Parable of the Talents

Change.

Recombine the seeds of Change.

Transmute the impact of Change.

Seize Change,

Use it.

Adapt and grow.

And so she tried to adapt and to grow. Perhaps she feared being like her own mother, who looked for help in a 'smart' drug and wound up damaging her child and killing herself. Chaos. Whatever my mother's reasoning, she decided that she knew what was wrong with her world, and she knew what would fix it: Earthseed. Earthseed with all its defini­tions, admonitions, requirements, purpose. Earthseed with its Destiny.

My Uncle Marc, on the other hand, hated the chaos. It wasn't one of the faces of his god. It was unnatural. It was de­monic. He hated what it had done to him, and he needed to prove that he was not what it had forced him to become. No Christian minister could ever hate sin as much as Marc hated chaos. His gods were order, stability, safety, control. He was a man with a wound that would not heal until he could be cer­tain that what had happened to him could not happen again to anyone, ever.

My father called my mother a zealot. I think that name ap­plies even more to Uncle Marc. And yet, I think Uncle Marc was more of a realist. Uncle Marc wanted to make the Earth a better place. Uncle Marc knew that the stars could take care of themselves.

from The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina

saturday, december 18, 2032

Dan hasn't come back. I had no reason to expect him to give up and come home so quickly, but I did hope. Jorge, Dia­mond Scott, and Gray Mora are going to trade at the Coy street market today. I've told them to leave word with the few people we know in Coy, and on the way back, to tell the Sullivan family. Their quickest way home takes them past the Sullivan place.

************************************

Marcus slept through the night, causing no trouble to him­self or to us. Bankole happened to be in the kitchen when he awoke, and that was good. Bankole took him out to one of our composting toilets. I didn't see him until later when he had washed and dressed. Then he came hesitant and tenta­tive, to my kitchen table.

'Hungry?' I asked. 'Sit down.'

He stared at me for several seconds, then said, 'When I woke up, I thought all this was just a dream.'

I put a piece of fruit-laden acorn bread in front of him. We had both been raised on the stuff because our old neighbor­hood happened to have several very fruitful California live oak trees within the walls. My father didn't believe in waste, so he found out how to use acorns as food. Native Ameri­cans did it. We could do it. He and my mother worked at learning to use not only acorns but cactuses, palm fruit, and other plants that might otherwise be seen as useless. For Marcus and me, all this was food from home.

Marcus took the acorn bread, lit into it, and chewed slowly. First he looked delighted, then tears began to stream down his face. I gave him a napkin and a glass of what had once been a favorite morning drink of his—a mug of hot, sweet apple juice with a lemon squeezed into it. The apples we pressed in southern California were of a different variety, but I don't think he noticed. He ate, wiped his eyes, looked around. He stared at Bankole as Bankole came in, then fo­cused on the rest of his breakfast, all but huddling over it the way a hawk does when it's claiming and protecting its kill. There was no more talk for a while.

When we had all had enough to eat, Bankole looked at Marcus and said, 'I've been married to your sister for five years. During all that time, we believed that you and the rest of her family were dead.'

'I thought she was dead, too,' Marcus said.

'Zahra Balter—she was Zahra Moss when you knew her—she said she saw all of you killed,' I told him.