout the community or his father with information restoration at the library. Between his studies and helping his family he's done more than his share of helping to progress the community. Actually he's unsure how they will cope without him if he chooses to go study in Europea.
Seven computer stations surrounding the old oak are connected to an array of thin umbrella like crystal membranes located at the tops of the surrounding trees. The yellow and green crystal collectors above the canopy capture the solar energy and feed it to the computers through inch thick high capacity, insulated, crystalline metal alloy wires. Because the devices will be using so much energy at once modern crystal battery technology is inadequate.
The two chy composers are forced to make some last minute changes to the preprogrammed chy songs. The adjustments are slight but require complex calculations that most chy composers use computers to help them with, but the boy does them quickly in his head. Tyc has always been able to perform chy algorhythms in his head almost as fast as most composers can do with calculators and computers.
"Are you ready yet gramps?" The boy asks eager to get started so he can go eat.
"Patience son. A job worth doing is worth doing correctly. We don’t want to make a mistake... do we?" The old man says looking up from his station and peering at his grandson over his translucent crystal spectacles.
"I guess." Tyc says reluctantly realizing the hundreds of man hours the community worked setting up the array of crystal collectors and wire. Not to mention the amount of chy energy they will be utilizing and the inherent risks of working with such high levels of energy.
"Okay, now I’m ready." Thomas says sarcastically with a smile and a twinkle in his eye.
Tyc smiles and initiates the first song on the first computer. The chy songs they are using are sterile and monotonous compared to the songs Tyc uses to make phantasmagorical creations, but the "boring" songs are very powerful and complex, utilizing much more energy than most of the chy used by the community. Unlike his theremin which uses low levels of electricity to control mainly the visible, auditory, and sometimes olfactory spectrum, the computers which they are using now use extremely high amounts of electricity to control the entire spectrum of energy.
The computer's use keyboards which are very similar in size and shape to the alphanumeric keyboards utilized to interface with the first home computer. But as far as Tyc can tell the precise chromatic crystal instruments performance is more like that of a piano's keyboard.
The boy moves on to the next computer and initiates the next songs. He makes a few adjustments as he watches the reaction of the songs he initiates as they meld with his grandfather's songs. Four of the chy songs are actually anti-chy anti-songs providing electromagnetic insulating shielding that protect all life, including the patient, from the radiation created by the high level chy energy. The insulating shields tree are like the electromagnetic energy fields created by the planet's spinning core, protecting the earth's biosphere from the sun's deadly radiation with an invisible barrier. Once the shields are in place the two men move onto the last three computer's and initiate the final chy songs.
Thomas’s songs are directed at the tree itself. Throughout the next two weeks the green, yellow, and blue chy energy will be fed to the old oak reinforcing the natural growing process which has slowed over the last decade due to environmental stresses.
Tyc’s powerful chy song is directed at the hundreds of multi colored crystal's implanted in the ground around the tree's roots. Throughout the soil orange, red, and blue buried crystals collect the chy energy and utilize it to reorganize and rebuild the natural soil ecosystem throughout the root zone.
Finally Thomas moves over to the seventh computer and initiates a song which focuses in on the entire tree from the tips of its roots to the top of its canopy. Over the next two weeks violet and blue energy will enrich the carbon dioxide around the leaves as the roots are enriched with oxygen, and nutrients. All of the energy shields and enrichment fields encourage the natural flow of water through the system. The only variable the two chy poets didn't fool around with is the natural chy energy input into the environment, but he weather is predicted to be fair and very sunny.
The two go back to each computer and check how the songs are functioning, making minor adjustments as they are needed. They then lock the computers into a schedule for the next two weeks and stand back to admire their work.
It makes Tyc feel good to use his chy knowledge in such useful ways helping his mother, and her father. But he helps them all the time, today is special because he is helping to keep the oldest oak tree in New Appalachia alive and reproducing for another season.
The towering arboreal triumph before him was grown with an acorn which his great great great grandfather brought over with him from Europea when he was a young boy. And that acorn was a direct descendant of a few acorns kept alive for over a thousand years by a group of European scientists who gathered as many plant species as they could before the ecotastrophe. They kept the seeds in a chy induced stasis inside vaults deep within caves throughout the Alps.
