When the Storms Came

Richard David Hames

© BENJAMIN GOODE / ISTOCKPHOTO

By Richard David Hames

Hi. I’m Daeng, an emeritus biocultural ethicist. Each month I work my allocated 10 hours for the FinanceLab hubbed here in Moscow, a “resilient” city with a populace approaching 21 million.

FinanceLab has managed all non peer-to-peer transactions and flows for our region since the global banking meltdown mid-century. My job is cool, although I would love to meet more people and listen to their stories, rather than interact with them via my webscreen.

Because of the extreme heat, it’s simply too dangerous to venture out much. My main companion is DAO. As a fifth-generation personalized clone, DAO is able to access the totality of documented human knowledge, answer any question I pose, and tend to all my requests. But she’s not really into hugging or intimacy, which I miss.

I grow my own food using permaculture techniques I learned from Mum after Dad died. At least I can be sure my diet doesn’t contain unwanted additives, which is a luxury few people can afford these days. I value my health and my fitness. Besides, tending to my small wall bioshelter is very gratifying.

After all these years, I still occasionally yearn for some grilled chicken or a pork green curry—what Asian person would not? But after the great contagion of 2038, which killed over 2 billion people in a matter of weeks, most meat production in Greater Europe was banned. I really don’t fancy the artificial equivalents, though they look and taste authentic enough.

Being born of a Thai mother and an Australian father, I grew up in what seemed to me at the time to be the most idyllic cosmopolitan city in the world. Bangkok is under water now, of course, and most of the tropics are just too hot to inhabit. Singapore still endures, but who would want to live in such a tightly gated, artificial enclave? I need to feel free, to breathe fresh air, even if my movements are somewhat constrained.

I often wonder what might have happened had the scientists’ warnings about climate change been heeded. But when the storms came, it was far too late. It all happened so quickly. Wealthy people simply moved. The poor suffered. So many people died from lack of water, disease, or starvation—although we are still refused access to the precise figures.

After many relationships, like many people of my generation, I now live alone—the result of us being encouraged not to parent children or to make too many friends on iWeb for fear of identity theft. Not that I mind. I feel no attachment or loyalty to this place.

And so today, as I record this message for Jez—my only child, whom I’ve never met—I celebrate my 88th birthday. It is Saturday, June 12. The year is 2100. My geneticist tells me to expect death 11 years from now. I am ready. I have seen and lived through so much.

Richard David Hames is founding director of the Asian Foresight Institute in Bangkok and the author of The Five Literacies of Global Leadership. Web site www.richardhames.com.