“My name is Ling. I live in 2100, and my hologram has been sent to 2025 as a warning. The decisions you make now will affect my life. I hope that seeing the outcomes of your choices will help you to choose wisely.”

As with so many others of my generation, I became obsessed with watching Ling. I knew every freckle on her olive skin and every expression of her cherished face. She filled me with wonder and even reverence, although my parents tried to discourage it. They loved Ling as well, but in more of a practical way because she represented hope for the future. I loved her as a heroine or a pop star, and that made them nervous. My mother tried to explain it to me.

“Ruby, Ling is not a real person for you. It is unlikely you will even be alive when she is born. The best thing you can do for her is to focus on your school-work and gain the skills and knowledge to make the best world possible for her to live in. That’s why her hologram was sent here, not so that you can worship her like a god.”

But I was twelve and I was a fanatic. I was not the only one; there were many of us, including plenty of adults. I had posters of her on my wall, alongside the actual pop stars. I read all the theories and opinions about her and her world and I watched her whenever I could. Her movements were televised worldwide twenty-four hours a day. The coverage started from the shopping centre in Hong Kong where her image had first appeared, and as she started to crawl and then walk, a camera crew followed the hologram wherever it went. This was not always easy, but her fans demanded it.

We watched her teeth come, her colds and her first words. We weren’t sure what they were, because of course we couldn’t hear them, but there was much speculation amongst lip-reading experts that she was speaking English. Fortunately for me this turned out to be true, otherwise I would have had to spend some considerable time learning Cantonese.

Naturally, nobody could interact with Ling and we never saw her mother or any other people or objects from her world. We watched her eat, but we could not see the food. Eventually we grew familiar with her strange solo mimes and we became adept at interpreting these performances. Impassioned debates were waged about what kind of toy she had been holding yesterday, or to whom she had been talking on Monday morning.

In her fourth year, it became apparent that something was going wrong in Ling’s world. She began to cry far more often and frequently appeared to cower and defend herself against some kind of attack. She also seemed to be eating less and started to lose weight. I was distraught. How could we help her if we did not know the problem? The media discussions began to address the fact that although the world was enthralled with Ling, up until now her presence seemed to have had zero effect on any big decisions being made in our societies. If the people of the future had hoped that Ling would inspire fairer, kinder, more responsible civilisations, the experiment was so far a failure. 

Greed, ignorance and fear were still the dominating forces in most countries around the world.

The other debate was over whether trying to changing our present world could actually have any effect on Ling’s world anyway. She was already here as a hologram, so didn’t that mean the future was set, destiny was sealed and whatever we did now was what fate had decided for us? That was an impossible question to answer, although many people tried. Some said that if people from the future had thought Ling could make a difference, they must have known something we don’t. They must have believed that their present could be changed by the decisions of the past, otherwise why send her? Others thought that was ridiculous. The complexity of that question was too much for me, but if there was even a tiny possibility I could do anything for my Ling I was willing to give it a try.

By this time I was sixteen, and although I was still in love with the precious toddler, my fixation had become a little less all-encompassing. I was an avid music fan and I was also trying to concentrate more on my studies, mainly to placate my parents. However, now I understood that they were right about one thing. She was not here to be adored. She was here to be helped and I was not going to stand by and let her suffer. After ranting at my schoolmates for a while, five of us decided to start an organisation called, “A Fairer World for Ling”. Our campaigns included, but were not limited to: ending war; preventing poverty; protecting all life; and stopping police brutality. Somehow, I was going to protect my hologram baby.

In the beginning the organisation was mainly occupied with school-yard discussions, in which we vehemently agreed with each other. Next came online petitions, Internet memes, speeches in school assembly and attending marches and rallies. We made a banner and attracted a few new members. Soon, we spoke at the rallies ourselves and did some radio and web interviews. The media liked us. We were not the only group that had formed to help Ling, but we were possibly the youngest.

Now my parents were unquestionably proud. I was following in their social-change footsteps and they had many ideas and plenty of advice. They thought we should hang a big banner from a bridge or try to block a coal train. I told them these methods were outdated and ineffective, which may have been true, but they also sounded a little scary to me. Despite my devotion to Ling, I had never considered getting arrested or hurt for her before. Others were not so timid and a wave of activism started to swell around the world. It was not too long before our little group became caught in this uprising, and we realised creating a fair and healthy world was worth a few risks and a little sacrifice.

