Utopia has invited Numeroso and Unesco to a symposium on the future of industrial living and they are already seated at her table.

There are birds and insects and plants within hearing distance but they do not know human language or the fate of those who can speak nothing else. Hence the symposium - for no one knows what to do next. If this paragraph surprises you remember that it surprises me also, types the writer. This is not a fixed programme - it's a story of daily life in the context of imagination.

Utopia (who is the voice of perfection) is doing what she can to prepare everyone for what might follow the industrial era but all she can do is to invite discussion between the three of them. In the 1980s they tried, at Unesco's behest, to explore the future as it then seemed possible and they hit on the idea of the experimental city - but it appealed only to social inventors. It did not become the public fiction that they intended - a world-wide tv spectacle of experimental living.

So now, in the new world of softecnica, these three voices (plus the writer and the reader of course) are engaged in this post-industrial breakfast in which they are to discuss, and even to try out, what is to be done in the future - now that all things mechanical are being replaced by things softer and more connective and integrated and enlivening, or even threatening (for instance the mobile phone and the internet). The new question is how to rise to this occasion and to let go of our mechanical inheritance?

I am glad you were able to come says Utopia, looking first at Numeroso and then at Unesco. I see that neither of you have aged since we met in 1981 but I hope that you have arrived with new ideas.

Well, I haven't, says Numeroso, I came here as the voice of everyone - ideas are your responsibility, Utopia... And I came to enjoy your presence.

Utopia blushes.

Unesco says that he too has come without ideas, apart from the hope that the experimental city is not dead - perhaps we can revive it in the context of computernet. And he too is glad to be here. But, as before, he has all of science, education and culture to attend to so he cannot be here full time.

Those are just the things we are here to talk about, says Utopia.

Numeroso dislikes those abstract names and he is doubtful of the activities they refer to. Education, science and culture are surely going to change. It's up to us to rethink them, and perhaps to rename them as well. In times of uncertainty rectify the names... that's what Confucius is supposed to have said.

A talkative crow who squawks continuously perches nearby. He or she or it turns to look at a robin. Numeroso's breath is visible in the cold air and he is beginning to feel that this is a good moment. He sips his coffee and finds that it's gone cold. A blue tit is eating butter out of a plastic container that it has carried to a nearby bush. Another blackbird stands on a nearby table. Utopia's hands are getting cold and she decides to move indoors and Unesco follows her. A robin hops beneath Numeroso's's inclined foot to pick up a tiny piece of food. When it's gone he gets up also.

This is the story of our lives, types the writer, more for the rhythm than necessity. The coldness has nothing to do with the plot for there isn't one, he adds. It's part of the totality.

That was Scene 1. The writer does not know what will happen next - some of it is to be decided by chance process and the rest by intuition. Numeroso thinks they need something more definite* to talk about. And more inspiring says Utopia as she thinks of the perfection of nature. It is visible to everyone.

(...pause while they read these texts - and while the writer and the reader do so also...)

The writer, who (with Erwin van Handenhoven) is currently planning a short course (at a college in Antwerp) in the design of 'mobility and safety in the city', decides to link this symposium, and the texts re bus travel, to the course data - and to open the symposium to the 22 people who are to attend the course. Later he will make a link from this symposium to the website at which their designs will appear.

Unesco likes this idea and says that he will seek ways to link the discussion to the official UNESCO website...

Utopia suggests that we focus our discussion today on the phrase

beyond the mechanical

'Is it a magic carpet that you want' asks a voice from Arabia...

As Utopia speaks these fine wishes the others are immediately imagining the conflicts and difficulties of doing anything so impossible...!

I can see what you are thinking, she says - that my proposal is not feasible, that machines are forever rigid and inflexible while the human body is nearly infinitely adaptable - and you are assuming that this is a 'fact of nature'...

...Yes of course cars and buses and trains and taxis and motorbikes and pedal cycles are mechanical things - but they were conceived and made by humans - who are themselves parts of nature (as we call it, as if it were not ourselves)... I do not see why, as human animals, we cannot design modes of transportation that are as adaptable as we are... and especially now that we have computers...

Silence.

Awaiting the attempts of design students in Antwerp at doing something on these lines, on these lines ... lines, no no ... perhaps it's lines that are the problem - lines and wheels and all manner of pre-arranged regularity? ...

...are we beginning to rectify the names, Confucius?

Confucius does not reply but after two or three thousand years of silence he begins to smile at the other world beyond China and to wonder if at last the people there,

(...who have wrecked so much of life - by attempting to make it faster and cheaper and more numerous)

...if at last these westerners are learning wisdom such as he knew it, and as did Lao Tsu and Chuang Tsu and many others, though in very different circumstances...

He waits, we wait (say the writer and the reader) while Utopia and Numeroso and Unesco sit in conscious silence, keeping the centre empty, and letting go of their likes and dislikes and their assumptions ... insofar as they are able...

