what was streaming like in this timeline? and what would be this world reaction to otl? and also can you do a short update on anime, I remember you saying that anime in this timeline might be crated in the ottomon empire and it would be great to learn more about that.
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Hey so I tried to access the timeline’s list on the wiki but the page seems broken for some reason
https://www.alternatehistory.com/wiki/doku.php?id=timelines:list_of_male_rising_posts
https://www.alternatehistory.com/wiki/doku.php?id=timelines:list_of_male_rising_posts
It's now unbroken! Seems the recent update somewhat borked the page into not showing the installments.
I also added the lastest piece, though I have no clue exactly where it's set.
I also added the lastest piece, though I have no clue exactly where it's set.
I've written another Malêverse 2100 story called Caretakers, set in Salt Lake City and rural Washington. I posted it in the Writers' Forum rather than here, because I will very likely revise it for submission - it's the first thing I've written in months that I actually think is good.
I'd prefer, however - although I can't require - that comments on the story be posted in this thread.
Thanks to @Zioneer, and at an earlier stage @Hnau, for helping me think through the LDS elements of the story.
I'd prefer, however - although I can't require - that comments on the story be posted in this thread.
Thanks to @Zioneer, and at an earlier stage @Hnau, for helping me think through the LDS elements of the story.
The story was... nostalgic, in a strange way. There's a feeling of loss that reminds me of my grandparents and their passing, but also one of community and moving on.
I suspect there will be a lot of that kind of moving on. When we first started discussing TTL's future, I mentioned that the Malêverse of eighty years from now would be much more of an aging society than today - probably even more than OTL in 2100, given that the demographic shift finished sooner - and that the search for meaningful work would be filled partly by caretaking. So the communities of 2100, and even the idea of community, would be more focused on the needs of old age and will have a lot of experience dealing with loss and giving meaning to it.
Zioneer
Banned
I'm extremely happy with that update; it's nostalgic but sweet, very wistful.
And @Jonathan Edelstein You captured the aesthetic of Mormonism perfectly, thank you so much for your questions and care in that topic!
And @Jonathan Edelstein You captured the aesthetic of Mormonism perfectly, thank you so much for your questions and care in that topic!
Deleted member 94708
@Jonathan Edelstein
Beautiful story, and another window into the world. If we end up in half as optimistic a place in 2100, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
One point; care to dig into the economic situation a bit further? Even considering inflation, the figures mentioned seem quite high; a caretaker position paying on the order of $1.2 million per year and the basic living stipend set around $100,000?
Beautiful story, and another window into the world. If we end up in half as optimistic a place in 2100, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
One point; care to dig into the economic situation a bit further? Even considering inflation, the figures mentioned seem quite high; a caretaker position paying on the order of $1.2 million per year and the basic living stipend set around $100,000?
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Thanks again for your time and patience in answering those questions.
I'd mentioned that the per capita GDP(PPP) of the Malêverse in 2100 would be about $200,000 by today's standards. A $1.2-million salary would be about $240,000 in constant dollars, which is near the high end for caretaker jobs, but the job Sally took was double-time and required nanomedical skills beyond those required in most such positions. The $100,000 UBI would amount to about $20,000 today - you can live on it, especially since some necessities like health care and network access are free, but the lifestyle would be pretty basic by the standards of 2100.
ETA: The UBI is part federal and part state, and people in states with a higher cost of living usually get a higher stipend, but it's still not a sum that allows many luxuries. A more common thing to do, for people who have limited material wants and who prefer most of their time to be their own, is to supplement the UBI with an 0.2 or 0.3-time job.
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Deleted member 94708
I’d run the numbers while assuming the standard 2% inflation and gotten the same present-day value, so... fair enough. Edging in on post-scarcity territory, though with the way we’re wired to care about relative status, I’m not sure that concept really will work out.
In any case, a pleasant world in which to live.
Above a certain income level, post-scarcity is a state of mind. Billionaires IOTL effectively live in a post-scarcity world, but post-greed is another story.
