Dream Logs After One End of the World

Excerpt from: “Dream Log April 17, 2073” on Danielle’s Daily Log

Author: Danielle Vogel

Status: Removed in violation of The 2037 Act on Art for Societal Good— written artistic expression not derived from The Canon.

NOT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION

*INDIVIDUALS MUST SEEK PRIOR AUTHORIZATION BEFORE OBTAINING/READING THIS DOCUMENT*

Everything was bathed in a dawn lavender light. Not lavender like a soft purple, but lavender like a gray, sick purple, like the purple of a light bruise. I was both me and a man with red hair and a green jacket. He was standing outside in white, freshly fallen snow. I was in a cabin, looking through the window, a dirty window shaped like an oval, like the one in my childhood home. The man was outside the cabin. You know how in dreams, you just keep switching identities?

The trees were taller; as tall as they must have been before The Degrading, and there were more birds. The birds surrounded the man; I felt them land on my fingers, the pinpricks of their feet and tiny beaks. I watched them land on the man’s hand from the window with envy. In the dream, I knew that radiation had made the birds friendlier. Although I also knew that wasn’t true. I knew that radiation had reduced the songbird populations to almost extinct. I held the truth and the lie in my head at the same time. Then the coyotes came from the woods and gathered around me, around the man. They were as friendly as dogs. Again, I thought, this must be the radiation and again, I thought:

This isn’t possible.

But what if the radiation or the changing world sometimes made animals different in a way that was good, in a way that we liked? Even if it’s not a way we like, nature finds a way to move forward. Should we?

“You’ve been asked here today to judge Mrs. Vogel’s actions,” I say, addressing the jury. I want to be charismatic but without flourish. This isn’t a performance. Never. No one, at least, should perceive it as such. “Mrs. Vogel is accused of making original art; art that is not derived wholly from The Canon. If you find Mrs. Vogel guilty of this crime, the punishment carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison and a minimum of eighteen months’ probation.”

Sometimes prosecutors prosecute despite their personal feelings–we might feel a law is somewhat unjust, has been unjustly applied, or we have sympathy for the accused and their unique circumstance. Mrs. Vogel knew exactly what she was doing.

She does not have my sympathy, but I need to seem nice. And fair.

“You all know there is a reason for The Canon. In the same way that we speak a common language–we share the same vocabulary, understand the same grammatical rules–art must also exist within an understood language. Every original piece of art that was worth anything has already been created by our ancestors.”

Our first witness comes to the stand.

“When I knew Miss–Mrs. Vogel, she was just little Danny Tellers. She was in my sixth grade class.”

“And, Mrs. Castillo, what kind of student was little Danny?”

“Smart. She memorized things quickly. She wrote well. Sometimes too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes…she would get away from talking about the book or the subject…she would start giving her ideas and opinions–just slightly different from the ones I explained in class.”

“You let your students come up with ideas outside The Canon?”

“No. Not really. You know, kids. We can’t stop them from talking and saying weird things sometimes. You have to understand that every kid is going to create. It’s our job to put them on the right path, give them the proper tools. It was just that, Danny, she did it a little more than most kids. When she was old enough to know better.”

Exhibit 1: Danielle Vogel (née Tellers), age 13, homework assignment.

Note, the underlinings and text in red were added by Miss Teller’s 8th grade history teacher, Andy Grandshaw.

1. What happened in the year 2034?

The year 2034 was the final year in the three year conflict known as WWIII. Three quarters of the human population of the world was killed due to the use of nuclear weapons, bombing raids utilizing planes with AI technology, and a new strain of the SARS-COVID virus.

2. What did the Surviving World Council decide in 2037?

In 2037, the surviving world leaders met in Reykjavik, Iceland to create a new future for humanity that survived the war. Future is a really weird word to use, isn’t it? We look back to the past, to the time where they said we were the best, humans were the best we were ever going to be. And we use that to make our future, our now. We use the materials of old buildings to make our buildings. We look back at our legal codes from then. We look at how the governments were made to work then, and we make our governments like them. The only changes are: we try to make things more sustainable and better distributed among all survivors in all countries. But that was the best humanity was going to be. We can’t get greedy and try to make things better than they were then because we were almost finished. The world almost ended.

