Then came a hall devoted to discussing the mistreatment of women, individually and collectively, often in the same countries that rated lowest in all the other categories of well-being and political representation and functionality. That was no coincidence, of course. The status of women was not just an indicator, but fundamental to the success of any culture. But many of the old forms of patriarchy were not dead, and so among the worst of the outstanding wicked problems were patriarchy and misogyny. Mary sighed as she looked in at that hall, where of course there were lots of women, and fewer men by proportion than elsewhere. In a room of a hundred people she counted five white men, twenty men of color. Even if it were demonstrated to be the worst problem left, still there would be few men willing to take a look that way. It wouldn’t be men who solved this one, but women; laws crafted by women and rammed through by women. So it was indeed an outstanding problem, a wicked problem indeed. Although to be categorized like that, as a problem alongside pollution and nuclear arms and carbon and misgovernance and the like— it was galling, it was another aspect of the problem itself. Women as Other— when would that stop, them being as they were the majority of the species by many millions?
On then to other intractables. Resource issues. Women as resources, Mary thought, no, forget about that. Water. But with copious clean energy, they could desalinate. Soil: regenerative ag was the hope there, biology itself. The biosphere generally: loss of habitat, of safe habitat corridors, of wildlife numbers. Extinctions. Invasive biology problems. Watershed health. Insect loss, including bee loss. Where to store the CO2 they were drawing out of the atmosphere. Even with the progress made, these were still acute problems.
Ocean health. They could do nothing about ocean acidification, nor the heating of the ocean that was baked in by the previous century’s carbon burn, nor the deoxygenation. Thus die-offs were happening, and presumably extinctions they didn’t even know about, that might have catastrophic cascading results. Ocean health would be an outstanding problem for centuries to come, and little to nothing they could do about it, except to leave big parts of the ocean, half of it at least, alone, so that its biomes and creatures could adapt as best they might. Coral reefs and beaches and coastal wetlands of course were also a big part of that, and almost equally beyond what humans could do to help. Stand back, get away, keep out; maybe try fishing for plastic rather than fish, at least in the big areas left alone; or even in the fishing zones. Set new foundations for coral reefs. And so on. It would be a wicked problem for the rest of their lives.
Oh yes, it went on like that, all day and all over the Kongresshall. And it didn’t help that many of these problems were incommensurate, that it was offensive to have women’s welfare put on the same card as the welfare of coral reefs or nuclear stockpiles. To hell with these anthologies of outstanding problems! Lists like these were in some senses useless, she felt. Perhaps better to have ended the conference the day before, with the celebration of progress they already made and were still making. That had felt good, this felt bad. Possibly the anger generated on this day could be put to use, but she wasn’t sure. A lot of shocked or depressed-looking young people were wandering Kongresshall, especially young women. Mary stopped some of them when they were in groups that looked as if they were talking things over, and she tried to encourage them to fight on, to go out there and kick ass, as they had been. Some nodded, some didn’t.
A mixed day, therefore. And then she got a call from the clinic where Frank was being helped. He had collapsed and was doing poorly.
They had him in a room of his own, a small room almost filled by his hospital bed and the monitoring and life support equipment, and three chairs. His bed was tilted so that he was sitting up. He wore a hospital gown and had an IV port in the back of one hand, tube running up to an IV bag on a stand. Monitor had his pulse bumping a graph, pretty fast she thought. His face was white and swollen, dark circles under his eyes. Hair cropped short; she noticed his receding hairline.
He was asleep, or at least had his eyes closed, and she sat down on one of the chairs and decided not to wake him up, to wait for that.
He looked ill. The instrumentation hummed, his pulse bumped the scrolling graph over his head. Faint smell of starch and sweat and soap. Ah yes: she knew this world.
She sighed and sat back. Hospice, in effect. Even if they were still making efforts to save him or give him time, this was still hospice. She knew this place. The halfway house between this world and no world.
It was a quiet place, much attenuated. Much had already gone away. Remaining was water, some food, food as fuel, which she had seen be refused, to speed the process along; also painkillers, also removal of wastes. Catheter tube running out from under sheet to a plastic bag hanging from the bed frame. She had sometimes brought music into these places, as the one thing that need not fall away, that some part of the failing mind might recognize and enjoy, or at least be distracted by. The boredom inherent in the situation was as bad for the dying person as for those visiting; or worse. Left with time to think, as in a night of insomnia that never relented. Except sleep did come. The drugs helped that, and simple exhaustion. Failing functions in the brain. Sleep came in to fill the