The Malêverse of 2100 has democratized the concept - it's post-scarcity for those who want it to be. Those people who I've described as having "limited material wants" - the ones for whom the definition of wealth in Pirkei Avot 4:1 is a way of life - will live as if they're in a post-scarcity society, although most will still work because another thing we're hardwired for is to find meaning in what we do. You'll notice that the conflicts in the 2100 stories tend to involve the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
But as you say, the majority will want the things their neighbors have and will have their eyes on the luxuries still outside their grasp. That isn't a bad thing - both groups will innovate in different ways, and ambition still drives the world - but the tensions at the higher levels of Maslow's pyramid aren't necessarily less destructive than those at the lower ones.
Deleted member 94708
Frankly any single individual with a stable income over $100,000 PPP lives in a post-scarcity world, as Keynes originally reckoned it, but that reality doesn’t seem to have caught up with us. I’m no exception, lol.
We’re probably stuck with some form of moderated capitalism until and unless we physically evolve past the need, but if we can muster a UBI and a reasonable balance between labor and capital, that’ll probably get us through a few more centuries until the “next big thing”.
Deleted member 94708
One other question that slipped my mind until now; how much regional variation do you see this figure covering up? Has there been a general convergence over the past century or do some places still lag substantially behind others?
There's been a great deal of convergence, albeit not total. I haven't run any numbers, but my working assumption is that the richest regions of the Malêverse in 2100 have a living standard about twice as high as the poorest, as opposed to many times that in the present day.
What an amazing timeline. I'm not finished just yet but I just read the Venezuelan War update where West Indies federate as a dominion. I can only wonder what TTL's A House For Mr. Biswas looks like, and if Naipaul ends up as any less of a curmudgeon than he did IOTL.
Malêverse 2100: The Garden at the Top of the World
The village was on the north side of the canal: thirty adobe houses with patterned tile roofs, storage sheds and barns, low stone walls marking off the alpacas’ enclosure, gardens planted around stands of alder trees. At first glance it appeared timeless. A traveler from two hundred years in the past might have been startled by the canal and the alder groves, but would otherwise have recognized it as one of a thousand poor altiplano settlements.
Carmen Yarhui, who’d grown up in a village like this, knew it wasn’t. She knew well that the plumbing and electrical fixtures inside the walls were as modern as any in El Alto or La Paz, that the furnishings and household goods came from the four corners of the world, that the livestock and crops were the product of a hundred and thirty years of genetic modification. The alpacas’ wool was as soft and warm as qiviut and had brought wealth to villages like this one, and the harvest yields were three and four times what the time traveler would have expected.
The two people waiting outside the gathering hall were proof of that if anything was. Carmen had met them both before: Nayra Sánchez, the headwoman of the ayllu that managed this village, and Inti Aguado, the mallku of the next settlement north. They were both prosperous-looking, and Nayra was decidedly non-traditional; her jeans and Aran sweater contrasted with Inti’s pegged trousers and vicuña scarf. More to the point, both of them were surrounded by images from the datacloths tied at their waists, comparing crop prices and discussing new quinoa mods while they waited for Carmen to arrive and start the main event.
“Come in with us,” Nayra said when Carmen got out of the fi. She didn’t waste time with preliminaries; those would take place in the community hall where both ayllus were assembled. It would be she and Inti who would agree – or disagree – with whatever mediation Carmen offered, but proceedings like this were done in everyone’s sight.
The hall was a few steps away, and most of adults from both villages were indeed inside. They left off their conversations at Carmen’s entrance and kept a respectful silence as their two mallkus crossed to a pitcher of chicha at the far side of the room. Nayra and Inti raised the pitcher together and poured three libations – one to Pachamama, one to the huacas of the two ayllus, and one to Jesus Christ – and passed the rest around; only when all had partaken did they activate the large datacloth on the floor.
The dispute was easily explained. “The forest by the Challpa reservoir has doubled in the last ten years,” Nayra began, and the datacloth became a map that showed the old and new forest boundaries. That was no surprise; the treeline had risen seven hundred meters in the past century, and pioneering trees moved closer to it every year. “Our herds grazed there…”
“And now they graze here,” Inti said, pointing to a stretch of pastureland north of the traditional boundary. “They’re mixing with our herds, pushing them north, and they’re interfering with the vicuñas’ route to the watering hole.”
“We’ve offered compensation…” Nayra began, but Carmen held up a hand; in the five years she’d worked for the Audiencia del Altiplano, she’d seen many disputes like this one. She asked a few more questions, plotted the answers on the map, clarified some points, drew a line of her own.
