(November 12th, 2017)

With a superficial knife wound to his waist, the young man ran along the Manhattan sidewalk, calling out for assistance while panting heavily as he passed one closed shop after another. It was just minutes past midnight, and onlookers walking both sides of the street did nothing at all to help; instead, they gawked at his serious predicament, desperately seeking sanctuary via an open and lively business.

He turned his upper body to his right as he continued his flight (though gradually slowing to a jog) to see how far behind him his pursuer was, all the while aware of the cut to his side but unaware of its severity. He did know, however, that the shadowy figure maintaining a distance of no more than 40 metres behind him was the same scumbag who cut him. And such inhumanity for naught but his small amount of money and cheap wristwatch (twenty bucks), a grand total of forty-five bucks.

The young man would’ve willingly handed over everything, but the thug wasn’t used to such willingness, at least not without adding one or two more slashes with his seven-inch switchblade.

“You can have everything I got!” the young man tried shouting as he panted, becoming even shorter of breath than before. “What the hell do you want, for Christ sakes?!”

He then spotted sanctuary. A bright neon-light sign, which blared “OPEN,” just above the door of one of a half-dozen or so nightclubs in that small region of Manhattan. “Oh … thank God!” he gasped, then worked on catching his breath after arriving at the Plexiglas protected entrance-fee-collection booth.

The nightclub’s Plexiglas fortified entrance door was entirely covered from the inside by an opaque, red, felt curtain, with everything else external being the red brick sidewall right next to where he stood. He could hear the soothing sanctuary-safe sound of boisterous, open-for-business activity from within getting out through the one entrance.

He grabbed onto the door handle and pulled with all of his strength and weight behind his effort. Only his blunt grunt was the result, as the door refused to budge an iota.

This isn’t happening! he mentally shrieked.

Out came another such grunt when he again futilely yanked at the solidly locked door.

But the light’s on! his panicked thoughts continued reverberating, as he yanked even harder at the door, twice more. Why the f— is it shut?!

“Uh … Thirty bucks, mister.”

“What … ? Where the …?” he muttered, looking around desperately for the disembodied request for the nightclub entrance fee.

“I said, thirty bucks cover-charge … if you want to get in.”

He looked at the booth beside him and the twenty-ish booth attendant within, staring back out at him apathetically.

“What? Thirty dollars?” he said, letting out a breath and behaving as though he never experienced a nightclub’s pay-booth before.

He anxiously fumbled about while pulling out a twenty from his right pocket and a five from his left; then he reached into his back pockets but found only lint.

“All I have is twenty-five—really,” he began to beg, turning his head to see how close behind the scumbag was.

There, no more than fifteen meters away, he could see the menacing thug, though only a shadow figure within the entranceway of a closed-for-the-night classy-appearance hat store.

“Hey, mister, do you have thirty bucks or not? … Look, I have to go use the john.”

The booth attendant stood up and walked through a rear door within the booth, and completely out of view. The booth light then went dim, although the nightclub’s innards remained quite active, and the neon light was still on, bright. However, he was still locked out tightly, to failingly fend for himself, his very life, simply because he was five dollars short.

His sole surviving family member, a young-adult little sister sunk deep in heartache and frustration, had those exact words engraved on her big brother’s gravestone: “His brief life cut short simply because he was five dollars short. Brandon Gridner, February 29, 2002 – November 12, 2017.”

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‘How Many More Must Greatly Suffer or Die for Others’ Gratuitous Monetary Gain & Simultaneous Societal Mayhem?’
(June 7th, 2042)

With significant social-activism momentum building on local, regional, national and international scales for just a few months short of a full quarter century—ever since the tragically gratuitous, brutal killing of Brandon Gridner, for almost no monetary gain. It was an atypical cause for such a mass movement that was triggered within the New York City region; nevertheless, his story, his totally meaningless murder due to being but five dollars short of accessing asylum from a killer, soundly resonated with the people of America, followed closely by Canada, and beyond, from that day onwards.

There followed a great weight massive move forwards with such a historically unprecedented, revolutionary concept to gradually (over a ten year period) eliminate the entire globe’s monetary and precious-metals exchange systems, along with all stock/bond trading methodologies—i.e. making money off of others’ gains and losses.

The progressive movement indeed was almost entirely potently propelled by an enormous and inexcusably immoral gap between the superfluously wealthy top one percent of the planetary population and the struggling or outright impoverished bottom ninety-nine percent, the latter which lacked sufficient means by which to maintain an average quality of life and/or lifestyle (an ‘average’ based on a new, relative Earthly scale).

Of greatest concern, however, was the most critical juncture in Earth’s existence involving the inhabitability of the planet in regards to its air, land and water. Either the planet’s populace made a figurative ninety-degree turn towards one likely outcome or perpendicularly towards the other likely outcome.

One choice of course change would eventually result in a world of genuinely pristine eco-systems, thus safely breathable air and truly clean drinking water, etcetera. Accompanying this true progress in cleaning up Earth’s life-sustaining environment, was a complete cessation of all hunger, incessant though needless serious illness and great suffering, etcetera.

