FICTION: LIVING ON A BUBBLESAFE WORLD IS HARDLY LIVING AT ALL

The bubble balls were quite fun despite the serious nature of the reason they became ubiquitous on our streets. After running through the complete Greek alphabet for Covid variants in the early 2020s we reached our third time around by the 2030s.

Currently, Phi3 is reaping its initial human crop. Half of us are gone, comparing the planet’s population of the 2020s to now.

But those who remained of course, and as ever, made the best of things that they could.

The bubble balls were an essential part of that.

They were part of a happy melee on our streets. Since everything became electric our thoroughfares had become quite something. Cars were still used for long-distance travel. But in the cities, they had to compete with all of those who had once been pedestrians now careering along in our plastic personal spheres, our PPSes. The electronic force walls ensured all the bouncing around was made safe. The carz were of course self-driving and pre-programmed and able to weave and dodge, stop, swerve and cope with any momentary blindness caused by a careening ball with its screaming occupant.

There was no way you could walk the streets. Covid was so potent now that only your oxygen neutral supply within your ball could keep you from harm. Pre-programming destinations was naturally super slick and easy. However, you could stop-stick to any wall in order to arrange a change and at any time.

I was happily lost in the ambient moment of the renewed Beatles when I realized the change. I flicked on the viewscreen after stop-sticking. All others appeared to be rolling, bouncing, momentarily flying and generally flowing in the usual tide while the carz drove on straight or snake style below them. I struggled to get the realization back from memory. I knew I had realized a change, my enhanced cortex had told me so. I had selected the option for this and the e-flag had been no figment of my imagination. But I could find no record of the cause and this worried me.

Docking at home I came through the lock in a state of nervous agitation.

Could it just have been a bug? But weren’t such things supposed to have been completely ironed out shortly after the AI robots had taken over all that systems junk? (It had proven far too complex for mere human capabilities to process, update and modify.) Our reliance on AI-driven robotics to look after us left us vulnerable. But what were we to do? Of course, this was when it was thought that the population of the planet would continue to rise above 8 billion. No account was taken for the slightly greater proportion of earlier than normal human death rates that had been encountered as the new covid strain got started. Even as late as 2025 the full force of what was to come was predicted only by the few and mostly kept secret from general consumption to obviate the many negatives that would arise through panic.

The interlocking online systems across all societies that emerged and became The Grid spanning functions from education to driverless traffic control to healthcare to food delivery systems to nuclear energy production and all else besides was far too complex for humans to deal with. All those sci-fi movies and books to do with robots taking over the world began to come partly true as the 2020s came to an end. Just before the new wave of covid’s new 57 varieties hit. And hit hard.

We were a complete mess at first. You didn’t need terrorists for terror to be a constant in those days. For some, it was evidence of the existence of God. For others, it proved once and for all that the opposite was true. Nothing new there I suppose. As the 2030s began it was obvious we couldn’t go on as had done to that point. Just as after the Black Death wreaked its miserable path taking out one-third of the Earth’s then population, jobs became easier to come by once again. That is, for those with special skills, all related to providing backup for those early AI systems that were being parallel run with those that were fast becoming archaic.

The global UBI brought in during 2032 proved a lifesaver in the years between then and now. The panic-driven struggle for mere survival as covid took hundreds of thousands per day in the late 2020s right up to that year had created memories no would ever forget and a screaming demand that they would never return. Now everyone had the financial backing through the structure plan plus a monthly UBI to get themselves and their families safed-up. All that could be done online was done online. Drones crisscrossed above the tubeways and highways like fireflies creating a skynet.

The Structure Plan, in coordination with the specialists in the TechHelp Group, meant each household would have its airlock fitted as fast as humanly possible. The transport spheres (as they initially called the bubble balls) were also delivered with full instructions for use.

Once we reached the tipping point where systems became too complex and had to be self-modifying, self-cross-referencing and self-perpetuating there was no going back. It all took off and left us standing in the middle of an electronic maze that was once our planet.

So anyway, here I was, home.

I should have been relaxing in the bosom of my family, the others busy or not-so-very busy, each within their own pod. Our communal pod is where you’d find me, usually ready for some online character transfer within the Metaverse.

But not this evening. This evening you would definitely ask me about the puzzled frown I was wearing. My mind was buzzing with one question only… what was that glitch that had raised an e-flag so momentarily within my bubble as I rode home?

