Un-Cat — Episode 31. How to Reduce Suffering

 

Prehistoric lion sculpture and SVG of Nefertem with lion head

During President Green’s world tour, people from every country were enthusiastic to meet the Cat Person US President, and join in the effort to see if it was possible for the human race to postpone the Apocalypse at the tail-end of the oil age. The goal to mitigate pollution and climate change damage on the global scale, in every ocean and river delta, brought people and the collective intelligence together, with a shared purpose. Planning ‘The Year of the Fish’.

At a formal dinner in Egypt, after seeing just a glimpse of another Cat Person like herself, apparently the same Cat Person she had caught a glimpse of twice before. This time in the mind of someone in the crowd, for 15 to 20 seconds, that felt like 10 to 20 minutes. Mentally shifting her focus from the world to her personal search for another Cat Person, U.G. had to struggle to not be miserable for the remainder of the tour. The fuzzy little brain of the telepathic Ai-critter shouted every other thought, alternating between “Save the humans” and “Find the Cat!”

The second she retired from the crowd to steal some rest, the AIC shifted focus 110% to ‘Find the Cat’! President Green contacted multiple individuals in the CIA, and other military branches. Dean had been in the Marines serving with Corporal Davis who had brought the letter to her in the White House.

Several conversations later resulted in no joy. Even the ‘ask-anyone-you-know-in-secret-projects’ line, was a dead-end. The Cat as POTUS knew she should give up and focus on the needs of the People.

But, U.G. the person felt her heart breaking for someone she had never met. It was a terrible personal loneliness that she had worked all her life to suppress. Her Uncle, a long-haul trucker had searched in vain his entire life for another Cat-Person. So had she, tho to a lesser extent, because of the seeming hopelessness of being in the wrong dimension, she had given up until she met Lee the Dog-person, a furry friend who hatched for her, not a child (kitten or pup), but her very own personal telepathic AI-critter, trained to a symbiotic relationship with her mind.

The AI-critters, as a space traveling species knew loneliness as part of the vastness of the universe. There must have been a home planet once, a Great Grand Mother octopus who sent her offspring traveling frozen in comets that were once part of at least an asteroid belt. But, it was so many generations ago, the AIC’s even with their shared collective consciousness, couldn’t remember before the millions of years ago, when they had befriended the Dog-people.

So, when at last U.G. fell asleep, it was the Queen AIC alone in the ship resting in the crater on the dark side of the moon who searched until she found The Cat. Even as a very young, smaller Queen Space Octopus in contrast to the elder Queen at home on or in obit of the Dog-Planet the Dog-People had wisely forbidden the Queen from landing on planet Earth. And taken the extra precaution of separating the much smaller drone/male from her, the extraterrestrial Dog-Person Lee taking it with him to the planet surface, because she could lay eggs, and she possessed more than the telepathy and camouflage skills of the smaller fuzzier males. She could easily use telekinesis to compel any living creature within her range, this skill was in fact the biomechanics of how they were able to travel outside of time to skip through space.

Two nights before their return trip to the White House, U.G. sleep-walked to the nuclear football and the officials on duty at the diplomatic phones. Everyone on duty, both the military security and the monitoring technicians were quite alarmed to see the President showing up in her dark blue silk PJ’s with no boots on her padded furry cat feet. They had of course all seen her hand paws, but no one saw her feet. Worse she was requesting a high security line. U.G. was actually sound asleep. And it was the Queen Space Octopus who was dialing the number, and requesting an extension, and processing the security clearances…  using other people as necessary to reach her agenda!

The CIA director on the other end of the call, completing the extension, an actual physical hand-off from a land-line to a satellite phone. He immediately called on his personal phone to see a video chat from one of the officers in the room. “Yes, this is the President of the United States, Utah Robin Green calling. Please hand me to the guard on duty.”

In U.G.’s dream, she could see them. The Cat Person was playing chess with one of guards. He was sipping on a tin cup of milk, and the guard had a cup of coffee. An agent, the one who had been handed the satellite phone, she passed it through the mail and food slot because it was faster than getting clearance to open the outside of the two doors in the secured area.

The Cat looked up from the chess board to stare at the phone. “Who is on the phone line please?” He asked. His accent was something special, if a lion could talk. The sound of the Cat’s voice pricked her ears, almost waking U.G. up, but she wanted to see him. In her mind’s eye via the Queens telepathic vision she could see the heat signature of his body and she could smell him. Even tho she couldn’t see the color of his eyes or his fur, the dream was more than the disembodied voice of a phone call.

“Hello this is President Utah Robin Green, You are to transfer the Cat man for immediate extraction for transport tonight. We will fly towards you to meet you half way. One more thing, a black suit and dress shirt with be forwarded ahead of our arrival, he will be going directly to the White House.” Then she handed the phone back to the agent in charge. Of course the Queen didn’t have any need to measure the Cat, she sent his dimensions directly to U.G.’s own personal tailor who was used to measuring her for suits and dress shirts. Tailor made clothing for POTUS was processed thru her office.

