Death of Titans - FFM 2010

I have lately become greatly consternated by some rumours I have heard. For years, harmony has reigned, yet now some of you – who shall remain nameless – have gotten it into your heads that this harmony must be broken. I understand the young may be restless, but restlessness must be abandoned in favour of the adult. Let me ask you: when your sock has a hole in it, and you need it mended, who do you turn to? That is right, no need to answer, it was merely rhetorical. Likewise, when you have a question you need answered, a hole, if you wish, in your mind, who do you turn to?

Me.

Yet now, you want to give your sock to the machine operator to be mended, or maybe attempt to barter carbs from the water foreman instead of the food dispenser? Now, you go and ask questions from people who cannot answer them. Who do not have the authority, nor the ability, nor even the will to do so. The topside surveyor is NOT me; the agricultural supervisor has work to do, work not connected with information. Leave these poor men alone, their lives are hard enough as it is.

Let me tell you a story.

Was that a groan? Truly, our society is turning to rust and dust if the storyteller cannot perform his craft without groans from the audience. Listen, do not yawn, do not roll your eyes, for this is important. Years and years ago, generations before I become information manager, there was no harmony. This was just after we had found refuge in our sanctuary from the Great Heat. People then were larger, they took up more space. They were veritable giants. You see this ceiling; does it not seem to offer an endless breath of space? It was called 'low'. They would knock their heads on it, imagine they were locked up in a utility tunnel, cold walls pressing them together shoulder to shoulder, breathing each other's breaths, farts and underarms. A crowded hell.

A crowded hell. Can you imagine?

This was before harmony. Before everyone knew their place. They knew then, just as we know now, that death is the only thing awaiting them above, yet many committed that suicide anyway. They would fight over living space. The strongest would take the biggest rooms, shut everyone else out, a horde ravenous for a bit of 'privacy'. They would steal carbs, demand more water; claim that their job made them 'sweat', even as they did nothing physically taxing. I am aware these are unfamiliar concepts for many of you, and this is well. It is a sign of the harmony.

Who made the harmony?

We did. The long line of information managers created it. This may seem prideful, and in a way it is: today, harmony is collective, and we are merely the overseers. But the first step was taken by us. There was an understanding then, that the shift from the wide open steppes of our ancestors, and the – only in contrast! - cramped conditions of our sanctuary was too much for many. But the understanding soon became deeper. There was, we realized, no difference between a thousand 'miles' of borderland, or a single inch separating naked flesh. The conflict between nations that caused the Great Heat was identical to the conflict between, say, the atmospheric reader sitting right next to the pressure monitor – as they must – both seeing their own sovereign space invaded.

What is the harmony?

The harmony is the realization that physical distance is meaningless, that the only distance that means anything is mental. In the olden days, I would have stood on a pedestal before you, looking over your sea of faces. Now I stand next to you, nose to nose – how else would we fit you in here? Yet there is no discomfort. Why would there be? Once it was said the whole population of the world could stand on a single island barely 2000 square kilometres across, shoulder to shoulder. For them, this idea was a nightmare. For us, it is not only possible, it is desirable. We are each islands, yet we form an archipelago, and each of us is connected by waterways that take but moments to cross.

Stop asking the topside surveyor, the agricultural supervisor, the expedition controllers what it is like up there. Stop asking them about the space, the sky, the mountains and the forests. These are no longer things for you and me, these are no longer things for us as a race. It will only serve to turn us back into the giants of yore; eating, fighting, struggling for more, always more. The Titans are dead, and the meek have inherited, and there is harmony.

Enough of this.

Let me instead tell you a love story. Once upon a time, there was an atmospheric reader and a pressure manager, and they began feeling a familiar discomfort...