༺ Thesium ༻

Industry

The Top Prof rubbed his wrists where the shackles had dug in. Guards shoved him in the back and slammed the huge oaken door shut. Echoes reverberated around the ancient chamber once known as the Laboratory. The equipment had been removed and all lay in dusty ruins. He wondered why he had not been simply put in the regular prison but then remembered, it was supposed to be a ’lesson’ to the populace.

His body ached from the ill-treatments he had undergone and also from the extra years he was now carrying. Things had gone so swimmingly well at first. The Great Counsel ruled with rationality and fairness and all seemed well. His voice carried the most weight for those first years but what he hadn’t seen coming was that the Exec would grow so powerful. All his scientific advances were funded and thereby controlled by the corporate financial structure that had been created. It used to confuse him, how it came about, but now it seemed clear enough. As the Exec accreted more and more wealth, as corporations absorbed corporations and he transformed into the Chief Exec, he had begun to act just like the High Neem before him. He even sat in the throne for counsel meetings. His ‘suggestions’ became ‘decrees’ in all but name. The professor had become an employee.

An industrial revolution turned the society inside out at a dizzying speed. The Execs, back then there were many, swept the Neemian feudal system aside and installed themselves in the corridors of power. Finance ruled all things and wore the mask of ‘Truth’. A total bureaucracy was established that controlled everything. The High Neem and his coterie were sent to the Laboratory which got renamed as the ‘Church’. The Cathedral was taken over and renamed ‘Head Office’. Their once halcyon world beyond the city was plundered at a breakneck speed.

At first the Evempiricals were drunk with success but in very short order they found themselves virtual slaves to the Exec. The pyrrhic victory was made worse by the understandings they gained from re-established communications with Root. The predictions they made about the environmental destruction wrought by Exec fell on deaf ears. They realise that one tyranny has been supplanted by another and all this talk of ‘Truth’ has only been a means to an end for unfettered greed.

The main mass of the population were given votes every few years. A theatre of ‘democracy’ was maintained but just about everyone worked for the Exec, whose rules became increasingly draconian.

All attempts to protect the natural world or have genuine justice were denounced as mystical nonsense. The Chief Exec proclaimed from his throne “Truth is all. Truth is financial.”

Putting together a full report on how their current rate of growth would overshoot Thesium’s carrying capacity had, apparently, been a mistake. Even with all the accuracy that Root could add, the report had simply been dismissed. The Chief Exec just muttered “bad for business!” and with a sweep of the hand, the professor had been virtually thrown out. A few days later they came for him in the middle of the night.

From a dark corridor he heard shuffling. He turned and saw, stooping and hobbling on a staff, a figure approach from the gloom. Aghast, the two prisoners regarded each other. The High Neem and the Top Prof were not to be in solitary isolation after all!