The far future. After the eco-crash, and "for their own good," humanity is penned into a parklike quad by immortal energy-beings. They call themselves Guardians, but to me they're just jailers.

My girlfriend and I decide to climb the corner tower. Long ago, humans built this skyscraper, but now only Guardians live in Blackslime Tower. My girlfriend spots a child ahead. I'm skeptical it's real, knowing the Guardians. One of their ghosts, more likely...

We climb on anyway, up to the Guardians' level. It seems empty. No, more ghost children! We chase them... then older ghosts appear... just as elusive. Finally I catch on. One male, one female, and they always look familiar. We're chasing images of ourselves in the past and future, older & younger!

We start to encounter trails of scary black slime... tradition says it's deadly, and related to the Guardians. Their ghosts have noticed we're here, and have started to react. We know the 'ghosts' are automatic defenses of the Guardians, not lost human souls... Still, we flee downstairs as if true ghosts are chasing us.

So now we know how the Guardians keep people within four walls.

I decide it's time to change things. I walk humanity's perimeter, shouting ancient holy names like Demeter. I hope to summon living Guardians, not just the automatic ghost system. I try for a long time--I want to know the reasons for still penning all people in this quad. Maybe some of them merit it, but I need to be free.

I get no answer.

At last I realize these beings are mere clouds of light, no more. They don't know us. Don't even see us. Only fear keeps us penned. We don't have to climb inside Blackslime Tower. The sky is free!

I hide from my friends; I don't want them to see I'm different, freed now--it would frustrate them even more if I can't free them too. Or they may think I'm a guardian myself in disguise.

Hide in a private nook where I struggle to grow wings and fly. I've been practicing a long time, sprouting feathers, turning half bird... but today my wings are strong enough at last.

I glide across the Quad, high up, and over the towers, and land on the hidden back side near the top. I meet the Cat, as planned; she lives in the penthouse up here.

We meet, and confer deep into the night. Bird and Cat, conspiring to free our old tamers, humanity... now tamed themselves.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Blackslime Tower and the quad: I work in Green Library, Stanford, between Hoover Tower and the Quad. The Hoover Institute was the source of Reagan's trickle-down theory and the Laffer Curve and the neocon push to lower taxes and let rich slimeballs rule us all.
• Energy clouds, penned in quad, I need to fly free: predictive! Next day I unexpectedly saw the movie Tron, about a teen trapped in a quadrangular gaming space, striving to escape nonhuman control and go home.
• Fly at last: today I went to San Francisco and tried contact-improv dance. The dream approved. Felt like flying.
• ACTION: Get out of Stanford, move to the City. Oh, and overturn capitalism too. In my spare time.

DECADES LATER

It took four years of saving up, growing my wings to escape wage-slavery, feather by feather... but I did. And was glad I did.

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