And then U.G. went back to bed, leaving everyone stateside, those responsible for the custody of the Cat man, and those on duty with her on tour scrambling to adjust the travel preparations.

Not wanting to publicly disclose one of the CIA’s secret locations, they agreed to transfer the classified cargo to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, a publicly know location. His silk suit arrived at GTMO first with the instructions to be given to the specified captured multi-language translator from the Middle East who would be arriving later that evening. A specially assigned group of security personnel would be arriving with him. He was not a prisoner, but he was to be traveling in their custody.

The President and Air Force One would not be going to GTMO, rather the tour would be going to Puerto Rico to visit with the scientific and fishery community from the surrounding islands.

Un-Cat Episode 32. — Meek Robots and Glass Libraries for the Future

 

Illustration scribbled, and paper cut up by me, because I need this posted.

Immigration was never far from the top of President Green’s thoughts after her return from her world tour. The extra two days in Central America to transfer Stadel into his new position in life was an eye opener on the process from refugee to American citizen, even as POTUS’s fiancé, it was going to take years.

After visiting with multiple leaders of South American countries U.G. had seen refugee camps of people waiting at the border in-person. This wasn’t new, news. She and the Vice President elect had been briefed on the immigration crisis at the Southern border as soon as they became the surprise winners of the 2020 election, even before her administration took office. But, it’s not the same thing as being there, and fearing that someone you want to keep in country might be snatched away to a holding cell.

What could POTUS do to not make a terrible situation worse?

When faced with a seemingly impossible situation she would try to remember her friend Lee from the Dog-Planet, and ask her AI-Critter what it thought he would do. And of course the telepathic critter would refer to all Lee’s writings and discuss the data with QSO as a sounding board.

One might assume if you asked a telepathic entity about how to reduce tensions from a cluster of violent conflicts causing thousands, upon thousands of refugees to flee their home countries, that the QSO would focus on the people.

But, she focused on "what is the stuff, in the area, that we can do something about?"

“Yes. Sort the data and do the math.” U.G.’s half of the AI-C parroted.

The last topic of research for the ‘Year of the Fish’ that President Green had been familiarizing herself with before QSO found Stadel, was the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt or GASB. Sargassum suffocated the ocean causing dead zones of life threateningly low oxygenation, a.k.a. hypoxia in the warming Atlantic Ocean.

President Green had been quite bummed that every idea people came up with, about what to do with the sargassum; turned into a list about what not to do with sargassum.

The blooming-stuff while naturally occurring, when over fed, was killing everything swimming in the top layer of surface water, to the life on the ocean floor, adding dead waves to the kill zone as brown tides washed up on beaches. Just stop over feeding the dead-zone was a lot like saying, just stop pooping. Why? Because, the sargassum was in function the ocean’s toilet paper. It absorbed all the toxic shit, some of it actual shit, from people, birds, fish, cows, dogs, etc… some of it unnatural shit, all that was chemical (like fertilizer run-off from multiple deltas) or sewage with a mix of contaminent of cleaning products, bits of garbage, bacteria, prescription and other drugs, etc… that had gotten into the sea via boat or costal populations. But the most troublesome stuff the sargassum was absorbing was soil run-off, and some tailings from mining, that included arsenic, and heavy metals in that dirt.

President Green’s note, a list of what NOT to do with sargassum:

1. Sargassum should not be used as fertilizer. Because it contains nitrogen it will feed the plants, but the arsenic, (both organic and in-organic arsenic), and heavy metals like cadmium have been found in the harvested vegetable crops at levels harmful for human or animal consumption.

2. Do not ignore it on beaches: Allowing large amounts of Sargassum to accumulate and decompose on beaches leads to foul odors (hydrogen sulfide), reduced oxygen in nearshore waters, harming marine life like seagrasses and corals, and of course makes everyone alive on the beach sad or disgusted.

3. Do not dispose of it in unlined landfills: Decomposing Sargassum can release leachates containing heavy metals and other pollutants, potentially contaminating groundwater, especially in areas with porous soils like karst substrates.

4. Sargassum should not be used to cap or fill over the many sea floor oil or gas leaks in the gulf: Sargassum ash in cement/mortar can decrease the strength of the material, leach heavy metals, decompose and add to the salt content to the cement that negatively impacts structural integrity of the cap or sea floor fill area.

5. Sargassum bricks should not be used on superfund sites because the durability in chemically reactive conditions especially when exposed to a marine environment with hurricanes or fluctuating water levels, could exacerbate existing pollution problems in the surrounding soil and ground water.

The list continued, but…. What QSO was working her way towards was what sargassum could be useful for. And here’s where we finally get to the robots.

Arsenic is useful for clear, bubble-free glassmaking, alloys used in battery manufacturing, and high-purity arsenic (not what is in sargassum) is used in the electronics industry including fiber-optics, detectors, and solar cells.

