[Editor’s note: this is the story in an assignment I did at animation school in 1992 or so.]

Evelyn Chan was born in the city of Toronto in November 1989- as the Berlin Wall fell. She spent her childhood in an upper-middle-class household, watching the turmoil of the world on a succession of television receivers as living standards slowly fell and population mounted.

Nation-states old and new formed and re-formed, a cartographic froth across the pages of history… fighters of a thousand nit-picking sects ambushed one another… and by 2020 technology wielded by ignorant, frightened (or just plain crazy) men and women had started the Great Dying.

The great cities were depopulated by nuclear explosions, internal warfare, disease or simple lack of supplies.

Only decentralisation saved large parts of the heritage of humanity. Enclaves of telecommuters and ecologically-based alternative communities had scattered themselves far from the cities and their starving mobs. Far-sighted businesses had quietly followed them in search of well-educated people, and with them went much advanced learning and technique.

A thirty-eight-year-old Evelyn watched the collapse of Toronto live on high-definition television as she received her anti-radiation and anti-aging treatments… and a few minutes later, as she went out to the greenhouse to attend to the greywater purification systen, the satellite link failed. After that, only the chickens watched television.

Thirty years later the slaughter had slowed and scattered survivor communities began linking up. One thing was clear: Earth was too small for this kind of thing to continue. Humanity had to cooperate or die. The new civilisation was worldwide and (thanks to a surfeit of grief) politically saner. Communications webs reformed and were strengthened anew. By the end of the twenty-first century material technology had surpassed anything previous, and new ways of thinking were weaving it back into the fabric of Earth. Old wounds were healing.

Evelyn celebrated her hundredth birthday as her grandchildren left for the new colony near the site of the original American landings on the moon. Solar energy from space powered her house, and libraries the world over were available on her screens. Products of a new cleaner industry were delivered to her door. She was not unaware of a new subtle tension around her though; in the news and in conversation differences of opinion began to firm up.

The great Turn of the Century Party, welcoming the year 2101, was the last celebration of a united humanity.

Like most citizens of Earth, Evelyn had lived through the Great Dying; she had sweated and bled in the effort to help Earth heal; and she dreaded in her bones anything that would harm Earth. She greatly feared and bitterly criticised celebrations that seemed to her to be a revival of the old wasteful competitiveness and frivolity, but she could not turn her back on the technologies that had given her youthful vitality at age 112. She looked at the booming space-based economy and saw exploitation on a cosmic scale; she looked at those who would abandon technology to return to the state of the ‘noble savage’ and saw cowardice and ignorance; and like a hundred million others, she chose a third way.

She would guard Earth, embrace it, and, perhaps, come to be part of it.

In the next ten years, humanity divided. The people of the space colonies continued their outward surge and looked on Earth as having lost its collective nerve. They gloried in their realm of light and metal, and hurled themselves between the planets, and came to be known as the Chrome. The people who chose to return to the old and traditional ways chose the warm parts of Earth as their home. They were not numerous; very few people actually had the knowledge, the motivation or the guts to make a successful living ‘in the wild’; and even fewer people could tear themselves away from the wonders of early twenty-second-century society to do so. Those who did came to be known as the Brown, but they called themselves Traditionalists.

Evelyn chose to join another group. Knowledge of the structure of life gave her and her fellows the ability to change the creatures around them; knowledge of ecology, information and energy let them avoid disaster, and the practical spirituality that had arisen out of the chaos of the twenty-first century gave them a vision to steer by. They would be Earth’s senses and watch the skies for threats. They would be Earth’s nerves and tie her lands and seas together. They would find Earth’s soul… and someday a living, loving Earth, Gaia, would cone to be.

They called themselves the Green, and they spread out across the Earth.

Evelyn settled in the Santa Lucia Mountains on the central California coast.

In the next century she charted the mountains and the creatures she found there. She watched as modified plants linked up to form information networks across the continent, and the remains of the cities were dismantled and returned to the soil. Broad-leaved trees collected wind and sunlight, and provided a surplus of energy to the biological transport system hidden underground. Evelyn acquired abilities to communicate with plants and animals and use their senses as her own. She toughened herself so that she did not require elaborate shelter. She found that various creatures would respond to her commands, and that she could change them, and that the changes would breed true. She also found that she could alter herself.

