Article voiceover
When my four-year-old says it slow,
you can hear the misplaced consonant,
the "K" at the beginning of the second word:
Majih-Kwand.
These kids have been captured by the idea. "I wish I had a magic wand that gave me all the powers in the whole world," says my six-year-old.
Wow, I say,
me too.
What would you do first?
She thinks.
"I would become a unicorn."
Sounds fun, I say.
She never asks
What would you do with yours?
(I really want you to pause here,
answer the question for yourself,
draft a comment with that answer,
come back, read mine,
then edit and post yours.)
Tree Power.
I've had this vision,
this longing
for a World Tree,
a single tree so vast
it rights the seasons,
protects us,
keeps us safe.
I'd make a billion of them.
Pull a Totoro,
incanting, dancing
big, rowdy trees from the earth
anyplace that needs shade and food.
tree by tree I'd regrow the ancient forests asphalt, concrete, endless monocrop grass corn soy all rototilled back to topsoil by new churning roots thrilled back to polyphony by new branching mycelia. Superconductor Power. A wave, a tap, and we'd know the secret, the material for not just room-temp but jungle-temp superconductors. More waves more taps and new zero-loss electrical webs intercontinental maglev rail branch like hyphae across half the earth. Tokamak Power. Like dial-up to gigabit, new fusion power plants would flood this web with so much energy we wouldn't know what to do with it. Desalination. Hydrogen fuel cells. Just to start. And no need to constrain to current-but-scaled-up tech; no need to top-out at boring-ass heavy hydrogen. We're making helium (sky cities; dirigibles) we're making lithium (from raw, abundant hydrogen) And heck, why stop there. You can set these tokamaks to conjure any element forged in the heart of the largest stars, the whole periodic table up to iron.
Leaf Power. This world of ceramic and metal superconductor and tokamak high-modern cIviLiZaTi0ɴ is fine and all but lets go back to the trees. For all the countries with contracting populations, for all the rural areas returning to nature, let's give a cozy opt-out from capitalist high-tech metropolis. We'll learn old and new ways to live among forest, carve round dwellings in living trunks. This is fully-provisioned luxury subsistence, you can plug your phone minifridge induction hot-plate heat pump medical device right into the wall: phloem to electron conversion, the leaves make more than enough to share. Heartbreak Power. Over black ICE vans and homesick soldiers following orders genociding neighbors I wave my wand and hearts rip apart horrified at the work of their hands unable any longer to muster obedience to the order of death or let their own brokenness compel them to anything but grief. Fences, walls, borders collapse great wailing mass of humanity safe from each other at last by this mutually-observed devestation, dismantling warheads (works of pRøGrⅇsS to end all progress 10,000 times anew), hammering tanks to plowshares— why did our ancestors stockpile horrors? Neighbor weeps with neighbor, and all share fruit and shade.