Merging with Gaia

The world was changing. Anthropogenic climate change had moved from a fringe science espoused by privileged elites to a daily reality that steadily increased the gap between rich and poor. 8.1 billion humans. What planet could possibly support that many self-obsessed apes? -

- The traditional faith systems all had their day as a cure-all explanation for climate change, but nothing lasted long. All that was left to believe in was Gaia herself. Now, that was a really fringe theory. This idea that the planet itself might be conscious: it’s something one comes across in Bateson’s cybernetics as well, but Gaia theory was a total red-headed step child of a theory: Lovelock wasn’t even affiliated with a university! The planet regulates itself because it is aware; that’s a radical thought, but now it was all there was left to believe in. We were supposed to be custodians of the land, but instead we became exploiters and transformers, upsetting the natural order to build bigger cars and faster planes. By 2060, we were at an inflection point. 2.5 degrees of warming. Several nation-states submerged by rising sea levels. 12.2 billion humans. The cannibals would shortly rise. - Assisted dying was a peculiarly 21st Century phenomenon. Originally intended for terminally ill patients, it had become increasingly popular, and soon there were calls to remove age limits and medical consent forms. They wanted suicide to be easy because they were harvesting the meat. In New Zealand, the laws changed in the 2040’s, but it wasn’t until the inflection point that merging with gaia became a calling card. People came to Aotearoa to die in the most beautiful country on the planet. Their environmental catastrophes were plenty, but nothing like those barbarous continents of Europe and Asia. The gaia theory was quickly establishing itself as an organised religion: over 25% of the planet were believers in some form or other. Aotearoa was a particularly enthusiastic adopter of this theory. The liberals saw it as vindicating their long-held beliefs that climate change was a reality. The nationalist conservative party that had emerged following the war with Australia was initially none too keen on this new hippy-dippy philosophy that pledged a circular economy and limits to growth that were necessary to heal poor Gaia. They saw this as politicising the issue (blissfully unaware of the irony), but then some bright young spark in the caucus had an idea: we know that overpopulation is going to destroy the country, so why not use this new religion to get rid of those pesky minority groups that continue threatening our white supremacy?

- That young man was soon head of the Party. When they swept into power on the back of an ugly campaign filled with multiple shootings and dozens of casualties, that was when he had his second brilliant idea: Changing the laws to target minority groups would cause too much negative publicity, but what if he proposed a law that was theoretically equal, but then built an algorithm that was designed to target certain groups? It’s not like the public would know: they hadn’t filled in OIA requests in over a decade, and the president of this new republic was very powerful. - He brought in a PR team, strictly against the rules after the PR ban of 2034, and tried to devise a way of making killing people as livestock marketable. They were all Gaians. They knew their faith and he knew how to exploit them. Soon, they had a slogan: merging with gaia. -

Jill was from Germany. She’d come to New Zealand as a student, and was returning again to be part of the cycle of planetary renewal. In the meantime, the president had become the new darling of the global right. This wasn’t some hack psychiatrist shouting that women aren’t equal, or a flamboyant fruit that hates themselves; this was a speaker as charismatic as Dame Jacinda Ardern. Soon this marketing gobbledygook was all over the place. Merging with gaia became a slang term for teenage suicide pacts. That didn’t suit New Zealand Inc. Soon the president-for-life had trademarked the phrase, earning trillions as it flowed from the lips of newscasters across the planet. By 2065, the global population was down to 6.5 billion. Most had been killed by pills supplied by the PharmaChem program. Soon healthcare was universal, and the secret algorithm had been a success, disproportionately killing off Māori and Pacific Islanders. That wouldn’t turn the tides for long, though. Even the president couldn’t remove the clauses from the Pacific Islands Treaty of 2046, allowing island nations to resettle in Australasia, and that day was soon coming.

- This gap in the death statistics hadn’t gone unnoticed by Jill, who asked one of the clerks why it was that more people from disadvantaged groups were merging with gaia. ‘Because they’ve got nothing to live for. They’re better off as cow feed.’ Her body stiffened. Another clerk swooped in to save the day. ‘Everyone who merges does so willingly. We’ll never force you, and even after the initial swallowing, there’s still half an hour in which you can decide to quit.’ Jill takes that as reassurance. She pays the money - her life savings - and prepares for the procedure. She walks into the next room: it’s sterile and white, with a dome-like shape. There’s a multicoloured gown, almost a mumu; she changes into it. - She leaves the room and steps onto the slope of an Auckland volcano. It’s a very beautiful view. Roughly a dozen other people are clad in similar gowns. Someone passes her a joint. ‘There’s free food, booze and drugs. They say that merging takes 5 hours, but the process is designed to be pain-free.’ - An American. Slightly boorish. ‘Ok’ - Her English is lightly accented. She joins the group. It’s a vibrant mix of people. Many exotic faces.

‘Is anyone here from New Zealand?’ - Jill. Everybody shrugs. Guess not. A man in a polo shirt and cargo shorts appears from the distance. ‘Is everyone having fun?’ ‘Yeah’ - half of the crowd. 'I can’t hear you’ - LOUD. ‘Yeah!’ - Jill joins in this time. ‘Well, I know that it’s everyone’s first time…’ That gets a big laugh. He knew that it would. ‘But merging with gaia is a very simple, peaceful process. Simply take your destiny pill and become one with mother nature. If you feel any pain or discomfort, let us know and we can take care of that for you.’

