Once Upon a Long Ago and in a land quite far away lived many thousands of children who lived all together and with no parents to bother them. The children lived peacefully with nature and with each other. They rode on the backs of wild horses and kept injured deers as pets. And they ran through the fields and played with the fishes who swam through the river. But one day the children grew up, and left the land to get jobs. At first the men and women who had been the children remembered the place where they had lived, when they were the children. But as time went by the busy-ness of their jobs caused them to forget about the land. And so came the future.
One day the Man Who Worked Where They Worked And Told Them What To Do said the company needed to make more buildings. And to make more buildings they had to make more factories. And to make more factories they needed large grassy fields to destroy and long clean rivers to pollute. The men and women suddenly remembered the land where they had been the children and told the Man Who Told Them What To Do where it was. He said they had done well and told them to drive the large steel machines to the place.
So the men and women who had been the children drove them there and parked them at the edge of the place. There were machines for digging holes and machines for cutting trees and still more for things only the Man Who Told Them What To Do knew. But the men and women drove them there still and got out of the machines to look at the place. They walked to the edge and stopped there, but one man kept walking until he reached the river and kept walking until he reached the trees and kept walking and kept walking and kept walking. And as he kept walking, his clothes grew bigger around him. But still he kept walking.
When the other men and women saw the man get smaller they were frightened. Some screamed and held their mouths or eyes or hair. Others tried to run away while staying close enough to watch. Still others stood still, and tried to think of clever things to say. But nothing clever came, and eventually they all just stood still and stared.
The boy who had been a man earlier that day turned and faced the men and women who had been the children and said:
�Men and Women! Hear what I have to say! You were all children once so why have you forgotten?�
But the men and women weren�t expecting to hear this, and therefore did not. But the boy continued:
�Men and women, you used to live here when you were the children. You used to ride on the backs of gentle beasts called horses under the wide blue sky, and let kind creatures called deers rest their heads on your laps when they grew tired of running through the bright green grass. And now you want to destroy the place where these animals still live, only because the Man Who Gives You Green Paper tells you to. Come closer to me! Do not be afraid of these things that are not toxic! Turn off your machines and come live how you used to, away from men who tell you what to do when you know it�s wrong, and green papers that speak to you in strange ways, telling you things you can only pretend to understand. The grassy fields here shine a more brilliant green than these papers could ever do. This was our home once, and it can be again!�
And the men and women who had been the children heard the boy and shut off their machines and came to the centre of the field to join him. Their clothes also grew bigger around them. And as this happened they forgot about their jobs and the Man Who Told Them What To Do and the green papers that spoke to them in strange ways. And they also forgot why those large metal beasts were there on the horizon.
The children who had been the men and women (who had been the children) once again rode with the horses and swam with the fishes and rested with the deers. The large metal beasts on the horizon grew brown and red furs in the next rain and although the children loved to climb trees and rocks and hills they never went near the red-brown monsters. But they spent many moments staring at the things and laughing at what silly looking contraptions they were.
This story is dedicated to the former children of the world.
-earth immigrant