If you make stuff, or take part in Recreation, someone will ask why you "Bother" - it's old, you can get it quicker and cheap in the shops. "In case of the Zombie Apocalypse!" Usually gets them to either shut up or actually Think. Zombies aside, there are times when old and slow skills come in handy. -- Anon Guest
Progress steps in, and the people who benefit from it see no value in the older way of doing things. Why bother growing linen and the years-long process of making clothes with it when there are chemicals and machines to make something arguably better than linen? Why bother sewing with needle and thread when machines do it so much faster? Why bother making clothes when a machine can print them on demand?
Why bother making bread when you can buy it? Or print it? Why bother keeping a starter alive when you can just buy yeast? Sure, the bread is delicious, but you could get the same effect from much quicker means. Whatever the hobby, there is a machine that does it quicker. Further, some of those machines could produce works that no cogniscent's hand could create. At least, not very easily.
Human Cess spent a lot of time on what might be called obscure arts. Fibrecraft and sourdough was just the beginning. Human Cess also investigated basic chemistry, how to create compounds that could prove useful in a longer process of hazard analysis. How to create elementary satellites. How to make circuits from scratch. How to build anything that could resemble modern society from the ground up.
Companion Keri was fascinated. He often perched above Cess' shoulder to watch the experiments in progress, verified by the far more compact instruments available. There was a notebook, a physical object instead of the datareader. Human Cess seemed determined to do everything "old school".
"Why do you do this?" chirped Keri. "There should not ever be need, yes?"
"You never can tell," said Cess. They were watching the substances foaming under a fume hood in his laboratory. "I usually say 'in case of zombie apocalypse' just to shut people up. But zombie apocalypse is just a shorthand for 'everything we rely on flakks up at an epic level'. Societal collapse, crashing on an unsurveyed planet with all the tech gone to shrapnel... whatever. It's all zombie apocalypse."
"This is a horror genre amongst Humans, yes? A genre not suitable for Havenworlders."
"Yeah. In brief, we're subconsciously scared of our dead and frequently imagine them messing things up for the living in more ways than the obvious."
"I have witnessed Zombie Tag games," Keri adjusted their balance on the perch. "I sense that there is more depth to the spectacle."
"Centuries worth of stories, books, movies, plays, musicals, comics..." Cess laughed. "The briefer part of it is that everything we rely upon suddenly out of everyday reach. It's happened in history. Entire swathes of territory left without electricity for months, utilities suddenly absent through the mismanagement of administrators over decades without a thought to the consequences. Environmental disasters not prevented through forethought... And so on. Deathworlder histories are full of this nonsense."
"Ah," said Keri, but they said it in a way that should imply, Please continue.
"More people should know how to deal with a zombie apocalypse. The more we know about the very basics, the better everyone will be. I mean... how many crash sites where everyone died slowly could have been prevented by simple survival knowledge or basic lessons in chemistry? We can't know. Not really. Me? I'm making a survival-everywhere protocol. Something that could be boiled down to idiots-can-do-it instruction sets."
"So... not just your zombie apocalypse, but everyone's?"
"More or less, yeah. Apocalypses can happen at any scale. Best to be prepared."
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Suchan]
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