At rare intervals she met other Gaians (for such they now called themselves) to socialise, trade and court; but by and large she lived alone: but she was not lonely, for the very mountains around her were her friends, and all the wildlife her family, and she watched over them all. She built small houses in favourite spots throughout the mountains, living in one, then another. The years passed.

Around the turn of the twenty-fourth century Traditionalists began to wander up the ruins of the coastal highway from the south. There were not a lot of them; they were wandering hunters and gatherers living off the land, sleeping in tents and selling furs and herbs in the small Traditionalist villages that already existed in the valleys. They had settled into a conservative way of life that allowed for little dissent, for most of their resources were tied up with survival, and they could not afford to make mistakes. They were aware of the Gaians as shadowy figures up in the hills, and considered them a bad influence. They called them ‘witches’, and told ancient tales of terror around their campfires, and their greatest punishment was to ‘send someone to the witches’, to expel them fron the tribe.

Evelyn was used to the rhythm of the mountains and disliked any interruption of her life, so she viewed the arrival of the Traditionalists with dismay. After a few years, however, she saw that they were as driven by the cycles of nature as everything else, so she relaxed and kept out of their way. The years passed.

One day Evelyn entered one of her houses to find two children sleeping on the floor. They were dressed in coastal Traditionalist clothing and a quick inquiry of the local vegetation revealed that they had come over the ridge from one of the inland valleys. She fed and sheltered the children, who were quite literally starving, but after a month or so, one of them left; the other stayed on and learned a little of the wider world. When the second child left to rejoin his parents, Evelyn turned her attention elsewhere. She left the coastal house and went inland to a mountaintop retreat to ponder the increasing number of strange reports she was receiving. For the first time in many years she thought of the space people and moved to find out more about their activities near Earth. She was startled indeed by what she discovered…

A great construction project was under way. A crystalline cable was being extended downward from a site in geosynchronous orbit to meet a point on the equator near the ruins of Quito. The Chrome and the Gaians had agreed to a limited exchange of people and information through vehicles and cables riding the structure. Traditionalists in the area were completely baffled by the strange sights in their sky; most credited it to witchcraft and spoke of it in hushed tones; they had largely forgotten the existence of the space people. Rumours of this had spread to Traditionalists all over the Americas and were starting to make them feel uneasy.

The more settled and prosperous Traditionalists in California were rediscovering market economies and trade was increasing; furs, food and wood were fetching higher prices and people were restlessly taking a second look at their customs.

From her mountaintop house Evelyn watched all this with a deepening sense of worry. One of the children returned to her coastal house; she greeted him over the vision screen and sheltered him, but he did not stay long.

Evelyn met with her fellow Gaians increasingly frequently. The world seemed to be heading into a period of increased disorder and they began to fear the activities of the Traditionalists. A great debate raged about whether and how to reveal themselves to the Traditionalists and explain their fears.

The Beanstalk, the great cable joining Earth and Space, was completed in a few years. Traditionalists, Gaians and Chrome began to encounter each other near its base, with unpredictable results. The most adventurous people of Earth began to migrate up the Beanstalk and out into space, resuming a movement begun centuries before. Tourists appeared on Earth. The dreamy isolation of Gaia was ending; most Traditionalists, no longer quite so traditional, were aware of the Gaians and eventually most of the Gaians revealed themselves.

By the end of the twenty-fifth century the two cultures of Earth had ended their strict separation, and there was a small but steady flow of people up and down the Beanstalk. Evelyn was not prepared for her next visitors however; one day a couple of familiar strangers appeared at her door. Only with some effort did she realise she was seeing her grandchildren for the first time in half a millennium.

The reunion was slow and hesitant; habits of centuries had to be unlearned and social skills revived. Evelyn learned of the beauties of the Chrome society, whose farthest explorers were even then reaching distant stars; her grandchildren relearned the rhythms of the hills and seas.

They stood on the ruined coastal highway and looked at the setting sun and the new ring around Earth, and thought of the different paths they had taken down the years, and then they looked at each other and realised that life was life, wherever it might be, and for the first time in many years Evelyn did not worry.

© copyright 1992, 1995 Scott Robert Dawson