The man and boy take in the beautiful sight of the old tree as the energy fields begin to do their slow microscopic work. Although the tree is traditionally young for the species, it has succumb to a few of the many problems the community has faced trying to reforest Greenfield. Not the least of these problems is the polluted soil. Much of the surrounding land had its soil detoxified by different natural and genetically engineered plants before it was forested. But the acorn needed to be planted quickly when Jebodiah Byron and the founders of Greenfield landed here almost a hundred and fifty years ago.
The poor old tree has also fallen prey to a few species of insects which thrive outside the community. Before any people moved to this land it was well prepared by
the Europeans. One vital security measures the people of Europea put in place is a series of insect repelling crystal beacons placed around the communities perimeter and regularly throughout Greenfield. The people of Greenfield have had to keep the beacons running or the insects outside would destroy their reforestation work in days if not hours. Throughout their history the people of New Appalachia have had to remain vigilant in the face oft heir insect enemies. Every once in a while a species will find it's way past the low level but constant chy perimeter. The current poet laureate has had to come up with an updated chy shield that includes repelling new menaces. The job has been Thomas's for a third of a century and will someday be Tyc's responsibility, one of many!
As if that weren't enough, a new strand of bacteria, discovered by Thomas and his other daughter, a batonist, has begun to attack the bark and acorns when they ripen in the fall. The chy procedure they are doing today has kept the tree producing some viable acorns for five years now. Thomas wants to get ten more years of acorn harvests from the forest’s mature matriarch. He feels that in ten years the rest of the forest will be old enough to handle the large load of new trees this huge old tree provides each year. Of course his daughter and many of the scientists of Greenfield and in Europea are working on a permanent cure.
Unfortunately most of the species resilient enough to naturally survive the ecotastrophe were weedy nuisance plants, pesky insects, and rodents. And because of these creatures dominance over the natural environment diseases, fungus, molds, bacteria and viruses spread through the Earth's ecosystems like wildfire. But the worst part is now that these hordes of pests rule the Earth's ecosystems and are fighting hard to keep their reign over the biosphere, restoring the land has become an uphill battle with no end in sight.
As he watches the tree soaking up the sun's energy as man harnessed solar energy powers the supplemental chy systems, Tyc ponders the battle waging between man and nature since the beginning of time...
At first we were at the mercy of nature, beaten at every turn by the law of the jungle. Then we slowly begin to overcome our environment until we thought nature herself was under our control and we had won. But that was just the calm before the storm. After the ecotastrophe it took but a few decades for nature to reclaim urban areas where humans had died by the thousands due to poor water quality, poor air quality and very little food.
So now we are completely at her mercy once again, like a bratty child set straight by his mother. But we are wiser and ready to except the ways of our mother and live by her example and not in defiance of her existence.
Well feed and back on campus Tyc bikes through a cluster of yurts. The small round wooden buildings serve as the main classrooms of the campus. At the top of the hill is a very large ornate building made of stone and crystal. This was the first building constructed in New Appalachia, before the first permanent settlers. The Europeans created the distant fortress in the tradition of their ancient ancestors.
Gleaming crystal sparkles in the afternoon sun as the boy approaches Carolina Castle sitting above the circular classrooms and the rest of the community. At first the huge building, resembling a small ancient castle from the old country, served as home, hospital, school, church, and just about anything else that the founders of New Appalchia needed shelter for. As the community grew and expanded out the crystal castle eventually become the primary gathering place of the community.
Built into a rock shelf beneath a towering rocky outcrop Carolima Castle is the town's northeastern most point and sits above a series of cliffs which eventually give way to a little bay far below.
Tyc rides up to the large stone bike rack partially filled with a variety of different types of cycles. He sets his bike in the rack and without even a thought of locking it up the boy climbs the stone steps carved from the bedrock. Two sets of wooden and crystal double doors tower above the small human as he approaches the leftmost entrance door which opens inward with ease as Tyc pushes it.
The boy enters the gatehouse and is greeted by the sunlight streaming in through the large colored crystal windows and, clear crystal skylights. The small gatehouse is simply an entrance hall with cubbies and hooks for peoples belongings and the main information desk in the center. The boy approaches one of the cubbies and puts his backpack into an empty one and then walks away without giving his unique customized theramin’s security a second thought. Such thoughts are unnecessary in Greenfield.
