And, of course, women will be free to do without men completely, since women can provide their own ova. I wonder what this will mean for humanity in the future. Radical change or just one more option among the many?
I can see artificial wombs being useful when we travel into extrasolar space—useful for gestating our first animals once they're transported as frozen embryos and useful for gestating children if the nonreproductive work of women settlers is needed to keep the colony going. In that way, perhaps the eggs may be good for us—for Earthseed—in the long run. But what they'll do to human societies in the meantime, I wonder.
I've saved the worst news item for last The election was on Tuesday, November 2. Jarret won. When Bankole heard the news, he said, "May God have mercy on our souls." I find that I'm more worried about our bodies. Before the election I told myself that people had more sense than to elect a man whose supporters burn people alive as "witches," and torch the churches and homes of people they don't like.
We all voted—all of us who were old enoughs—and most of us voted for Vice President Edward Jay Smith. None of us wanted an empty man like Smith in the White House, but even a man without an idea in his head is better than a man who means to lash us all back to his particular God the way Jesus lashed the money changers out of the temple. He used mat analogy more than once.
Here are some of the things that Jarret said back when he was shouting from his own Church of Christian America pulpit. I have copies of several of his sermons on disk.
"There was a time, Christian Americans, when our country ruled the world," he said. "America was God's country and we were God's people and God took care of his own. Now look at us. Who are we? What are we? What foul, seething, corrupt heathen concoction have we become?
"Are we Christian? Are we? Can our country be just a little bit Christian and a little bit Buddhist, maybe? How about a little bit Christian and a Little bit Hindu? Or maybe a country can be a little bit Christian and a little bit Jewish? How about a little bit Christian and a little bit Moslem? Or perhaps we can be a little bit Christian and a little bit pagan cultist?"
And then he thundered, "We are God's people, or we are film! We are God's people, or we are nothing! We are God's people! God's people!
"Oh my God, my God, why have we forsaken thee?
"Why have we allowed ourselves to be seduced and betrayed by these allies of Satan, these heathen purveyors of fake and unchristian doctrines? These people... these pagans are not only wrong. They're dangerous. They're as destructive as bullets, as contagious as plagues, as poisonous as snakes to the society they infest. They kill us, Christian American brothers and sisters. They kill us! They rouse the righteous anger of God against us for our misguided generosity to them. They are the natural destroyers of our country. They are lovers of Satan, seducers of our children, rapists of our women, drug sellers, usurers, thieves, and murderers!
"And in the face of all that, what are we to them? Shall we live with them? Shall we let them continue to drag our country down into hell? Think! What do we do to weeds, to viruses, to parasitic worms, to cancers? What must we do to protect ourselves and our children? What can we do to regain our stolen nation?"
Nasty. Very nasty. Jarret was the junior senator from Texas when he preached the sermon that contained those lines. He never answered the questions he asked. He left mat to his listeners. And yet he says he's against the witch burnings.
His speeches during the campaign have been somewhat less inflammatory than his sermons. He's had to distance himself from the worst of his followers. But he still knows how to rouse his rabble, how to reach out to poor people, and sic them on other poor people. How much of this nonsense does he believe, I wonder, and how much does he say just because he knows the value of dividing in order to conquer and to rule?
Well, now he's conquered. In January of next year, he'll be sworn in, and he'll rule. Then, I suppose we'll see just how much of his own propaganda he believes.
************************************
Another, happier, more local event happened here at Acorn yesterday. Lucio Figueroa, Zahra Balter, and Jeff King came in with a huge load of books for our library. Some look almost new. Others are old and worn, but they've all been protected from the weather, from water, and from fire. There are textbooks, up to graduate level in several subjects, specialized dictionaries, a set of encyclopedias—2001 edition—books of history, how-to books, and dozens of novels. Jeff King ran across the books being all but given away at a street market in Arcata.
"Someone was clearing out a room so that relatives could move into it," he told me. "The owner of the books had died. He was considered the family eccentric, and no one else in the household shared his enthusiasm for reading big, bulky books made of paper. I didn't think you'd mind my buying them for the school."
"Mind?" I said. "Of course not!"
"Lucio said he wasn't sure we should spend the money, but Zahra said you were crazy for more books. I figured she'd know."
I grinned. "She knows. I thought everyone knew."
There were fifteen boxes of books. We took them into the school, and today we recovered as best we could from the stuff on the Worldisk by looking through the books and shelving them. We read bits of this and that to one another. People got excited and interested, and everyone carried away a book or two to read. After hearing the news, we all needed to read something that wasn't depressing.
I wound up with a couple of books on drawing. I haven't tried to draw anything since I was seven or eight. Now, all of a sudden, I find myself interested in learning to draw, learning to draw well—if I can. I want to learn something new and unrelated to any of our troubles.
SUNDAY, november 14, 2032
I'm pregnant!
No surrogates, no computerized eggs, no drugs. Bankole and I did it the good old-fashioned way—at last!
It's crazy that it should happen now, just when America has elected a wild man to lead it. Bankole and I began trying as soon as we could see that we were going to survive here at Acorn. Bankole's first wife couldn't have children. As a young woman back in the 1990s, she was in a serious car accident and wound up with a hysterectomy, among other things. Bankole claimed he never minded. He said the world was going to hell just as fast as it could, and it would be an act of cruelty to bring a child into it. They talked about adopting, but never did.
Now he's going to be a father, and in spite of all his talk, he's almost jumping up and down—that is, whenever he isn't being scared to death. He's talking about moving into an established town again. He hadn't said anything about that since right after we got the truck, but now the subject is back, and he's serious. He wants to protect me. I realize that. I suppose I should be glad he feels that way, but I wish he would show his protective feelings in another way.
"You're a kid yourself," he said to me. "You don't have the sense to be afraid."
I can't seem to get angry with him for saying things like that. He says them, then he thinks for a moment, and if he doesn't watch himself, he begins to grin like a boy. Then he remembers his fears and looks panicked. Poor man.