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

And just like Stefan, they are all convinced that there is no likelihood of humans returning to their previous condition. They believe they are now on their way to writing true history and that no generation will ever allow this incredible social edifice crumble again.

“We’ve paid for those mistakes too dearly to make them again. Rivers of blood and tears were shed in order to escape the mire. People will not return to living in hunger or being exploited by other people ever again. You might not have given enough importance to those things back then, but such history of pain and shame has not and will never be forgotten by us.”

I told him that such extreme situations in our time were rare and not a daily occurrence as they may think. He shook his head incredulously and told me that I had to admit that during the “prehistory”-my time-(people of the future consider the time before Eldere, that is 2396 AD, as “prehistory”), rationality was completely absent in social and economic life. And he knew much, so much that he put me in the difficult position of becoming an advocate and an apologist for our era.

But there were also moments when he spoke with pure naivety, telling stories with amazing plots and exaggerations about arms manufacturers and landowners who took tall and blue-eyed European women as “loot”.

"Just like the old barbarians of the North, who once drowned Europe in blood, so did your own barbarians lack any moral, spiritual and aesthetic values."

The pride that people of today took in the current situation was evident in Stefan’s every word. “Don’t think that the individual linsens or the privilege of not working again in your life after nineteen years of age were always a given,” he told me. He then explained to me that it all started on a winter day of 427 of their new calendar (in 2823 AD of our time) on the ground floor hall of the Binenborg Palace, on the eastern side of the large central square, when the four leaders of that decade were the first to accept the free individual means of transportation of that era, which they would, from that point on, always have throughout their professional and private lives.

It was then when one of them, Torhild, a leading figure in natural sciences and later governor and leader, posed a symbolic question: “Aren’t the people with disabilities or other problems going to need them more than us?” The rest then assured him that everybody had already received their own means and that there was no shortage anymore...

Stefan, evidently moved and excited, paused for a second and then told me, “You can’t imagine what moral satisfaction you derive from working for the common good instead of individually hoarding or putting money aside so that your grandchildren can enjoy the boredom and tedium of not being able to find a purpose in life.”

What could I say? I admired their amazing system that allowed them, with only two years’ service, to secure the rest of their lives. I asked him why, however, they did not raise the service to five, ten or fifteen years to provide them with even more wealth.

“Because our life’s objective is not untold riches,” Stefan answered. “One is wise when one knows when to stop. And trust me, it is not always easy to tell where sufficiency and comfort stop and absurdity and extravagance begin... We don’t need excesses. Our goal is to never be accused of putting barriers in the spiritual way of the Cives, the citizens. The job of an industrial worker for example doesn’t satisfy any innate need of the human soul. Hard work is not a need of the heart; it’s nothing like scientific, artistic or intellectual creation. We consider it as a new individual right for the born scientist, artist or philosopher to be left alone and unencumbered to create.”

“That’s no excuse,” I remarked, “to leave the glothners in the hands of those kids, especially when you know how much better production would be if left in the hands of more mature people.”

“There’s no need to fret about that. The current partners are much more mature than you’d think, considering their age.”

His last words reminded me of an observation I made regarding these people, everywhere I went, since the first day. On the one hand, these young people seemed to have an admirable maturity that I wished our adults could have. On the other hand, however, all of them, adult men and women, sometimes looked and behaved as “big children”.