- 2 hours later. It turns out they weren’t all on the same schedule. By now, there’s five left from the initial group of twelve. Jill hasn’t taken her pill yet. The attendants haven’t asked her to take it, but she senses that they’re growing hostile, and a particularly officious-looking one keeps staring at her. ‘Look, I’ll talk to her’ - the safari man. He walks over to Jill. ‘You haven’t begun to merge yet.’ ‘Well, I haven’t decided if I want to or not.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Look, you paid the money. It’s not like you can afford a flight home, and immigration laws have tightened up considerably since the President took office. Take the pill.’ Jill looks around for an exit; somewhere to run. There isn’t any: the view looks fantastic, but she knows from the orientation video that there’s a wall of invisible electric fences that make escape impossible. The man walks off. Soon, Jill takes her pill. -

The process was much like opium, a substance Jill had enjoyed in her younger years. Her body slowly ebbed from her, her mind filled with fantasies as she giggled and drank from the syrupy wine bottle that she’d commandeered a few hours ago. There was even music that went through the stages with her. She’d turned the headphones on expecting it to suck, but actually it was quite good; the algorithm had gone through her user history and found songs appropriate to the occasion that she listened to frequently. It was tacky, and it had no subtlety, but who wants subtlety when they’re dying? Neunundneunzig Luftballons Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont... - Nena. German New Wave (1983). -

She wondered where it had all gone wrong, not just for her, but for humanity. There was so much hope when she was young. The Berlin Wall fell shortly before her birth, and the early 21st Century was full of hope and optimism for the future. People had tried to stop global warming, but they hadn’t tried hard enough. It was all timid, and guided by money rather than truth. She also felt her own pangs of guilt for her years of international travel, flitting around in gas-guzzling planes that almost certainly accelerated climate change. Jill had been a lawyer, until Germany removed the legal system as a result of a popular anarchist party gaining power via a farcical series of events that were considered the libertarian equivalent of Hitler’s rise. Everything went. Their mission was to remove the safety net, presuming that the most gifted citizens would naturally rise to the top, saving themselves from the overpopulation crisis. - Jill survived in the UK for another decade or two; when her 50th birthday arrived, she was forcibly retired. She’d survived long enough for a pension, but it wasn’t much. Coming to New Zealand was a deliberate choice to reconnect with her younger self, hoping to pinpoint the moment when human life became expendable. She was recording the entire event, hoping that it might be useful for those that followed. She couldn’t say much, though; every time that she expressed dark reflections, the attendants would tell her that merging was a natural, wonderful process and that she should stay positive. - The philosophy of the cannibal Gaians was classic supply and demand. They figured that every death could be calculated in terms of the potential carbon emissions that were cut short by merging those people with Gaia. It was a large number, even though the evidence that these deaths were reducing emissions was much shakier. I mean, after that they were still processed and transported to packaging plants, then placed into packages that were seldom recycled. Nevertheless, it had a ring of truth about it, and that's how a quarter of the planet had been turned into devout Gaians. With half the human population or less, then there were fewer reasons to discontinue their mining operations or to replace vehicles with efficient alternatives. New Zealand and Australia went to war over water rights. New Zealand won. This pseudoscience soon caught on, and several other countries offered merging with Gaia as a way of offsetting their emissions.

- These death camps hadn’t exactly endeared Aotearoa to the rest of the world, but it was taking care of roughly 30% of the estimated cullings that the UN said were required to save the planet. Soon, the GDP growth had repaid all their debts, and New Zealand’s social welfare system was functioning like it was in the golden age. The citizens had become practised at the cognitive dissonance; everyone believed that the harvested meat was being used to feed animals rather than people. It was well-known that the president supported cannibalism, but even he couldn't ignore a mandate as strong as 75% opposed to eating human meat. There was 95% support for harvesting human meat, though. People were aware of what they were doing, but they figured that this was saving the planet.

- As Jill drifted further and further into the void, memories began to flood her mind. She wondered if there were any psychoactives in this, because it felt a lot like an acid trip. It would make sense, she thought; psychedelics make people more pliable, and that’s why the CIA used to use them as a truth serum. Oddly enough, it was now that she chose to nitpick the terminology: she hardly felt as if she was merging with gaia. She felt that she was merging with the void, the timeless void that every soul eventually merges with.

She knew it was a scam - that’s all organised religion has ever been: a scam. - The death was painless, but it was also shorn of meaning. She wasn’t allowed to rage against the dying of the light. She wasn’t allowed to go through the five steps of grieving. All those things were antisocial and the gaian faith was designed to be sanguine. ‘We live in Heaven, but we are impure. Hence, we must leave the sacred realm in order to preserve it for those who are purer’ - This is the mantra of the Gaian supplicant, and Jill shuddered at having recited it earlier in the day. That was at the reception desk. It just got weirder from there. She thought that she knew about weird stuff as a German, but Kiwis are really fucked-up. - Instead of a meaningful death, she dropped her wine bottle and toppled over unceremoniously.

She clung to life for a minute or two, helplessly looking upwards as two of the attendants stared at her, waiting for the instant that she passed out. They had a quota to keep. The two of them carried her neatly across the field to a smallish hut. That’s where the butchers dwelled. They cut off her head - nobody wants the heads - and then proceeded to skin, flay and saute her in the traditional Gaian style. The religion was only 15 years old, but that’s old enough to have traditions, they thought. Compared to kosher or halal, it felt somewhat hollow, thought one of the older butchers... - Soon, Jill was eaten by the dog of another fat white blob. That dog took a shit later that day. The merging was complete. - Jill Baake - time of death: 6:13 pm  08-04-2068. Planetary population 5.8 billion; 68% more than the maximum survivable population.