“Let’s try it this way,” she said. “Both ayllus will have joint rights to the forest – say, seventy percent for this village and thirty for yours.” Inti and Nayra both nodded, although Carmen could see that they would quarrel over the percentages; the alders that were populating the altiplano had been engineered to have oil-bearing seeds and every village had equipment for distilling salicin from the bark, so forestry rights were something of value. “This land” – she drew another circle – “will be available to both for grazing, with the ayllus jointly responsible for maintaining the canals. We’ll leave a migration path for the vicuñas here, and you’ll share the shearing rights – let’s say seventy-thirty the other way.”
Carmen was right – the two mallkus did argue percentages, and Inti wanted the joint pastureland increased to compensate for the expanded wetlands that left less room for his village’s herds. Every concession came with a price and the bargaining was sharp, but it was clear from the outset that both villages accepted the general framework; indeed, Carmen got the strong feeling that her solution was much like what they’d have come up with themselves.
This isn’t their first mediation either, she recognized, and I’m sure they had a good idea what I’d bring to the table. Still, she knew that her part was important. If the solution came from her – if it were a judicial order – it would have the force of customary law, and even more importantly, neither ayllu could gloat about getting the better of the other. They both had to live together, and the resentments caused by bad bargains could last generations.
This way, if it goes wrong, they can blame me. But for the moment, it seemed that both sides were satisfied; after a few more rounds of discussion regarding water rights and future forest management, the agreement was sealed, and the datacloth registered the successful mediation with the database in El Alto. The maintenance machines and agricultural credit balances would start reflecting the deal immediately.
The ayllus adjourned to the feast that had been prepared outside – another sign that they’d anticipated that the mediation would succeed – and Nayra carved a portion of vat-lamb for Carmen to go with the chicha and the spiced quinoa mush that they'd made into a couscous with imported vegetables. From the number of chicha barrels that had been brought out, Carmen guessed the celebration would last the rest of the day. They let her excuse herself after twenty minutes, but she was still glad the fi drove itself.
#
It was a short ride to Municipal Airstrip One, where a nine-seater plane was waiting to take her on the next stage of her journey. The pilot climbed steeply and banked north at six thousand meters; the day was clear and the altiplano was laid out below them.
Carmen would never get tired of this view. She liked seeing everything at once, everything together; the villages and towns, the migrating herds, the expanding forests, the lakes and marshes teeming with bird life, the high plains crisscrossed with thousands of canals and reservoirs that joined with the natural river systems. The view was also a reminder of why the canals were necessary. The snow line, like the tree line, was hundreds of meters higher than it had once been, and the glaciers were noticeably smaller than they’d been even when Carmen was a child, let alone a century ago. The altiplano had warmed more than the lowlands and rainfall had increased, but without the glaciers to regulate the rate at which water was released, its people had to use artificial means to prevent erosion and protect the wetlands. A hundred years ago, the ayllus had begun reviving the pre-Inca system of canals and catchments; since then, they had expanded many times over and were the lifeblood of the lagoons and terraced farms.
It was all part of the Audiencia’s remit now, and had been for the past sixty years – the Consistory, the Andean Community, the Bolivian and Peruvian governments, and the council of ayllus all had a hand in it. The wetlands had recovered, the growing alder forests added nitrogen to the soil, and these days, the altiplano could almost be called lush in places, but it was a lushness that had to be maintained. The highlands now were a carefully tended garden.
The thought carried Carmen all the way to a bumpy landing at the Puno provincial airfield and the ride through town to the Inca Uyo site. The waters of Lake Titicaca were lapping at the town; some of the streets nearest to the docks had already been sealed and converted to canals, and more were in the process. Temperatures had been stable for forty years but the increase in rainfall was permanent, and the port towns were either relocating or adapting.
Others were making the same choice, which explained why Carmen was here this afternoon.
“You can see the retaining walls,” said Marco Chávez, the superintendent of the Inca Uyo archaeological preserve. Carmen had a moment’s difficulty following his words; on the Peruvian side, people spoke traditional southern Quechua rather than the Quechumara creole that was common in highland Bolivia. “It’s not going to be enough. The soil underneath is being undermined, and unless we can raise the site, we’ll have to move it or else leave it behind.”
