Here & Now 180: Where is everyone?

Lismore. Tuesday, 4.38pm

It’s quiet. I hear only the sounds of the bush garden. The verandah outside the university classroom is deserted. A few minutes ago, students from many places around this wee planet were gathered, post English lesson, in noisy conversation, creating an excited human hubbub amongst the cicada caroling. Now there is only quiet.

As if.

Students do not gather in noisy conversation anymore; they sit in cyber isolation, staring at their enhanced palms, their thumbs dancing like naked fat ballerinas over a small, shiny stage, their minds as disconnected to the physical reality around them as is possible without dying.

It’s quiet here, now the students are gone.

It was quiet when the students were here.

A dozen students were hunched over their phones. Each was a solar system separated from the other by the silent noisiness of cyberspace. Each was a planet caught in a blue sun’s gravity, spinning round it. I passed by the students, a smile at the ready in case of acknowledgement, but they didn’t see me. I was a phantom; the ghost who walks by.

Now the verandah is empty, the quietness makes more sense. But I hear a scrabbling sound: A water dragon, from the little creek nearby, darts across the pebbles barely a metre from me. The water dragon stops, cocks its head, and looks at me. I am no invisble spirit to it. It sees me. We share the here and now. We are Earthlings.

I flop heavily into one of the plastic seats and put the dregs of my coffee on the plastic table. Cicadas vibrate the air. This university has planted a lot of trees in its grounds. They’re a haven for wildlife, and perfect for peaceful reflection as you eat lunch. But mostly the students sit here at these plastic tables, eating lunch with one hand as the other keys them into the virtual world they have missed for an hour or two.

The coffee is instant and cold (left over from lunch), but it tastes good.

I certainly don’t blame the students for their smartphone obsession. I guess I was the same way with books when I was that age. I’m not even sure there’s anything wrong with this digital distraction – but it disturbs me that we are all moving away from the world, just when it needs us.

Yes, we are leaving the world behind; leaving it to its own fate; abandoning it to the exploiters and sociopaths as we move into our new web-worlds, logging into little bubbles of make-believe, which may very well outlast the real world, depending on battery life.

The university is quiet. Except for the cicadas buzzing like terra tinnitus, screaming for attention on behalf of the trees and forests, of the creeks and oceans, of the water dragons and living things: ‘Is anyone there? Is anyone there? Is anyone there? Is…’

No.

Well, I am. (But I will leave soon, drive home and check my emails.)

I hear a voice. It laughs and chats. It approaches.

Could there be another person in this emptiness? Someone sharing the moment?

No.

A young bloke with white cords trailling from his ears passes by the verandah, talking. He’s alone. He strolls past me and the water dragon, his mouth speaking, his eyes blind to us – and is gone.

Somewhere inside the building a phone rings. Outside, a beep-beep-beep signals a vehicle reversing, and a weet-weet-weet indicates the territorial claim of a noisy miner. A palm frond smashes onto the creek stones, sending the water dragon scampering back under the verandah.

And always the cicadas. (I think they live in my head.)

The emptiness is deafening.

Will the world still exist when no-one hears it?