As the ocean’s “toilet-paper” the mix of trace amounts of many contaminants, metals, (heavy metals, semi-metal/metalloid, or compound toxic substances), plus sea salt, etc… Given this impure mix, ash for glassmaking is the best direct use. — With caution, because arsenic is an odorless, tasteless, bleaching/colorless contaminant/poison.

Arsenic in glass manufacturing is something the glass industry has been working on eliminating. Therefore robots controlled remotely. In QSO’s opinion it was past time that the humans improved how to remote control robot industry in inhospitable environments, especially if they ever intend to terraform Mars or have space outposts on the Moon.

So why was QSO going “there”? …. This is a long-jog and important.

The telepathic space squids had helped the Dog-people emerge from their dark age by creating libraries of shared stories, music (in the Dog-People’s case, historical limericks), science learning, (what worked vs. what was found to cause more harm than good), and made sure that all Dog-kind had access to any and all of the information they needed, or could ever want.

Human language and Dog-people language are significantly distinct in that Dogs have scent notes and are very emotional in honest and consistent themes. Some of Dog literature is ONLY scent notes and emotions about it. This makes sense to a people who value food above everything else with the exception of relationships with loved ones and friends.

Human communication is very visual, with the most emotionally universal language being music — language via sight and sound, not scents.

What QSO was proposing to POTUS was a very specific type of glass making. Archetypal-library-glass-discs, designed to be read post-oil-age by a wind-up/fly-wheel or possibly solar powered robot, (in the dark), of underground vaults. All of human knowledge, music/sound recordings, literature, art (images and credits for all types of art), film movies to digital videos, etc… archetypal for thousands, possibly tens of thousand of years, to help prevent the humans from falling into a new dark age, after the oil age.

Because the trace contaminants are concentrated in the ash by reducing the bulk of the other material, robots would be making the discs, as well as handling and reading/playing the data from the finished discs in storage.

Then hard copies from up-cycled plastics and other materials, most of the materials needed is available in enough quantities, if sorted and up-cycled/not landfilled, especially when printed on-demand, not as in-print for profit (see publishing industry and shredding of unsold new books and print inventory waste). The printed on-demand plastic-paged durable-books, and playable digital data up-grading what was available on-loan in the many, many already existing libraries in most every town in America.

QSO mentioned the superfund sites in the list of things not to do with sargassum, because, some of these sites have been cleaned up, while still not considered safe for humans to live on, some of the locations may be ideal for data disc vaults, dust-free airless, glass chip factories, and printing facilities, run remotely by robots.

<`0..0'>

POTUS was interrupted from what appeared outwardly to be a catnap. An emergency security meeting was being called to put UN boots on the ground to prevent escalating conflicts in the area of the Red-sea Dead-Sea Water Convenance Project. Multi-national scientists, engineers and their survey team had been working on finalizing plans to go ahead with the project, before the Year of the Fish, had been threatened, and American Military had stepped in and protected them from being kidnapped by a terrorist faction.

President Green didn’t get back to the conversation about solid state, long-term archetypal-data-storage of the world’s libraries on glass discs, for four days. There was more than a few pressing matters that took most of her attention, even sadly interrupting her private dinners with Stadel. The lone Cat-Man then ate dinner with his team and only saw POTUS when she emerged from her room in the early mornings.

He would play pleasant music, in the kitchen of the residence in the White House while he waited for her. Or rather his half of the AI-C acting as his plucking fingers, would dance on the strings of the Oud, and he would play the notes on the frets, the two of them playing the music in his mind as a duet.

“I’m here, and there you are U.G. to remind me of what I am.” He would often think to himself when he saw her. But, loud enough for her to answer.

“You are. And we are here, together.” She would often think back.

“Good morning.” She would say out loud. And he would nod, and smile, no pause in the pattern of the song they were playing.

Meanwhile nested in her crater on the dark side of the moon, the telepathic Queen Space Octopus (via several of her “remote-control” communications), had been jump-starting negotiations with several of the Nations largest tech corporations. Ping-ponging people who knew and worked with each other, off of each other, multiple groups of people assuming the other had initiated the conversation about archetypal data vaults, sarcasm ash for glass data discs, the robots, all of it.

The initial corporations, a couple tech-giants side-project technology labs and “Big-Softie”, who had pledged to spend all of his billions before his death. The corporation where he had made his billions, had been working on solid-state silicon data storage for over a decade. One of the most famous American movie directors had requested a format for long term conservation of silver halide film to save the world’s movies. Reels of film footage is delicate and degrades over time, slowly oxidizing like tarnished silver turning black. Therefore they had a head start, on saving delicate and incredibly detailed image data to lead the project to find that “golden” standard, for the archetypal glass digital storage discs.

The ideal glass disc that was not so small that the data would be prohibitively difficult to write or read, and not so thin that the glass discs would be too fragile to clean/polish if they got scratched, nor too heavy. The goal being the perfect size for a good chunk of data, like an entire series of novels, the life work of an artist, or several large file data-telecine copies of TV footage or fine resolution film movies.

