At 75,000 feet Trish stirs her cup of crap, and looks plainly out of the
window on to the streets below. She was a journalist covering the third great
council,
Sitting in her red
dress, she jotted things on her typewriter, dreaming like all of us do of other
things, as people talk without really listening to themselves, if ever some
quisling benefited, drowning in a sea of paper, of meaningless data.
If this information is somehow some sort of threat to her what She
likes, what she consumes, what she objectifies, she does not care about that knowledge.
This only presents her with a better opportunity in allowing those who
undoubtedly possess some ability to acknowledge her needs and her desires. They
did pay her to pass on this slush to the public at large, to give them hard
evidence that they are somehow participating in the decision making process.
She was a consumerist, she only wanted things that made her happy, she knew
well that by telling people about what was happening they found themselves
quite regularly under the illusion that by the basis of having an opinion on a
matter that they had some sort of right, and if gathered together could somehow
influence this process. So powerless they protest at every scandal until they
elect a successor. This successor will continue this process, this wielding of
power to the benefit of those this person owes personal and sensual dependence
upon, and to the people they throw scraps of things to ask if they are doing
well.
She knew their lies, propaganda and manipulation. This propaganda they
fed the people so they would not know the true extent of their powerlessness. In
high places they sniggered and whispered the tax-profits must flow, to pay for
us.
She would not curse them as corruptible rather non-corruptible in that
the malice of their spirit was pure self-interest and this could not be diminished.
So like all people their self-interest is power and the maintenance of such,
and so they fear us. She knows that they must always strive to control us, and
to herd us into the ballet box to sign your name next to theirs.
Fans whir, and she watches the events unfold, words and numbers, favours
and gifts granted the great and good that plot the lives of us unaware,
oblivious almost to, unaffected in the extreme, by any who happens to be
watching them, finding themselves almost
surprised that they are being played attention too. Still darker matters, are
by course not discussed here, only the plain facts of day to day and what is
true and fair of course, and then we all shout fore, and hurrah.
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I suppose we were swimming in a sea of gaseous, anyhow that is what they
said, the third segment of the fifth division in the council of the third trade
federation was meeting at 90,000 feet, to discuss the coming quotas and deals,
and with them as always went the Quasar. The great Religious Scientists, who
study of Physics and Great Universal oblivion, brought them closer to the true
essence.
Dalia’s houses-----------------------
Obscure litany, Immensity slight.
Mutable bucolic largesse, aggrandisement,
Stuck for feet, sleight, of
rampaging whores,
Fleeing to the basement for ever mores, CORECUT
On several previously inhospitable planets attempts had been made to
begin the process of terra-forming a planet. The process was in its preliminary
phases, but they need Oxygen and materials. This was good news for the trade
federation as it meant more shipping tariffs. On several planets in the Dargo
cluster small domes had been built and working population of five hundred to a
thousand attempted to begin a desperate process.
The science has not been tested but the planets are going to be seeded
with a Nitrogen atmosphere then oxygen is going to be added this will hopefully
create the conditions for these planets to accumulate heat and be able to
support running water. We still have soil samples preserved from the Old earth.
The process is designed to take nine hundred years. The costs are enormous.
There are many who think that this is a ‘white elephant’ that resources,
especially oxygen should be preserved.
It was always item one on the agenda, new ice deposits. Recently the
list had been dwindling to nothing. If they did find anything new there would
be over two hundred year journey times. They talked of building a ship and
sailing in some random direction in the hope of finding a new rock to cling to.
They talked of expeditions but what with the cost in oxygen and the length of
time any signal sent could be detected and in what time zone that signal would
be detected, they decided against this as nothing other than a last resort.
New schemes were also being developed to suck the gas out of gas giants
in order to transform their gases somehow into oxygen; more likely fuel for our
escape ships, he made a mental note to mention this to the appropriate concerns.
Yes we can send out probes but what with a five hundred errors per journey per
average can we ever trust what the sensors say. Yes we know that the Scientists
have results from sensors saying they have found water, but in what time zone,
and as the result of which fault? Is it a smudge on your oscilloscope again?
