The Slow Death of Europe

Part One-2

‘We are not supposed to have those,’ replied Hugo, ‘but, I suppose, if he is family.’

George ignored the remark and continued, ‘he was something to do with the Corporation at a high level but retired in the early days, back in AI03, I think. He was given a fantastic top floor apartment in an old converted warehouse as a life reward. You should see the views from there. Right across the Complex and he has the whole floor so it’s a 360 degree panorama. And besides, my subject is history and he has lived in it, so I have learned a lot from him’ George watched as the supervisor walked into the room. ‘I will take you there one day, you can meet the old man, he is full of stories’

Hugo, George and the others straightened to face the last man into the room.

‘I would like that,’ Hugo whispered. ‘Seen much of Will?’ he asked.

‘On the hydro this morning, he got Woking for his Industrial Placement.’ George replied.

‘I saw it, just seconds along the line, I will make sure I am on the same hydro as you both tomorrow, it would be good to see him again and…’ Hugo tailed off.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ interrupted the Graduate Supervisor, ‘and welcome to your first day of contribution, the first day of your working lives and, of course, the first day of the rest of your lives.

‘What a t**t,’ whispered George. ‘I hope he is not going to talk in clichés all morning.’

Hugo ignored him and listened alertly. ‘My name is Vincent Baptist and I have been the Intake Supervisor at this department for the last twenty years. There is nothing I do not know about what goes on around here and so if you need anything at all then I am the man to ask. I will be supervising you until I am withdrawn, which is in ten year’s time’

George listened as he surveyed the other graduates. They were all of the same age and all of them, like himself and Hugo, would have been assessed for this contribution at the same time and received a variation of the same training and preparation at one of the five hundred and twenty academies throughout the Corporation.

There were marginally more young women than men and he realised that, apart from Hugo, he knew none of them. George’s gaze stopped and rested upon a beautiful, brown-skinned girl with shiny, black hair who was staring up at the supervisor, listening intently. George found himself staring at her. She glanced quickly towards him and then back again as a small smile, which began in those brown eyes, briefly lit up her face. George quickly turned back to the supervisor and realised he had not been listening. He pulled gently on his ear with his thumb and forefinger and forced himself to concentrate.

‘You haven’t missed anything,’ whispered Hugo. ‘And yes, she is cute. I noticed her earlier.’

’What did he say?’ hissed George.

‘Just some crap about where the sports centre is, the dining room, overnight suites and everything else. It’s all in the induction PDF anyway, I read it earlier. Don’t worry about it.’ The supervisor’s words became audible to George again as he tuned back in.

‘And so, as you know, there is very little I can tell you about what you will be doing here. You are all fully trained, completely prepared and can go to your work zones right away, if you like. However, for those of you who are interested I can offer you a tour of the archives. Here you will see books. Real books as they were first printed back in the days when we used to use paper for everything.’

Some of the graduates started chattering excitedly. They had never seen a book before. They had all been recalled during the first years of the Incorporation and replaced by a brand new updated digital version that was uploaded automatically to everybody who handed their old battered, original copies into the recycling facilities.

Edgar, on the other hand, had an old chest full of them in his storage area back at the warehouse. He had shown George once, but hadn’t let him read any since they were considered to be against company policy to own, when everybody had the new digital copies safely on their hy-dev bookshelves. The Main Board’s Public Relations Department had sent an email to the entire corporation reminding everybody that paper was a valuable resource that needed to be preserved and recycled. Although George had never been told of what it was being used for instead. He had never seen any, apart from the old, tattered copy of a story called Treasure Island that Edgar had once, briefly, let him see before locking it back into the chest with what appeared to be a couple of hundred others.

The supervisor’s voice faded back into range again as he announced, ‘so, remember that the old democratic governments of the past encouraged fiction writers to make up names, places and situations, for reasons best known to themselves, and it is our job, in these new, enlighten times, to correct some of those details. The Main Board want an accurate record of history, not the fictionalised version the old regimes used to teach its subjugated populations, such as your grandfathers and great grandfathers. When you log on to your work zones your will all receive an introductory memo and an induction PDF. Once you have read this your first novel, chosen from your specialist subjects that were identified during ASPP, will download for you to begin correcting. Ladies and gentlemen, please remember there have been tens of millions of books published over the last, corrupt, five hundred years or so. They all need to be corrected and then preserved. It will take many of us many years and certainly, for you, it will be a lifetime’s work. Work that is well worth doing if it means that future generations will have a complete and accurate record of The Corporation’s real history, I am sure you would agree.’

