"Steve Jordan - The Onuissance Cells" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Steve)

so much damage. At some point, the present system will inevitably break down.
Futurists, knowing this, can spend a great deal of energy guessing what the immediate outcome will
be. Possibilities include a new World War that will decimate the planet, an industrial crash that will lead to
a new Dark Age, a financial crash that could lead to anarchy, a climactic ecological upheaval that will leave
the bulk of the planet uninhabitable, a similarly catastrophic scientific disaster, or any combination of the
above.
For the purpose of these stories, I have chosen to bypass the fall.
The Onuissance Cells are about the rise after the fall of the Industrial World… for, as civilizations
fall, so do new civilizations eventually rise after them. And, at least for a time, those new civilizations tend
to look at what transpired in the past, and as much as they are able, seek to avoid the pitfalls of the last
civilization. The rise of civilization after the fall of the Industrial Revolution should be no different. We can
expect those descendants to examine their past, work out what grievous practices caused the former
empire to fall, and build a new world that seeks to avoid those practices.
As Europe recovered from the Dark Ages, they set about to improve their lot by concentrating on a
drive for scientific and social development, a drive away from the ignorance and anarchy of an earlier era.
They soon coined a new term for their Age of Enlightenment: The Renaissance. When historians look
back at our time, I expect that the greatest failure they will identify as being committed by us will be our
lack of responsibility, to our fellow humans, to all other creatures, and to the planet itself. They will learn
that our lack of onus caused us to pollute our planet, stifle cooperation among men and nations, and critically
overextend ourselves in every direction, leading to the inevitable fall. Learning this, they will hopefully
conclude that, most importantly, we must keep in our minds and hearts an understanding of our onus, our
responsibility to everything and everyone around us, as we plan and act and grow.
And as this age grows and hopefully prospers, it will eventually come to be known as the Age of
Responsibility… or Onuissance.
There is no telling how long it may be before these events occur. Within a few decades…
centuries… millennia? Those living today will certainly never know. The best we can hope for is that, if
we do our best to live in the spirit of the Onuissance now, maybe the inevitable fall will not be so hard, or so
soon.
 LOG CELL ENTRY #28949: Tour of Duty
...He imagined he was seeing a caveman, standing at the opening to his rock home, staring out at the
open plains. There was a wide, bright, hot, dangerous world out there. But that caveman knew he wanted
to see it all, to learn everything about it. He took his first furtive steps into the unknown...
...He imagined himself standing next to Christopher Columbus, as he stepped out of the waters of the
Atlantic and onto the beach of an island, somewhere east of the Americas. He was standing on ground no
European had trod upon before him, and he had no idea what was beyond the thick trees ahead. But he
was determined to find out...
...He imagined himself watching Neil Armstrong, poised on the ladder of the Lunar Module, a few
meters above the surface of the Moon. He and his compatriots had come a long way, and if any one of a
hundred things went wrong, he may never return home again. But while he was there, he was determined
to learn the secrets of Earth’s nearest neighbor. Slowly, carefully, he inched downward, and planted the
first human bootprint on the soil of another world...
...He imagined himself watching Claude LaMonde, half-standing, half-floating on the bottom of the sea
floor beside a clumsy-looking scaffolding. It had been a difficult journey, with numerous political and
financial hurdles that had to be pushed aside. But now that he was there, he was determined to learn all he
could about the sea that surrounded them all. Pressing a control stud calmly, he drove into the ground the
first support pylon of the first permanent undersea research lab...
Then, as if his mind’s eye was on the end of a huge rubber band, it suddenly raced back to Midland
City, settled amidst forested plains of green. His mind’s image shot past the outer balconies, past shoppers,
past the cafes, to the residential levels. It seemed to stop in front of a single door, the one next to the
Peacekeeper station’s reinforced door. A small plaque over the announcer of the single door said,