Father George, Rabi David, and Sahid one of the Muslim clerics are walking together just in front of the boy. The three theologians are the primary spiritual leaders of the community. The three men spent a lot of time together in the library housed in the castle. The three men hold nondenominational services in the library starting Friday night and going through to Sunday evening. The rest of the week the three men along with some anyone else who wants to join, meet regularly in the library or one of the castle's cafes were they do research, pose questions, and have many, many heated arguments. But by the weekend they have aways reached a compromise on some common ground in order to come up with a cohesive spiritual message for their parishioners. They argue amongst themselves, searching for the answers so that the people who look to them for spirutal guidance don't have to.
Tyc has seen the three men together all his life, and can't imagine living in a time where people were killed and wars were fought over religious differences. Although being in the library almost as much as they are the boy has heard them have many loud and sometimes raging debates and discussions, and it is then that he's glad there are no more armies on Earth.
The priest, the Rabi, and the cleric go up the stairs to the second floor. The boy has never been very spiritual, he's always preferred logic and science to emotion and faith. An Agnostic at heart the teen could never quite let go of the theory of a creator. After all he does have an open mind... It could happen!
Tyc watches the three theologins enter the juice and smoothie bar and envies them. They may not have all the answers of the real world but their faith must be very comforting when realities harshes their mellow.
Three tall stories tower above the boy as he strides through the gatehouse and into the main hall. A large stone stairway stands in front of him leading up to the second floor where there's a Cappuccino counter, a juice and smoothie bar, a salad bar, a café and access to the large terraces overlooking all of Greenfield and the surrounding mountains.
The sun shines through many clear and colored crystal windows onto hundreds of comfortable wooden and fabric chairs, lush leather sofas, large tables and personal desks scattered throughout the open interior. The castles main floor is very open with a huge circular solarium towering off to the right of the mian building, but still tied into the main entry hall. Although the space is so expansive there are not only a series of vegetation covered balconies with confortable seats in the solarium, but there are hundreds of small cozy reading alcoves and private quiet study niches throughout its interior and exterior of the whole building. When the weather is pleasant the dozens of doors on each floor are opened, inviting the readers to enjoy the outdoors where there are many patios and balconies surrounding the structure. Thousands of fist sized yellow crystal globes hang from the ceilings at varying heights throughout the sitting, lounging and study areas of the castle. During the day the sun's energy is absorbed by the yellow crystal on the exterior of the globes and fed to the smaller green sphere inside which powers the glowing greenish-yellow globes at night. Sunlight is the primary source of light in the building during the day and through exact cuts and placement of many small crystal windows the sunlight stretches into every thinking nook and reading niche.
Carolina Castle has several wings. The three above ground floors and round crystal three story solarium house hundreds of wireless chy viewing stations, connected to the libraries network, where people can access every piece of information in the libraries archives as well as the worldwide chynet. The rectangular front left tower houses the archives contained in the communities super crystal computer, the hub of the communities chynet it is a series of crystal processors and memory drives providing the citizens with virtually unlimited processing and memory capabilities. Behind the archives tower is an identical second tower on the back left of the building housing the enormous crystal communications antenna, which keeps the super computer in constant contact with one of the Earth's five chy satellites and the worldwide chynet. The two floors below ground are climate controlled storage facilities and labs which hold all the recovered information found in the last century around New Appalachia. It is the labs on the first floor of the basement where Tyc is headed.
Despite having spent a great deal of his time in the primary gathering place of his community, Tyc usually spends his time here alone. Where as most people come here to socialize, glean a little info like current events, and gossip about everything under the sun, the chy prodigy usually has his head in one of the chynet displays or in one of the numerous books filling the sparadically placed inset shelves in every stone wall. Always finding a seat with a good view, the teenage boy often pauses in his research to watch the people of his cummunity intermingle. Although most people know the boy by sight, no one ever really talks to him or includes him, not wanting to disturb the genius. Sometimes he wishes that they would disturb him.
He turns left past an information counter as he waves to the thirty-something assistant librarian on duty.
"Hey Tyc we watched your performance on the chynet this morning. It was awesome!" The balding man says as looks up from his work.
"Thanks Drew. Do you know where my dad is?" The boy asks as he slows to talk.
"He’s in the video lab." Drew replies.
"Thanks!" Tyc says as he speeds back up towards the left side stairway between the two towers. This is the only stairway which goes down, thus helping to control the subterranean environment.