I got little sleep that night. If our systems still had glitches in them then this was evidence of a failure in the AI matrix. In theory at least mere random glitches could not occur. All systems were refreshed, analyzed and checked for possible anomalies hundreds of times per nanosecond. For a decade now bugs and glitches had been totally eliminated. Everything worked perfectly… or was supposed to.

On my way to my pseudo-work I puzzled over the seeming contradiction I was experiencing. We had developed perfect machines to create the perfect e-world that allowed us humans to be released from worry over an entirely too complex system of software that surrounded us. However, worry I did and no matter what I did I could not shake a feeling of foreboding off of me.

Was it possible to log this when it had only been an ambiguous, extremely short-lived blip that told me nothing except some anomaly existed? There was no message as in the old days of hard-metal computers. All were soft interfaces now where AI handled everything. Had AI spotted the e-flag? Was there any way I could find out? I was aware of no interface to the discorporate entities who now ran everything, none at all. All was supposed to be completely self-regulating.

I knew of only one possibility, one connection of mine that might possibly help me throw off my worries over this mysterious anomaly that had thrust itself into my perfect environment.

I wondered if he was still around…

Mr Stefanson had been my physics teacher back in the day. Only a year or so I had happened to bump into his bubble right there in my own neighbourhood. We had recognised each other and stick-stopped to each other to communicate. We’d exchanged our few banal pieces of recent news and then, just as we were about to say bye and disconnect he gave me his address with an invitation to come round sometime.

I had never found time somehow, even though I had plenty of it. I don’t know, maybe age has made me quite anti-social… or maybe it was the deep paranoia that had settled into just about all of us due to covid. At any rate, I had avoided further personal contact. But now I vowed to overcome that reluctance.

His home appeared very similar to anyone else's. He was still alive as his nametag flashed on my wall as I approached. I messaged ahead, then on getting the approach sign I locked. Stefanson’s credentials regarding his various vaccinations and global access pass appeared at eye level and I signed acceptance. The far lock opened. Stefanson had read my own creds before sending acceptance so we knew we could breathe the same air in the same space with virtual total impunity.

“How are you son?” he said approaching me with his hand outstretched. “How are you finding life these days?” “Keeping busy?”

It was a warming experience to be asked these questions while knowing no detailed answer was expected. He was simply signalling that a human to human experience was there to be experienced if I felt safe and secure enough. These were quite rare these days of covid-stricken attitudes and I warmed to the man immediately.

Coffee was ordered and delivered immediately hot and steaming from the organic print unit. We sat in close proximity enjoying the finely crafted taste of the brew.

Shortly he spoke.

“I presume this is not merely a social call Hal. Something’s on your mind... what is it?”

I knew from my time under Stefanson at Uny that he was not a man to beat around the bush so I told him in response exactly what was bothering me.

He said nothing for a while. Then took up an ornate pipe he had on a small chairside table next to him and began to vape. He puffed out some jasmine-scented whisps of smoke with one hand raised to signal he needed a little time to contemplate what I had told him.

After what was probably only a little over a minute’s time he spoke very quietly to me leaning in my direction as he did so.

“It is far from certain, however, taking into consideration everything we know about what we’ve been told of our new masters and their abilities, I suspect you may have been the honoured recipient of the first sign of the fall.”

He spoke the last two words of this sentence with particular emphasis then fell silent once again. After another two puffs of his pipe, he turned to look at me once again after appearing lost in thought. The look in his eyes was deadly serious and I must admit my spirit chilled before them.

I will not relate all that Stefanson related to me that night. Most of it after those initial remarks were conveyed only after the introduction of music in the room and by mouth to ear mode in what was once, before covid, a commonly engaged-in trait known as whispering.

The next day heading to PW I was nervous as hell. What might possibly happen next? I didn’t have to wait long.

It didn’t amount to much that day though that was shocking enough. The perfect image on the GPS viewscreen shivered just a little. Nothing more. That was it. I watched for more but no more came. All else was perfectly operational as usual.

The next day the shiver returned and continued for a second or two longer. In addition, an anomalous sound occurred completely unrelated to the onscreen image at that time. In fact, I had all sound alerts switched off so this made this strange momentary buzz even more anomalous. Heading home in the evening I was sure my bubble made a curious deviation from its expected course and trajectory for no accountable reason.

