Town Meeting
I decided that we needed a town meeting, rather like this one come to think.
There had never been a town meeting on Flint Island before, never having been a need for one. The dinner that Viper had crashed and burned at, was the closest that we’d ever had and it had been in the factory. There also wasn’t room enough in any of the buildings on the island for everyone to gather at one time. The buildings were mostly homes. Shelby had solved that problem in his on inimitable fashion. The whole island was indoors. I asked him to provide an auditorium where everyone could meet and he caused a huge grey dome of Structural Smoke to spring up that almost entirely filled the largest open area in the middle of the island.
I remember Cody was there with his mother.
Everyone else on Flint Island was there also. Cody appeared to be having fun. His mother seemed a little bit less thrilled. It was a very strange building if indeed it was a building at all. It looked like an extremely dense dollop of fog that filled the previously open field. I saw Cody and his mother approaching across the island from their residence to one section of the fog bank. High above huge floating neon arrow shaped sign pointed downward, “DOOR” it said. I was tele-operating a dragon doorman at the doorway. I want to see who all came, make sure everyone had a neuro-loop and to answer any questions and direct them to their seats. The child sized dragon that I operated did not appear to be threatening in any way. I wanted everyone to be at ease. No one needed to know that it was me.
“Good after noon, sir, ma’am. Hiya Cody!” I greeted them. I had a number of pendant necklaces draped over one arm.
“Getcher program here. You can’t tell anything without a program.” I imitated an old time circus barker and gave each of them a gorgeous golden necklace attached to a magnificent gemstone.
“Just put the program, er... necklace I mean, around your neck. If you don’t have one already I mean.” I said. “It will sting for just a second. Ignore that.”
Cody and his mother did that. The necklaces did sting, but not badly. No sooner had the sting faded from their perception than a whole new reality opened before them. It was a bit surreal. Cody’s mother smiled and Cody was delighted.

A small blue genie appeared before them. Beside the genie hovered a really ODD looking, Bat? It was the Orcs, Captain and Marc, in disguise. “If ya’ll will foller me I’ll take you to your booth,” the Genie said. “Gomer here will get you some snacks. Ya’ll want food or drink? Popcorn maybe? Whiskey?”
Cody’s mother was almost overwhelmed. Not so Cody. “I want a...,” he started to say .
“He’ll take a glass of milk and a cookie,” his mother said.
“Very good ma’am. For ya’ll?” the Genie replied.
“We’ll take a cup of coffee each and cookies as well” she said.
“Do you have chocolate chip?” Cody asked.
“We certainly do,” the Genie replied. “Gomer will fetch a dozen chocolate chip cookies, a coffee and a glass of milk. If you’ll follow me please I’ll escort you to your booth.” The cookies and drinks were waiting for them when they arrived.
“Ahem, is this thing on?” They heard someone speaking.
It was me. Everyone who was coming had done so . I’d dumped the dragon and was appearing before them as my self. In virtual reality I appeared to be no more than a few feet in front of their booth. I appeared to be no more than a few feet away from anyone in the auditorium. Everyone had a front row seat. They could see and hear me easily. It was a hologram or something. “If everyone will please be seated we’ll get this show on the road. We have a lot to go over tonight so let’s get started. Oh by the way, the chocolate chips cookies are excellent tonight, I recommend them. All of the ingredients come direct from our new food factory, it’s all home grown. That’s one of the things we’ll cover tonight. Free food from now on.”
I was munching on one as I spoke.
“First off.” I said. “I want to thank the Magi for providing the accommodations. Without Shelby and Chad none of this would be possible and we’d probably all be dead by now. Shelby is our ArchMage, for want of a better term, and Chad is the Mage.”
“I’ll give you the executive summary first,” I said after the applause died down, “then we can go into greater detail later if you want.”
“First off,” I said. “The Magi have many projects in the works. The Ssmoke that you see all around you is the basis for many of them. Ssmoketm is the main reason we wanted you all to come here tonight in person rather than attend by virtual reality.”
“I wanted to make sure that you all have the Neuro-Loop Necklaces, some do, many didn’t. Now everyone has them. They will allow you to control the Ssmoke. “I nibbled the cookie, “and the cookies, you would not have wanted to miss the cookies. The necklace is something the magi call a neuro loop as I said. It interfaces your brain to the Ssmoke. The Ssmoke will then just naturally do what you want it to do if you want it to do something that it has an app for. If you want it to do something it can’t do, if there’s no App., then nothing happens. That’s likely to be a rare occurrence soon since the Magi have developed a programing language that’s intuitive and easy to learn. S-Smoke-Talk and the Ssmoketm are both very, very versatile. That’s the good news.”
“The bad news is that something is happening to the national economy. We’re not sure what it is. One of the effects is higher prices, and vanishing jobs. Some of you live off island and have lost your jobs. The worse news is that we’re loosing the Factory. Due to a number of factors it will no longer be available after next week.” I said casually.
“Even worse news is that Winter is coming on and it’s going to be a bad one. Thanks to the Magi, Flint Island has The SSmoke now and cookies. We won’t starve or get cold,” I must have droned on and on and on.
I saw that Cody lost interest, as had many of the children, except for Carl. Those chocolate chip cookies were GOOD, and the milk wasn’t bad either. The sugar shock made him alert at first then he began to get drowsy. It wasn’t long before he fell asleep.
He woke up later, ”Mom?”
“Everything is okay dear. You just go back to sleep.” she said, and he did... The meeting lasted a long time. Cody and the other children woke up several times, except for Carl. Carl was attentive the whole time. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I should have. It was my first clue. The Children all heard some of the questions that I was asked, and the answers. They didn’t understand many of them, except for Carl. Carl understood everything I later found out.
“Yes, those are Scooper-Poopers. They are building a Levy around the Island. ....-..... No, those are not dangerous river sharks, although there might actually BE river-sharks. Those ain’t it. Those are Bottom Feeders. .....--.... Yes, rent, food, water, electricity, and sewage are free retroactive to a while back. You will get refunds. There’s enough room for anyone who lived off island to ‘come on down’ too.....--.... We are working on other services such as internet and cable, feel free to help, we’ll keep you updated regarding their status.” I answered those and a host of other questions. I was being prompted by the Maggi, unseen, for any questions that I couldn’t answer.
“Yes, there is now a dome over the island. Under the dome will be climate controlled.......----Yes... SSmoke is being released inside the dome, eventually it will be much like right here....---....Yes, the SSmoketm is open source. SSmokeTalk is freely available. Tutorials are online. Anyone can learn to program it to do anything they desire. I’m sure private enterprise will be able to offset the adverse economic impact of the missing jobs.”
To Be Continued
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The Hobo Picture is a Public Domain image from
Samantha at the Worlds Fair
by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
Illustrated by
Baron C. De Grimm published by
Funk and Wagnall's Company 1893
Unless noted
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