Knowledge Vs Wisdom

  Hank:What about the horses?

  Liza: What? Oh right, we have about an hour till sunset, just tell me about Grandma and Grandpa. I think I remember their house, didn't they live in a forest?

  Hank: Kind of, their neighborhood was nestled in amoungst this old forest, so yes lots of trees but still in a neighborhood, in a suburban part of the county. The houses were close enough together that you could throw a stone and hit your neighbor. The problem was that as you traveled south of the river the more you found people who supported the government, and if you support the government you were most likely, chipped. At this point, Pops had told me that most of the neighborhood had been chipped, and some of his neighbors were getting mean about the fact that Gma and Pops hadn't gotten their chips yet. This was back when it was voluntary.

  Liza: You mean that people willingly allowed devices to be implanted in their heads and ended up enslaving themselves?

  Hank: Please try to understand, when the chips were first released they were sold to us as a technological innovation."How lucky are you to plug directly into the internet 24/7.""Using just your thoughts to send messages to anyone across the world." "Ask a question and the answer instantly formed in your mind."It was like have actual superpowers. You can see how some people found these things fasinating.Around this time too, came the push from the goverment, it was patriotic to get chipped."The country works better when we are all connected."

  Liza: Thats awful. They didn't know. How could they have known...

  Hank: I remember that Gma and Pops were visibly distraught when we arrived. Pops, his stoic nature masked some of his emotions but his eyes were glassy like he was seeing 1000 feet in front of him, hardly looking at me when he said, "Hey Buddy." Gma might have already taken her medication becuase she actually looked happy, but it was hard to tell at times. I kept seeing their faces change, when they interacted with you, they were smiling and laughing, which in turn only highlighted how scary it was, becuase when they turned away from you and finally looked at me, or just off into the distance, the mask dropped and I could see their fear, the unknown, a look I had never seen in my parents before, a look of someone staring into the threshold on an inventiable unknown.

  Thank goodness that Gma was having one of her good days. She went and played with you while your mother, Pops and I sat down around the old marble top coffee table inside the glass walled living room. We could see you and Gma playing in the garden just down the hill.

  Pops: In all my time, I’ve never seen anything like this. I never thought I’d see something like this. Do you guys have a plan?

  Hank: You have to come stay with us.

  I thought it would take a little convincing. I thought they might try and convince us to stay with them but before I could go on Pops said,

  Pops: Great our bags are already packed.You know that it wont be easy with Mollie, she just got on a new medicaiton last week and it seems to be working better then the last one, but I've got her.

  Beth: We know and we talked about it. We know that there will be tough moments but hopefully this isn't forever its just for now. Not that we wouldn't want y'all to stay with us forever but this situation, the craziness.

  Pops: I understand. You're right, hopefully it is just a few days, everything will blow over and we'll find some normal again. But I dont think its a good idea for us to stay here right now. You know Mollie has a hard time biting her tongue and both of our neighbors, on either side of our house are now chipped. Who knows what Mollie might say to them and I dont want agents at our house because of something she has no control over... Hank come with me to the shed and help me decide if there is anything in there we might need.

  Beth: Wait... Hank ask him.

  Hank: I don't know what youre talking about....

  Beth: Last night in bed, you were crying "I hope he's okay" "Dad will know. Ill ask him tomorrow". Remember?...

  Hank: I was not crying. I just got a little watery eyed. But it's not the time, we need to get going. They're coming to stay we can talk...

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Beth: Any news from Jack?

  [Silence]

  Hank: Im sorry. Im just scared. I know he's probably okay, but I also know that you wouldn't be able to send us news about him even if you had heard something.

  Pops: No, we haven't heard anything. But I know he’s still alive. I know people beileve otherwise but I think the Brothers would have found a way to tell me if something had happened to him. Just do me a favor and be sensitive about this around Mollie, good news is we'll be together, so if the Brothers contact us we'll all deal with it together. Mollie, she struggles so much but I don’t know if she’s stopped crying since his first arrest and him going underground with the Brothers.

  Hank: Beth went to check on you and Gma, Pops and I got up slow and went to the shed for what we didn't even know so we just took everything we could.

  While Pops and I were out in his "Fortress of Solitude".