We try the best we can to make things how they used to be, but sometimes I think the buildings do look pretty different because they’re all patchwork and some people are better at making patchwork look nice than other people. Sometimes people have to fill in some spots with new material. We aren’t supposed to talk about that. Because art doesn’t mean anything unless it comes from THE CANON.

The computers have a record of the art that was stored on the internet and as many of the books as we could save written from 2012 or before. After that, humanity got worse. So all new books needs to be generated by the LLMs, the drawings need to come from the database, too,. Sso does the new music. We can create, but we have to use the tools left by our ancestors, the algorithms that combine things from THE CANON for us.

-This is a history assignment. Just define the words. I didn’t ask for your personal opinion.

-Be careful of sentence fragments and run-on sentences

Another witness climbs the stand.

“How were you acquainted with the then Ms. Tellers?”

“We met at a party right at the beginning of her freshman year of college–I was studying for my MBA, in the last semester of my program. We dated for a few months.”

“So, she was eighteen at the time.”

“Seventeen, I think.” He gulps, perhaps feeling judgement from the audience and jury in the courtroom, who all must be calculating that he had been a full-grown adult, dating a teen. I don’t have to like witnesses for them to be useful to me.

“During that time, did Ms. Tellers express any subversive opinions?”

“Not exactly. She was always zoning out, though. Like sometimes we’d be talking and she’d just start staring at something for a long time, as though she was going into a different world. It was kind of annoying. It was very hard for her to focus on one task at a time. She did tell me she was struggling in her art history class. Like, she said she was bored of always looking at other people’s art. One time she asked me, ‘what do you think it felt like, to hold a real brush in your hands and watch a canvas change colors?’

“I told her, ‘you’d probably get a sore wrist’…we already have the art of masters.

She can make art with the visual algorithms using the work and suffering they already experienced. We have everything we need. She can’t hope to challenge the old masters. You know.”

“Right, right. Why did your relationship with Ms. Tellers end?”

“Well, she gave me a love poem.”

“Not a romantic?” I cross my arms over my chest.

“She made the poem herself.”

“So you didn’t like the contents? She didn’t pick the right version generated by the algorithms?”

“No–she didn’t make it by prompting the algorithm.” Andy takes a sip of his water and glances, almost imperceptibly, at the defendant. The jury leans forward. We border on performance. I suppose that is inescapable to some degree.

Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.

Andy continues: “She took an email exchange we had with each other, when we first met, and she blacked out some of the words, leaving only some behind. I told her I didn’t like that sort of thing. ‘But we already wrote it. And it wasn’t about anything that wasn’t happening. It was just a description of our feelings’, is what she said back to me.” “Did she call it a poem?”

“Well…no, not technically. But that’s what it was. And she made it. I feel like she was testing me. To see if I could accept her doing that kind of thing.” I could hear the cogs in the jury’s heads turning. In many criminal cases, you are barred from using character evidence and making the case that the defendant is prone to a certain kind of crime based on past behavior. Yet, for some crimes of perversion, like sex crimes, or crimes of art, this is allowed. Mrs. Vogel had a pattern of potentially transgressive behaviors, but she was a child in all these examples, a jury member might be thinking now. No worries; we have plenty more evidence.

Exhibit 2: Transcript of file of episode 17 of canceled podcast “The Future is Here” found on Danielle Vogel’s laptop

Voice of Host Andrea Bellofato: We are taught that we have to reference The Canon, but not everyone was on the internet back then. How many people, in how many countries, still never even used the internet or hardly used it by 2012? A huge chunk! Not everyone’s ideas got recorded. 

The further you go back in history, it was only the rich landowners, the male, rich landowners whose art and ideas got saved. Only people of certain races or classes had their art valued. Even in the more recent past, how many pieces of art got thrown in the trash? Kids used to draw, you know, every kid used to draw, how much of that was lost? 

