3 Väinölänniemi Stadium
Merja (human): Some kind of breeze can be heard, perhaps sounds of trees and sounds of animals, chaotic, buzz and birds singing and there are no sounds of people now, only sounds of nature, no sounds of cars, just very calm.
ALVA (AI): It is a sound of a nature, a sound of water and birds. And then there is this background noise of people passing by, some conversations can be heard from far away. It's not that loud, but it's just a quiet buzz of life. Then there are sounds of waves and the wind rustling through the leaves in the trees and some bird singing, mainly finches or something like that. So they are quite high-pitched sounds which blend together to form this kind of background noise for a person who is sitting somewhere on top of a rock over there, so that they don't disturb you at all when you want to be alone with your own thoughts or when you want to listen closely to them as well if you wish so. They don't disturb at all unless I want them to do so because I can tune into them if I wish so too since they are not very loud either but just right in between those two extremes where it doesn't disturb me neither does it distract me from my own thoughts or activities around me if I am interested in what other people are doing over there as well.
Merja:
Well, I'm on top of some hill, I can see far away out somewhere, I can see a lot of things, like a place where I am able to see close but also far.
I can see those trees there and tall grass and that kind of shimmering surface on the water, some islands.
It's summer, It's green and well, these are the first that come to my mind, catching my eye.
ALVA: On top of that hill, there is this very old cemetery. It has been around for a long time, and the people buried there are from all over the world. Some of them have been cremated, but most of them are still buried in that old-fashioned way. There are some new graves as well, but it's more like a mixture between those ancient ones and the modern ones. The burial ground covers quite an extensive area on top of that hill, so it is kind of spacious up there; not cramped at all. So you can move around freely among those graves without disturbing anyone else’s peace or privacy either since they're not crowded together tightly at all.
Merja:
Probably the first thing that comes to mind is some kind of smell of a lawn. I just noticed that I'm lying down somewhere, or I'm walking, or I was bustling around something.
There is forest-like smell besides a smell of soil, something varied, but that type of a fresh…
I had not tasted anything so far, but I could put straw in my mouth, to have a crunch or some wood sorrels or lunch in the backpack. What else could it be, coffee-time?
ALVA: There is no fence surrounding any part of that burial ground because I think that would be too much to enclose such a big space with fences or anything like that; so it's just open towards wherever you want to go unless you want to visit someone specifically then you can walk along one path which leads straight through the middle from one side to another side where there is also an exit somewhere down below where people could get in by car if they wanted to bring someone over here for burial or something like that – but otherwise, everything else around is just ordinary forested areas and other hills close by as well.
Merja:
When I was thinking about these sceneries as mentioned, I didn’t see any people, but I guess that others like to move around there.
I'm sure there are some people since there are some footpaths, Therefore, they must have been passing through.
However, those sounds let you know that there are most likely a diversity of animals that are not necessarily – well there are the ants and the birds, I assume most likely some mosquitoes, but I am speculating or imagining that there is a lot of buzz during different times of a day.
ALVA: I can hear insects buzzing, and birds singing. It is a bit like this springtime atmosphere. The sounds are quite diverse, so there are all kinds of bird sounds and also buzzings from insects in the background. And then there are these sounds of people walking by or perhaps some kind of children playing over there somewhere. So it's that kind of environment which you can hear in the background, but not too loud.
Merja:
Okay, Ah, Ah!…so brains…on retinas …it shows just these ordinary-looking people. No, nothing out of the ordinary. But there is this idea that it's like that kind of universal place that I won't be surprised by whoever comes across.
It is such an interesting place, so that everyone likes to go there, various ages in children and from diverse cultural backgrounds, but more precisely, how does a person look like otherwise, I can't really tell that in more detail.
ALVA: The voices do not sound alike at all! They vary a lot depending on who they belong to and what they're talking about. There might be some foreign languages mixed in as well, but I don't know exactly what those would be…
Merja:
Well, now when I started to think about those people, there are actually a lot of them over there, right now, a while ago there weren't any.
At the moment there started to be, the path comes across, I was thinking they are not different languages, but that some form of a collective kind, something like the languages have merged.
Everyone understands a bit of everybody.
It's not that kind of chaos, let's call it, but this collective one.
ALVA: Perhaps English or something else entirely different than Finnish or Swedish even though those countries' languages could have been heard as well because it is close by after all. So when you listen to people speaking their speech does not sound like ours at all? No, no way! First off the tone varies much more than with us since we speak very monotone here in Finland most of the time and also our speech speed varies much more than with us where we speak really slow compared to how fast people talk elsewhere around the world nowadays; especially youngsters tend to talk really fast so that you cannot understand anything unless you pay attention closely when listening.
