Just a dream

Something remarkable had happened. I took that for granted, as so often happens inside a dream, having already accepted the events — whatever they’d been. The shape of society itself had changed, The Events having shaken a greater sense of our collective responsibilities into us. Well, most of us.

One such responsibility we had taken on was handling some of the primary perpetrators of The Events, particularly those who remained clueless or apathetic. We’d agreed to do away with justice systems of the past, knowing them for the repression and slavery machines that they had been. Instead, several thousand of us volunteered to be put on rotation to supervise these wayward souls like the children they were, limiting further harm they could do while gifting them a window into this new world.

Generous, I know. But the decision wasn’t based on what they deserved. To do away with the horrors that led to The Events meant bringing our own vengeful urges to heel, too.

That was how I’d come to be in a garden supply store, walking through greenhouse rows. Today was my day to keep an eye on an aging man who had fallen far indeed.

He picked up a large bag from a supply shelf, insisting that it wasn’t too late, that we had the materials, that we could still make it to Mars!

I told him to put the fertilizer back, or else we’re not going to the bake sale next.

He reluctantly complied, the fertilizer soon forgotten under a diatribe about the bake sale people not being willing to commit to economies of scale or... something. We headed into the pressurized corridor and I half tuned him out, watching construction progress on a neighbouring dome on just the other side of a dusty, red-tinged outcropping.