  Liza: Wait. Whats the "Fortress of Solitude"? Is it another mid 2000 reference Im not going to understand.

  Hank: No, Superman, I have told you about or you have heard of Superman right?The superhero character... invinsible?

  Liza: Yes, it's ringing some bells, but Im not sure, did he have a light coming out of his chest and missles...

  Hank: No, that's ironman... Nevermind, "The Fortress of Solitude" is where Superman hung out all by himself in like the Southpole or something.It's really not important.And Superman was invented in the 50's.I think... anyways, I remember asking him a question… Pops, Why? Why do you think all this was happening? Why are people acting in way that feels counterintuitive to who they are, or even their own best interests?Can't they see that getting chipped is simply enslaving them to the government?

  I felt like I was 5 again, asking Pops why all the other children weren’t playing nice and sharing. I felt silly, but it was like word vomit. Deep down I wanted to know if Pops could explain it in a way that I could understand.

  Pops: (Contemplative silence) We as a people have always gotten smarter. With our tools we built more tools, which helped us build better tools and we got really smart, really quick. Using that intelligence we were able to do amazing things like observe subatomic particles and build rockets that were able to launch us off our own planet. However, somewhere along the way we forgot wisdom.

  Wisdom… the idea that intelligence and wisdom are two very different things. We know the how but somewhere along the way we forgot to keep asking the why. How, is the easy question to answer, how does something work, we can test that, using deductive reasoning, we can make statements of fact and provide the best possible answer based on the data we received. That makes sense, that is logical. The efficiencies and luxuries of life however, ended up capturing the hearts of the wealthy, creating a massive wealth gap, polluting our politics, eroding social structures, and the most terrible of them all is the abuse of our natural resources. The why though, that is what we forgot, asking questions like… why do need this new invention? Why do we need to create this new advanced weapon system? Why do we need a super computer that runs billions of calculations a second? Why do we need smart phones in everyone's pockets? Why do we need to make AI smart enough to run an entire country. Do we need these things? No. In short we don't need a majority of what the human race had decided to create and produce. And yet, after all that advancement, do you know that we still dont know what how a spider makes its web? We know the parts, we know the components but a spiders web with all it's amazing properties has yet to be recreated by humans. We can't even answer other questions like... Why do human beings feel love? The intangible forces in the universe are just as strong, as the tangile ones and they have been ignored for too long. We’re out of balance and I’m afraid, literally terrified that the scales have tipped too far and now there’s no going back. (Silence) Should we take this plywood?

  Hank: Yes... we need the plywood.

  Pops and I loaded up the car with a bunch of things from the shed and the house. There really wasn’t a spare inch in either one of our cars. We told ourselves it was just for a couple of days but our cars told a different story. Deep down we knew... Later on that night I would reflect on what Pops had said. He was right, we had lost our way, it is not the first time humanity had become "lost". I just hoped that I wasn't living through the last time... I had a random thought pop into my head as we were just about to leave.

  Hank: Money - cash - does anybody have any?

  Pops: No.

  Hank: Neither do we... I feel like that might be very important. We should try and get some on our way back to the house. Pops, don’t go into downtown, use the highway. Beth and I will find an ATM off the beaten path a little bit, maybe there’s still some cash to be found. You guys take Liza, go straight back to our place, start to unload, and we'll be just a few minutes behind you.

  Beth: Take Liza?Hank.(Taking me to the side) We talked about this.We do this together.Liza stays with us.

  Hank: But she will be safer with my parents.They are going straight to the house.

  Beth: I dont care. We do this together.... there is no other option.

  Hank: Ok. You're right. (Back to Pops and Gma) Okay, new plan, we'll keep Liza with us, you guys had straight to our house and start to unpack. We'll be just a few minutes behind you.

  Pops: Ok. Be Safe.

  Hank: Yeah, y'all too.

  This next part, the next part of the story is one of those parts that I really don’t want to tell you about… Look, the sun is starting to set. I'd like to go on our ride to the ocean now.I can hear the horses getting restless.

  Liza: Pops, the horses are a field away. You cannot hear them. The hard parts of the story are the parts I want to hear the most...

  Hank: Later. Come on let’s go. Before we lose the daylight and miss the beautiful sunset.

  [Hank walks away]

  Liza: Dad! Wait!