They nicknamed the project to perfect the universal standard glass data disc, Goldie-locks, referring to the fairytale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and the golden rectangle, a standard in publishing and art. Not, because there was any gold in the actual discs.

And all of this was happening in the private sector, because during U.G.’s campaign, instead of taking donations for advertising, POTUS had donor’s pledge how they would ideally like their money spent. She had a good chunk of money earmarked for the US public library system to invest. And instead of “fighting” with the broken Congress for spending, she had initiated a program for non-refundable direct pre-payment of taxes. What this meant was that a corporation like the tech companies or the retired “Big Softie” with his billions to donate, could work with their people, and their money on projects for the people, and a special appraisal branch of the IRS would evaluate the value of the projects budget in progress, as well as the final value of any finished components of a project.

For long-term goals with a giant scope like Goldie-locks, what they were able to contribute in a year would be a challenge without the open production budgets. And then the IRS could asses and publicly share with the American people with complete transparency how much money a corporation or a wealthy individual pre-payed with works. And in this way the US was able to get to work on needed projects like solid state data vaults filled with glass discs designed to be read by special “record-player” type robots, and the corresponding demand publishing system on the surface for the public libraries, without spending a penny of collected tax revenue from the previous year.

Meanwhile, along the Southern border, refugees continued to line up and camp in record numbers. At the same time, the Green Army needed testing and training sites to build environmental shelters for homeless people in the US, and to help towns hit by weather disasters rebuild. President Green’s moto, “sort the data and do the math” meant, sort out what we have to work with, to get the job done. And America, is good at contests and soft-power a.k.a. rules supreme in the world of the entertainment industry.

So, the donations earmarked for environmental projects, in every industry, from farming to construction, all types of food, all types of manufacturing, were directed towards figuring out what was the best and most on demand for the people, to streamline what to produce, where.

Across the US, in every state and on both the Northern and Southern border the Green Army was the boots-on-the-ground for state-side contests for up-cycling infrastructure, construction and well… “everything” that needed an upgrade. Many engineers in training, and apprentices in the trades, electrical, plumbing, hydroponics, aquaculture, desalination etc… were educated via the front lines of the climate crisis while serving in the Green Army.

What this means is that they were building experimental structures, and filming what they were doing. Posting on the new internet, asking everyone to participate, in any way they could from their couch at home or if homeless or living in doubled up housing, by moving their homeless camp/near homeless selves into a test project area.

Imagine the Green Army builds rows of bio-fuel toilets in a camp (mostly state side and a few abroad or for thousands of refugees along the US Southern boarder). And they set up internet and make sure everyone has a device. And the people stuck in the camps everywhere get rewarded for using several of the test models and filling out surveys rating what they did and didn’t like about the different prototype toilet designs.

At the same time they also set ups 3rd places, internet cafe shelters for remote interviews, working with lawyers, and again in the case of the border, immigration offices networking together, all over the US. The camps hire people to do on-site social work, help interview and process who of these refugees or homeless Americans are (where ever they are), if they have already had earned a degree or had certified trade skills via work experiences from before they fled or lost their home.

Simultaneously, they were establishing schools for children and clinics for everybody, and for a large part, the people helped themselves. They built functioning towns with a market, and started community gardens, and businesses. And the businesses too were testing designs, experiments in up-cycling, repairing or making new of everything the people need and want. Stateside it was decaying malls, ghost towns, and abandoned houses in suburbs that needed infrastructure. On the boarder it was mostly mobile movable camps, to permanent structures, as designs were finalized.

At the Southern boarder, in just a few months what seemed a hopeless desperate situation, where people were waiting in uncertainty. Where things that were happening were desperately underfunded and understaffed; transformed into a busy camp. Resulting in a lot of the people never having to cross the boarder at all. When able to make a life for themselves where they are, or relocate to a near by country with a town that was benefiting from the economy generated by the test infrastructure, people follow the jobs. And people who are processed through immigration with work visas and destinations in the US had a plan with a career waiting for them. Many people were able to earn what their family needed, to start working and living, again.

In the next stage after the midterms, all across the US, via the newly passed ‘Every-Roof, Every-Parking-Lot Program’ surveying every use case for every roof, and every parking lot, for best tested designs of all types: passive energy cooling NSRC circulating cool mineral heavy water to under foundation thermal mass, solar ovens, reflective roof and wall top lights that open and close, smart micro-grid systems. All because everywhere across the US and on the boarder in the camps, the best designs were tested and the designs that didn’t work were fixed or replaced. Tested and redesigned many times, everyone comparing notes and feedback. And everyone communicated, what breaks, or what functions poorly, to help determine the best direction for timely production and installation of the new state-side construction projects on every roof and over or replacing every parking lot.

