Chronicles From The Future: The amazing story of Paul Amadeus Dienach

Large in size but sparsely populated, Marienborg in Central Europe has probably got more museums—mainly historical ones—Reigen-Swage Institutes and theatres than housing estates. It was built right next to the big motorway that connects Blomsterfor with Terringtown and it was destined to become exclusively a city-museum complex, without any residents. That explains why its current, permanent residents are all descendants of the old art critics, historians, musicologists, students and art lovers who settled here centuries ago. Along with them, a large number of scientists and artists from Terringtown had also come here to do research on major works of their own renaissance, the 9th century. When these people moved here, they also brought with them their way of thinking, their morals, lifestyle, and style of dress; even the air of the venerable metropolis and birthplace of John Terring.

It is said today that the work of John Terring was far superior for the history of humanity than the legend that the descendants of his generation had created around the “first great publicly active man”.

When he was young, he was a big dreamer. During his childhood he had spent two summers in his very old, ancestral villa with the beautiful gardens that today has become the central square of Marienborg. By the time he died, the only thing that had survived from the villa was its walls and yet they found a way to restore it—staying as true to the original as possible—and transfer it here, all the way from Terringtown, along with his notes of “mad, grandiose plans”, mementoes of those two summers, which revealed the restless heart of a child that would later achieve great things. There still exist historical pictures of his parents, his two sisters, who were almost the same age as him, and his adopted little brother, Charles Terring.

This morning, I sat and stared at the towering statue in his memory, located in the square bearing his name. Mondstein, the sculptor, has portrayed him with his right hand raised, pointing far in the distance. Further down, you see the smaller-sized statues of the four other precursors: Spaak, Verginus, Milstone and Trodalsen.

For all present-day people, Terring is the most charismatic public figure in history. For his contemporaries, the Cives

with the universal national consciousness and the uniform civic education, Terring, one of the protagonists of human history, does not only live inside the history pages; he’s still here, living among each new generation. This modern-day Woodrow Wilson enabled new paths to be created by leading the way to the establishment of the new chronology. Thanks to him, his charm and persuasion and the impact he ultimately had on so many different cultures, the necessary trust in a universal social and political life that was worthy of and equal for all the inhabitants of Earth was built. He lives among them and they, all the inhabitants of today's universe, love him as deeply as he had once loved humanity and shared the pain and sorrow of billions of people. They love Terring, the political figure, “the first ever to essentially and effectively escape the shackles of the local ruler”, Terring the inspirational orator who mesmerised the crowds around the world, with the deep wrinkles of mental concentration engraved on his forehead and the characteristic grey stole of the “Great Year”

(their year 1, our 2396 AD) draped around his neck, a very frequent accessory of his. But even more, they love the Terring of the portrait by Knut Valdemar, making a speech at the 2394 European Convention, the year after which the Universal Commonwealth was established. Blomsterfor, 27-VI

(Shortly before midnight)

It makes you wonder: which is that ingenious race that managed to defeat the monster of overpopulation and the relentless lack of space? Which are those miraculous generations that did not fear that they would suffocate among those billions of people and instead managed to build layers of ground, like floors, one above the other? Who are those people who managed to produce abundant food for all from their laboratories through artificial photosynthesis?

I asked Stefan why people choose to crowd together in overpopulated cities when there’s so much nature in the countryside that could host them, offering them a much more comfortable and quiet life. He answered that they prefer to densely populate their cities in a rational way—a way that seems to me, the inexperienced and unfamiliar, more like insanity—than to spread out to the farmlands and other unadulterated parts of nature. That is why they build the city upwards instead, stretching incredibly wide air bridges they call rums, high above their skyscrapers. You can even see their technicians shake them like whips when they fix them! If you look up, you’ll see them hanging above your head like a net or an enormous spider web!