It’s been, what, ten years? Fifteen?
Team Jet-Poop hasn’t been seen for a long, long time.
The grown-ups say they earned their rest. The world and Everything is better now, life is calm, and the wild beasts of yesterday are no more. The odd troublemaker appears every now and then, but the polis are enough now to easily corner them almost as soon as they trespass.
The offenses are also lesser now. The random punks loitering around at night do little more than just spray vulgarities on someone’s door. Petty theft has become rare, and people feel free to go downtown for a pint or two and walk back home, safe in the knowledge that the worst thing to happen these days is another drunkard yelling strange things on the street.
Even the worst disagreements are now different in kind. There was this old man, a staple in the community, some would say. His crimes came out in public and he had his day in court, with the required attorney and legal assistance for both parties. He pleaded guilty and is now serving time. I don’t know much more, it’s all legalese and apparently, boring enough to merit only a note on ENN’s midnight report.
There’s more festivals and civic participation. There’s old people who we thought had retired, only to come back with a beautiful bouquet, or an entry to the fortnightly pie contest.
And in all this time, I’ve never seen Team Jet-Poop. I’ve only heard someone mentioning it twice, but I wasn’t sure it was a real memory.
I went to the newspaper archives. They too bear scars of the past, and have thrived for the past few lustrums. The records of the last 7 years or so are almost impeccable, save for the odd editor that disappeared, but most of it remains.
But go back about 15 years and it’s not the same. At the height of Team Jet-Poop’s activity there are lots of holes in the archives. The Main Index notes the titles of all records, but the corresponding books have pages missing, burned, ripped or deliberately inked all over. The librarians tell me they know of this problem but are powerless to recover the information now. Sometimes the missing pages are the result of fights and arson. Some were deliberately removed by their authors, whether by spite or atonement. Some were lost to the termites, mold and the odd filing error.
And yet, among these many holes, there are references to Team Jet-Poop, and the Editor League of America, their analog teams across the pond in Europe and the nefarious villains they faced. The streets, they say, were packed full of people, scurrying along, so dense that conversation out in the streets was almost impossible.
The world is quieter and perhaps better. But the wonders of the past will remain a memory, engraved in the memories of all the people living then and there. Team Jet-Poop is now nothing but a memory that sure, will persist in the collective memories and hopefully will be told and retold for generations to come, but it will be only that: ideas, memories, a shared tale. No one will ever live that atmosphere, no one will ever node in fear again… or so I hope.
The price we have to pay for peace was for the age of wonders to end. It only goes to show just how valuable and priceless it is. May we never need those wonders to come again.