The Canon is not the complete history of all art ever made before, before The Degrading. It can’t be. It’s impossible. So much human experience, pain, thoughts, is lost. How can our Canon be complete when so many voices have been lost…? Hell, even…troves!...of actual Hollywood films have been lost. The Canon cannot represent all of human history and creation. So. Many. Books. were burned before and during the war.

In the evening, I watch It’s A Wonderful Life. Black and white films calm me down. I feel sick that Andrea’s podcast was allowed to air for so long. I heard it was available online for at least six months before she got shut down. The censors are getting lax. No one should be speaking from scripts they’ve written themselves unless all they’ve written is a strict and neutral log of events. Andrea claims that her script was made using the algorithm referencing The Canon. However, the algorithm probably wouldn't be able to create so many critical opinions about recent events, regarding itself, although some neutral news and history articles have been added to its database. I try typing in “What is The Degrading?” to the script generator algorithm. The generator produces the following script:

Scene 1:

Setting: A rosy, well-lit small kitchen with decent appliances, but nothing fancy. Mrs. Thomson and her husband, Mr. Thomson, are sitting at a small Formica table and sipping coffee.

Mrs. Thomson: The Degrading was coined in the late 2030s, in the wake of WWIII to describe the decline in civilization’s morals, ideas, and art that occurred in the late 2010s and 2020s that historians claim led to the denial of imminent climate change, extreme nativism, denial, and failure to contain the SARS-COVID and other dangerous viruses, and aggression between nations that led to the breakout of the third world war.

Mr. Thomson: Wow, is that so? I never paid attention in history class.

Mrs. Thomson: We seek to elevate art and ideas derived from minds prior to The Degrading. This is The Canon.

Mr. Thomson: Honey, I know what The Canon is. I didn’t slack off that much in school! Why, I shot a cannon even, once, even got to wear a Revolutionary War tri-corner hat while doing it. Those were the days, where kids could shoot off firearms–

Mrs Thomson: Oh, Gerry. I don’t know if you’re joking or serious, or which one is worse!

Cue audience laughter

I frown and close the document. As much as they are part of The Canon and our history, I am not a big fan of sitcoms. Sometimes you have to prompt the algorithm a few times before it creates what you need from The Canon.

The next day, Mrs. Vogel finally takes the stand. She looks confident, serene, almost, her brown hair tied back in a messy ponytail, and her button-up shirt unbuttoned almost a little too much, given our setting. The court-sketcher is working furiously to capture her complete image; no doubt the reporters and audience not allowed inside the courtroom will be interested in what she is wearing. Mr. Vogel has come dressed in a full piece suit and is sweating and twitching his foot. For a moment, I see Mr. and Mrs. Vogel as Mr. and Mrs. Thomson at the kitchen table, but she is the joking, happy one, while he rolls his eyes at her. Rolling her eyes wasn’t actually in the script. Was it?

“Danielle Vogel, when you wrote ‘Dream Log April 17, 2073’ what was your intention?” I ask her while pacing, catching the eyes, briefly of an attractive member of the jury.

“I wanted to tell people about my dream. I wanted them to know the colors I saw, how I could literally smell the lilacs in the field the man walked to, out of the snow, the fresh shit from the many animals, that weird salt-tasty smell of dog feet of the friendly coyotes. In my dream, I was thinking: ‘Do you know that if you stare long enough at a yellow dot and then look at black you see a shade of blue you’re not supposed to see? But what if my colors are different from yours. What I see as “red” is not what you see as “red”, how would we ever know–’”

“Mrs. Vogel.” I interrupt and sigh. “Your counsel has argued that a dream log, like a log of events that take place in the real world, constitutes a neutral description of events and is not an attempt to create original art. It is not an attempt to improve or change The Canon. When you posted your “Dream Log” online, were you trying to make original art?”

