Storyline, First Draft

The original draft of the Peritia novel (before it was decided to make it a graphic novel) was written by Ziggy in April 2015. It includes a fast paced intro, and an increasingly detailed first couple of days of Dinarah in Peritia.

Timeline

The original timeline was set in 2025 (the current version has moved the date to 2029). J. = Journalist.

Flashbacks

• 2015 (mid): RBE10K Project turns into Peritia (marketed as an informal arts and sustainability school)
• 2018 (early): Foundation of Peritia
• 2021 (mid): Foundation of 2nd
• 2023 (mid): Foundation of 3rd and 4th
• 2024 (late November): Journalist begins requesting visiting Peritia to write news segment about it
• 2024 (early December): Gets a response from a PR coordinator in Peritia who will look into it, pointing out useful some research
• 2024 (mid December): J. begins researching about the school and taking notes

Beginning of the book (2025)

• Early January: J. gets invitation to fill-in for someone going back to visit family (email from this woman)
• Early January: J. begins doing research on Gaianism and RBE, and rushes through the self-assessment for participation
• Late January: J travels to Peritia and meets the woman coming back. There may be others in the 4x4 truck going there, and supplies. The woman comes back in the same truck.

Original notes

• Find a name for the self-assessment system. Find a name for the site and register it. Perhaps peritia.org.
• Journalist would be confronted by cultural differences.
• She would be sceptical about the whole thing (just doing this because no one else has done it and she sees potential).
• Journalist must fall in love. Perhaps with a photographer in the media team, a little older than her, foreigner, perhaps Norwegian or South American.
• She participates, like everyone else, in two 10-people support groups each with weekly meetings. There are 2000 groups of 10 people each, and 1 in 5 people volunteer to coordinate. 200 of those groups are level 1 coordinator groups, consisting only of basic group coordinators. There are 20 additional groups of level 2 coordination for level 1 coordinator group coordinators, and one group of 20 level-3 coordinators. Serious matters flow in both directions. She documents this as it being the closest thing to government there is in the city.
• She must have a nervous breakdown. It lasts for about two weeks (support groups help here). Perhaps be due to there not being any disposable personal hygiene products, but menstrual cups instead.
• The finds out about the skills game and wants to play. She gets frustrated that her options seem so boring and banal, but then finds it fascinating and states, at the time, that it is one of the highlights of the lifestyle.

Synopsis

Dinarah, a young journalist working for The Guardian is requested to write an article on Peritia, an informal arts school located in Vanua Levu, Fiji, seemingly isolated from civilisation. It is the year 2025, western nations have recently reverted to conservative governments after nearly a decade of progressivism, and there is fear of a new offensive in the Middle East after a few years of peace. As Dinarah begins to learn about Peritia, she realises that it is far from an arts school in a rural setting, and embarks herself in a journey that will challenge everything she believes and trusts. She learns that Peritia is a social experiment of nearly ten thousand people, that there are two younger communities, and that three more are about to be created. By the time she’s finishing writing the article, she has to decide if she publishes it and goes back to her normal life, or joins one of the new communities.

Chapters

Chapter 1

Dinarah is requested to write an article on Peritia, a "hippie" arts school in Fiji; her employer, GMG, has gradually aligned with the opposition, and Dinarah’s boss, hearing about Peritia, thought it would make a case to further weaken a struggling labour party.

Chapter 2

Dinarah gets in touch with the school and requests coming to visit; she learns about the conditions of entry, and its Gaianism value system; she finds it very odd and struggles understanding what is the point of such complexities; one of the things that perplexes her is the requirement for her to bring only a backpack with personal items, that she will be provided there with anything she needs other than medicines, including clothes and footwear.

Chapter 3

Dinarah gets in touch with Suri, a woman from Peritia who is happy to trade places for two weeks, provided that Dinarah pays for her airfare and a little spending money; she gets enraged by the nerve of this woman, but soon concludes that it will be easier to comply as it seems to be the only way in.

Chapter 4

Dinarah gets ready for the trip; she maintains correspondence with Janus and Rhea from Peritia, and by their request she runs an online self-assessment of alignment with the values of the community; her results show a very low alignment, and Rhea requests her to keep reading Gaianism, warning her that she might have a difficult time during her stay while the results of her self-assessment are of low alignment, but her results would continue changing as she learns more about the community.