A course change towards the other direction, however, would be regressive, imminently leading humanity (not to mention its fellow Earthly creatures) back towards nightmarish, global scale, coal-dust-dark-gray, industrial-revolution-like existence. Eventually, it would result in a catastrophic planetary environmental consequence—one that would pollute Earth to a hopelessly prolific, profound degree.

Maintaining the same course straight ahead was also a path with a very bleak outcome for Earth’s various life forms, just of a different lot of negative occurrences taking a little longer to reach fruition (of course, periods of time relative to Earth’s great age).

Contrary to Big Capitalism and Industrialists’ cynical critiques against any slowing, let alone the ceasing of their unrelenting mass extraction of Earthly minerals and other natural resources, the diverse peoples, ideologies and cultures all over the planet wisely chose the correct, truly progressive course change that spared ‘spaceship’ Earth and its life so much agony and loss.

In less than five and a half decades, every nation of the world quite successfully initiated, managed and maintained an environment purification project involving every aspect of Earth’s air, land and waters. In fact, efforts proceeded so successfully that many cases of severe ecological toxification were actually halted then reversed back to a global environmental status of pristine eco-system sustainability, something not witnessed for three to four centuries in some major European nations.

“It all turned into like some version of Earth society from those very old Star Trek movies and television series I used to watch as a young boy,” a 103-year-old Canadian man of amazingly sound memory was quoted by TIMEmagazine’s April 10, 2138 issue.

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‘We Made the Right Choice for Progressive Change & We Live Quite Well By It!’
(June 7th, 2142)

To the day, exactly one hundred years had passed since that one spring morning, Earth’s populace began accumulating in every capital and major city across the planet just a few hours after a New York City gathering became the launching point for the most profound cause to date in human history. Planet-wide, the peaceful yet cohesive demonstrators all made the utmost insightful choice of their lives and their future as a ‘collective humanity.’ The people, about 10.23 billion in number, redirected their destiny towards an absolute elimination of all pollutants, mostly in the form of insidious bio-toxic substances, followed by a 180-degree reversal of the global pollution crises that had reigned for much too long and for too much of the wrong reasons.

All the while, truly effective population control also became and remained a reality, soon eliminating such past ordeals as the mass famines of Africa, particularly during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. On the other front, to stop mass famine suffering, the elimination of all forms of planetary pollutants such as ozone-depleting greenhouse gases over decades of environmental progress virtually totally resolved previously precarious irregular global weather systems that caused massive-scale crop-destroying devastating floods, permafrost and drought. But human ingenuity received the most credit for the exponential increase in agricultural efficiency bio-technology and eco-friendly fertilization of crops.

Perhaps most profound, wars, be they ‘civil’ or transnational, and genocide naturally became without-exception unacceptable concepts, let alone options for any reason at all. Simultaneously, respect for life extended to all animals, translating into vegetarianism becoming the culinary-art-form-to-perfect for the twenty-second century and well beyond.

Also, the refreshing fact that no nation any longer utilized the innately abused monetary system imminently ensured that stockpiles of gold bullion would no longer almost entirely represent gratuitous wealth and monetary value but rather would be melted down for progressive use as constructive elements for clean, green technologies, etcetera.

In this new era, every person on the planet could be employed according to his or her talents, mostly acquired through universally accessible higher learning institutions, therefore contributing towards positive societal or global functions to varying degrees of skills progression, in the manner which he or she genuinely desires. Hence, all citizens could acquire the skills and professions of their own choice, to their own fulfillment, while experiencing a real sense of accomplishment and thus satisfaction—without having to suffer any anxieties whatsoever over potential or actual financial obstacles (i.e. late home mortgage payments followed by bank foreclosure).

Every person began thinking for him- or herself: How exactly does a person truly, justly “earn” $100 billion—in both a moral sense as well as that of a universally accessible contribution to society? One would conclude that to “earn” so many billions of dollars, the lucky person would be performing some super humanitarian feat for the planet’s populace or spaceship Earth itself through that person’s pristine upkeep of the planet’s eco-systems. Or the multi-billionaire would have eliminated starvation or alleviated at least a large chunk of the mass suffering occurring 24/7 around so much of the world—for example, through his mass distribution of much needed medicines.

It simply cannot be done—not from a moral perspective, it was agreed upon by all.

Salaries and wages were no longer allocated within the same marginalizing framework that in the past resulted in large, unjust gaps between the personal wealth and therefore quality of life of one extremely small portion of the populace compared to that of the vast majority of Earth citizens. Instead, all were accorded secured computerized “credits” with the ‘payout’ based on the time and effort that ‘employees’ put into their profession, the quality and quantity of their education/training as well as the “human and environment responsibility” involved in their profession.

All said, there would not be lingering desires for superfluous mass credit accumulation—a concept of ‘savings’ that was decidedly left behind in the socially dysfunctional past—because no one would be left to want of any necessity of life or moderation of lifestyle comfort.

There was to no longer be any enduring temptation or compulsion to hoard anything, let alone monetary wealth.


Frank G. Sterle Jr.