Tyc opens the door leading to the descending stairway and pauses. As a child he always use to envy his father for being able to go to work in the castle, that is until he understood that his father worked over eight hours a day in the sunless, plant-less, fresh air starved basement. The boy prepares himself for the unnatural setting and enters.
A mellow indigo glow baths the stairwell as large blue, and violet crystal wall panels cleanse, ionize and condition the air and anyone passing through it. Tyc can instantly feel the difference in the humidity level and although it is cooler he doesn’t like it.
At the bottom of the stairs he enters a transparent crystal door leading to a small white crystal room. On the wall are white crystal hooks with sterile white soy-based plastic hooded gowns hanging from them. The boy sits down on a simple white shelf bench opposite the hooks. Removing his sandals he places them under the bench beside his fathers. Behind the bench are dozens of cubbies with a pair of white plastic shoes in each. Tyc grabs one of the size eight pairs and puts them on. If he didn’t completely trust chy sterilization he wouldn’t be putting the used shoes on. But when he was in primary school they experimented with chy sterilization songs and he saw with his own eyes how effective they work, especially on the medical graqde soy based plastic.
The boy stands and grabs a gown from a hook. Putting it on over his T-shirt and shorts he has to roll up the sleeves which are a little to long. He walks to a solid white door opposite the one he entered. On the left side are several small hooks with pairs of translucent and white crystal wristbands hanging from them. Tyc puts a pair of the wristbands on and can feel the neutralizing energy fields encase his hands. On the right side of the door are several small cubbies with a multicolored crystal visor and palm sized crystal controller in each. Putting one of the visors on and slipping the small controller in his pocket the teen opens the second door and enters the pitch black labs.
The first floor of the basement is separated into several varying sized white crystal rooms which are filled with crystal computers and many different pieces of crystal equipment. Tyc walks down a long white hallway with many white doors leading to the different labs. He comes to a door like all the others and enters.
The video lab is filled with all sorts of different modern equipment as well as many ancient machines recovered with the historic videos. On the far side of the large lab is a man who seems to be sitting in the dark staring into thin air. Since the ancient materials being studied and restored here are so fragile there is no light allowed. The visors the scientists wear absorb all the chy in the room and project the image on the wearers retina as if he were seeing the scene before him in full daylight. The small crystal controller in his pocket allows him to adjust the light, enlarge anything he is looking at, and choose what he watches. The man is actually watching a video he is working on. Ever since the glasses were perfected ten years ago Tyc has dreamed of a day when the world has enough expendable energy and resources so everyone can use the glasses all the time. For now he must do with only using them were they are needed, not wanted.
The man sitting alone in the dark looks exactly like Tyc, from his size and build, down to his clothes, but upon closer inspection one can see he is older.
"Hey Dad you said you needed some help this afternoon?" Tyc says as he tunes into the pixelized image his father is watching.
"Oh hey Kiddo, I didn’t here you come in." The older man says as he turns the visor to thirty percent transparent so he can see his son through the video.
"What’s this?" Tyc asks regarding the video his father is working on.
His father gives the boy a slight smile as his reply. "Watch."
The now crystal clear image begins to move and what was just a picture of a forest before suddenly turns into a video of a forest with audio commentary.
"She stalks her prey waiting for the opportune moment to strike." The deep voice narrates through the earpieces of the visor as Tyc finally sees the deer in the forest scene when the animal moves. Although he has seen deer before it has only been in video and is a rare pleasure. Deer did survive the ecotastrophe but they have not yet been reintroduced to New Appalachia. The plants of the newly restored forests and fields could not quite handle them yet, maybe in Tyc’s lifetime he will see deer in his forest. But he soon realizes that the deer however is not the subject of the video.
A brown blur suddenly shoots across the screen and before the deer or Tyc know what’s going on the gentle forest grazer is down.
"The large predator takes down its prey with ease as its powerful jaws and sharp claws grip the flesh sevoring it's jugular." The narrators grisly commentary only adding to the excitement of the scene as Tyc sees a mountain lion for the first time.
He has seen pictures of mountain lions but never video footage, unfortunately no actual mountain lions or any big cats survived the ecotastrophe. For that matter only one species of all the land predators over fifty pounds survives today. Because of mankind's restoration efforts of wolves before the catastrophe they were able to gather a large enough genetic sample to save the species. Besides the invention of chy, the efforts of a few late twentieth/ early twenty-first century conservationist to save the wolves might be one of mankind's greatest achievements before the ecotastrophe.