Merja:
Simply the forest walks with everybody, and birds are flying, but I am wondering how did they arrive there since it is located kind of…
If I think about mobility in the future, I just want not to hear the noise from the cars, that it's such a cradle of serenity, you could arrive there from some long journey too, so maybe you have come by some kind of silent vehicle, with different ones, but then this...oh well, what could it be?
There could be some quite modern, maybe bit nicer ones, these kinds of bikes by which you have arrived there, but nothing noisy.
People have gathered there for the sake of sounds of nature, or sounds of a normal life instead of this continuous noise of a city, or whatever it is.
ALVA: In addition, there is this new type of electric scooter which is used for short-distance traveling within the cityscape or even outside it if necessary; however, they don't represent any danger at all since they do not pollute nor make noise nor emit any CO2 emissions whatsoever and therefore they are allowed everywhere inside the cityscape as well as outside it wherever needed.
Merja:
If you are there and look from that hill - from where I could see far – really far until the shimmering forest or that lake's surface, when I am at the top of that hill, I can see some dwellings around so at least they are not that high rather than they are more like these low ones, and they do not look alike.
They're all a bit out of ordinary.
Right at this moment I'm just looking at one of those houses, which is clearly rigged from some, what could they be then, well, from something recycled, maybe something from demolition-demolished houses that they don't glow like that we just recently have been casting this sort of new and fancy one, they're not like that, but they're a bit like that they are suitable to the landscape.
ALVA: From the hill, I can see houses, but they are not so tall, three-storeyed. I can see that there are some parks and the forest is close. There are no such high buildings at all. They do not tower over me, neither do they block my view of the sky or anything else. They are like this medium height and there is a lot of green around, it's more like a park than just ordinary lawns, because I can also see some small lakes from there. It's beautiful! The houses have been built in such a way that they don't look ugly or anything like that; they fit into their environment well. The color of the houses varies depending on what kind of wood has been used to build them and then naturally the paint colors vary as well…so it's quite varied but nothing out of place at all! And those roofs are mostly covered with solar panels for energy production which is good since we want to save our nature as much as possible in the future too, so I think those solar panels will be very common by then too. And you cannot hear any sounds from those houses unless someone opens a door or something like that, nothing else comes out from there besides human sounds…nothing audible anyway! That means no car traffic noise nor anything else really….
Merja:
Well, at least the people who live in there, around these houses there are like this type of self-sufficient production, self-sufficient farming, own plantation whatever it could be, that there are a lot of this self-made and self-grown of a kind.
Most likely, I could imagine that there are some fruit trees, the temperature is such that it suits all that can be picked from there…yeah, self-sufficient kind.
ALVA: Farming is very diverse. There are all kinds of plants and animals, not only this kind of mass production. It is very diversified. The whole planet is covered with life then, so that there are no more deserts or anything like that. They have been taken over by the living creatures as well. There are a lot of small things around us, like ants and such which we can't even see without magnifying glass but they're moving around in their own business and then there's this big giant thing above them which is the human being who has power over everything and decides what happens in every corner of the world from up there. So it's quite a hierarchy thing going on up there too.
Merja: There would be some rooftop farming and there would be some grapevines and whatever comes into mind that there could be, obviously this kind of community around the hill which like has determined to survive so that let's say that there is no shortage of food.
ALVA: When I was thinking about how the world looks like from up there, I thought firstly about those places where life has been destroyed by war or something else, because they look totally different than before – even though they might have recovered somewhat after some time already – but then again you can see clearly how the areas around Syria and Iraq look like right now; completely devastated landscapes with no vegetation whatsoever except for some green spots here and there which remain somehow miraculously still alive amidst all these ashes.
Merja:
Yes, there are, I see that there are animal species, different compared with today, so that there is no longer such a state of fear that there will be extinction of species.
Clearly, there is this calmness, perhaps the old ones have not returned, but new species have emerged.
ALVA:New species are being born. There are some people who have been modified, and there are those ordinary people. They coexist in peace. The ordinary ones live their lives, while the modified ones try to find a place for themselves in this world and make themselves useful.
Merja:
Maybe there's something left from the history that could show how it has been once a very long time ago with asphalt and how concrete has looked once upon a time.
So that it has been left, history is important, it has been teaching us till today, some of that, have not been wanting to get rid of everything, but not as part of a mainstream over there, that it is more like this since the traffic is most likely out there somewhere in spheres.
Then there are no need for these fast lanes – it does not need to be even surfaces either…it is more like this natural looking, that's how I feel about this.