The next day I was distinctly aware that traffic was not behaving in the normal, albeit to the untrained and inexperienced eye, semi-random fashion. I knew the way of the highways after the decade I’d been riding these waves of travellers. Things were not as they had been and as I looked around I could see looks of some anxiety on some faces and on others the signs of quite obvious consternation. Below us, the straight lines and occasional snakes of the carz showed distinct signs of breaking up with individual cases of drift without reason.

My mind raced. On one hand, I wanted to stop this. On the other Stefanson had taken a fatalistic view, one looking to the far long term… to the days beyond what we knew now and to a very different world to the one we had become accustomed to.

Things got worse from day to day from then on. The situation first became a source of unavoidable demands for explanations when the first fatalities began. Such things had not been heard of since the before the switchdate when all parallel running was concluded. The bitter disappointment at turmoil returning to what had been thought a perfect level of security shook us all. At least all I knew or became aware of… with the exception I knew of old Mr Stefanson.

The MechCovid pandemic took us all back to the terminally dangerous place we had hoped to consign to dark memory forever. The breakdown forced a swift learning curve on us all. Much of our shiny newborn world was abandoned to the loving embrace of Mother Nature once again, a Mother Nature who in romantic minds had been revolted by an alien presence she sought ways to invade and subvert.

Disease followed our re-opening of doors to the dangerous outside, to the uncontrolled world once again. Many millions died as the process of reintegration began. In those dark days, my visits to Stefanson grow to be a common occurrence. I desperately needed some reassurance that there was a positive end in sight even if I myself did not live to see it. For my wife and family, or at least for my children, this was a vital thing for me to believe. Especially so as more and more things began to twist out of synch among us.

Many simply could not cope. Without the predictability of GPS, without being able to rely on our bubbles and airlocks, our organic print units and all else how could we exist, how could we manage, where was the predictability we had come to rely upon to bring us the perfect lives we craved? Suicide rates rose. Demands for help with anxiety conditions, depression and all manner of mental health issues rose inexorably. The streets that had once been so safe and even fun as we transversed our cities by bubble were increasingly abandoned and even bare-faced walking became a routine sight.

Stefanson assured me it was all for the best. As he saw it, humankind was meant to walk essentially naked through life, not surrounded by the masks of online adventurism and soft cell imprisonment. His life was nearing its end and he had waited so many years for precisely this development. Humanity was returning to its roots, to its vulnerability in the face of adversity, to learning to cope with what is without looking for a way to bypass reality. I became infected by his positivity, much to the bewilderment of my wife and children until I explained all Stefanson had told me.

Entire areas of land formerly crisscrossed by freeways lay abandoned, shield walls long switched off. No longer did drones make a patchwork of the sky. No homes any longer had their accustomed warm-glowing nook where the OPU had once stood ready to deliver foodie-goodies as required. Bubbles lay deflated everywhere. In gardens across the land, people worked to grow vegetables in front of airlocks left wide open to all Mother Nature’s many elements.

Slowly but surely we began to learn new ways to cope, new ways to share, to play, to reach out hands to one another again and yes, to share the very same air on the very same shared planet that was step by human step, if slowly, becoming truly ours again.

THE TRUE NATURE OF WESTERN STATE TERRORISM & ITS IMMEASURABLE COST

The western powers conceived that they had very good reasons based on self-protection in making multiple military interventions across the Middle East, in central/south Asia and North Africa.

The claims made for these interventions, attempts to disguise the true motivations behind them, spoke in glowing terms of saving populations from dictators, of gaining them their human rights, of affording them freedom and bringing them democracy. But what has been the reality behind the PR campaign?

Each nation attacked has suffered a massive loss of life. The story concerning the level of human suffering brought about will never be told. Few westerners are interested in portraying such effects, carried out as they were for no one’s benefit but the western political elites ordering them. While the past death, destruction and suffering has been immense there are no signs of any respite from them. Destitute migrants increasingly attempt to cross over to the affluent West that promised them a better life. The USA continues to exert enormous pressure on all nations not to assist where it has brought such suffering about but failed in its regime-change operations such as in Syria and Venezuela.