Utopia thinks it is time to lift this symposium out of conformity to, or rebellion against, the mechanical culture and to begin composing and living the new culture for itself - and she wonders how to do it?

Numeroso reads her thoughts and asks what kind of action she has in mind.

Utopia looks at him calmly but says nothing. Unesco watches in silence. The writer has no idea what is coming next but he decides to stay at the keyboard until Utopia's question is answered.

They continue to sit in silence while the rest of reality, such as it is, remains outside the discussion.

That's what's wrong, says Numeroso, we are condemning and ignoring the world as it is - the only thing from which the new can develop! May I suggest we go for a walk.

Slowly Utopia gets up and walks outside. Numeroso follows but Unesco stays behind to write notes.

Utopia and Numeroso walk in silence, each looking about - as if the other wasn't there.

Then simultaneously they each think the same thoughts*:

awakening from industrial living as frozen dreaming

awakening to a new vision of time

Is this the answer, asks Numeroso... as Utopia begins to smile and as the two of them begin walking in step, not caring any more about the culture as it was until this moment!

But Numeroso stops in astonishment: a pigeon, perched on a nearby branch, looks at him strangely, as if about to speak, while the tree, and the bridge they are traversing, and other trees, and the sky, even the aeroplanes that are constantly flying over, all these appear to him as a single piece of sculpture... which includes even Utopia, even himself... he begins to walk unsteadily, he feels that he is going to faint.

Come and sit here says Utopia, reading his thoughts and taking his arm. She leads him across the bridge to a nearby seat that is dedicated to Bill and May (who are they?). Even the seat seems to him artificial, which of course it is, but so do the trees, so do his thoughts, and so do these woords... I mean words type the finfgers... I mean fingers (who is I?)... the imposed order is almost lost - what is happening? what is happening cry the others (what others?)... and where is the storyline? The pigeon does not say anything. Nor does the sky.

This is not nonsense says Utopia, this is the beginning of something new. We must stay here until we get used to it, this could be the new world we've been seeking and the end of all we regret. Let us stay the night. I think we have left the mechanical world - I wonder if we are going to live forever?

Numeroso hasn't heard what Utopia said but the readers read it, the writer also, and each ponders what to make of it, this sudden change of circumstance.

We're staying the night here in the woods with the pigeon says Utopia to anyone who can read. Numeroso puts on his glasses but everything still seems like a single piece of sculpture. He decides to stay with Utopia on the bench and he wonders what the night will bring and what kind of breakfast they can expect in the morning. Post-industrial, no doubt, type the fingers - but no one laughs. This is terribly serious types the god of fear, the only one left from the ancient pantheon. Even the devil is losing credibility. God also. Every word is miraculous, and poetic.

We are on our own now, think the people. Thank goodness.

Utopia and Numeroso are getting married!

This is the union of perfection and everyone, they think, as they lie in the enormous bed of the world which is already creaking as the writer and the reader smile at each other in literary interaction as they imitate the practical marriage of these theoretical beings. This is the rebirth of everything!

That was the introduction, type the fingers, quite pleased with themselves but knowing nothing...

Our intercourse is the reverse of the sexual, types Utopia, for I get inside him and he gives birth to something new and extensive in everyone - but it's equally enjoyable (at first) and traumatic (later). J W von Goethe nearly did it single handed but in the end he had to give everything to Faustus and Mephistopheles and Helena and The Mothers as the salvation of evil and artifice and the unachievable end of divisiveness.

Yes it's the Faustian man, woman and automaton who are going to put these theories into prACTice.org and to (Pr)oust the ogre from progress... prss... prss... prss... and where is the adaptable pussycat?

The words are ready for any kind of nonsense but what of the people?

Re-enter Unesco accompanied by Dr Iorwerth Bellamy and i2 (the experimental version of the internet) and Mavis, the robot that has replaced the educational system and disconnected it from governmental control... The academics and the humanists flinch at the the idea of automatic control and some depart screaming, while the school teachers are shocked into simultaneous retirement and the children and everyone who is supposed to be uneducated suddenly become serious contenders to take over the education of everyone, themselves included, without books, without teachers and without compulsion but with new software and the new ethic of inclusive morality... (Is this a threat or a promise?)

This is the starting point says Unesco, this is what I've been working out in my notes since you left me in scene 4 for your night in the woods and your revelatory return to the urban complexity. Welcome to New London, the metacity of evolutionary experiment - which we have overlaid on the existing one. Dr Bellamy will remind you of its principles and Mavis, its first animation, will invite you to become the first urbanauts. The first experiment begins in scene 7...

...that's all I know at the moment, types the writer, these new characters have the answer, if there is one, or else it's the end of the world and of our species, both are in doubt in the light/darkness of unification and neotopia.