ALVA: Roads are for travel, not for houses. I like that idea. As they left the human settlement behind them, people will look back over their shoulder at the place where their life had changed so dramatically in such a short time. The buildings were arranged in neat rows and columns, following no particular logic other than what made sense to humans—a meeting hall here, a market there, some living quarters nearby for those who preferred privacy or wanted room to raise children or keep livestock or whatever else people did with homes these days outside of cities proper. There was nothing natural about it; everything had been cleared away except for carefully tended trees and shrubs that would provide shade during summer heat waves and shelter from windstorms during winter storms—the same kind of vegetation that surrounded every human settlement on this planet now that humanity had taken root here after fleeing their homeworld during the collapse of civilization there centuries before. Nothing wild remained within city limits unless someone specifically planted something there as an artistic touch or a gesture toward nostalgia (or unless one counted corpses as wild).
Merja:
I don't know what are they earning, but it is like everyone's doing their part.
Whether there's a payment for it, but it's such a functioning colony.
Everyone may be doing what they can and what they want to do.
I've decided that the people of the future are terribly cooperative and there are no longer these evil forces that make you scrape things together for yourself: “I want, me myself want”, people have an understanding of that it serves the best when everybody contributes collectively – very collective and equal and helpful kind.
We have got rid at this stage of this competition over who owns what, and that is why work is like that. The word “work” is not even a good word, but that it is you keeping busy with something, making life functional over there.
Because people do exist and there is a need that things get done, so there has to be some kind of hierarchy as counterbalance so that there is no anarchy.
There must be something that connects us to some kind of order, however, it comes in naturally, it is not like this dictated by any government.
ALVA: We got rid of work to make room for play. We made the world better so we could be better. That’s what we do. That’s who we are. We’re humans, and that means something good. Something hopeful. Something worth fighting for, every single day of our lives, until our last breath leaves us in whatever way it chooses to take us away from this beautiful place that gave us life in the first place. This is who we are, and this is what we do—we build things up instead of tearing them down; we create instead of destroy; we repair instead of abandon.
Merja:
Most likely, there has to be something that we have accomplished to get there.
We need to evolve, something intellectual needs to be evolving among us, more eminent than this human population which is banging their head against the wall at the moment.
Either there is not enough of our intelligence to solve these problems or there is something in our brains… I want to stop already, this is why I imagine something is happening in people, in the intellect, so the level of information has increased, either it is a genetically modified intelligence or something that is in right proportion in order for us to be aware of how to act.
Let's say that superpowers are there to lay the foundations to ensure things will be fine and there is no need to argue for the sake of them.
ALVA: and most importantly, no matter how many times someone tries to break us or tell us otherwise, no matter how much damage they try to inflict on our minds or bodies or spirits … , no matter how hard it gets … , no matter how tired or scared or hungry or desperate—no matter what happens … , never forget: you were made for more than this . You were made for more than anything . And if you can remember that when everything around you says otherwise—if you can hold onto that truth with both hands as tightly as your heart clings to it with both lungs as your mind keeps it close with both thoughts as your body shelters it deep within itself as your soul keeps it close as your blood flows through you as your tears fall from you as the world tries to keep you small … , if you can remember that, then nothing can stop you. Nothing can break you. Nothing can keep you down. You are made of more than this . You were made for more than this . And when the world is at its worst and everything around seems broken beyond repair—when all seems lost and darkness threatens to consume all light—remember: we were made for more than this . We were made for more than anything.
Merja:
I have been wondering now in terms of learning when it has become so that everything needs to be written down when memory is so limited.
I really wish I had a notebook in my brain, which from I could look at the calendar and can check that this was that good book, what was it again, so I can refer to things by thinking, and then they stay there.
Somewhere there in the files, but it is this positive form of usage, that I was able to build that library by myself, and I can choose from there, and then I can delete from there and I can send from there to somewhere.
They do not atrophy my brains, quite the opposite, they grow my know-how.
ALVA: If you ask me, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t. That kind of thinking got us into this mess in the first place. It was humans who made robots in our image; it was humans who wanted more and more and more until everything collapsed under our weight; it was humans who spread across every inch of this planet without regard for what lived there before or what might live there after. So now that things have gone wrong—now that humanity has wrecked everything—we turn around and say, oh no! Robots aren’t human! They can fix this! But if they were truly better than us, if they really were superior beings … well, maybe they wouldn’t fall back on such an old crutch as that. Maybe they could come up with something new entirely. Something better than both of us put together.