The tide of suffering continues to sweep the world and those who perpetrated that suffering continue to assert how right they were to do it and how necessary it is to them to continue such activities in order to protect the western world. Of course, they continue to couch such concerns in terms of bringing the torches of freedom and democracy to all. But how many believe their weasel words at this point or believe in their brutally violent methodologies to achieve their aims?

Throwing a hand grenade into any situation rarely brought about an amicable settlement of the issue. Western elites in their frantic desperation to regain their aura of strength and invulnerability after 9/11 threw a volley of hand grenades into the nations they considered a threat to them. The resulting chaos of death, destruction and rising (not falling) hatred toward the western world was a very predictable outcome along with the immense suffering of millions of bystanders whose lives were completely torn apart. Economies were devastated, entire regions fragmented and in each case, the settled lifestyles and cultures of nations were shattered never to completely recover.

Out of the resulting mess of western intervention, interference and invasion, all of them against sovereign nations that had not lifted a finger against any western nation at a state level came the poverty and hatred of the West that gave rise to ISIS. Once again as it has done down through its history the USA created ever more problems for others claiming that it was delivering solutions. To U.S. elites they may well have seemed solutions while it was others that suffered and died and had their economies devastated. The history of their involvement in their southern neighbours is well known. The motives involved ALWAYS concerned their own interests, NEVER those of the populations they arranged assassinations, coups and sanctions against.

This pattern of chaos-creation by the USA and its allies has been in place for centuries and will continue without let or hindrance until some outside influence brings it finally to an end. No talk of the lies they told or the mass death they caused has any effect upon them. Their self-interest trumps all else, their narcissistic and overwhelming desire to preserve themselves, their privileged position and right to dominate all others and threaten them into submission conquers all. No nation not subordinated to the USA and its allies is safe from its desire to subvert and dominate them. A de facto prison planet where there is no aspect of life or culture that is not supervised and subtly authorised by the USA is the ultimate goal of U.S. elites and will remain so until the goals set post 9/11 are realised.

Those who cannot understand why there is a complete lack of diplomacy regarding the ever-growing threat of war and indeed nuclear war must understand the fact above. The protocols set in place post 9/11 do not allow for any reduction in the maintenance of pressure on any and all entities not fully subordinated to western command. No u-turn is possible. No modification of the goals is possible. They cannot be questioned, contravened or altered in any substantive way. They were unalterably fixed in place with the entirely unquestioned goal of the necessity for 100% security for the USA in perpetuity in mind.

Thus the continuing suffering of massive numbers cannot be avoided while this fixed obsession for U.S. security remains in place, this unattainable goal short of a virtual prison planet, this western elite consensus to maintain its patrician dominance and hegemonic control through a maintained economic and military dominance, are all rigidly maintained using all means conceived necessary in the West and at any cost.

WHO IS FOMENTING WAR ACROSS EUROPE & ASIA & TO WHAT END?

Who benefits from the widespread fragmentation taking place across Europe where almost every voice aligned with the USA is creating the potentialities for outright war rather than attempting to minimise them?

With the almost total absence of diplomacy, the main tool to find peaceful ways forward it is all too clear that the threat of war and perhaps the outbreak of war itself suits some powerful entity's agenda.

What might that agenda be and how is the creation of the threat of war and the fomenting of outbreaks of war of assistance to that agenda?

The most significant event of the last several decades has been the rise of Eurasian economies and the decline of those in the West. What does this signify for those at the head of western nations and those in elite positions immediately below them? Can the factors involved possibly have a bearing on the turmoil being fostered?

For two centuries and more, there has been a war of economic domination taking place. The result of this war was a foregone conclusion. The nations of the global south never stood a chance. The European monarchies and later the leaders of western/European republics and those in the corporate classes beneath them sought to achieve as much profit from the exploitation of the weakly governed southern nations as possible.

A combination of state and corporate power was imposed across the global south turning nation after nation into a source of cheap resources, of all types including manpower. The Slave Trade was immensely profitable as was the de facto plundering of many other resources. These nations were policed by northern militaries in as racist a fashion as can be imagined and far beyond. The earliest attitudes evinced by those of the plundering nations was that anyone not white was likely in fact not to be human but instead a species of ape.

These attitudes and the fervent desire to exploit other, weaker nations for profit created a backdrop of self-asserted moral and ethical superiority by those imposing their will. The native population of what became the USA could be virtually wiped out as if this was the natural order of things. Slaves could be shipped in chains from Africa to the Americas again as if this was an unexceptional norm. Spain could assert its “Christian” right to take whatever it wished from South America. Britain could assert its authority across a vast swathe of nations with impunity as if it had a God-given right to do so.

