La Belle Epoque Part 3- Extract- Copyright- Robert Fullarton

La Belle Epoque Part 3- Extract- Copyright- Robert Fullarton




3.


No men suffered hangovers in the new world, no drugs were pushed, the
arts had been slowly eradicated –removed emphatically from the
cultural agenda of the Aerodome- and who honestly wanted to listen to
the scores of Beethoven? Who honestly wanted to see a painting by
Degas? Who wanted to read the sonnets of Shakespeare? All these little
bits of tattered paper, all these paintings that once hung on the high
fancy walls of a Parisian art museum or these notes that once were
played to avid ears, all these papers had been cremated within the
ruined walls of a city that lay demolished seven times over. All the
grand pianos had been smashed, piece-by-piece, destroyed in time, no
ears heard these long extinct embraces, these celebrations of melody
and romanticism, the relevance had gone, the pianos only played in the
dying memories of a few old men in the Aerodome and they too did not
invoke the past, for fear of breaching the Civil codes. 

Likewise
Shakespeare’s words had burned with the old world and were lost in
memory too, that faded like water strewn paper to the tide.
But man’s consciousness can often unearth the past through discovery
and sometimes they crave to know and seek and such instances and
incentives can permit rediscovery of a lost thought or word by a
genius of the past. The natural world permits knowledge.

Men got their kicks on the political activities that devoured the
daily life of the people; every labour was for the good of the system
and for the protection of the habitat from the wrath of the untamed
natural world, that mankind had become ubiquitously alienated from.

Zero was a teacher at the Darmanstadt Academy which was the most
prestigious of all the colleges in the Aerodome –then again many of
the colleges were the size of small classrooms and they were crammed
with students of many different ages and many different levels for
teachers that were weighed down like a lead balloon by the wide and
very demanding curriculum that was imposed on them.
The walls of each classroom at Darmanstadt Academy resembled an old
laboratory, everything in the vicinity was white, it bore the
austerity of the drab and colourless direction that the academy took.
Maths was first priority on the scale of the curriculum, maths was
essential for the basic arithmetic, the trigonometry, the algebra, the
geometry and then eventually applied mathematics was taught to a
special few, which had surpassed all the others in grade and merit.

The very cream of the intelligentsia were bred for the purpose of
becoming scientists, engineers, technicians and hopeful pharmacists-
for the study of chemistry was stated to be of utmost importance to
the regime and to the furtherance of the New Society.

Each of these minute few would have to pass several rigorous
examinations, complete their endurance tests in the North Sector and
then each would eventually be trained under the supervision of their
employers. Architects, traders, doctors, horticulturalist farmers,
teachers, manufacturers, these professions were for those minds that
were of the “second grade” namely what was once called the middle
class. 

These men rarely got involved in politics nor did they have
such a substantial say in the overall governance and ruling of the
Aerodome. Such people worked in the Cradle –the Central Sector of the
Aerodome- and in the Quota department in the North Sector that dealt
with the production, the registration, the monitoring and the tracking
of ration cards –which was the equivalent of working what was once
called a “mint”- for the good of the currency and trade of the people.

The “Third mind” or lower class, consisted of labourers, rickshaw men
–that brought people around on wooden makeshift rickshaws- builders,
waste disposal men, miners, those that worked in the tunnels in the
depths of the Aerodome, crawling through holes, buried deep and hand foot
in excess muck, these men worked to expand the Aerodome so that the
New Society could expand. These men were wretched creatures –the ants
that bore the brunt of the colony’s demands- who perished at an early
age from disease, of malnutrition, they were promised to have a new
share in the rights of the growing political ascendancy of the
Aerodome, but nothing had availed of their aspirations, that were
greater than ever before. But each man believed that their profession
defined them as a person and they believed that life was solely for
work and for material benefit, so few questioned their life in motive
for a rationale.

The faces of many boys, clothed in white linen overcoats sat
attentively at each wooden desk that ran horizontally in rows across
the room. The room looked more like an old woodwork room or
carpenter’s workshop that had been poorly converted and turned into a
proper classroom. It was almost like and old Russian country school
for the underprivileged. It was wholly different from the rest of the
Darmstadt Academy, since it was once a timber depository and bore
nothing of the austerity of the other “ classroom laboratories”. At
the front of the classroom stood the New Society History teacher,
Atticus Zero.

The Creed was read out as follows at the start of every new day…..

“I believe in the New Society,
blessed be our teachers and our leaders
because they have opened our eyes
and because they have saved us
from the wreckage of history
and the ruins of the past.
Great and strong is the stamina
of the general will
because together
we are many parts
to make a single
indestructible body,
we are only a mind
so long as we think together
and learn together,
life is the search
for discipline
those who are lazy
perish
and those without will
are lost,
Our leaders have sheltered us,
From the cruel cruel world
And let us work
So that we men
Shall live another day
Safe from the hands
Of our destructive nature.

The creed was a poem that had been written by a poet, at celebratory
party of the 20th anniversary of the Aerodome’s construction. The poem
did not bare the typical, technical, prosaic language of the people
but had become a religious standard in its own right, a sort of
ethical motto, a mantra, a song to hum to on the state keyboards –that
blasted out on the Cradle’s public sound system, between 9am to 8pm-
it was drilled into the general population so well that men and women
probably mumbled the creed in their sleep.

“Now boys”, said Zero pointing at the blackboard with his teacher’s
staff –a wooden broom handle.
“My analysis has reached a conclusion that is both the creation and
the inevitability of our New Society. What we have got here are
resources. Bad society made poor use of resources and labour. Bad
society allowed criminality to exist, because it was over stretched,
it was too divided and its leaders were weak and incompetent. The
question is whether we can control ourselves and personally adopt to
the fusion between science and government to make a sort of super
state or state religion.”
“Sir, can I speak?”
Said one of the boys at the back of the room, as he raised his hand in the air.
“Go ahead.”
“What could stop us from progressing on the promised rates of expansion
for the annual state memorandum?”
“That question is a little irrelevant in respect to this lesson. But I
will answer it anyway. I believe that our makeshift effort, science,
engineering, labour and construction has helped us to survive many
times before at times where the statistics and the estimations of
logic were against us. Our productivity has thrived in far tougher
times than this and we have now reached a level of stability and
containment.”
“Sir”, said another student in the front row.
“Nature is never quiet, it keeps moving, and we can’t keep up with nature?”
“Man is mortal and yet creative, we possess the edge. Nature is
dangerous and that is what they have taught us to believe, that the
old society, failed to convert and process their own resources and
their energy to their own advantage. I wont delve into the matter
again, since we probably know the facts and the statistics off by
heart at this stage. We seek comfort in our confinement and comfort in
our society, so let us vote and decide for ourselves who we believe
should be elected for the role of president of the New Society. Go
home and think about this, we will discuss Malthus, Darwin and the
natural balance in the next class –from a sociological point of view
to state that Darwin himself was a precursor to New Society theory. I
think he would have been proud of our iconic achievements as a
people!”

The classroom emptied out in single file, every copybook was folded
over and each wooden table was filled with lecture notes and
improvisations for the upcoming history examinations. When the rush
had parted and the room was vacant, Zero sat at his desk, surveying
the wooden premises, thinking back on what he had said, partly he felt
a rift of division in his own belief system, perhaps he had already
begun to believe that the New society was not invulnerable, it was not
eternal, it was not divine nor was it the answer to mankind’s lost
suffering problems and the answer to mankind’s search for happiness
and self knowledge.

“Perhaps the inner life is slowly disappearing, yet it is the only
true life, perhaps this is all an illusion? I do not know”, said Zero
aloud in his own lamentation.