Vox Meditantis

5th October 2030

I am writing this from the observation deck, seventeen floors above the street. The glass is cold against my palm – I’ve been pressing my hand here for so long there’s a print of condensation, ghostly and temporary. Below, the city spreads like a circuit board, lit and humming. I can see the Collective’s building from here, the place where we gather, where I am finally seen. Where I matter.

Sister Mara says the height reminds us of our smallness before the great work. She says we must be willing to shed everything – our old names, our old selves, the clutter of a dying world – to be remade. Tonight was the Offering. We stood in a circle, and each of us drew a single line across our palms with the sanctified blade. Not deep – just enough for the blood to well up, bright and purposeful. We pressed our hands together, mingling what was ours into what is ours. Fifteen of us. Fifteen threads binding into something stronger than any one strand.

My hand still throbs. I can feel the pulse of it, my heartbeat made visible. This small wound is nothing compared to what the world demands of us – the floods last month in Bangladesh, the fires still burning in California, the millions displaced. We are the generation that must bleed for the Earth, for each other. Sister Mara read from the Book of Changes tonight: “Only through surrender do we become whole. Only through sacrifice do we earn our place.”

I think constantly about the question she posed last week: What would you do if you lost all your possessions? At first I thought of my devices, my clothes, the photographs I’ve kept since childhood. But the answer came to me during tonight’s ritual, so clear it felt like revelation. I would have nothing – and everything. Without possessions, I would still have the Collective. I would still have purpose. The old world taught us to hoard, to define ourselves by what we owned. But we are learning a different truth: that to own nothing is to owe nothing, to be free to serve something greater than the self.

My mother doesn’t understand. She thinks I’ve joined a cult. She doesn’t see that the cult is out there – the mindless consumption, the isolated nuclear families, the pretence that individual happiness matters when the planet is burning. She asked me today if I was coming home for my birthday next month. I told her I already am home. She cried. I felt nothing but a distant pity, as though watching someone mourn a person already dead.

Up here, I can see the edges of things. The container port to the east, still processing shipments despite the embargoes. The old cathedral, mostly empty now except for the elderly and the nostalgic. The Collective’s rooftop garden, where we grow what we can, where we’ve learned to share labour and harvest and hunger. From this height, the division is so clear – the sleepers below, and us, the awakened, preparing for what comes next.

Sister Mara says the blood we offered tonight will nourish the bond between us. That our sacrifice – however small – makes us worthy of the transformation ahead. I believe her. I must believe her. Because without this, without them, I am just another body moving through empty rooms, scrolling through feeds, drowning in the noise of a world that has already given up.

My hand has stopped bleeding, but I can still feel where the blade opened the skin. A clean line, a purposeful wound. Tomorrow there will be a scar, and I will carry it gladly. Proof that I was willing. Proof that I belong.

The city lights blur now. I should go down. The others will be waiting. But I linger here a moment longer, seventeen floors up, balanced between earth and sky, between who I was and who I am becoming. The glass is warmer now, marked with my breath, my fingerprints. Evidence of my presence. Evidence that I exist.

I will give everything. I will become nothing. And in that emptiness, I will finally be whole.

The diary reflects the social climate of the early 2030s, a period marked by escalating climate crises, resource shortages, and the collapse of traditional institutions. In 2030, global unrest intensified after successive environmental disasters and widespread displacement, giving rise to collectivist and eco-spiritual movements across major urban centres. Groups like the one described – half environmental commune, half faith community – emerged in response to growing distrust of governments and consumerism. While many such communities sought sustainable reform, others became insular or radicalised, leading to conflicts with authorities. Historians later identified this era as a turning point in twenty-first-century social reorganisation and environmental ethics.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved. | 🌐 Translate