This jargon will finish him, us and the whole thing thinks Numeroso but for once he does not speak his mind... though the fingers are typing his thoughts. The poetic complexity of all this appeals to him and Utopia who are still in the ecstacy of conjugal perfection and numerousness, the jargon having entered even their state and their intercourse, soon to infect the whole population whether they like it or not, for likes and dislikes are no longer the criteria. Only respect for each self by all others including one's own...

a supernatural imperative

Utopia is not encouraged by Unesco's proposals. She does not want to become an obedient explorer of the experimental city if it is part of any plan, or pre-existing purpose - she prefers to combine the aim with the doing, to trust life itself to show the way...

Unesco, reading her thoughts, loses his enthusiasm while Dr Bellamy sits down and puts Mavis and i2 into sleep mode. What is Numeroso thinking?

He takes off his reading glasses, switches off his mobile phone, and stands up. I'm not thinking, he says, I'm waiting for a sign, a sign that we intend to use these new technologies in ways that combine the rationality of nature with the imagination of our human mind*. How do we do it?

He looks at each of the others, and the literary context which they manifest, before taking off his coat and beginning to dance, as only a very large person can... surprisingly lightly yet with the seriousness of an elephant.

Utopia begins to move her shoulders and hips in the same rhythm, and to sing meaningless sounds... Unesco and Dr Bellamy don't move but they both begin to smile and to accept what is happening - though they are flabbergasted.

I don't think I've ever written that word before, writes the writer, while the fingers continue to inscribe these words on the handheld until he pauses to think of what's going to happen next...

This is a new version shamanism, he thinks, as he listens to the rhythm of the words more than to their meaning. He takefs ofs his gcmsses too - an coptinues wrlting blifdly...

Put your glafses back on, says Dr Bellamy, or we'll all vanish into illegibility. The writer obeys, refreshed by that brief dedarture from custom and comprehensibility. I think we are now ready for the experiment - knowing that it does not have to make sense, he writes... then he goes to the lavatory. He shits, washes his hands, and returns conscious of his animal nature and of the supernatural nature of thought...

I guess there's too much guesswork here says Dr Bellamy with a smile...

...yes he's smiling now thinks Utopia and she goes to sit next to him.

He stiffens a little until she touches his shoulder and says Iorwerth, you don't mind if I call you that... Iorwerth, tell us how we can proceed with more certainty...

Dr Bellamy stops to think and then he advises them to begin not with thought but with experiment, by getting their hands wet, or dirty, to make some improvised attempts at post-industrial living, at doing things in non-mechanical ways, by any means to hand...

...That will change your minds, he says, it will re-educate your intuitions out of the divided ways you have inherited and into the very different ways you wish to discover. It's a process of education, he says, but without teachers and with the help of the world itself, and the mind, undivided...

As Iorwerth speaks they realise that what he says is the new truth - and one that was present in their first discussions in the early 80s - but they never did it, only spoke. Now's the time for doing before thinking - or rather, to mix the two up from the start...

The others become silent, reading his thougths as they appear on the screen. They realise that this is the moment of change - from the supremacy of thought over action to the integration of the two in the manner of a conversation - or of any kind of interaction between equals... as in love, as in fighting and as in dancing of course!...

Utopia and Numeroso continue their shamanic dance until the even Unesco takes part... Dr Bellamy straightens his tie... and then they all begin laughing.

We don't care about the future, says Mavis (who has voice but no arms or legs), now we've begun to live in the present. This is education in deed! That's quite a good joke for a computer types Bellamy - and Mavis blushes... (and I didn't know you could blush, he adds in loco parentis as well as in parenthesis)

Tut, tut, types the reader.

Feeling somehow different after these unexpected scenes Utopia, Numeroso and the others gather again at the table and continue eating and drinking. For the moment they seem to have lost the wish to speak... But then Numeroso puts down his glass rather heavily and tries to focus his thoughts. He has been reading about design methods and he asks the others to join him, when they have eaten, in the collective process of redesigning industrial life, nothing less, using whatever methods come to hand.

No one says no, but no one says yes.

They continue eating and drinking as the music of Morton Feldman's piano quartet begins. This lasts over an hour says Utopia - that's why I chose it - that and its almost imperceptible movement. I am hoping that in an hour or so, while listening to these sounds and while digesting this banquet, we will realise that we're capable of anything.

Everyone breathes and breathes and says nothing - except Unesco. He feels that at last they are approaching the real world as he calls it and he suggests that they indeed begin redesigning the global organisations and the culture - starting with the universities and the schools, and following the method of broadcasting the proceedings on television and inviting viewers to provide the ideas and to volunteer to try them out before the global audience. Reality tv but with a serious purpose, he says, as he eats a banana. All we need do is ask the questions, he says, and issue the invitations. This is going to be the re-education of everyone, ourselves included! Yes, Unesco is actually smiling.

Utopia looks pleased but says nothing.

Numeroso goes to sleep. He is dreaming of a world in which everyone has political and economic power and in which each person is a public presence.

This could be the story of our lives says Dr Bellamy but I think we need a change of context...

...he speaks too late. All the others are in bed.