Chapter 5

Dinarah flies to Fiji and must stay in Lautoka for a ferry to Savusavu in Vanua Levu that leaves the following morning; she chats with locals tourists at the hotel trying to find out information about Peritia, but no one seems to know anything about it.

Chapter 6

She arrives at at Savusavu in the late afternoon, after 11 hours in the ferry, and is greeted by Suri and Guanyu, a Peritian filmmaker; as agreed on initial negotiations, Dinarah hands some cash and return tickets to Suri, who jumps in the ferry back to Lautoka; Guanyu takes Dinarah on his motorcycle to Peritia, which is four hours ride; they arrive at Peritia late at night, and are greeted by Pawel, Janus and Rhea; they show her to one of the guests houses and bid her goodnight, giving her a tablet computer to find her way around; she jumps in the bed and falls asleep immediately.

Chapter 7

She wakes up early, it is still dark and stays in bed investigating with the tablet; she gets requested to create a profile by entering just her first name and a password, and then the tablet proceeds to run a tutorial that gets her quickly started with its main software; she learns that she can choose over 1500 activities to do that day, all kinds of seminars and courses and games and tutoring and volunteering; she begins setting up her user profile and browses through some profiles of Peritians; she notices that software has elements of popular solutions like Meetup, Facebook and LinkedIn, and it is sleek and sophisticated, and very responsive; with increasing daylight she begins to notice the features of her room: rustic and simple but beautifully adorned with a variety of artwork; it’s a hot morning, she gets up and takes a cold shower; she changes in fresh clothes and as she begins to unpack, hears knocking on the door.

Chapter 8

At the door is Rhea, she’s coming with a tray of fruit she says she just picked up; Dinarah bombards Rhea with questions, which Rhea addresses vaguely assuring her she will get a better understanding as she gets involved in the activities of the community, and asks her if she had seen them in the tablet and chosen any for the day, and that the 1500 or so activities she can see are only the ones available to her entry level, that there are about 2000 more if she develops certain skills and the trust of the community, and that there are about ten thousand people in it; Rhea gets a call and excuses herself, Dinarah eats the fruit and finds it much more flavoursome and perfumed than the fruit she’s accustomed to getting in London; she decides that getting involved through the activities in the system will be the easiest way to get a first-hand feel of the inner-workings of the community and to meet people, so she signs up for three activities: cherry-picking in the morning, then a massage after lunch, and finally a class of salsa in the evening, with plenty of time between the activities to walk around and chat with people.

Chapter 9

She gets information on her tablet about her first signed-up activity: cherry-picking; the software shows the time and location in the map where she’s meant to go, the people that will be there (along with their profiles, while she realises that the system shows only first names, many of which are very unusual), a brief bio of the coordinator of the activity, Chloris, who’s becoming a botanist and helps running the greenhouses; as she checks the map she realises that Peritia is squarish in shape about 2km each side, so it must be about 400 hectares, and that she has a good half hour walk to the cherry-picking site, so she should get going to get there in time; she leaves the guest-house and uses the tablet for navigation to the site, realising how comprehensive and sleek the software is but trying to pay attention to the surroundings instead of the tablet; as she leaves she notices there are a small group of guest houses, and surrounding the path there are gardens and greenhouses, and large buildings in the distance; she crosses a few people, some of them dressed as if they were going to a costume party, several of whom greeted her with a “hi” and a smile; when the navigator indicated that she had arrived she couldn’t find the entrance to the greenhouse, we walked around it and realised the entrance was on the other side, about two meters underground.

Chapter 10

Inside, the greenhouse was about 10 metres wide and 20 meters long, hot and humid, she expected to see the greenhouse full of cherry trees but found that not two bushes and trees seemed to be the same, which she found odd; she spotted four people around a bush, picking what seemed to be cherries, chatting in an animated manner; they greeted her and briefly introduced themselves; she mentioned it was her first time and they told her it was extremely easy: they just had to collect all the cherries from this tree and from a couple more in adjacent walipinis; she joins them picking the cherries and they tell her about walipinis and the other different types of greenhouses they have; she asks how much people generally spends collecting food and they tell her that the rule of thumb is “in general people collect about twenty thousand calories of food per week”, and that the city system tracks an estimate of calories consumed and collected, both to keep track of general production and consumption in the community, and also to create a notion of fairness, although some people collect a lot more and some a lot less than their fair share, but some people prefer doing, for example, planting or maintenance instead of harvesting; the trees are now 6 years old and this is the third time they produce cherries, expecting now to produce about 30kg of cherries each; each kg of cherries are about 600 calories, so for the three trees, between the four of them, they’d collect about 11,000 calories each in a couple of hours, so they’ll do it again in the next couple of days; she asks how come they know so much about cherries, they tell her they read the about it in the section of the activity signup before coming, they had no idea about any of that before coming today and laughed, and that it is worthwhile getting informed about the activity before doing it, in case there are problems and also to make it more meaningful and interesting; she asks why the trees are in separate greenhouse and they tell her that it is to minimise the chance and spread of diseases and explosions in predator populations; she asks where’s Chloris, and they say she organises many activities in the walipinis, but rarely participates in any, and that she’s a genius, very clever and what she does is very difficult and she’s done a remarkable job growing fruit and some vegetables; when they finish they take the harvest to the main buildings and they invite her to have lunch with them.