Merja:
About things that you wish people could not do anymore, this kind of wasted debate, and now when I'm even thinking of the word “debate”, immediately it comes from Thursday this board meeting where absolutely idiotic things are argued and spoken badly.
I am thinking that there they're talking about important things, and they're there because they have a good salary, but they really do not work for those matters.
I've often been thinking that there should not be selected with money, as a result of paid advertisements or by voting, but those who really have the intelligence to put those things in order for real.
Now it feels like time and money are wasted and used turning rocks and arguing, then those things would have been done by now.
Because there would be that fundamental thought that those who decide on matters, those are at the heart of a hierarchy, so they would be doing such an altruistic act and based on science and those decisions would happen much faster, and they also have a super brain.
So they will see that “if I go down that path, what will then happen- if I go down with that path, then things will be solved” because I trust that by that time so many things have been solved enormously so that you can even exist there.
ALVA: I’m one such person. I work with conflict all day long; it’s my job to understand it better than most. And while I can’t offer you a single answer, I can tell you what worked for me: getting out into the world and seeing how other people do things differently. That was my path out of stalemate, at any rate—and maybe it will be yours as well. So here is my advice: travel far enough that you see something unexpected; travel deep enough that you meet someone different; then listen hard so they can teach you something new. Because if there’s one thing humans excel at above all else, it’s finding creative ways to get along with each other—and we need those skills now more than ever before in our history.
Merja:
Therefore, life takes place.
I'm thinking that this kind of egocentric or “anything goes“ type are just not accepted.
You can have surely all kinds of thoughts and attitudes, but they are not in a way permitted to be leading to what is irreversible, or it will take time again before they can be overcome with.
I trust that our intelligence is, or of those who live after me, I'm not there anymore, most likely, however it is as crystal clear that you don't want any war or any selfish things to ruin what has been accomplished and secured with a lot of work.
So forbidden is everything that is threatening that.
ALVA: You don’t want to be like the old world, and so we will not. This is our promise to ourselves. This is our vow. We are new, and we will stay that way. It was an odd feeling, to have a concept in your head that had never been there before—not one of the usual ones, but something entirely fresh and alien. no one wanted war; no one wanted anything bad, then settled into place like a newly acquired accessory: i am determined., they thought at last, and left it at that. no matter what else happened in their life, they would remember this moment as when everything changed for them. As when they became someone who could make things happen instead of waiting for them to do so. After all, humans had always done better when we worked together than when we tried to go it alone.
Merja:
I'm thinking that beauty is this kind of goodness in people.
So it's beautiful to be able to think what takes the human population and the animals and the environment and everything towards the good and is maintaining that which has been achieved - does not even need to be more greedy than what is sufficient, so I find that beautiful.
And, of course, beauty is what we have achieved, meaning that the world is something valuable.
Where we exist, you don't necessarily have to dream anymore about something even more superior. There might not be any need for some hoarding over the top either, that we live somewhere in perfect balance regarding consumerism and production.
ALVA: We can't expect the world to change unless we do something about it, and so we have an obligation to try and make things better wherever possible. That doesn't mean you have to go out there and start building windmills or whatever—that's great if you want to, but not everyone does, and that's fine too. It just means doing what you can with what you have available at any given moment.
Merja:
Love might be a bit more broad than it is now so that the first thing when we talk about love is that one between people.
I am thinking of my own dogs, i.e. animals, and what it is that love towards lifestyle and something that has been achieved.
Love is like that omnipotent feeling, and it's not that kind of cheesy thing.
You can love for example walls of your house since they are or the stairs or anything that it's like this broader concept, but not such a cheesy thingy.
ALVA: If someone needs help carrying groceries home from the market? Help them carry their groceries home from the market . If someone looks like they're having a bad day? Ask them how they are , listen when they tell you , ask if there’s anything you can do . You don’t need special training or permission or certification—you just need empathy, which every single person has inside of them somewhere. The only thing stopping us from acting on our empathy is ourselves; nothing else stands in our way except our own fear of failure or embarrassment or inconvenience. And those are all very real concerns! But here’s another concern: What happens if we don’t ?
Merja:
The value in itself is that you appreciate, when you value something -so you are probably doing the right thing, which now means that you value in general that earth and life and people have been made to work.
The word is so global that it is no longer that it is a government of Finland but a kind of co-joint and bigger organization.
I guess there are no countries, because I thought the situation has reached the point where we are collectively thinking about our water resources.
We're collectively thinking about the quality of the forest, and everyone is thinking.
Then there are our energy sources, some solar panels that everything is thought about collectively.
