Abandoned world: the Awareness
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Again several men rose from their seats and shouted "Execute him," "Destroy the wretch," "Hang him." Peyton pretended to look out over the hall, while he watched his clumps who were defeated – all of them listening to him, waiting to see what decision he would voice. Waiting to see what time would now come on the station.
– I'm afraid it's the only right decision… As hard as it is to make, we have to nip this contagion in the bud… We have to show that our intentions are more serious than ever. That we will fight for our victory in this battle… We must execute him! And to prevent this from happening again, we must properly evaluate this crime… After all, an attempt on a manager's life is a brutal act. It's
not just a violation of some rule. It is a threat to our existence. It is treason against our world, against our nation. It is treason against ourselves… And it should be called accordingly… Treason....
– Execution for treason! – shouted one of the clackers, and immediately several supported him with a shout of "Yes!". People were driven to a frenzy in which they could not deny that something was going wrong, or not the way they wanted it to. They only began to want to agree with everything, to be in a common rhythm, to be part of the whole that was behaving right. Right means safe, because the new understanding of the world order included first of all the preservation of one's own life. Which now depended primarily on following the logic established by the rules.
Rules that could change, as they had just done. Which meant that the only way to remain intact, to stay alive, was to be compliant.
– And if anyone still thinks that's too harsh, let him have his say now! – Peyton thundered, throwing his pen on the podium table. At the same moment the clackers instantly froze, and there was a deafening silence in the hall, which lasted only a few seconds. Peyton defiantly looked around the hall, imagining that everyone could see his confident and formidable silhouette from their seats, and then solemnly proclaimed:
– So it's unanimous. Execution for treason.
Chief of
security
Bill Sterling was an elder. He was also chief of security. And he was also the only one of all the elders who was himself in charge of one of the sections on the station. And in all the time he'd possessed all of that, the thing he'd learned the most was restraint. It was the cornerstone of his whole policy, his whole system for staying on top.
There was no need to inconvenience the other elders. That was the first point of restraint…
He sometimes wished he could take on the task of cleaning up what was going on in the Supreme Council of Elders. At least once to clean it of those people who just waste other people's time, take other people's place, use other people's powers, and do nothing in their place. As much as he wanted to interfere, he would not allow himself to do so.
You can't show citizens that you're doing things on your own. That's the second rule. And for his ostentatious duties, he had Tannet Knight working just fine, listed as a deputy and showing up in person whenever someone important from security was needed. Tannet was no-nonsense and executive, which was why he'd held the job for as long as Sterling had been Elder and Chief of Security.
The third rule kept him in check. Restraint as a character trait of a man with power. How many women he wanted to fuck at the station and in what positions. To change every day one girl for another, and sometimes to have sex with several at the same time. He wanted to do it, but Sterling didn't do it, because he considered it dangerous for his position. Dangerous for his self- perception, because it would be easy to go off the rails. That's why he slept with only one girl at a
time and didn't change her at least once every two years. For two years no one would think anything bad about him, and certainly not say anything bad about him. After all, others in his place would not have observed it, and he had not long to live. He's already in his seventh decade.
As for the fourth rule of restraint, it wasn't for him, it was for everyone else. Everyone must be restrained. Order is achieved in this way. As long as people don't overstep their boundaries, then safety is achieved all around. Everyone knows these boundaries, knows what will happen for violating them, and, thinking with their own head, they do not violate it. They restrain themselves.
All of these rules had been in place for twenty-four years, and what-not, but Bill Sterling wasn't about to change them. They're time-tested. And no one had ever come up with a better
one… But then it turned out that the boundaries themselves were changing. And they were being changed by a complicated term: treason.
He'd read about such a term in the books that were forbidden to the public, but that the elders and section leaders had in their possession. Those books, of course, were determined by the Curator, but there was no doubt that something of value would still fall into their hands. And Sterling had two favorite books: Hanni Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, especially the part about totalitarianism itself, and Jean Delarue's History of the Gestapo.
In the first one, he picked up on the fact that people tend to idealize. It doesn't matter what… What they are offered. Even the most disgusting thing can be served with the right sauce and it will be devoured by the masses. You can say anything and say anything you want – what matters is the subtext that is emphasized to the masses. And thus, the process of execution and the process of pardon are absolutely no different from each other. Except for the name. People do not care what happens to someone, they may be more or less involved in the general process, but they will not oppose it. All this, of course, applied to large masses. As for individual personalities, it is exactly the same with them, only in the opposite direction – there will always be someone who is against it.
There will always be someone who is against it. Again, it does not matter whether it is a question of narrowing or expanding the rights of all others – there will always be someone who will tell everyone that it is done wrong. And relying on these initial data, Bill Sterling has identified for himself two stages into which what can be considered the achievement of absolute power over the masses, called totalitarianism, is divided.
The first stage – individuals, opponents, can act on the basis of generally known norms of law, and sometimes exceeding them. This stage is very important in order to show the masses that there was once an option in which the system is not working properly, the system is weak, and the masses themselves are not safe.