Consider the Lilies
Heat lies over the summer garden like a too-perfumed blanket. The flowers, heavy lidded, gorgeous in their fecundity. I think someone compared them to prostitutes, once, and I can see why. They move only a little in the breeze, waiting for the bees to come to them, tempting. The striped little workers, so busy.
It’s a lesson, of course. All this is a lesson. The decadence of the idle rich, the splendidly arrayed. The industry of the insects, creating their own sweetness of life.
I know it’s a lesson because the soft, electric voice in my head explains what I’m experiencing, gently driving the lesson home. I know why I am experiencing this, but don’t want the lesson to end.
Too soon, the garden fades, and the sting of the needles comes prickling back. Subdermal Sensexperience IRL HD Simulacreators, that’s what they call them- the ones who care about what they are. To most of us they’re just Thought Spikes.
My 15 minute break is over- used, as all time is now, for a productive purpose.
“Consider the lilies of the field, they do not labour or spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these”, comes the message on the screen. It’s a warning. There are no flowers, now, nothing that has no practical purpose. If I do not labour, I am as worthless as the flowers. I imagine they were beautiful, back when there was a point to them. Now what fields are left are filled with sensible, nutritional plants. In the land, as with people, there is no room for anything unless it is useful.
There are people who can remember when this was all buildings- such a long time ago. We’ve clawed back what sustainable ground we can. Lucky there were the famines and the illnesses, or there would still be too many mouths to feed. But now we have an Ideal Society, so I’m told. We work, we are rewarded. We spend our time wisely- or at least, our time is spent wisely for us.
I wonder if anyone ever misses the flowers. Can you miss what you never saw? I dream about flowers sometimes. But that may be the neural stimulators. Our dreams are always peaceful, they keep us sane.
The bees died out long ago. But, of course, there are still drones. There are always drones.
