Treehome

Greetings from 2055! My parents named me Qilandra. I prefer 'her' as my pronoun. My friends call me Qi or Landra for short. This morning I woke as the sun rose, as I do nearly every morning. Our home responds to daylight and the membrane window in my bedroom opened to allow sunlight through. Meanwhile thousands of microscopic blooms opened in response to the light, releasing an energizing smell reminiscent of pepper, cinnamon, and lemons. I take a big breath in and feel invigorated to get my day started.

I go and use the poop chute. Instead of wasting fresh water to flush, the plumbing here captures the grey water from my showers and uses that to flush. Like all civilized people I use a bidet to clean up. Then I step in the shower. The water for the shower comes from rain water we've collected, and as I already mentioned the water from the shower gets saved for the poop chute. The shower cleans me off with a three hundred sixty degree high pressure mist of water. It gives a deep cleaning without using much water.

Did I mention that my home eats all my waste? Everything from the shampoo I use, to my excrement and urine eventually makes it into the underbelly of our home. Naturally we feed our home our compost too. Our home also feeds on sunlight and the abundant CO₂ remaining in our atmosphere. I live on the third of five complete floors in our home. Currently our home has started growing the sixth floor, we think it might finish in a year or so. Our polycule hasn't decided what we want to do with the sixth floor. We might decide to add housemates, or configure some additional activity spaces.

I might have mentioned the CO₂ in the atmosphere. Some of our ancestors didn't realize the impact they had on the equilibrium of Earth's dynamic processes and released excessive amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Fortunately they had the foresight to invest in the education of future generations, and with each generation we (humanity) have gotten more in tune with GAIA and have learned to take care of and promote our beautiful spaceship Earth.

Lucky for us! CO₂ promotes plant growth, and through our use of genetic engineering we have formed numerous symbiotic relationships with living organisms that we love and cherish. Our home, for instance, will likely outlive us all and provide shelter for many generations of our families. By living in it we provide it with nourishment.

I really appreciate our home, it shelters us so very well. For instance, in the summer it stays deliciously cool, because of course, it covers itself in leafy greens. In the winter it keeps us warm by composting, which produces heat, as well as increased solar capture which occurs after the leaves fall.

Every year the leaves that fall around our home serve to fertilize the soil around our home. All winter they decompose and by spring we have a bed of fertile humus ready for planting. My mind boggles at how our ancestors used to rake away this natural fertilizer and then pour excessive quantities of nitrogen all over their lawns. And the concept of lawns?! So laughable. We of course have an edible permaculture garden. It has over sixty plant species growing within it. In our neighborhood we have over 700 plant species growing. We go to the communal market to exchange plants. That way everyone in the neighborhood has access to whichever ingredients they need, and as a whole our neighborhood has amazing biodiversity. Certain plants don't grow well in our particular micro-climate and bio-system so we leave them for other homes to grow. We grow as many of our favorite plants as we can that fit into our permaculture system.

We also keep chickens and goats. We don't especially love to eat our animals as they die after the natural course of their lives, but we respect that other homes do. We tend to bury our animals in the garden which promotes our soil fertility. We harvest eggs and goat milk, and make our own goat cheese in our cellar. We also have a mechanized beehive which harvests honey without the need for human intervention. Almost every home keeps a beehive, because everyone can use some good pollination action.

I think I mentioned I have a family or polycule that I live with. I'll try to explain as best I can, usually diagrams would help here. Thirteen of us live here. I consider myself partners with four people here: Rachel, Orlan, Michael, and Jen. Rachel and Orlan have a relationship, so together we form a triad. Michael has a partnership with Joanna. Joanna has also partnered with Tomy, Jon, and Yeena. Joanna, Tomy, and Yeena make another triad, and Tomy has also partnered with Jorge who doesn't have any other partners at the moment. Jon has two more partners, Phil and Sana. Phil and Sana both partner with James, but not each other. And Phil also sees my partner Jen. Whew, I think that does it. It might sound rather overwhelming for someone who hasn't grown up in an environment like this. For us we find it rather natural, but we also have software that helps us keep track of everything. I haven't even gotten into the complexities of child rearing in all this! We collectively parent the three kids that live with us. I really love little Lizzy. Yeena gave birth to her, but Lizzy and I have connected very deeply through our love of art and I feel so blessed to have her in my life and consider her my daughter.

I should mention how education works these days. As we have started to live longer and have fewer children we have truly begun to understand the importance of education. These days we have only individualized learning and group projects. We laugh at the old days when we measured in terms of student to teacher ratios. We now have teacher to student ratios, usually above three. Yes, every student in our neighborhood has at least three teachers dedicated to the nurturance of the student's full potential. We have no more valuable resource than these young minds.

At birth each citizen contributes their DNA to the blockchain and receives an endowment. We have a slightly inflationary currency in that new currency only gets created at the birth of a new child.

Most people live off of the incomes generated by their endowments. The safety of having an endowment allows many people to take creative risks, and we live in a thriving community of entrepreneurs.