“Does it matter? I don’t really care if you think it’s art or not.” She bites her pointer finger before continuing with a wave of her hands. “Everything is art. The clothes you’ve picked, the words you’re choosing. None of it can be done in total reference to The Canon. You are not those people who lived sixty decades or longer ago. Our lives can never really mirror what was–”

“So you disagree with your own attorney?”

“Obje–” The defense counsel stands.

Before he can finish his word, his client interrupts: “To me the creation of art is to argue with society for power and your personal monopolization of ideas. The act of creating and releasing art into society is an act that asks for power. Here, this is how I see the world. Let it influence how you see things. Accept my vision into yours. Accept some blue into your yellow paint. Let it turn green. It is not that new art, original art, does not exist anymore, it is that your art has been given the name of ‘normal’ and my art is still ‘art’, but asked not to exist.”

“Don’t try to turn this courtroom into your private soapbox. What was your intention?” I say through clenched teeth.

She smiles. “We are all in a giant play, directed by our leaders, asking us to ape and mime our version of what was lost. To Mayans, the year 2012 was the end of a calendar, to people living during 2011, it was meaningless or imagined as the rumored, catastrophic, end of the world. We say it was the end of worthiness.”

“So you’re not afraid of repeating The Degrading? Is that the type of person you are?” I clench my fists, my neck getting hot under my collar.

“Objection! That's a leading question!” The defense counsel shrieks, obviously stressed at how his client is behaving and likely ignoring everything he told her to say..

“Sustained.”

“I’ll answer your question anyway.” She places her chin on her folded hands. More of her frizzy hair has broken free of her hairband. The light shining on it gives her the look of an electrocuted lion. “The Degrading will happen, or something like it. Society will unravel as it always does. Canon or not, history repeats itself, and humans, you and I, share similar trauma–sadness isn’t special.”

As if she could see how silly she looked to me, she smooths her hair down and continues: “But even amongst all the repetitive patterns we see over and over again, there is something each of us have inside us, don’t you think? Even though we, similar to the algorithms, have brains molded by everything we’ve been taught and modeled, I think we all have something we want everyone to see, something we hold in the dark parts of ourselves–that we will try–it will always try to get out. That part will suffer for creation and…The Canon cannot do that. It has no feelings. We can do it. You’re doing it right now.”

She pauses. The audience in the courtroom is mumbling, but before she can be told to shut up, she opens her mouth to speak again: “And all logs, even ones as boring as describing a walk through an empty field, are art. Each word is a choice, sentence length, paragraph breaks, punctuation–all of it is an attempt to influence, a grab at the power, an attempt to own the reader, the viewer’s ideas, imagination, for just a microsecond, even–”

“Enough, Mrs. Vogel.” The judge bashes his gavel.

I choose not to ask more questions. The judge decides to end the trial for the day as the defense counsel declines to interview Danielle Vogel. The flustered, inept attorney can’t think of a way to save his client. Danielle has definitely earned the ire and disgust of the jury and will be given time in prison. It is almost too easy to win these cases, with defendants like her.

In the bathroom, I wash my face a few times to get the stink of her words out of my mind before I go home. Melinda, my wife, will be happy I’m home early. She likes to watch a medical drama and a cop drama on TV on Thursday nights after we eat an early dinner. They’re new shows, but the scripts were generated from the algorithm referencing The Canon, like all the new shows--the legal ones. 

I don’t care much for TV, but it’s a comfort for Melinda, especially since our latest infant has passed away. They never live more than a few months–radiation poisoning. I remember the faces of all my babies who have died, their little smiles, the shapes of their doughy cheeks, each one slightly unique from the others. I see them in a row, lined up, one by one, sometimes, before I sleep. In my dreams. Someone who lived in late 20th century Hiroshima or New Mexico and Bikini Atoll, who wrote before The Degrading, whose work was added to The Canon, must have written of how that feels, to lose so many children to lingering radiation poison. So it’s ok that I cry alone. That I don’t try to explain the rot that chokes me, takes me out of my mind sometimes and brings me to strange colors, to Stygian blues, that aren’t supposed to exist.

THE END