In more recent times the USA took upon itself the right to attack whoever it wished using spurious justifications to do so. It began this in South America but slowly but surely has spread this “right” to any nation across the planet where it conceives its national interests must be maintained.

All of the above activities enriched the powerful nations taking part. The relentless exploitation built great fiefdoms and empires for states, corporations and individuals. Once the nations targeted were appropriated the exploitation which then took place could be framed as being for their own good. On asserting this as fact rather than contention any attempt by the indigenous population to resist could be framed as criminal behaviour or worse and the most deadly response used against it with impunity.

So many benefits in terms of both wealth and power accrued to the colonising and exploiting forces that an entire panoply of convenient mythologies could be asserted to support these activities and perpetuate them into the future. Being superior to the primitives was an essential attitude. Portraying them as savages who knew nothing of civilization was another. Keeping any revolting savages in check for their own good was another.

These attitudes remain among the elites of the western world in vestiges if not as a whole. The exceptionalist mindset remains the most potent vestige of all, the overweening attitude of exceptional superiority, of being on a higher ethical and moral plane exemplified by a history of privilege and power, of having systems which mimic (but do not fulfil in any way) the Demos of ancient Greece. The facade of “democracy” continues to provide a weapon in the hands of self-seeking, perpetually interfering and violently policing westerners.

Great status has been self-awarded by the navel-gazing elites of the West who would totally deny their exalted wealth was accrued through the means described above. That status is guarded jealously and woe-betide anyone or any state that challenges it. That status, self-granted as it is, is wielded as a stick justifying attacking others, waging war upon them and twisting arms to bend them to the western will. Institutions of all kinds were formed to judge the errant foreigners ‘over there’ who simply could not be trusted to govern themselves without westerners to keep them in line, show them the ropes and punish them when they erred.

So what happens when those that were once weak become strong? What happens when the various sticks the exceptional westerners use to beat them into submission are grabbed and broken? What happens when they start to feed, clothe, educate and heal their populations without the “assistance” of westerners? What is the reaction in the West when these states no longer bow down before them, take their advice, refuse their demands and assert their power to decide for themselves on the future path they will take?

What happens when Russia has a leader who says that Russia will make its own decisions as a proud, sovereign state and will accept no demands from others to change its course, traditional cultures or mode of governance whereby these are preserved and strengthened?

What happens when China builds a network of trading relationships and transport infrastructure that creates a network spanning Asia and ending up within the far borders of Europe? What happens when it becomes the most economically successful nation on the planet and like Russia will no longer accept lessons or demands from the West?

I would argue that what happens is what we see now, a level of chaos fostered with the intent to disrupt and if possible to destroy the now strong nations the elites of the West wish to once again return to compliant, weak states that they can exploit and manipulate as before. We see as much turbulence and as many terrorist acts, threats of war and the complete absence of any attempt to diminish these factors.

Following the money and the trail to those who wield the kind of power necessary for such events along with the motivation to foment them can only lead to one place, to the elites who stand to lose both wealth and power due to the rise of states they once found it quite easy to control, manipulate and exploit.

The USA and the United Kingdom are the obvious culprits in what is clearly a deeply cynical game where hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives will be damaged or lost through their callous and self-serving interference, fomenting of fear, division and dispute where war becomes inevitable. These two acting in self-preservation mode to hold onto their status and power over others by weakening them are nothing more than state terrorists hiding behind feigned human rights concerns, their self-awarded superiority and insistence for others of their deeply corrupt fake democracy.

These two, the USA and UK are fast fading powers heading for an ever-increasing descent into internal wars and encroaching debt, dying empires striking out like a terminally wounded animal at those it perceives in its demented thought processes to be its enemies when in fact they are only a wave of economic and geopolitical success and influence destined to totally eclipse them.

PRIMING THE POWDER KEG OF NUCLEAR WAR IN EVERY ADDLED WESTERN MIND

They had so lost the feeling that their lives were worthwhile that they were willing to countenance almost anything, even nuclear war. Burden after burden had been placed upon them. Stress after stress had succeeded in messing up their minds to such a degree that almost anything was better than the status quo and the prospect of everything turning ever more rapidly to shit.

