The heat was smoldering, the black smoke billowing as I gazed upon our lady liberty in the heart of Paris: that stubborn, immovable Statue de la République. Flash grenades flickered, ricocheting between the low clouds, sound cannons cracked ribs. The flashlights of the Gendarmeries pierced the human maelstrom, they’d encircled us, blocking off the street exits to the square. Containment is the logic of our times, we already knew that.

“We broke through! This way!” a hoarse voice beckoned to an escape route via a puncture in the police line. Bodies followed, staggering over smashed glass from the windows of the Real World Retail Outlets. I stumbled past a corpse. A young man, dead on the wrong page of the almanac. The slogan on his t-shirt was illegible.

It was not without casualty, but we had broken through. The protest scrambled to its feet, stampeding toward the S.C.D.C (Sacre Coeur Data Center), led by women in black dresses collectively roaring 20th century chansons réalistes about failed singers in cheap bars, single mothers, orphans and waitresses. A man in a scorched cassock recited Bible verses. Reverse Evolution Evangelists attempted to sever data cables.

This ramshackle ensemble of ‘Les Gavroches’ roiled toward the Hotel de Ville, the mayor’s residence, to state its case. A spokesperson scaled a perimeter fence and, over the sinister chop of helicopter blades, announced: “We are a youth to which no political representation corresponds. Sons of an unsubsidized geo-social working class, soon to be replaced by machines. Losers in a geographic lottery. Absentees from the ballot box. Exiles from nature. Survivors of state-sponsored climate disaster. Now we stand at the gates of the seat of power, with our gasoline-dipped rags and glass bottles. We’ve thrown these molotovs in our dreams!”

As the DIY projectile explosives rained down on the Teflon-coated mayoral palace, I spoke to several demonstrators, each of whom cited Paris’ successful bid to host the 2133 Global Organic Terrarium only as a symptom of a wretched disease at the heart of the establishment: “The Terrarium is the final straw,” said one man who had traveled alone from Dieppe, “but before that, there was the tap water tax, and the ban on fishing in the Seine, the mandated data amnesty, the paving of the Provence Desert Sanctuary, the Public Noise Act…”

“Did you know there’s not a single native plant species left in France?” another demonstrator shouted into my dictaphone.

The Terrarium has indeed exacerbated barely concealed unrest. Activists are skeptical that Paris’ proposed geodome will be accessible to the public, despite being funded by taxpayer data.

Previous host cities have been leveled with complaints that, after government delegates, corporate sponsors, media partners, official banking partners, foreign diplomats, select socialites, techno-elite moguls, software scions, winners of rigged competitions, celebrities, influencers, and so-called artists have been afforded visits to the Terrarium, there are few remaining time slots for ordinary folk who must apply for tickets by ballot.

The Terrarium announcement comes after years of government policy that many believe has separated man from nature. After significant reductions of green house gasses to pre-industrial levels, in 2128, the last of the European Union’s green belt laws were abolished, allowing unchecked urban sprawl overseen by property developers, many of whom were revealed to be cronies of the political elite. In 2130, Paris lawmakers imposed the infamous ‘tap water tax’, to conserve the much depleted resource (valued at the same price per gram as silver as of this year), that allowed citizens to draw from the public recycled waterh only if they handed over their monthly data to authorities, functioning much like the solar electricity and wind turbine power tax. That law remained in place despite sustained demonstrations from multiple factions of activists that eventually coalesced as the loose collective ‘Les Gavroches’, an assembly of anti-authority groups dubbed » » ‘originalists’ by government spin doctors on account of their common belief that man must be re-united with nature, even at the expense of technological development and corporate profit margins.

In a press conference delivering news of Paris’ Terrarium win, Paris Mayor Anne Perpèt denounced Les Gavroches: “We must move beyond originalism. No matter how much we try we will never return to a state of grace and one-ness with nature and it is a vain hope to do so, that is why we are committed to the Global Organic Terrarium project - a semi-public nature reserve that honors our heathen past, while conserving our techno-elite present and future.”

Sympathetic journalists failed to press Mayor Perpèt to respond to activist demands for Terrarium access for every Parisian, enabling her to sign off with a missive, “these shambolic ‘originalists’ have no idea that the forgotten Eden-esque Utopia they believe in never existed in the first place.” (A christian journalist threw up his hands.)

As the flames of the last molotovs fizzled, with gasoline on our fingers and sulphuric smoke settled on our tongues, we dispersed through the sprawling streets, imagining the Eden beneath the concrete.

CHRISTIANS CLAIM COPYRIGHT!

In an unexpected display of awareness of
current events, members of the Eden Movement, once a radical splinter group of the Catholic Church and now the sole exponents of the Christian myth, walked to Paris from Santiago de Compostela today holding handmade placards decrying the Global Organic Terrarium as an idea plagiarised from the Bible. They amusingly sang “There’s only one true Eden” to the tune of “Guajira Guantanamera”, though their surprise demonstration lost energy quickly after they tried and failed to purchase refreshments with an obscure pan-European, physical currency outlawed in 2022 after it was deemed a key transmission method for the Covid-19 virus.