Chapter 11

On the way to one of the food stores, Janus shows up; she asks him how did he know where she’d be and he tells her that he could see she had joined this activity, and that everyone can see what anyone else has done, is doing and has signed up for, and who has given feedback; she tries to express some concern about privacy, but realises that perhaps this is not the time, and changes subject; Janus is excited with her being here and is anxious about showing her around, and his favourite things about the community; the fruit-pickers and Janus start exchanging ideas about what to show her first and they bring up part of the conversation at the greenhouse, and that they had invited her to have lunch with them; they approach a very large building (an Earthship X1000) buzzing with people, and enter from one of the sides, and left the cherries in a large wooden box close to the middle of the front internal garden, where there were several other trays and barrels of fruit; Janus mentioned that this was for snacking, and that those 90kg of cherries were likely going to disappear by the afternoon; they climbed the stairs to the upper level where there was a big cafeteria, with hundreds of people eating and chatting excitedly but not loudly; she could see a few people in the adjacent industrial kitchen working on the food, and a buffet; there were many options to choose from and one of the new friends asked her if she had checked the nutrition section of the system yet; she asked what was that and got explained that people used it as a guide to determine what to eat, to get optimal nourishment, from caloric requirements based on recent activity, to nutritional needs based on foods recently eaten; she gets a pumpkin soup, serving of potato and lentil mash, and salad; they keep chatting about various notions of nutrition and when they finish with their meals they bring the dishes and place them in trays for being washed; the cafeteria was clean and tidy, and everybody seemed to look and clean after themselves; the furniture was simple, foldable tables and chairs of cheap quality, but the place was adorned with many paintings and sculptures; there was no artificial lighting, there were several skylights on the roof lighting the place with bright sunlight; the cherry-pickers bade her goodbye as they left to courses they had signed up, and she stays chatting with Janus for a little while more about Peritia and its people; she realises it is time for her massage and asks Janus for directions; he’s pleased that she has already lined up for three activities and they arrange to meet back at night along with Rhea to organise her stay, ensure she has what she needs, and chat about the article she’s writing.


Chapter 12

Her appointment for a massage was at 1PM and it was four buildings away; while she was walking she wondered what it would consist of, why would anyone be giving massages; the massaging activity was upstairs in a section of the gym, and there was an instructor and about twenty people gathered in the room; they brought wooden boxes used as benches, and yoga mats, and clever simple things like tiny folding chairs used for holding the head level with the body; and everybody found a partner for the activity, which consisted not just getting a massage but learning to massage as well; she wasn’t pleased with this, and wasn’t at all comfortable with being semi-naked in front of all those people, but thought it too rude to leave and was curious, so decided to partner up with another woman who offered doing the massaging first; the trainer was soft spoken and seemed very experienced, and gave instructions that were easy to follow; Dinarah realised that being aware of what was being done to her, as she could hear what the trainer instructed, added a whole new dimension to being in the receiving end, and made her more conscious of the muscles being worked on, the tension, the release, the pressure points; she was told that this was a beginners class, and most of these people there today had arrived at Peritia not long ago (the woman giving her a massage was had only been there a couple of times before) but that most other people took massage seminars regularly and were all very experienced in many types of massage, which was considered an essential art form, medicine, and social bonding skill; the instructor was called Athena, she was a physiotherapist, and one of the yoga and massage therapy trainers, she approached a few times to correct technique and to show how this or that movement was done; after 45 minutes there was a 15 minute break, after which it was Dinarah’s turn to deliver the massage, which she had done informally to her mother and girlfriends for just a few minutes getting exhausted after, and here had no idea where to begin here and thought there was no way she’d handle this kind of intensive massage for 45 minutes; Athena quickly realised this and gave her some hints, and Dinarah was surprised at how easy it was after all, and how much difference it made knowing what to do, where and how to use palms and elbows, how to press with thumbs and hold, gradually releasing and massaging; when the class was over, Dinarah realised that she was not tired at all, and that she had definitely learned something valuable, plus she felt very her back very relaxed from the massage she had been given previously; she approached Athena and asked her if she could interview her for her article, and Athena accepted happily, and arranged to meet for lunch the following day; she had a few hours before the salsa class, and decided to go back to her room to change and write some notes.


