7th
Safe Haven
Guess what I did at the weekend? That’s right, I talked to the Mongoose. Lots.
We sat up for hours discussing things.
Discussing what it would really be like to set up a new home somewhere away from here. Secluded. Making our own power, growing our own food. A little haven of quietude.
We even talked about building a library there. So if the worst of GEAS’s predictions come true and in a couple of decades there’s nothing left, we’ll at least have saved something from the fires of societal collapse. With all the griefing and viralware out there, actually keeping stuff digitally for posterity just isn’t safe anymore. We’ve gone back in time and good old-fashioned ink on paper is the safest way to keep stuff. I mean, how much of my fiction did I lose when my account got hacked a few years ago? Stuff that I can never replace. If I’d had hard copy I’d still have it.
So, a library. Books. Reference stuff and fiction. Anything we can save. Take it somewhere safe and keep it. Not locked away so no one can read it - books are meant to be read - but secure and fireproof.
We even had an idea about how to go about it all without raising suspicions. Hide it in plain sight. The best way the tell a lie is to hide it between two truths. So how’s this for an idea: a social experiment. We get the ball rolling on this little haven and tell people it’s a social experiment. Like Big Brother, but with useful people. We get engineers, growers - all the useful skills - and we say we’re running an experiment to see if medium-scale self-sufficiency works. Just to run for a couple of years, to prepare for future projects when the shit hits the fan.
Only it doesn’t just run for a couple of years. We hand pick our little community and then we stay there. Safe and sound, making our own power, growing our own food.
Hell, if we pitch it right we could even get government funding - tell them it’s for the good of the nation and society, to find out what works. It would be true, but at the same time we’d be building a new home for ourselves, away from all the danger.
I even know where. Well, I have to look into it, maybe take a trip, but the place I’ve found… it looks perfect on paper. Better than perfect. Fertile, secluded and unihabited.
It could be home.