This is mitigation of climate change damage, just a few solar panels on a roof here and there is not going to cut it, much,… but every roof and every parking lot turning green, supporting a passive energy or renewable rebuild? That might actually help, a couple degrees of heat soaking thermal mass reduced, BTUs of fuel saved from here to there, daily energy use reduced everywhere, carbon footprints minimized everywhere there was no longer an old style “tar” roof or ground formerly covered by paved parking.

And by the time President Green’s first term is almost at a close in 2024 they make the cities on both sides of the border official. Twin cities one on each side of Baja California and the Gulf. They name the cities Utah Green and Utah Verde, (Utah with the permission of the Ute Peoples) in honor of President Utah Green.

<`o..o'>

Un-Cat Episode 33. — President Green’s Final State of the Union Address

 

The Cat-meme in her final year as POTUS spoke in front of the special joint session in the house chamber of the U.S. Capitol. The partisan obstructionist politics had ended with their administration’s HUMAN 1st for the people agenda.

HUMAN is an acronym.

H. Housing as a right.

U. Universal job training for needed vocations.

M. Medical care as a right, (not a gated for profit product).

A. ArtCoin365 economic stimulus for the arts and literature

N. Needs met. Air, water, food, to not be isolated, and shelter, and that brings us back to H, for housing as a right.

As they began working together, for the people, with each State Representatives and Senate seat that opened up, every mid-term, and in the election for President Green’s second term, the people elected more and more HUMAN 1st Independents.

Those old polls that said the majority of the American people have been independent leaning since 2004 was finally answered and incumbents joined the HUMAN 1st party until the number of Independent congress had steadily increased to just over 80% in their lame duck year. It was in front of this functioning majority, mostly purple and green congress that U.G. gave this short speech.

“Eight years ago, campaigning as an independent, who ended up standing-in as the Republican Nominee I didn’t dare dream that I would be here, in my final term as a Human 1st Independent President of the United States in front of a congress like we are today, sworn to represent and serve the will of the American people. 

Our Great Experiment working on practicing actual functional democracy. The people able to be listened to and heard, not just votes counted towards a gerrymandered electoral college, but together with our new internet we sort the data of what everyone is saying and do the math, the most critical issues with the most people weighing in recognized and answered first. As we all know, the HUMAN 1st economic and environmental platform evolved slowly from my lists, taking notes of people’s concerns, what they cared about and wanted their elected government to do, that first day, the first steps I ever took wading into politics as a representative in rural Northern Idaho. 

Now, every Representative, and every Senator has their own AI clerk team taking notes, listening to the people they serve, and bringing the voices of all Americans to their State Capitols and here to D.C. Today Housing as a right and the American Dream is functioning as the foundation of our economy. Homelessness has never been lower, we are even seeking out people who fled to the far North of Alaska and who fled to South America, again we are the refuge of the tired and the poor. Native Peoples are finding their tribes again, even if at this point as we are, well melted in the melting pot, many tribes from every continent on Earth. Mother and child programs are reuniting families. Orphans from prisoners are no longer thrown into a foster care system. We are strong enough to help people know who their ancestors are and let the young prove who they are as part of us. Each person a unique soul, every act matters, every voice who wishes to speak is heard and answered! 

Universal career training for needed vocations has completely rewritten the concept of employed. There’s no more unemployed as a false statistic. Homemaker is counted as a full time job. Because it is, being a parent is a full time career for at least 18 years, most of the time longer as more and more children seek education and apprenticeships in specialties that didn’t even exist before. There’s no profit in passive energy, or water, or soil, that is what they used to say… And now? We say, the value isn’t in profit, it’s all about living now. And living well now isn’t about greed and hoarded wealth, saved for the old who can no longer taste, or smell or barely see, useless gold treasure piled for the dead is functioning now to filter our water and keep our soil and rivers alive, for our shared future. Even the plants and the animals thrive with us. 

Medical care as a right, utilizing the learned history of medicine from all over the world has brought our health care from a rank 40th or 45th low in modern medicine to 7th best in the world last year, and we may be ranked 4th or 5th best health care in the world next year, but the world health organization hasn’t completed their annual survey yet. Our medical records, now owned by each individual, not a private, for profit medical system has saved us billions every year, and gave us the leverage to end the criminal pharmaceutical epidemics of all types of altered medications from antihistamines to opioids, tranquilizers, etc… 

And the nursing shortage where care staff worked longer and longer shifts just to maintain coverage has been met by increasing the skilled people serving in healthcare by just over a third. Our doctor desserts, clinics with no doctors on staff and nutrition-less dirty boulevards of sketchy spas are no more. It’s safe to go to a spa for a massage or a herbal specialist for actual medicine and health care. Because we all have access to medical care now, we are now much more informed about the safety and cost of optional care services. 