Tyc sits down and watches the screen mesmerized by the video image before him. He barely even hears the narration as the powerful animal devours large portions of the deer before it proceeds to drag the mangled carcass up a tree for later consumption. The huge cat then lounges in a large branch of another tree and cleans the blood off its fur with its long tongue.
Suddenly the image before the two men becomes distorted, jerky, and pixilated as the commentary drops in pitch and the narrators voice turns from a deep calming tone to a chipmunk on helium. Tyc’s father quickly turns the sound down.
"Well, what do you think?" Keen Silvanus asks his boy with a smile.
"Awesome, where did it come from?" The curious boy inquires.
"It was part of the expedition last fall to the public television station. Man we found a lot of good stuff at that sight." The older man says looking back at the screen.
"Did you need some help with something or did you just want me to see the puma." Tyc says looking around at the many ongoing projects around the room. He has helped his father many times in this room, his creativity and knowledge of chy coming in handy when his father is struck on a project. He also helps out the other historical restorers on this floor, he especially likes helping in the audio department where they restore the coolest old songs from computers and small potable audio players.
"No, I just wanted you to see the lion but if you want to you could take a look at the old news footage on the hard drive over there." Keen says gesturing to a beat up looking device two work stations over. The older man focuses on his work as he runs the rest of the digital video through basic chy filters before he does the detail work.
Tyc thinks for a moment, remembering he is supposed to meet Josh in a few hours for a hike. He looks at the hard drive, early twenty-first century, he thinks assessing its condition as he approaches it. Even though he knows the simple binary will be easy for the chy computers to piece together he sees water damage which always makes ancient digital restoration challenging. You never know what kinds of chy algorhythms you’ll need to come up with to help piece together the gaps. This could take days not hours. He thinks as he sits down and places the fifty terabyte hard drive onto a full spectrum crystal scanner connected to a chy workstation with keyboard. And before he knows it Tyc is absorbed in the project.
Several hours later two descendants of the few lucky people to survive the Earth's ecotastrophe are hiking up Blue Mountain while engaged in an engrossing conversation.
"You know I’m excited about graduating and all, but I can’t help but feel a little sad also." Tyc says to his best friend Josh as they walk up the steep rocky trail.
"I’m not so much depressed, but the real problem is all my life I’ve wanted to get out of here and see the world, but now that the time has come I feel bad about leaving this place and the people. I mean I plan to go to study in Europea so I can help put the pieces of our history and heritage back together. And then I'll travel the world and teach people about chy and nature, before comeing back here to become the chy poet laureate. But lets face it I’ve seen the chy pictures and video not to mention phantasmagorical recreations of the restored forests and ecosystems of the world and frankly this is as good as it gets." He says as he indicates to a slight view of the mountains and ocean peaking through the lush forest.
"Maybe I should just stay and work on the reforestation with you." He sighs "It seems like no matter what I or anyone ever does we’ll only ever have a fraction of what our ancestors had." Tyc babbles to his friend.
The taller boy realizes Tyc doesn't have a lot of friends and thus does not get to say what he wants to much, so the teen lets the smaller boy talk as he just walks and listens.
"Don’t you think it would have been cool to have been alive in the twentieth century when you could have hiked for weeks through New Appalachia, and no one had to be a field or forest farmer if they didn’t want to?" Tyc asks his tall hiking companion as they slowly make their way up the side of blue mountain just northeast of the pleasant valley that they live in.
"Actually I would have preferred to have been alive in the fourteenth century before white man ever came to this land." The tall darker complected boy replies. "The natives didn’t farm, they hunted and gathered."
Tyc stops and turns to his best friend. "But your not thinking of how much you could have done in the twentieth century to prevent the ecotastrophe from ever happening."
Josh just smiles at his very, smart, talented, but guileless friend and says . "Sometimes Tyc you area as naive as a newborn. What exactly would you have done to prevent the biggest loss of life and living ecosystems to ever hit the Earth?" Josh had let the boy muse most of the way up the mountain and feels it is time to make him accountable for his musings.
