Memoirs of a Moment
©1993 Tim St.Clair 
“It was just a dream.” The soft voice spoke reassuringly, unknowingly. Unknowingly of the abrupt truth that lay encased within its impenetrable casing.
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Some dream. God! Where had it all started? A long time ago, that’s where. Probably in my early childhood, or sometime, at least, when I was still that young, buoyant kid, up on the issues and ‘in-things’ that accompanied my generation. Ah, those were the days. All I could see, at the ripe ol’ age of sixteen, was the corruption and violence that our great “civilised” society had threaded into its everyday procedures. All I could see was what the media told me. The lies and half-truths that accompanied each night’s news reports on the TV and radio. Then there was that surreal world that emanated from Hollywood and Universal, the sort of that made people think that this world of ours is full of heroes, with more resistance for bullets and bombshells than- what? not much, these days- anyway. So they were the people that lived in front of their TV’s, or in the theatres, where the real world gave way to the unreal world of movie stars and the like.
But, through all of this, there came the news. The news, the more news and other news, this news, that news. It all said the same thing. “Today in Washington, mass civilian revolt caused the gory deaths of...”, “Slovinia, last night, the remains of the four escapees were found smashed to death...”, “Once again, Police Commissioner what’s-his-name was found guilty of sex offences with an immature nine-year-old...” and on and on and on. Turn the TV off, turn on the radio. “Today in Washington, mass civilian revolt caused the horrific deaths of...”. We were surrounded by death and destruction, violence and chaos.
And was it so bad? Was it so untrue? Granted, there was a few wars going on, the occasional city razed, the sometime death of 10,000 civilians. But, who’s counting? More road deaths and drunken smashes, but who’s counting? I’m sure someone was. I, most certainly, really couldn’t’ve cared less. Why should I have? It was another world away, I sat in my safe little room typing away at a computer keyboard, watching the cartoons on the TV or playing the piano. What use was the knowledge that another god-knows-how-many kids had died of malnutrition.
Any use at all?
Well, some thought so. The staticians loved it, the historians too, and definitely the newsreaders and media groups. But that’s really all. The world can only hold so much, I said. Each American city only held the odd 15 million or so and the European cities held about the same amounts each, and all the countryside on the globe really didn’t matter much to me at that age.

So with all the TV, radio and newspapers there had to be something for the kids, too. And there was. There was ‘VideoMania’. All those big ‘men’ movies, high action, blood and guts- just what they didn’t show on the TV is what the children did see. It was as if the adults were actually scared of what they saw. They happened to  see the real world being exposed. The Americans and their military and presidential corruption, the Australian corrupts destroying lives and inevitably the country, the pompous European idiots and their silly war games, bickering and land disputes. 

And then there was the world of Hollywood- that stupid glittering crap that rolled endlessly from the reels of film. The idiot storywriters that poured the same old thing over and over and over into movies about rambo men, rambo women, all-American heroes, all-American heroines(!), good cops, bad cops, dead cops, cop wars, drug dealers getting shot by ex-cops, westerns, western cops... The list went on to infinity. Millions of millions of dollars went into movies each year, about as much as went into the military rubbish, and almost as much as went into computer games.
The games industry was rather big. It included enough fighting and shoot-em-up games to simulate World War IV. The games industry was so competitive it revolutionised the worlds computer industry. Getting more power into less space, more fight into the home- more violence into the younger. Everyone thought the US military had the most sophisticated computer network and power on the planet. Not so. Electronic Entertainment surpassed all. The huge industry in games even affected the movie world. The movie makers made films about characters generated by a computer game, and the game industry in turn made games about movie characters.
All in all, the world was thriving on violence, corruption and destruction. The environment was decaying, the kids didn’t care. In the utopia world of reincarnation of their favourite dreams, where even reality was not real, the adults of the childrens’ tomorrows couldn’t give a stuff. Their parents were too scared to give a stuff, and the world just didn’t go anywhere for quite some time. Their so greatly needed utopia was still far off- still just a story.
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“Some dream. Well, I’m awake now, might’s well get up.” Outside, the sky was a darker shadow, the grass was a shade greyer.
Our utopia was a little more crumbly.