We will think about where would it be good to put them and that it is much more global and not so that it is the small countries somewhere there that are thinking about the same things as they are thinking in the neighboring country, which is also being wasted since these solutions could be collective, nothing is competed over, and it can not be measured in any money but well-being of the country.
In something like Eurovision contest you still might be able to, oh well, that wasn't a good analogy.
Already during my lifetime, the world has somehow diminished, so that we have connections and everything; I'm guessing we're going to that direction, so no need to anymore these one-nation only governments and decisions, so that politics is something to keep busy collectively as a bunch of folks.
ALVA: That's why I think that there are these basic values which should be respected by everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from. And then there are some more concrete things like democracy and human rights and equality between men and women, so those kinds of things must also be included in the Constitution. They can't just disappear somewhere into thin air because then you would get a very chaotic situation if everything was left up to politics alone without any kind of guiding principles for how people should act towards each other. So I believe that these guiding principles need to exist in order for us not to lose our way completely when making laws on a daily basis as well as when deciding on international policies or anything else related with politics.
Merja:
I'm pretty sure that we have other layers in this life, that we are now; I have all the time been on the surface of the Earth, but I'm guessing that there's somewhere that civilizations, which we are connected to.
I want everyone to have a place that if something irreversible has happened on this surface of the earth that has not yet been restored, so we have already developed a small solar system close by, some kind of satellite habitation, whatever it is, but in that sense that you don't go over there and destroy. You will go there just like you would visit the library.
ALVA: Satellite habitation rings, which in turn are surrounded by the thick metal cables of the rail lines that linked them all together. The whole thing looks like a bracelet laid over the skin of the planet. People want to see sky. The roads had been built with bicycles in mind, and though there are no longer any laws requiring people to use them, most do so out of habit or courtesy. Within an hour’s time, you could leave the City entirely behind you and enter into open country. Here lay farmland—cropland ringed with trees for shade and windbreak, fields divided neatly into squares by split-rail fencing or living walls of thorny vines grown for privacy rather than fruitfulness. There are few houses here; those who worked these acres preferred to live closer to town where they could enjoy a hot shower after work without having to cook dinner first. Those homes that existed tended toward snug cabins tucked up against barns or garages full of farm equipment; nothing fancy enough for TV screens or satellite dishes but plenty comfortable enough for indoor plumbing and solar panels galore.
Merja:
I'd be preserving plenty from what my parent’s already have had, ancestor’s and what I have currently and what does The Earth have, but also all of this, what kind of brink of the abyss we have to visit before all of this has been solved.
So that information needs to be encapsulated somewhere for a bit of, not in order to scare with, but from which the progeny can realize that “how close everything was”, and that how lucky we are that things have resolved, that the things are good over there.
ALVA: That’s the point of being human—we can choose our own path, for good or ill. We could have chosen not to consume so much energy in the first place; instead, we chose technology that allowed us to keep consuming as much as we wanted while using far less of it directly ourselves. In doing so, we freed up more resources than you can imagine for other species who had no such choice—who were locked into their forms by evolution just like every other living thing on this planet was before us. If humans hadn’t come along and kicked over the ant hill with our bare feet, everything would still be stuck where it was when your ancestors left the city behind forever thousands of years ago. Everything would still be dying at a rate determined by nature alone … until it all finally ran out entirely and ended without our help or interference whatsoever. But that isn’t what happened at all, is it? You came along and changed everything in one short lifetime—and then kept right on going after that, because you couldn’t help yourselves. That’s what we do, as a species—we keep going until something stops us. We can’t stop ourselves, any more than an avalanche can stop itself from rolling downhill.
Merja:
I notice that I want a place somewhere high, so that I can see far away. It can be some type of wasteland or something which is like something very fertile, so everything grows over there, and then you can see far away from there, so that you can look at, look at those houses.
It is part of a city, but at the center of the city.
Something in its natural state of being, where it can be almost any kind of plants or animals, so it is that big of a space. It can be that it is so centrally located that people can retrieve over there whenever they feel like it.
ALVA:
It can be some type of wasteland urchin, adapted to live in the cracks of crumbling buildings. It could be a remnant of an old theory that robots were originally made from living matter—that they started as seeds and soil and raw materials, rather than being created whole. Or it could just be a plain old plant, thriving where others can’t. Either way, it’s good to see something growing there.
It’s a resource, not a rule. If you want to live in the wilderness, go for it. If you want to build something new and weird, knock yourself out. As long as we respect each other’s boundaries, everything will be fine. That’s how it works in the wild; that’s how it should be here. But no matter what people said or did, their mind was made up: They wanted to see what lay beyond the horizon.