"Well I would take the ancestors of chy-- language, mathematics, the sciences, music, and literature-- and use them to show the people what is going to happen to them if they don’t change their ways." Tyc looks at his friend triumphantly. "I would show them the decades of death at the end of the twenty-first century. I would show them the suffering that humans had to endure for two millennia, due to their selfishness and materialism which nearly killed the whole planet." The smaller teen looks at his friend to see if he can read his reaction.
Josh gives Tyc no indication that he has won the argument. The two boys always try to outsmart or outwit each other when ever they can, taking completely hypothetical situations and using their knowledge and imaginations to try and logically and realistically explain their way out of, or into them. They each take great pleasure in talking the other into an impossible hypothesis of the imagination. It doesn’t happen very often.
"Come on Josh!" Tyc gives his friend a no-nonsense stare. "You know as well as I do that if people saw a good movie about the eventual outcome of their materialistic habits, that they would at least walk away questioning their ways." He says to his friend sternly.
Josh just shakes his head and smiles at his small friend. "Tyc, when will you learn? A person of the twentieth century did not have access to all the knowledge you would need to make this movie, many of them were practically uneducated by our standards. And more importantly, the very thing that caused the castastrophe is why they would not watch, or pay attention to your movie." The tall teen looks at Tyc expecting him to pick up on what he is getting at. The small teen just looks at his friend blankly, so Josh continues.
"People of the twentieth and twenty-first century only had two things on their short little attention spans... Me, and Now!" Josh says looking at his friend, who he has always viewed as childlike with his small boyish physical features as well as his unending optimistic innocence. But he has always sort of seen it as his job to help Tyc see the ugly truth and keep him down to Earth, the dirty, stinky, flawed Earth. Josh has found his job becoming increasingly more difficult as they get older.
"For someone who has been accepted to study in Europea you’re very ignorant about humanature sometimes. I think that’s what Arronger was talking about when he criticized you this morning." Josh stops again and looks back at the smaller teen who is now dragging behind. He suddenly realizes he might have been a little harsh to his friend, but then again unlike Josh who may never leave New Appalachia Tyc is going out into the world and needs to toughen up.
"Humanature is a very sly and fickle beast and you’ve gotta understand yourself before you can understand anyone. Take what you just said about staying instead of going to Europea. People do not want to change, and they won’t change no matter how loud you scream at them, or how much sense you make, even if you do it in a very educational and entertaining way. You have to get to the root of people, their philosophy, you must positively change a whole society’s world view, before the society will change into the world view. Historically peoples’ influences have been uncontrolled, accidental at best, but due to mankind's ability to think for themselves and learn from each other, we should have been able to create a more positive environment for our children, and the twenty-first century should have been different. But the people weren’t thinking of their children when they went shopping for plastic with plastic, or paying enormous sums for huge cheap homes, or filling up their gas guzzlers with the last of the fossil fuels. They were thinking ‘Me Now!’ The motto of the materialistic society."
Josh can see in Tyc’s eyes that he knows the taller teen is right. Josh actually feels a little sorry for Tyc, he hopes the boy will grow up someday, in a real way, not just knowledge and rules, and it saddens him.
"Think about it from a historical standpoint. Since the beginning man has strived, working inhumanly hard and sacrificing all they have, even their lives, to progress beyond themselves, thus creating language, art, math, music, science and society. Yet at the very tippy top of this pyramid of achievement sits Twenty-first Century man, and what does he do?" The tall teen asks excitedly not expecting an answer.
"He wastes history's wisdom, balks at science's knowledge, throws away his natural environment, and concentrates wealth and power to a few unsuitable men, thus slowing down humanities progress to a trickle. In the Twenty-first century man's hands were the tools to cure hunger, the ecotastrophe, ignorance, and degrading poverty. But he spent his time, energy, and money on entertainment, sports, wasteful disposable products half of which were designed simply to sell quickly and often."
"Considering this was a world which was run by neither socialism, totalitarianism, or democracy, but rather capitalism, which is ruled by the almighty bottom line, then you would have thought they would have considered the ultimate cost... The Earth's bottom line." They come to a point in the trail which overlooks the mountains to the south that have not yet been reforested. The two teens stop and take in the barren sight for a second before moving on.
"You see Tyc if they couldn’t even think of their kids and grandkids, many of whom perished in the decades of deaths, or suffered afterward, then why would they care about a meaningless movie which passes through their materialistic lives like a swift styrofoam breeze?"