Chapter 13

On the way back to the guesthouse, Dinarah passed in front of one of the dorms; she gets inside and walks around, notes the capsule beds, and goes upstairs where there was a group of people playing video games and another singing karaoke, while many were around in the sofas chatting, and some were baking in the kitchen; she engages someone in conversation and gets informed about the basics of the dorm, like the rules, the features of the capsule beds, typical hours for sleeping, etc.; back to her room, Dinarah collects some information and notices she’s got a an email from Janus, asking her if she needed anything and if she’s coming that night to a party; she then realises she has no appropriate clothes for a party, or even for the salsa class, and calls Janus with the tablet; he takes the call and she asks about clothes and he tells her that there is a selection of clothes for her in the closet, and that she can come to the clothing workshop where there’s a warehouse full of clothing for her to choose from; she checks in the closet and finds a couple of suitable dresses, although the three pairs of shoes there were flat; she takes a shower, writes some notes and realising she still has two hours until her class at five, she decides to have a nap since she feels very jet-lagged; she realises she doesn’t have a hair dryer so she wears a towel on her hair; she plugs the tablet to the wall with a cable that was on the desk, and notices that the wall only has USB plugs, one of which was used by the lamp in the bedside table; the tablet’s alarm clock was easy to figure out and she tests it to ensure it works, and then puts it to one and a half hours; she notices that she could set-up the time in either duodecimal or decimal systems, both looked the same but the decimal system had 100 minutes and seconds rather than the familiar 60 in the duodecimal one; she realises she’s overwhelmed with unexpected and unfamiliar elements; when she wakes up from the nap she gets dressed, to her surprise it fit very well and was very pretty and comfortable, and now realises why she was asked about body measurements in her profile, which she had filled-in reluctantly; as she gets out she notices there was a tray of tropical fruit left outside in the shadow, covered with a tulle bell, which she brings inside and cuts open two passionfruits to eat on the way.


Chapter 14

The dance class was at 6pm in one of the geodesic domes in the central park; there were about 40 attendees, and it seemed packed inside the dome, which had a wooden floor and didn’t require artificial lighting since its cover was made of light cloth with a few clear windows; everyone was dressed in simple, colourful clothes, no one was wearing high heels, and some women were wearing dresses and others trousers; the class was for beginners, most people there had done at most two or three salsa classes but many seemed experienced dancers; almost all people were slim, and they were all active, agile, cheerful and friendly, it felt as if they were all good friends from somewhere else, however they all had the same manner towards Dinarah, who they had never met before; most people looked in their thirties, and there were a few that looked in their early twenties and a few in their forties and fifties; the teachers introduced themselves as Francisca and Kitaro, who had been attending intermediate salsa classes for a few months and knew the basics quite well but were not great dancers, like the teachers in Dinarah’s salsa class in London; Dinarah wasn’t impressed and was looking for a more advanced class, since she was somewhat intermediate; the music was good, but she didn’t recognise any, and asking her dance partner she told her that some of it had been composed and recorded there or in the other two communities, and the rest was free and open source music, and that there was a commitment in the community to only use and listen to non-commercial music, and a much as possibly locally made; Francisca and Kitaro noticed Dinarah was quite advanced and approached her after the class, inviting her to come to intermediate lessons, and that if she wanted to teach, she could also get teaching training; she accepted coming to intermediate, and they recorded something in the tablet and said that she’d only see intermediate classes in the activities available for her; they ask her if she’s coming to the party, and tell her a bit about it, and that it will be in and around the central dome, and that they’ll be setting up this dome as a tea house, and that she can stay and help if she wants; she tells them she’s meeting Janus and Rhea for dinner, but she’ll come to the party later.


