རྟིན་འབྱུང 

Trenjung: A Journal of Interconnections

(This is a draft of a short story I am working on for a book of short stories I am writing called, "The Book of Books I Will Never Write."  I am sharing it now in this indistinct form because of what is happening now in our world...)

Refugia

by D. H. Garrett

It had been built in the perfect place to solve a desperate need. And as large as it was -room for 30 million and more- it still rose above the horizon most gracefully. It had the revealing blessedness of a Mont Saint Michelle, but on a vastly grander scale, it had the magic of the Emerald City, but without the fakery of a little manipulative man behind a curtain. But the real miracle of the place, beside the compassion of its being, was it lightness. In terms of its weight upon the earth, it weighed nothing, its ecological footprint was zero.  And all around it, on the seeming endlessness of the Northern Great Plains, buffalo were again roaming, and the prairie grass was as tall as prairie grass had ever been.

It had all started with a dream, a vision. An old Lakota Sioux wiseman had seen it in his inner sight, and told a few. And there it would have stopped except for the fact that one of the few was his nephew and his nephew was the senior Senator from South Dakota. And old Senator Blackhorse had thought about it, recognized it for what it might be, and got to work talking with the right people to make it happen. 

It had been a rare moment of clear-sighted purpose for the nation as a whole. Abrupt climate change was ravaging the planet with floods and droughts and famine. The number of refugees had grown into the hundreds of millions, and no one wanted them, even though none of this was their fault. And they weren’t content of course to die in place. And so their movements reared up on a vast scale, swirling across borders, battering down walls, braving bullets, tearing down governments from within and without. And all they wanted, was what everyone wanted, a home, and chance to work and dream and raise their children in peace.

That is how the idea of Refugia was born. Out of pain and chaos and an old Indian’s idea of how it might end. The Senator called together the most innovative architects and city planners and engineers and ecologists and biologists and artists and dreamers and computer scientists and anthropologists and psychologists and they designed into existence a city that practically grew itself, that created its own energy and water and food; a city with room for 10’s of millions to lead good, healthy, well-educated and inspired lives of meaning and purpose and comradeship. A city so green and sustainable, that the airs and waters around it visibly healed from its presence.  

And they filled the city with those most in need: Palestinians and Afghans, Central Americans and Africans, people of every color and belief from all over everywhere, for climate change had left nowhere safe.  The skeptics felt it wouldn’t work, that fights would break out, that the city would soon burn to the ground from all of the sectarian fighting, (much as the world seemed to be doing). But a miracle had happened, and they all got along most splendidly (well of course there were squabbles, but little squabbles) for the Refugians, as they came to call themselves, found they had so much more in common, than what could ever keep them apart. And with their needs met, and their dreams fed in their beautiful new home, it was as if heaven had taken root in this one place on earth, in this one great living, organic city that was of the earth and with the earth, and nourished the earth, equally to what it got in nourishment from the earth, which wasn’t much -self sufficient as it was- except of course for  the place that had been provided for it.

And it all looked like it would work, with more Refugia’s planned, now that it was clear to all that the poisons had to be cleared from the air and the waters and the land, and that the earth could be largely re-wilded with humanity no longer needing to be a virulent parasite wanting to devour it all for itself, but rather that human technologies could meld seamlessly with the natural rhythms of the world and mankind could rest within them, prosperous but not destructively greedy, nourished and growing, but not at the expense of the planet itself.  Refugia betokened a Golden Age far beyond the dreams of even of the greatest dreamers. 

But then there were the others. They were well-armed, and hateful. They were Nativists and Racists, believers in strange interpretations of strange religions which somehow gave them the right to do whatever they wanted in the name of their God. And Refugia was their scourge, their anathema. Refugia, economic success that it was, put a lie to their smug sense of supremacy; Refugia’s visionary light of humanity’s possibilities for peace and greatness when all lived together accepting and equal, was exactly what drove them mad. They couldn’t stomach the idea that this compassionate trans-national cosmopolitanism not just worked, but that it excelled, and was felt by many to be unutterably beautiful. And so the hater’s plotted and schemed to tear it down, from within and without. They sowed lies and they sabotaged, and the more Refugia caught them in their subterfuges, the more incensed they grew.

The Refugians sought council among themselves to try and find ways of dealing with, defusing, defending against all of the hate. They offered their enemies Refugias of their own, offered to show them how it was done, said they could live their own lives with their own kind (whatever that was) at peace. But their overtures were rejected. “We don’t need your help,” they were told, “We were the ones who invented all of this while you lazy people were picking through your garbage dumps.”

Now this is where I should tell you how ended. But I cannot. I do not know for sure. I did not survive to the end of the troubles that, because of climate change and hate and inequality, came to devour the United States and much of the world. I know that as I lay dying, in a state of strange calm, various possibilities ran through my brain. Perhaps the Refugians found a hard way to defend themselves, though few defenses are impregnable, and powerful weapons tend to migrate to both sides of a conflict. Perhaps the most persuasively eloquent of the Refugians were able to calmly convince enough of those gathered against them to treat them as human and negotiate some common sense, if not amicable, solution. But those amongst the haters still open to talk I suspect were few. I smiled at the thought that Refugian scientists had developed a love bomb, an invisible gas that if released amongst the torch-bearing, rifle-bearing vigilantes, would trigger waves of love and remorse and forgiveness within them. But of course one never knows if such a chemical recourse would last.

And so I passed away before I know the end to this little story. In leaving my body, I had a brief sojourn in a Native American place, where I saw the old Lakota Sioux wiseman who had the original vision. I asked him if Refugia would survive. He smiled and gestured to the brilliant thick field of stars above and said, Refugia is always here.”