The fork in the road
A tale of two futures
by Mike Meyer
The fork in the road is before us. It has been there for awhile or I should say we have been looking at it and thinking about it as we approached. We once had a map but we lost it. Perhaps we should have tried to memorize the large features of it at least, such as the forks in the road and which way to go. But we didn’t.
I guess we weren’t really paying much attention to where we were going. That was kind of funny because we had our best years, we thought, traveling west when it was really hard. Probably that was where the problems started to get out of hand. We were taking what we wanted and had no doubt that the people we took it from had no rights. We didn’t understand rights very well, then, and now that makes some of us sick.
That is probably the real problem. We got so caught up in the fact that we could travel and take and then bury the bodies that we lost the idea of where we were going. In a way we convinced ourselves we were already there. And you don’t need a map if you are already there.
Now we’re looking at this fork in the road and we don’t know which way to go and people don’t seem to understand each other anymore. What we thought was the promised land, well it wasn’t the original promised land but it was the newest and it was ours, turned out to be a desert. Even though it had some nice golf courses and rich homes, still, it turned out to be a desert. Maybe it was always a desert but it seemed as if it hadn’t been when we read about it from when our people first arrived. But there it is so what can you do?
This road ends and there are two roads to choose from, which should we take? They both look the same right here but each has a sign. One says “More” and the other says “Share”. We thought we had a good ways to go before we came to a fork like this but one day, suddenly, there it was. So we started talking about it and pretty soon we were arguing. We almost got to an understanding on how to handle this but then a bunch of people just stopped making sense.
What kind of choice is that, between More and Share? Of course we want More. We’ve always gone for More. That’s what we are. We are the promised land people and the chosen people, the good people, and the real people. We deserve More.
We have some of the others, too. We understand Share. We do that too with the people that aren't chosen and don’t know how to get More. Don’t talk to us about Share. We learned that in church. You have to have More before you can Share.
What kind of choice is that? That’s a fake choice. You have to have both but More comes first. But the others are saying that Share is a better road. They just don’t understand what it takes. We work hard and we take because we work hard. Those people that are big on Share are just weak and aren’t strong enough to take so that’s why they like Share.
Now these damn people want to go down the Share road and that just leads to hell. We have to have More. If you don’t like it you can go to hell. That’s what I say.
We’ve decided and we’re moving out now. We’re not fooled by this Share shit. We’re going for More and these other people will end up trying to find us when they are broke because they gave away everything. We’ll see if we let them in to the New Promised Land. Besides we’re the ones with the guns. The other fools aren’t thinking about guns. How you going to protect your share of More without a gun? And how are you going to take?
The children were on their way to school that morning. Walking along with the dogs and the cats and the new animals that had decided to make their home us. We had found the people who lived on the mountain and they showed us a valley to live in. Since we had technology that they didn’t have we shared it with them and taught them how it worked. They had some really nice ways to cultivate and fix the food that grew in the mountain valleys.
We has also met the new people who had arrived from another world and that was shock. They were completely different but they shared their knowledge of tools for genetic engineering that was much better than ours. We got along, too, although that took some work.
Since all of us were very concerned with long term issues and how much the planet could take, we managed to build a way to grow our houses from the trees on the mountain. That was a joke with the kids since we had become tree house people although we didn’t actually live in trees that way.
It was that morning when we felt the earth rumble and heard the old sounds of a distant war. On the horizon there was a darkness in the air like a distant storm. But it wasn’t a storm. We knew what it was and the kids looked at us, our partners, our friends and the new animals looked at us also with the question in their eyes.
I guess they’re getting More of what they want, we told them. Our new friends are worried. Maybe we should leave. Now that’s a really big fork in the road. Well, they said, one fork leads to another until we really decide where we want to be.