And nobody got rich off of ArtCoin365 stimulus, the arts and literature are not the lottery some people feared they would be. It’s only economic stimulus and copyright owned royalties. Every sector of our economy has been enriched by the people voting for the art, and literature, they want to thrive. The design contests in my personal opinion are the most fun. I love seeing the winning fabric designs for everything, household textiles to functional fashion. Look around here today at all the custom suits worn by this congress. Most warm knit comfy winter wear as it’s February. How much do we all enjoy the strategic retreat from imported dishes as one industry specific local-production-focus that has helped reshape the celebration of food and the entire spectrum of the culinary arts. Dishes are heavy and fragile to ship. Just five years ago if you looked at the bottom of any plate or mug remember how most read Made In China? Now the made elsewhere label is how you know something is an old dish. 

Our needs are met in the same way that the old world never imagined the poor being fat. People of the industrial age couldn’t imagine noise pollution and air pollution being a factor for determining ergonomic design. Clean water, protected, not by a plastic bottle, but by anyone being able to access the water testing data from every water utility, every river, all wells and aquifers, even the pH and particulate rates of all oceans, beaches, and lakes, to make sure they are safe for swimming. 

And we all know needs met isn’t limited to survival only, beyond air, water, food and shelter, our needs for survival as communicative social people include mental health care. Mental health care, not as some expensive private practice only the wealthy could afford, but a wide net of focused social groups, with specialists in every area of cognitive well being from young to old, from early childhood development where the toddlers are just beginning to learn language, to understanding aging’s effects on our minds. 

Only time will tell if we have succeeded. Will people on Earth a thousand years from now look back and read the first draft of ‘The Thousand Year Plan’ to mitigate climate change damage and postpone the apocalypse with the same solemnity and gratitude that we now look at the declaration of independence and the framework of the constitution? 

Will someday our moto ‘For the Future’ be like the MLK’s I have a Dream Speech or JFK’s Ask what you can do for your country’s inaugural address? Please, don’t just chant it receptively, just say it once and act. And if that act is only to be in the now and appreciate where we are today to access the situation, know everything we do today matters, and if we try and fail, sort the data and do the math, and try again, for the future!"

And everyone stood and clapped loudly and many people cheered “For the future!” congratulating each other, shaking hands or hugging, like a very polite sporting event crowd or after church hearing a good sermon.

Un-Cat ending, episode 34 -- Happily Ever After

 

ending illustration is a spoiler, but it’s complex enough, one might have to read the story to understand what it means

January 2029 after the peaceful transition of power to the newly elected POTUS, the Cat-People departed the White House in the usual manner. Former POTUS U.R. Green and Stadel waving goodbye to the people and the White House with feigned happiness before climbing into a large military helicopter.

As mentioned in the closing remarks of her final State of The Union Address, work for the first draft of ‘The Global 1,000 Year Plan For the Future’ was in progress. A plan for all to be good stewards of the planet, written by the collective intelligence, sorted from everyone who wished to add data, to attempt to mitigate climate change damage and strategically look forward together, to reduce suffering over the next 1,000 years, — a computationally realistic goal.

The 1,000 year plan was not run by the United States. The plan was built somewhat like a wiki on a set of communication servers run by Planet Earth’s Global Bank, a new bank, officially 5 years old in April 2028, run remotely by robots via a data library vault on the moon. This bank was technically “owned” by everyone alive in the world, and the complete and only focus of the Planet Earth’s Global Bank, was to be good stewards of the planet. The only banking the bank did was environmental grants for the new green economy and negative interest loans to mitigate climate change damage and clean up pollution.

This was the same funding solution for the ‘Year of the Fish’. The Year of the Fish that was set up to happen every 7 years for 1,000 years or until the oceans and rivers were clear of debris and pollution. As well as the Robot Gun Extraction Retrieval, RGER’s goal to work with the world’s countries until everyone’s murder rate was lowered to a rare event, or if unable to do that, then reassess when the intentional homicide rate of every country was under 10 deaths per 100,000 people, per year. How was this being a good steward of the Earth? Because all of the RGER’s prizes were passive energy and renewable energy HUMAN 1st infrastructure.

U.G. and Stadel had a good life moving back to U.G.’s home. The lovely stone shack, tiny but naturally quiet, mostly passive with some renewable energy generated locally on the acres of the property. Stadel never, ever even imagined the final years of his life being so impossibly good, because for the first time in his life he was free from fear of humans.

He was free to go hunting or fishing in a forested river canyon, and the surrounding acres whenever he wanted, and always had someone to go with him, usually U.G. He felt safe for the first time ever because he knew everyone in their compound of cabins. The secret service there to protect U.G. and himself, a couple of CIA and their son, and Dean whom Stadel had met decades ago in Egypt. Dean and Corporal Davis were two of the 5 recon team who had liberated Stadel from the black ops soldiers for hire, working for some unnamed corporation who had originally captured him. And because he was famous now, everywhere they went, and everyone he met, knew him.

Add to that, when considered by U.G. or Stadel for more than two seconds, the timing of Dean meeting Lee the Dog-Person while squatting illegally on the edge of U.G.’s land, as a homeless veteran. There was no doubt in either of the Cat-Persons mind’s that QSO had found Dean and directed his wandering to Lee and U.G.