When our government bowed to pressure from the airlines and oil companies and finally decided to close interstate passenger rail services, many of us were outraged. Apart from increasing carbon dioxide emissions and further threatening our environment, it would of course make life harder for those with less money and even easier for a few obscenely wealthy airline tycoons and oil magnates. Our frustration reached a tipping point and we broke in through the back fence of Coolangatta airport and used bicycle locks to attach ourselves and our banner onto an aeroplane. As the policeman cut into the lock on my neck with his angle grinder, I thought of Ling’s skinny body and felt incredibly sad, but for the first time I could remember, in no way conflicted about my course of action. I knew this was what had to be done.

The course of my life had been set.

There is no doubt that Ling has changed our world and our world has changed Ling, although nobody fully understands the way in which this has worked. After her difficult early years, things started to get better for her when she was around eight, at the same time as there was a breakthrough in political vision in our own time. As many leaders started to be more far-sighted, Ling became a thriving and cheerful child for a couple of years, until the Chinese war broke out, and suddenly she was emaciated, sullen and dressed in rags. The pressure on the Chinese government, from both inside and outside the country, eventually and remarkably succeeded. They peacefully retreated from Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong and Japan. Almost overnight, Ling appeared as a healthy, well-dressed girl on the verge of puberty. Later things turned ugly again and she even seemed to be dying of malaria, until another positive turnaround in her late teens.

My beloved hologram had proven to be an instant marker for the direction in which our civilisations were headed. You might think (I certainly assumed) that this would quickly solve society’s problems. If the outcome was there in front of your face, how could you not make the right decision? But it wasn’t that simple. Many people still managed to deny all the evidence and continued to act out of short-term self-interest. Even with the personification of the future on all our television screens, there were always those who refused to acknowledge that the world had to change, or just didn’t care. Still, those of us with open eyes were very determined and gradually situations improved in most societies around the world. With increasing frequency, political decisions began to benefit the common good instead of large corporations or wealthy mates.

“A Fairer World for Ling” achieved many victories and became a major lobby group in the south-east Asian region. The world seemed to be generally on the right track. A few months ago, when Australia announced it would finally cease all fossil fuel extraction, I had the feeling a chapter was closing. Ling was always central to my life. My first consideration was always, what would Ling think or how might this influence Ling? She had become an elegant and seemingly gentle but strong woman of twenty-five and I believed it was time to let go of her a little, although I knew she would always remain important to me. The hologram was slowly achieving its purpose and I had played my part in the plan. Now that I was approaching forty, I was tired of the constant struggle. It was getting more difficult to keep smiling as I fought the same battles over and over again. After over twenty years in the organisation’s core team, I decided to take a break from social change work and pursue other interests.

It was time to leave activism behind and embark on a new life.

After lying in a hammock for a week, I took a part-time job in a bar, and started to learn the bass guitar. Music was my only real interest apart from changing the world. I discovered people outside the organisation were quite different. For one thing, nobody knew me and they did not treat me with the same automatic respect and deference that I guess I’d become used to. That was a good thing. It would stop me becoming complacent and force me to prove myself on new bases. Also, people were generally more relaxed, and talked about trivial things which I knew nothing about, such as sport or movie stars. Sometimes they did things which would scandalise my former colleagues. They didn’t recycle properly or used violent language, and I realised I had to suppress my judgemental reflexes sometimes. I was pleasantly surprised however, that just like those within the organisation, the people I met generally seemed to act for the common good rather than individual gain. I guessed that was Ling’s influence. My life was changing, but I felt the thread running through it. I practised my guitar diligently, and when I thought I was good enough, the local band I chose to try out for was called “The Voice of Ling”. It was not so easy to turn my back on a lifelong passion after all.

The audition was coming up, but I decided I needed a day off from my finger exercises. I packed some water and fruit and set off to explore a national park near the beach where I live. Probably the biggest and best difference I’d noticed since leaving the organisation, was the pace of my days. I now had time to daydream, do puzzles and take long walks. My mind was calm and slow. The sun warmed my back as I followed the rough track along the edge of the cliff face. The air was cool and the trees were full of tiny birds. I was so immersed in the flow of nature around me, that I ignored the signs about unstable land and ventured to the edge of the cliff to admire the bay.

Of course it collapsed beneath me! How could I be so careless? I must have let my mind slow down too much! Now my ankle is bleeding and I’m stuck alone on this hidden ledge with no phone coverage. It’s a miracle I’m alive and at least I have a few provisions, but why didn’t I just stay at home today? Or at least heed the signs! One thing I know is that if I was still in the organisation, I wouldn’t have had time for bush-walking, so I definitely wouldn’t be stuck here now. Is this a sign that I’m on the wrong path, or is there some enigmatic purpose for my being here? Or am I about to die for a meaningless coincidence of bad luck and stupidity. No. I won’t let that happen.