Some of the group gasped eagerly. After all, correcting history was a very important career to have been chosen for. For these graduates there was no better way of spending their entire working lives than reading books and making the odd improvement or deletion here and there to make sure they was perfect, accurate and that they reflected true history. All of them would also be given time to write their own books for publication by The Corporation. They were all now professional writers and editors and would, themselves, become part of the future’s own history. It was an exciting time.

‘And finally, for those of you would like to see the archive, for those of you who would like to see the old obsolete format, the way books used to be produced, then please follow me.’

George joined the back of the group and watched the dark-skinned beauty move slowly in front of him. From where he was he could almost smell her. He tried to get a little closer. The supervisor spoke again.

‘Remember everyone, these are not all of the books ever written. The Corporation has about a five hundred departments like this all across the regions and other books are being corrected, or translated into Albion from old, dead, languages by thousands of literary workers just like you. Although all of the books you are about to see,’ he added proudly, ‘were updated and corrected right here in this very building. It is a historic achievement by those working here both past and present.’

Hugo could feel the sense of excitement among the group. As they stopped at the door to the archive George brushed arms with the girl with the dark eyes and, for a brief moment, felt her naked skin upon his. At that moment he felt excitement of an entirely different kind to the rest of the group. They entered the climate controlled archive room and along the shelving sat lines and lines of what the graduates immediately recognised as the old books. But they alone, among all the company members, knew this for only the graduates of the Literature Updating Curriculum (LUC) had been taught about books and magazines. Graduates from the Agriculture & Farming, or Industrial, Curriculum’s didn’t need to know anything about hardback and paperback books.

There had been nothing illegal about them in their day, but they were simply objects from a time long ago and nobody had used them, or pens, pencils, or paper for over forty years. Instead, the tap, tap tapping of the hydro-device was all members relied upon in the year AI43. Every member had been allocated their own on the first day of Pre-Training that was replaced each year with an updated model.

The grads marvelled at the sight. Some gasped while others simply stared. A bold few stepped forward and ran their fingers along the creased and fading spines and experienced the unique sensation of fanning a few pages. The girl with the dark eyes appeared to be close to tears, as if she had waited her entire life for a moment like this and had not been disappointed.

‘This may be her first orgasm,’ Hugo whispered.

George looked at him and ignored the remark. To the right of the archive was an open plan area with hundreds, if not thousands, of neatly lined desks, each with a chair and a thin, modern plasma screen of about twenty inches wide that their hy-devs would automatically connect to once they were placed upon any of the desks.

The supervisor turned to address his new recruits.

‘Ladies, gentlemen, once again you will remember learning of how fiction writers of past generations such as Dickens, Twain and Nabokov had made up names for regions that they called countries. And then they all copied each other. The Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare, for example, called the Western Division of Albion, that we are all part of today, a country called England and even gave it a central city with the name of London. Emile Zola then borrowed the idea and referred to the Western Division of Gaul as France and gave it a central city called Paris. Mark Twain made up a place he called America, a name he gave the ten Western Divisions across the Atlantic Sea. It was a fashion among fiction writers to provoke and sensationalise their stories but it wasn’t long before scurrilous and ill-meaning people, wrestling for power and control of these lands, adopted their ideas and presented them to uneducated people as facts. They re-wrote their history.’

George appeared a little confused by this revelation. He thought John Bunyan had invented England, not William Shakespeare, in the first book ever published way back in the year AD1678 of the old calendar. That’s what Edgar had once told him although, when he tried to look for it at the sss Library, there was no trace to be found on the search archive. Mind you, he couldn’t remember the title. Something about a pilgrim was all he could recall. The supervisor continued without interruption.

‘They then used those uneducated people in the respective regions, your ancestors, to fight wars with each other in an attempt to control or defend these so called countries. They motivated the masses with what they called ‘national pride’ or ‘national defence.’ A little like the way the Middle East is organised today with warring nations using religion to provoke violence towards each other. Yes indeed, Shakespeare, Twain and the rest of them have a lot to answer for. We should all be grateful that when the Main Board took over the running of the Corporation they banned all religion throughout the Divisions. Here in the Western Corporation we have nothing to go to war over with each other and can all work together for the good of ourselves and The Corporation. Only a fool would allow these fiction writers to create an environment for the greed and avarice of democracy to raise its ugly head again. And in those days mankind was never short of fools. It was all revealed as a sham anyway. If voting had actually changed anything for the better then nobody would have been allowed to do it anyway.’