For days the lioness had stalked through his waking dreams, appearing and disappearing in the long grass, the world's top predator, her drool falling onto sandy soil, each paw deliberately placed, stalking, her eyes mechanical in glint. She could see everything that moved in hyper-lit awareness, hear everything that happened for hundreds of yards around her.
Negotiations were under way.
They spoke through images which could be easily understood.
Where once he would have rushed in, now he spoke no more. Schoolboy pranks and bored suburban louts, well, military grunts and disbelieving analysts, it was just a game to them.
An idiot savant, one of the Watchers on the Watch muttered. Well, sometimes just an idiot.
The maturing of the process took time. Mistakes had been made on both sides. This was not exactly a rapprochement, because the uncanny thing, as they well knew, was that all those prophecies had come true. That the country had been destroyed, was in the process of being destroyed. That dark times were ahead. Indeed. That the mistakes of the political class were writ large across the slave population, that there would be suffering, that the false normality they were currently experiencing would not, could not last.
We built our dreams and squandered them, sometimes, just as sometimes we squandered our talents and opportunities; as individuals, as a species within a species, a genetic variant they now increasingly understood.
Everything could be isolated. Everything could be manufactured. Everything, now, with super computers, could finally be determined.
How we came to be entangled with a far greater world.
And so it would be. This rare gift carried not just across millennium, but across galaxies, born on galactic winds, a secret code within an already complex code.
They walked among mammals. They moved between trees. A single seed unfolded into this. They gazed through him with utter fascination; perhaps most at trees, how complex they were, how they grew from such a tiny thing, but also the birds, there were no birds on their world.
The machines hummed; one could say. Blinked in weak red light. All was not lost. Indiscretions could be papered over. Movement could be found in all of us.
I salute you. We salute you.
The lioness, every so carefully, ever so slowly, ever so planned and determined, placed another paw on the savanna floor.
We were alive and so are you. This morning is amazing and so are you.
Or as the late Leonard Cohen put it: "I wish there was a treaty we could sign."
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Head in the sand The federal government keeps pretending nothing is wrong
Prime Minister Scott Morrison visiting CSL’s Melbourne facility, where the AstraZeneca vaccine is being produced. Image via Facebook https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/rachel-withers/2021/06/2021/1617687990/head-sand? There is by now no doubt that the federal government’s vaccine rollout is in shambles, after last week missing its target by millions and today being ranked 90th in the world – “sandwiched between Bolivia and Albania” – with only 2.34 doses administered per 100 people. The media knows it, having been tracking the slowly unfolding crisis for months now. Experts recognise it, with one labelling the rollout an “unmitigated disaster”. The states know it, with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian admitting this morning that the Commonwealth’s goal of vaccinating everyone by October would be a “big stretch”. Even News Corp admits it, with The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and news.com.au each running multiple stories today on the debacle, after Monday night’s Newspoll analysis showed the government in “election peril” in its traditional stronghold states. The only people who can’t seem to admit it are those in the federal government, who continue to insist things are under control despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately for us, this is the one group that needs to admit there is a problem if there is to be any chance of fixing it. The consequences of a botched coronavirus vaccine rolloutScott Morrison blames international supply issues for slow Covid vaccine rolloutPrime minister refuses to say how many doses of AstraZeneca vaccine CSL is producing in Melbourne each weekTravel bubble between New Zealand and Australia to start from 19 AprilPrime minister Scott Morrison has blamed international supply for the huge lag in in the government’s Covid vaccination program. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPThe prime minister, Scott Morrison, has rejected claims Australia’s vaccine rollout has been held up by the batch testing of 2.5m domestically made doses and instead blamed international supply issues.At a press conference on Tuesday after New Zealand announced a trans-Tasman travel bubble, Morrison said Australia had not received 3.1m AstraZeneca doses from overseas. He said that was to blame for the massive discrepancy between the 855,000 vaccinations administered so far and the missed target of 4m doses by the end of March.The federal government is under fire for the slow pace of the rollout and a lack of transparency about how many doses have been manufactured locally and administered.An Australian government source told the Reuters agency on Tuesday that the European Union had blocked the export of the 3.1m AstraZeneca doses and that Australia had little hope of getting the remaining 400,000 doses it has been promised on time.The Chinese Communist Party has 'deeply infiltrated' Australian universities06/04/2021|8minAustralian universities have experienced “very deep infiltration” from the Chinese Communist Party, according to the IPA’s Bella D’Abrera. The remarks come after federal Education Minister Alan Tudge criticised Honi Soit - a student publication of the University of Sydney – for removing an article exposing links between university academics and the CCP. “It’s very deep infiltration and this has been discussed a lot in the last couple of years", she told Sky News host Cory Bernardi. “We must remember that the University of Sydney still has a Confucius Institute – among many other universities in Australia which is directly tied to the Chinese Communist Party. “They’re happy to host a Chinese Communist Party at the Confucius Institute but they’re not happy to host a bachelor of arts in western civilisation. “If you look at the words of the students explaining why they took the letter down – it’s because they say that they want to make a stand against western imperialism – so they’re even using the words of the CCP which is remarkable."