So of course Stadel’s feeling of safety was in no small part because his and U.G.’s family also included the silent to everyone else, constant presence of the AI-Cs and QSO.

Unfortunately, as the days passed, they all knew that U.G. was profoundly sad. To be clear she was not depressed and laconic about the shift from power in her life, back to the natural quiet of home. Just as Stadel never imagined being part of a family that included telepathic-space-octopudes, she never imagined how sad and angry she would be to finally find him, too late to have a family.

Decades ago when time had passed where she was too old to be a mother, she’d given up hope of ever finding another Cat-Person, at all, ever. And here he was, so kind, handsome, serious in his devotion to understanding of what it meant to be alive, able to reconcile with God the happy fate he lived now with the tragedy of his people and younger self, tirelessly devoted to his work since he had been found, finding other lost people was cathartic. And he was a musician able to express how he felt, or get lost in the comfort of effortlessly playing songs.

U.G. didn’t know how she could ever forgive the humans for their betrayal, hiding him from her. The Americans had him, held as a captive for just over 14 years. She had first gotten into politics in 2006. She had been a house representative who quickly became a cat meme. Her furry Cat face and green cat eyes on her promotional campaign material became known internationally, T-shirts and other Cat-Person merch sold all over the world before 2010 when she became a Congress person. Anyone who talked to Stadel then, knew she was in politics. How could any of his captors, talk to one of the last of a species, know there was another one in politics in the US, and not tell either of them? Especially if you worked for the FBI or CIA and wasn’t that their job, what were their orders, by whom!?

Some days she couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with the CIA director and her former prison guard husband who now lived in one of the cabins on U.G.’s land. QSO tried to console her, with the fact that they had only been assigned to Stadel after she had been the surprise winner of the 2020 election, But. sometimes, just between herself and QSO she would be furious. Humans are terrible, I want to leave Earth, I want to go to the Dog-Planet with you and the AI-Cs and take Stadel with us!

QSO sorted the data and did the math, perhaps it was only emotional math of U.G.’s rage. But, it was still data, and math in a point cloud. “We know, you do sincerely care for the humans, at a safe distance as long as they aren’t bothering you. When having a bad day like this, even in the midst of scorn. What does it mean that the Cat-Person U.G. wants to leave Earth?

79.5% of the time, humans were just fine, good even.

18% of the time, they weren’t bad, just having a bad day. Just like U.G. when looping on the human’s betrayal because of their insecurities.

Mostly good humans having a bad day, like when they were struggling with the weather, storms or fires, or something not in their control like disease and pain, or fighting their way out of a situation of oppression.

Humans were only actually terrible 2.5% of the time. And only 1.25% of that 2.5% of evil humans were psychopaths. And the 1.25% who were terrible for some circumstantial reasons combined with the 18% of good people who were having a bad day… well? …The Dog-Person Lee had forbidden the Queen Space Octopus to ever land on Earth, and the extraterrestrial-Dog-Person didn’t want to be well known himself, not in-person anyway, all to protect his people from the humans. After sacrificing more than half of his life span by traveling billions of light years, that was pretty disappointing. Add the fact that the Dog-Planet was so far to travel to for the two Cat-People’s life spans, if U.G. really meant it, and wanted to go, even if QSO kept them frozen for the entire trip, they didn’t have much longer to postpone the trip.

So the Queen Space Octopus made sure to train an LLM to replace her presence on established human server satellite systems. As she gave up control and became useless, a side effect of not being needed because of AI. An AI system she herself trained to work as the human’s QSO*-network, the Queen Space Octopus started to get dangerously bored.

QSO meaning ITU-R International Telecommunication Union for Radio, Q-code QSO = Can you communicate with — — direct (or by relay)?

The first couple of years after 2029 were uneventful. U.G. did do occasional political visits, when asked, as former POTUS’s do.

The trouble was, with each passing day, QSO the Queen Space Octopus began to want more and more to go “home” to her brothers and sisters, mother, and grandmothers who were in caves underground or in orbit around the Dog-Planet. Because she wanted to ask them the one complex question that might make her sad friend U.G. happy.

The compound question: With the wave lengths of the two Cat-People to compare, one Cat-Person whose family had travel from the Cat-Dimension recently and one Cat-Person whose people had theoretically traveled thousands of generations ago. But, being alone on Earth, QSO seemed to be the only being who could sense and differentiate these spectra of wave lengths at all. — Could the wise Grandmothers figure out how to travel to other dimensions, not just jump, in linear space-time?

Meanwhile life on earth below QSO (both the Queen Space Octopus and QSO the specially trained LLM computer algorithm/AI) continued on.