Chapter 15

Dinarah checks her tablet for messages and sees that Janus messaged her telling her he’s waiting with Rhea for her, and where to find them; they were in a small building similar to the guesthouses, which was a restaurant; there were about 60 people in it; the feel inside was similar to that of a restaurant Dinarah was used to, but there were no waiters, and the menu was in the tablet, and was ordered from there; Rhea tells Dinarah that there are three restaurants in the community, and are run by people doing gastronomy courses; the queues to get in the restaurants are two to six weeks, and there’s no way to jump the queue or trade places, but one can book for future guests, as they’d done with her; luckily they got a booking for her first day! the dishes available that night were few, and quite exotic; one of the kitchen helpers came with the dishes, very elegantly presented; the food was exquisite, delicate and refined; there was a piano concert playing, artwork everywhere, dim lights; she tried an alcoholic beverage made out of mangoes and sweet potatoes, which tasted somewhat like cider; they ask Dinarah about the article, what are her thoughts about the angle she wanted to achieve, its length, who are the target audience, etc; Dinarah replies to some of the questions, but asks back why are they so anxious about it, and if they’re worried of the impact it may have; they tell her that this is the first time, to their knowledge, that a major media would cover the project, and that even though they have a large following in social media, that kind of exposure is a delicate matter, as it can go very well but also very bad; they tell her that getting people to understand what Peritia is about is not a simple feat, as it is very controversial and can cause people to fear or strongly oppose it, and they’re both trying to fly under the radar but at the same time trying to get as much support as they can manage, and that social media has been great but also slow; they tell her that they’re getting ready for a new “mitosis”; she asks what do they mean, and they explain that each community member is committed to promote and help create a new one every two years or so, and that this has happened twice but the second community had not managed to do so two years ago, so there were currently three communities instead of the intended four, but they’re all in the final stages of organisation of three more, and would likely happen in six to eight weeks, but that they still need a few more thousand participants to finally commit, and that they’d like to know if they can rely on the article to help with this, but they’d need to know the article’s angle and audience to determine if it will be positive or negative; they tell her that most of the organisation and promotion of the new communities is done via word of mouth, through closed groups in social media, generally through invitation and with trusted references; they tell her that it’s no secret, that if she knows what to look for she’ll find the information online, places to apply, details about the new communities, but it is not heavily advertised to help with keeping away from trouble, troublemakers, and tabloid press, and that they have found very useful being referred as hippies because it helped keeping potential troublemakers out of the picture; Dinarah listened with attention to what her new friends were saying, and made a few questions about the new communities and they told her that it'll be better if she gets to know and experience this one instead of trying to understand about the new ones conceptually; they all had a superb pudding for dessert and got ready to go to the party; Rhea explained that there were big parties every three to five days, and small parties pretty much every day, and that they were usually at night, with live music and dancing, that each party had a specific musical genre but psytrance was a very popular choice, and that people used it for express themselves artistically, show their performance art, socialise, connect and interact sexually, and that it was very tribal, a great way to exercise frequently and to let go of ego and be in the moment, in a meditative, experiential way, and a great way to wind down before going to sleep; Dinarah asked if there were drugs involved and they said that a few people would try to enhance their experience using alcohol or herbs or mushrooms, but that the great majority of people were sober; they brought the plates to the kitchen and placed them in the washing tray, and thanked the cooks and praised their meals; Dinarah took the opportunity to check on the cooks and the kitchen, and was impressed at the cheerfu
l.

Characters

• Dinarah: English/Bengali, journalist for The Guardian, intrepid, sensual, sharp
• Diana: Welsh, biologist who knows a great deal about the local fauna, smart, idealistic
• Selene: Brazilian, artist, coordinator of one of the therapy groups, wise, gentle
• Athena: Greek, athlete, studying physiotherapy and nutrition, strong-willed, dualistic
• Mark: American, martial artist, aggressive, trouble maker, disliked
• Guanyu: Chinese, filmmaker, journalist, musician, bitter, perfectionist, sophisticated
• Jenny: Australian, an artist and cook, creative, inventive, spiritual, emotional
• Pawel: Polish, linguist, Esperanto teacher, involved in general coordination, friendly, private
• Janus: Swedish, one of the founders, wood carver, hacker, childlike, nurturing, gaianist
• Rhea: Canadian, one of the general administrators, gaianist, maternal, revered
• Daoji: Chinese, chemist, martial artist, philosopher, musician, poet
• Fortunata: Spanish, writer, yogi, musician, minimalistic, soft, romantic, airy, gaianist