No coffee in the future? (First World Problems)

When I commented on a post on a different section, I mentioned a comparison to someone’s analysis of urban planing in the future world of the story and the MoMa exhibit we saw a while back. How planning for overpopulation was, at the time, irrelevant to our class but now there’s more of a connection to Sci Fi and the exhibit that I began to notice again in the book. “Imagine the plantation system, people starving while big fincas owned by foreigners grew for wealthy countries as cash crops a liquid without food value, bad for kidneys, hearts, if drunk in excess” (187). This Utopian future has made sure to not make waste of their resources, planned out rations and methods to sustain a stable future an urban planning, just as I had mentioned in a different section of the book. “To plant beans correctly is important . To smoke fish so it doesn’t rot. To store food in vacuum” (188). This is Bee responding to Dawn’s view on what is more important, Dawn thinks that the past is more important. Bee’s response shows us that food and urban planning is more important in the future for it to continue growing.

I’m still under the assumption that Connie is not an actual time traveler, I feel her “traveling” to the future is a way to cope with her harsh reality that she is living through. “I may not continue to exist if I don’t check back…What good can I do? Who could have less power? I’m a prisoner. A patient. I can’t even carry a book of matches or keep my own money. You picked the wrong savior!” (190). This is Connie just putting herself down after Luciente explains to her why she was picked and chosen to travel to the future. Notice how Connie expresses the helplessness she feels from being in the hospital in her current time period, she uses the word prisoner as to express what she really feels like instead of a patient. But in the future she is free from the reality that she was originally in, she even calls it a vacation from the hospital. “Why are you contacting us? You said I’d understand but I forgot to think about it. It’s kind of a vacation from the hospital” (188). I am also used to the more typical ways of time travel, not traveling with the mind like Connie does, which is another reason why I think this is all just in her head. “How easily it had become to slip over to Mattapoisett. She did not return exhausted. As if her mind had developed muscles, she could easily draw Luciente, she could leap in and out of Luciente’s time” (186). Not a convincing form of time travel for me.

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