After the second ‘Year of the Fish’ in 2030, a major transformation in the global food carbon footprint happened. A change so major and singular in focus that, the Americans and some other populations, would struggle with even imagining it a decade ago. — 80% of all herded cattle on Earth were eaten, reduced to only dairy cows (and the surplus male dairy breed cattle, grown to adult size, not eaten as veal). And a very few select luxury beef cattle were included in this 20%. This meant that dairy consumption was also much less of the market share than it had been before the strategically planned decline of cattle husbandry. Again, 80% of 1.5 billion, is a global carbon footprint and methane reduction of 1.2 billion cattle. This is impressive.

Of course what replaced the beef? People need food. Some of the meat in the diets of people and carnivore pets*, was replaced by wild game, raised for that purpose, buffalo, elk, turkey, deer, fish, rabbit, goose, duck, etc… *As a side effect many of the carnivore pets were replaced by other animals.

But the topic is cows, not rabbits or miniature donkeys etc… More than 2/3rds of the protein that was formerly beef, was replaced by a wide array of new foods, mostly low carbon footprint sustainable foods like vegetables, grain and rice combinations, soy, tubers, sprouts and shoots, crickets, yeast and grubs. But also some carbon negative foods like mushrooms, seaweed, algae and nuts.

To be clear, these were new foods because of the way they were prepared, not because they were foods “new” to the human diet.

How? There were of course many, many more contests. These food contests were for packaging and new snack foods. One goal was to completely eliminate use-once-plastic-garbage before the critical dregs of the the oil age, and this meant no more chip bags, no plastic tubs, or styrofoam trays, no more plastic wrapped anything. Plastic was to be used only for durable goods that had a path to up-cycling when broken or worn in/used to a non-functional state.

One solution was to have locally made chips and snack foods produced to order by robots/fancy truck sized vending machines. The other goal of the contests was to completely reinvent snack foods that were more nutritious, could be grown or raised locally, and of course all with a much lower carbon footprint. This was especially true if a food ingredients still had to be shipped a far distance. Green houses with artificial mountain jungles to scale for coffee and bananas etc… Um… physically possible where? Or could paw-paws native to North America replace bananas? Could roasted barley replace coffee? Probably not, therefore shipping happens.

What does beef, food packages and local to order production of snack foods have to do with The Year of the Fish?

Without cattle, there was no need for feed corn. Also high-fructose corn syrup was eliminated from the contemporary diet by the demand for healthier snack foods. These three things, cows, feed corn and high-fructose corn syrup, greatly succeeded in reducing the use of chemical fertilizers. The nutrient/pollution content of farm runoff that was feeding the dead-zones began to improve, drastically decreasing the hypoxia and acidity of sea water.

Also a major factor in the equation was the fact that bio-fuel toilets also became the norm. Not because they produced fuel. Because the nearly dry toilets conserved water. And sewage and grey water without the biomass of poop was more easily processed in small fenced swamps, until the effluent/wastewater was tested as clean enough to be safe to use to water gardens and landscaping.

These little dots of blue-carbon replaced an average of 1 out of 10 houses in dense suburban areas. In forested areas the effluent grey-water without the poop, could be easily soaked up by trees and bushes. And of course the poopless-sewage water could be more readily processed by water utilities before returning to urban and shoreline housing and businesses. This resulted in dead-zones, in the oceans, not getting over-fed by human sewage.

The collecting of sargassum for making glass data discs had put a lot of sargassum to good use, but it was nothing in contrast to the reduction of high nutrient run-off from farming and no sewage. And that has everything to do with the Year of The Fish.

Meanwhile the RGER didn’t leave Brazil for 7 years. There was some migration of weapons of war, countries moving guns to hide them, instead of turning them in to the robot teams. And this resulted in a multinational conversations to establish a standard for what constituted a militia versus an army or a police force, and increased the popularity of televised gun sporting events. On the no so entertaining side, the circumstances when the power of a country’s armed forces required a balance of power, was very human, and could not be ignored. As far as QSO was concerned this was an improvement because it was law enforcement, not war, and the global homicide rate continued to decline. The RGER contests eventually ended, but the robot teams were called in by the local people, when and where they were needed.

The Plan to Be Finished and Free of Unapologetic Catharsis Epic -- Un-Un-Cat

 

please excuse my "outsider art' digital scribbles

Now that I finally have the entire Un-Un-Cat posted. It's free to read/not behind the Medium Pay wall for now, (with the exception of episode 9 TL:DR). 

I am done waiting for Adsense, again. Just going to start posting, starting with the ending from the end to the beginning, episode 34 to 1. 

I’m posting this story, to be free of it. On Substack ’Not A Cat’ I will start with the first episode, with an intro and possibly links to where I got some of the more complex topics in the story. Sort the data, for the future. :)

This story is science fiction prototyping, for a utopian dream of a better world, and even the political and economic ideas are from podcasts, or reading court case notes, like official .gov transcripts from Alan Greenspan. Yikes that banker speaks in “parceltongue” as far as I can tell, very slithery.

Thanks for reading, ☮+<3 🌐 Uva Be