December 24, 2193 (Washington, DC)
From the Smithsonian Research Center of the ISHF
In the year 2033, during the Third World War, the newly formed International Alliance forced the Muslims of the world to wear a black armband with the crescent moon and stars on it. Soon after, they were rounded up like cattle and sent off to concentration camps across Eastern Europe and Asia, where a dark and tragic end awaited them. A few years after the end of that Third World War, as if in the eye of a hurricane, my great-great-grandmother Sofia Speranza gave her historic speech in the garden of her beloved school, where she talked about the history of that institution and the story behind the great Olive Tree that so many Arab, Jewish and Christian children loved to climb, with equal enthusiasm, for the past decade. She didn’t know it then, but that same school would play a crucial role in the rescue of thousands of men, women and children during the fourth and final World War, at the twilight of the 21st century.
The speech was first heard on December 25, 2047, and it became a viral phenomenon via the original version of the World Wide Web, until large parts of it were lost in the Great Hacking of ’76, where approximately 45% of all the digital data of various countries was intentionally erased, and thus the period is also known as the Second Dark Ages. The few video fragments that still exist today are currently archived in the Library of Congress and within the International World Wide Web Digital Museum.
As is often the case with lost historical documents, a few years ago, when the missing sections of the speech were found written in cursive handwriting within the yellowed pages of a printed diary, it was first thought to be a hoax, since the old tradition of transcribing a text of that length via pen and paper was no longer common practice by that time. However, subsequent investigations proved the veracity of the document, written in Sofia’s own handwriting, to the surprise and delight of all of us involved. Apparently, Sofia was an avid collector of various literary antiques.
As if the discovery of the missing segments wasn’t reason enough to celebrate, tomorrow, December 25th, 2193, there will be a rare alignment of three human celebrations on the very same day! Ramadan and Christmas Day coincide this year with the eighth and last day of Hanukkah. Therefore, this year’s Holiday of Holidays will no doubt be the most spectacular since my great-grandfather, Dr. Eshan Perez-Speranza, helped make it a national holiday in honor of his mother’s memory, so long ago, especially since this might very well be the last holiday that some humans actually celebrate here on Earth. For come this March, if all goes as planned, the first colonists will finally commence the long voyage to the New World Colony on Mars.
Therefore and without further ado, we take advantage of this special occasion to commemorate my great-great-grandmother’s legacy and the contributions of her beloved school by transcribing her historic speech herein, divided it into sections for easier reading. In addition to the standard academic footnotes, we have also included short descriptions of the public’s reaction to her speech, as observed in the remaining videos, with their corresponding LOC number or the International WWW Digital Museum link.
For those of you who ordered the printed paper version or purchased it at the Smithsonian gift shop, this strange artifact that you now hold in your hands was actually printed using the same techniques that our ancestors used to print all of the antique paper books that fill so many of our museums today, like strange souvenirs of a world forever gone but not forgotten. Because in the end, human nature is as immutable as the stars: the same today, yesterday and always. It’s no surprise, then, that we can now show with physical data and scientific methods what my great-great-grandmother already knew in her heart, almost one hundred and fifty years ago.
I’ll close with my family’s favorite greeting during this very special time of year: Shalom, Salaam and have a very Merry Christmas! Happy Holy Holidays to all!
Maryam A. Eshan Perez-Speranza, ISHF Director
(Institute for Social & Historical Forecasts)
The Olive Tree: 12.25.2047 @ Amazon—chosen as the December 2019 cross-genre book of the month by The Across The Page Club.