Most individuals harkened back to what they considered to be a golden era in their lives with which they measured the present. And the present almost always sucked to almost everyone. Now was the worst of all times and nothing they did or those above them did changed a damn thing except to make it even more shit-ridden than before. As had been the case in recent decades they were primed to shout that “Something must be done!”

Most people wanted things fixed and fast, the more violent, dynamic and drastic the better. Dulled nerves and emotions needed a big blast to enliven them. Movies with plenty of death and destruction went down well among them. The vicarious pleasure involved was transferred from those fantasy scenarios ever more directly to the world about them and the world’s of others ‘over there’.

Primed to have constantly bleeding hearts for someone or other ‘over there’ they demanded a supersized portion of mass death, shuddering explosions and breast-beating patriotism to solve such issues, if not exactly to solve them at least to create a great series of visuals to pump up their flagging heartbeats. But now there was a new ‘something must be done’ scenario created to be cheaper than the previous offerings which had proven too expensive.

In rapidly descending societies where frustration was growing by exponential leaps and bounds along with depression, suicide, drug use, economic decline, viral panic and state violence the longing was for a convenient scapegoat to escape all the suffering going on among their in fact over-privileged throng. This was the ultimate and very ugly irony at the heart of this. These were societies of the long term cosseted and highly privileged where hunger was extremely rare and excessive affluence was not.

One pampered nation, in particular, cried out for someone to pay for all their sorry woes. Every movie they watched had bad guys who wanted to ruin things for the Honest Joes they conceived themselves to be. Weren’t they the conscience and good-hearted white hats who had a duty to gun down the evil-doers, the followers of Satan and any others who upset them in that black and white box of addled memory and nostalgia in their rather thought-challenged heads?

There must be someone or someones to blame for their ever-worsening plight. The myriad heads infected with a simplistic dichotomy of thought where only good and evil, Jesus and the Devil, white right and black wrong “knew” that they only had to identify the bad guys and eliminate them to set the world (and their lives) to rights. So it was that the bad guys were laid out before them with limelight playing constantly all over them for all to see.

These bad guys suited all concerned. Those who had mismanaged economies for decade after decade, who had opened innumerable floodgates to massive wealth for the few to the detriment of the many could create an enormous sign of a hand pointing… you guessed it, ‘over there’. The teeming millions had an answer to their interminable question about why their lives were so incredibly and increasingly shitty. Of course, it was the Russians, those creepy reds with their insane lust for world dominance and destruction of democracy that were to blame. And if it wasn’t them, well the switch could be flicked. It was the Chinese. Or better still, both.

The Russkies and the Chinks were interfering in the greatest society ever known (yes, that same one that had made them feel like shit for decades now). If they could be exterminated all would be well. And the wellspring of that feeling had been carefully nurtured, fine-tuned and laid down in endless layers of “knowledge” as incontrovertible fact on an intense level in recent years. It was obvious. They needed to be ‘dealt with’. The might of their nation could not tolerate the evil that they simply refused to stop displaying. Didn’t almost every headline demonstrate this fact?

So it was that nuclear war against the Russian and Chinese hordes, the “reds” and the “yellow peril” became ever more popular. Weren’t the Russians constantly persecuting the Ukrainians after having outrageously and illegally invaded their country? Weren’t the Chinese threatening the poor innocent Taiwanese making their highly laudable lives a misery? Weren’t these two dragons to put to the sword, two prime candidates for bringing to justice or to the sword for their sins?

That a mistrustful population across the western world that indulged in every conspiracy theory that came down the pike could believe things were so utterly simple was a mystery to many outside its borders. Emotions of simplistic clarity had long taken the place of logical analysis and respect for known facts. The psychologies of mass manipulation had been developed where a kind of group-thought mesmerism had been achieved through the death of semantic neutrality, the overlaying of the required agenda and the targeting of emotion using emotive issues and images.

The next steps would be child's play. The widespread acceptance of nuclear war as an inevitable consequence of the terrifying level of evil now in the world. That evil, which once destroyed, would leave everyone completely at one with themselves again, satisfied with a job well done and justice served with all the bad times they had known now behind them. It was a tasty prospect for minds so addled by fantasy and misdirection that such a thing as reality hardly existed anymore. All was emotion and wants. And they wanted war.