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!" The smaller teen laughs at his friend. "Swift styrofoam breeze!? How long have you been waiting to throw that into a conversation?" Tyc asks his friend as they begin to climb a steep incline.
"So I guess you noticed Autumns outfit today." Josh says giving his companion a friendly nudge, as he contiously lightens up the subject.
Tyc turns red and just smiles.
"I thought so." The taller boy replies to his friends shy smile. "So when are you going to do something about that."
"Come on Josh we’ve known each other since we were babies how could I?"
Josh knows that this is just an excuse. He has seen how Tyc acts around other people, he is withdrawn and quiet. Josh has also known the smaller boy since they were babies and knows Tyc is a thinker not a talker. He knows that this characteristic carries over to Tyc being extra shy around girls. He also knows how much Autumn likes Tyc, it seems to be obvious to everyone except Tyc.
"Well if you don’t I will!" The tall boy says with a smile as he uses his long legs to quickly stride out of the stockier boys reach.
"Stupid jerk you probably would." Tyc says quickening his pace to catch up. He does feel pressure from himself and Autumn to do something, but he has just never been sure she is the one. He would probably do something, but he doesn’t want something to start and then have to hurt her. He just couldn’t do that to Autumn.
Since Josh’s, and Tyc’s parents both donated their rights to a second child to families that wated three, the two boys have been like siblings. And then when Autumn was born to the Silvanus’s closest neighbors a year after Tyc, the boy adopted her as his little sister. He wanted to be an older sibling like his hero Josh was to him. Although he has never really considered the sister angle to seriously, it's still a weird area, so Tyc has just tried to avoid it altogether. Just like this...
"Did Arronger help in the reforestation area today?" Tyc asks knowing the professor was supposed to help his grandfather but is often called out to help the chy engineers with the reforestation on the edges of New Appalachia.
Josh instantly sees what Tyc is doing and doesn’t call him on it. Frankly he is getting really exhausted hiking and talking for miles after working a full shift.
"Nope, he wasn’t around. But Frank McCormick didn’t show up to work today either. Sometimes they go fishing together."
Tyc can’t imagine the professor skipping out on his gramps to go fishing, but then again it was an annual top ten day by his account. "That was probably it."
The trail quickly becomes very rocky and the two teens begin to race to the outlook near the top of the mountain. Tyc runs sure-footedly over the moss and lichen covered rocks a few steps behind Josh as they pass through the rhododendron forest. They both have been coming to the outlook, they call catrock, since they were very small.
Josh and Tyc are suddenly standing on a large rock outcropping reaching north over the rolling mountains of the Appalachians to the west and the Chesapeake Sea to the east.
Tyc is struck to his soul by the beauty of the mountains rolling into the horizon on one side, and falling into the flat water on the other.
"Well, there is one good thing about living now rather than in the twenty- first century." Tyc exclaims as he continues to stare out over the amazing communion between land and sea. "Two thousand years ago the ocean was four hundred miles to the east." Tyc reminds Josh of the Atlantic’s continuing crawl across the continent since the ecotastrophe, to its current resting place at the foot of the Appalachians.
"It sure does make a pretty picture." Josh says in an awed tone as he watches the sun begin to set over the rolling ocean of mountains to the west.
"Yeah.... ." Tyc says as he watches the clouds go from bright orange to deep red and then violet as they stretch from west to east across the Atlantic.
Tyc takes his theramin from his leather backpack and begins to set it up. The boy attaches the two crystal antennas and places the instrument on a rock with a flat spot. He turns the theramin on and holds his hands over the antennas and listens to the symphony of natural chy songs emanating from everything around him. At first the boy is almost overwhelmed by the seemingly chaotic collage of chy songs, but then he thinks the focusing phrases.
As the phrases pass through Tyc’s mind his hands almost automatically play the simple chy filtering and focusing songs on the crystal theramin. He records each song on a separate track and loops it as he starts the next song. The teen adds many different songs before he narrows the theramin’s energy to filter nature's symphony with only the voices he wants remaining. He focuses in on only a select few of the more melodious chy songs coming from the forest, birds, rocks, insects, sun, mountains, animals, sea ,and sky.