We have a thousand years to discuss these things, if the population
remains constant, and dome diffusion rates on Experimental Material Jiao- 536b
continue to be maintained. I will certainly be dead by then, and what if
material wealth does not trouble me to implant myself to some uncomfortable
ship on a ruin to nowhere when I can join in the worldly comforts of my high
rank in society. Live in comfort now, death will come soon enough.
In tumbling meetings like these, he tried to suppress a yawn, blinking
at some indifferent interest. All he really needed to get by was to keep
looking at the screen. A spokesman for the Inevitability of Finite organisation
was arriving at the only conclusion which could be reached, that life on the
asteroids was not sustainable. They were arguing for continuing the vital
distribution of resources to the research and development of the planetary
colonisation board. Several planets had been found………..
He had heard this before and he never quite believed it. He knew that
they had almost five thousand years worth of present and future supplies of
Ice. The money should be used to find more advanced propulsion technology. This
was a large asteroid belt; surely there was more ice to be found. He felt sure
that the process of terra-forming even part of a planet was far too complex and
likely to bring about the demise of their ever fragile existence on the
asteroids.
He can see orange flares reflected far away from an arc in the curvature
of the dome as near distant ships charge their engines. They slowly become
visible as they move to dock; they slip into the meagre atmosphere of
Cassandra’. Still the mind tended to wander to distant windows as the chatter
droned on…….
There freighter’s had arrived a week ago, gigantic translucent
rectangles, hovering around the tip of the dome, huge banners hung from their
sides, twelve suns and five Gas Giants. A gesture of the grandiose and
grotesque designed to impress and awe the ignorant.
The mercantile corporations which supplied the huddled masses, honoured
in their position. The Seventeen houses of Sand. With there greenhouses and menageries, you
could call them farms, orbiting in their glass rectangles at the right distance
from their star. Algae silos from the underground farms on Alamosa, and variety
of Fish from the Sundry of Quokkas. The quality of the produce could never
match expectations, they were cheated of its true flavour and its homely
sustenance because it has been cultured artificially, so these were named the
houses of Sand, for people long ago lost any great interest in food, and preferred
to tune into the spheres. For such torpor was the spectacle of the Festival of the
Golden Sun Rose devised.
He was tuning out; he was not listening to what the other man was
saying, he was perfectly sure it was fairly similar in tone to what he had
said. Undoubtedly the women after him would say something almost similar and we
would go on until it was his turn to say something similar again.
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The Quasar was worried about something. They had left three days ago.
Their departure was always the same. Lifts and jets and other such mystical
techniques fired their transparent pods into space, and the people would watch
them from their towers. Blue lights like fireflies, fairy lights just beyond
the dome. The pale blue phosphorous calmed them as they chanted and meditated,
or so they perhaps claimed. He wondered what symbolism was this. What scheme
pervaded these people for whom sense and reason did not signify their role as
cathartic for the deep depression that lay upon these people. This they had
perhaps reclaimed from nature, evolved into some new life form that floated
rather than walked and choked in the meagre light, and huddled together at the
schism of draughts and pale sunless skin.
He admitted that this was needed here; such was the condition of life
here, a limpet on twelve rocks surrounded by fifty rocks of Solid water ice. The
mumbo-jumbo surrounding the Quasar was permitted to keep the latent psychotics in
society sated who were not satisfied by the usual excesses. They saw azure dots
in the sky and their primeval hearts were troubled.
For three whole days we had heard nothing in reply to our urgent
messages to them. The new cycle had begun but still the people, sensible or
Drug-awed, were feeling slightly perturbed by this. Even myself as a rational
consumer of even religious social goods, and understanding the true purpose and
sense of the Quasar as a spiritual aside to the cause and effect of every day
life..
Still such damned unreliable behaviour was to be expected from the
Quasar. It weakened his position as he cursed under his breath in the tone of
the mockers, the drunks and cynics.
“Orange Papery”
True enough his wages were good , because the Quasar sold a great number
of trinkets and gadgets across the galaxy to the faithful, still with them
inactive in meditation he could no longer claim such a large share of the tax
profits for this month. He wonders if the Quasar would be penniless beggars if
it were not for him and his organisational flair for business.
He murmurs to himself
“Lest the planet
evolvers drain all the oxygen from Cassandra to help their stunted little
cities”
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