Carmen nodded. This too was far from a unique problem. More than one archaeological site on Lake Titicaca’s shores was now an artificially-elevated island, and more than one had been moved inland. Inca Uyo was a small site, a low wall surrounding a field of mushroom-shaped standing stones, but the ground it was on would be difficult to raise, and doing so might damage the more fragile structures, not to mention whatever was still underground. Moving the site inland one stone at a time would be safer and would allow time for exploration of the foundations, but the budgeting and approval process would have to start soon…
“What do the people here prefer?” she asked when she was done with her inspection.
“They’re of two minds. Some of them are all for moving it. Others don’t want it disturbed – they’d rather let the lake take it over than relocate it.”
That wasn’t unique either; in fact, it wasn’t even new. Titicaca’s water level had changed before, and there were prehistoric sites that had been underwater for centuries. People had found ways of studying them, and no doubt, people would still come to Inca Uyo even if the lake drowned it. But…
“And there’s another thing,” Marco continued. “The people who don’t want the site moved – most of them are with the tavarista party.”
Ah, thought Carmen, it will be political. But at the end of the day, everything was. Marco had been right to bring her here now; there would have to be a referendum before the Audiencia could ratify a site plan and appropriate a budget, and that meant there was even less time to get things started.
“Are they around – can I meet with them today?” she asked.
Marco nodded and motioned toward a back street. “They’ll be at the coffeehouse this time of day – nobody goes back to work until three. The Audiencia is buying the coffee, I assume?”
“Of course.” No doubt both factions would be sharing the early-afternoon break, and Carmen could take their temperature before making recommendations to the Audiencia about the alternative plans to be put forward, which local boards would be involved in planning, and how many surrounding districts would participate in the voting. No one would mind if she bought a few rounds of coffee in exchange for that; the cost wouldn’t even be a rounding error by the time all was said and done.
#
All roads on the altiplano led to El Alto sooner or later, and Carmen’s plane made its approach to the airport at seven o’clock. Darkness was gathering and the city was alight from the airfield all the way to the cliffs that led down to the Choqueyapu valley and La Paz.
Carmen had lived in El Alto for a decade, since her first year at the university, and still didn’t feel entirely at home there. The city was on the altiplano but not completely of it. The houses and public buildings might be painted in bright Aymara colors with windows and brickwork in patterns that suggested birds or ancient gods; the neighborhoods might be arranged around communal gardens; but it was a city of a million, not an ayllu or even a collection of them. It was the capital of the altiplano region and the home of the Audiencia’s offices, but it had the impersonality of a large town. No one met Carmen at the airport, no one guided her through the swirling hurried crowds, and she rode the rest of the way to her office alone.
She didn’t plan to stay long. She made a few entries in the database to update her reports, and looked to see if any matters had been called to her attention for the following day. Finding none, she called up a schematic of the region to see if any problems had reported themselves.
The map that glowed above her desk datacloth was the counterpart of the view from the plane; it showed the pipes and drains, the salinity and erosion monitors, the maintenance devices that kept the land the way it was. These were the unseen gardeners laid down over the course of six decades, and there were more of them every year – Carmen had placed some of them herself.
It looked like she might have to recommend some more. There were drainage problems west of Oruro, which were minor now but would do damage if they weren’t controlled. There were also a couple of alarms above the snowline where the water catchments had become insufficient. Carmen noted them, routed a report to the construction department, and sent another to budgeting.
That finished her work, and she realized that she was hungry and that she ought to find some dinner at her neighborhood cookhouse, but another part of her wasn’t quite ready to end the day. She dimmed the lights in the office and looked deep into the schematic, letting her eyes follow the patterns in the map. If she looked long enough, she’d learned, she would forget what those patterns represented, and they would become a work of art, a beauty of the garden that could only be seen this way.
At school in the village and later at the university, Carmen had learned of the other gardens, all the regions where the ecosystem had become a project of generations. She wondered if anyone right now might be looking at their region the same way she was at hers, tracing the garden paths that lay unseen below the earth. She realized she would never know, but the thought was somehow comforting.
It was time to go home, but she would stay in her garden a few minutes more.
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Understand that the lack of comments is merely the result of awestruck admiration. This, as with the rest of the thread is great. I am not exaggarating when I say that this thread is perhaps my favorite work of fiction, bar none.