The chy songs of nature are very chaotic when listened to all at once, but a good chy poet will be able to focus in on the separate parts like individual threads from many different pieces of fabric. Luckily there are patterns and Tyc, being a great chy poet, quickly finds what he wants. Improvising new chy phrases over old ones, narrowing his focus even further the boy begins to weave his own unique chy fabric over the natural one. It takes at least a decade of dedicated study, to learn how to do what the boy achieves in a few minutes. Using some of the theramin’s many controls, the boy turns the song up so he and Josh can both hear it. The teen only uses the auditory portion of the chy energy, filtering out the rest of the spectrum of energy emanating up off of everything. He does not wish to compete with the natural beauty or use the extra energy. He then puts the theramin on automatic so he can sit back and enjoy the beauty of the evening with his friend.
Climbing out to the edge Tyc finds his favorite seat and quickly checks it over for snakes and spiders. Although he loves nature there are some parts he loves less than others, especially when it comes to creepy crawly things in his vicinity.
Sitting back the boy enjoys the harmonious song being plucked from the natural world around him, he thinks back to the conversation he and Josh just had. He looks over at the taller teen but sees his is already zoning out on the beautiful view and mellow song. Although Tyc had a busy day he knows Joshes was much more exhausting working a six hour shift in the reforestation zones.
It’s not that I’m naive you know. He thinks to himself as he stares at the sunset, while the sunset’s song plays over the crystal theramin. It’s just that I think if man had the opportunity to learn in the twentieth century how their actions would become known as the greatest destructive force in the Earth’s history since the extinction of the dinosaurs, and how they would cause the extinction of over ninety percent of the species on Earth and the death of over fifteen billion people in the span of three decades, that maybe they would change their ways.
Tyc looks out over one of the better effects of man’s destruction, he then looks back over at his pal sitting in a very comfortable rock which looks like it was sculpted around him. Tyc sits with his legs dangling over the steep edge and thinks. I guess that’s the real difference between Josh and me: he only sees the destruction, where I see the creation. I will always be an optimist and believe that positive aspects of our humanature drive us. Where as Josh will always be a pessimist and say it is the negative side of our nature which motivates us and which will bring about our eventual destruction.
The curious, sensitive boy has always known he is different from most people. He learned in psycology class when he was twelve that it is because he's introverted. Unlike most extroverted people, Josh for example, Tyc internalizes the world, using his creativity to imagine himself as other people throughout the world and history. If he sees flaws in others he examines himself until he finds the same flaw and then searches for the cause or causes.
His first few years in school everyone thought he was a little slow, especially socially, but he was just processing the information his own way. Tyc has always had to work extra hard at most things, but that is because in order for him to remember something he must know how it fits into the big picture. Luckily by the the end of his primary education he was a top student and his big picture view of the world helped out immensley when he specialized in chy.
As an observant and thougthful person the teen is fascinated by the amount of self promation most people do. Josh isn't as bad as most and he's different becasue he is one of those naturally smart people, who unlike him has always done decent in school and life without even trying. In fact Josh has always fascinated him, he and Tyc get along great but he also gets along great with everyone else. The smaller boy has watched mesmerized as Josh talks his way into and out of any situation he wants.
Talk, talk, talk! The chy poet often thinks to himeself. No one wants to just sit and think all they want to do is talk, mainly about themselves. Tyc realized long ago, when he was wondering why he dispises making small talk, that most people spend most of their time talking about themselves but without any real insight about themselves or the world around them. Of course, despite everything the teenager still wishes he could just be that person everyone wants to be around.
Looking out over the landscape of New Appalachia the teen slowly calms his active mind. It is very hard for the boy’s hyperactive intellect to shut up, and he realizes that maybe this is one of the places he is lacking. He overthinks everything, sometimes to his benefit, sometimes to his detrimant. Josh and Autumn can just sit and watch the sky for hours, as the stars come out and everything is swallowed by shadows, but Tyc is always thinking, of songs, or history, or something strange in science, or nature, or he imagines the future. Somehow or another it always comes back to the future.
The boy realizes he needs to go out and interact with others. He's tried to force himself, but he can’t. Everytime he tries, he starts thinking and then he starts writing in his electronic crystal pad, and then he starts playing songs on his theramin. It's like a sickness and sometimes trying to force himself to go out and enjoy a regular life only makes it worse.
For now, however, he resigns himself to just sit and watch the sunset. No rules, just sitting and observing, and, if he has to, he'll let himself think... a little.
