La Belle Epoque -Part 4 Extract- Copyright- Robert Fullarton 2013

La Belle Epoque -Part 4 Extract- Copyright- Robert Fullarton 2013



4.

The whole campaign had been a speedy process in hindsight, it came and
went, the best man came and conquered. Each citizen was entitled to
their own vote, regardless of colour, sexual preference –although
homosexuality had been frowned upon by the authorities and it was
certainly discouraged- or gender differences. Despite all this, it
made little difference in hindsight what each man thought themselves
on their own place within the frame and demographics of their society
since their vote could be decided on by the 12 leaders on the Council,
if a nomination was politically incorrect –for example some of the
candidates have come from within the labour class and were therefore
not amalgamations of the ruling elite- then for “the good welfare and
safety of the people” such a voter could be vetoed and automatically
removed from standing during the election. In the centre of Memex
square exactly one week from the time and date of the original debate,
T.A. Calsius was lifted up on the shoulders of his many supporters to
be announced the President or chief of the New Society. Timaeus Adorno
Calsius aging head of Wasler Tech had risen over the last fifteen
years to be the prophet of a new technological progression into the
new century that loomed ahead. In the century ahead it was promised
“all the benefits, the luxuries and pleasures of the Old Society would
be given to the people in a new age of communication, transport, a
greater diversity of life for a greater abundance of opportunities”.
The miners had dug wide and dug deep, with tunnels that stretched for
up to thirty miles in length and were now wide enough for human
colonisation. Miners had worked hand in hand with engineers,
electricians, scientists from Walser Tech and Kimokito Tech had to
make sure that the elevations in the land were suitable for people to
live in, ample oxygen, electricity, water piping and transport matters
had also to be taken into account. These zones on the Northern Sector
were to house over three thousand settlers and were to eventually hold
another twenty thousand people, if T.A Calsius got exactly what he
wanted.

Calsius jubilantly raised his arms above his head and waved goodbye to
the people as he stepped off the central platform, to be whisked away
by his bodyguards and onto his own personal rickshaw.
The jubilant crowds dispersed and went back to their routines.

In the New Society the males of the household were to become
scientists, architects, builders, teachers, doctors, shop owners and
all the entire content of the heavy duty labour that existed. The
females of the Aerodome were expected to be the carers, the nurses,
shop assistants, horticulturalists, midwives, teachers at each branch
of the Women’s Institute- where women were trained to be good wives,
taught in the ways of femininity, schooled in the lessons of home
economics, child birth and infancy care and this was the only
education that they received throughout their entire lives.
Men wore black or bright blue Linen overalls, whereas women generally
wore pink linen overalls, had their hair as long as they could
possibly grow –since it was encouraged for preserving their natural
feminine nature. These men promoted a lifestyle which they stated to
possess “a strong gravitational pull to the earth and to nature’s
ascendancy” yet the establishment detested the Earth and the natural
world about as much as they detested the people having the power to
finally think for themselves- because such a possibility would limit
their control chastising the people.

Rickshaws wheeled by the memex square, along with makeshift bicycles
bringing people up and down the Cradle, through Memex Square, Antioch
House, Parabola Gardens and back to the Medusa Square. The shopkeepers
on the second level –above the Memex Square- stood outside their
businesses waiting for any momentous signal that money was to be made
on the day. Zero approached the bald, stocky shop owner of the Memex
News to pick up the first edition of a brand new newspaper called the
People’s news, he glanced at the main headlines and then called the
shopkeeper over to purchase a copy. The paper read as follows……

Men should invest their future in the new Underground Sector-
Women don’t need to stress any further over their womanly virtues….now
there is an answer to the long sought dilemma..
buy Metro fashion for all your designs- it is what women really want
for their husbands. Metro fashion can be located at Unit 2, the second
floor of the Metropol.

Alpha Male elected….before the dawn of a new era. The underground
sector is to be opened finally. Work is to be completed ahead of
schedule.

“So what do you think, sir”, said the stocky, bald shopkeeper beside Zero.
“Well, we’ll have to see how things fare out for Calsius.”
“No I mean, the Metro fashion. Doesn’t it look good just going by the
artists impression?” Wouldn’t you want your daughter to have the
latest designs?
“Oh, the clothes, well I don’t think that it is compulsory, whether
you have these designs or the pre-existing design that’s already
uniform.”
“But sir, the Department for Fashion is getting rid of these old
uniforms, we can finally wear whatever we want.”
“Well that’s not entirely true. We will have to wear whatever the
state provides, but I know what you mean, the designs will be on a far
broader scale than before.
“What makes you so indifferent to all this?”
 I guess that too much emphasis on material clothing just distracts us
from what really needs to be done. The underground sector has far more
relevance than mere garments of fabric. I care nothing of the uniform,
whether it is grey or blue makes no difference to me. I rather like
blue mind you, because it reminds me of the ocean. I wonder what the
ocean is like. Or what the sun looks like on the summer solstice. I
wish I could feel something inside myself, like what our ancestors
felt when they wanted reach new heights, they wrote, they sung, the
painted and they composed. Those days, only contained in mere
fragments, mere drabs and paragraphs in the Public Works, speak to
me.”
After this longwinded dialogue the shopkeeper merely burst into howl
of laughter.
“Oh, sir! You are a dreamer, are you awake yet? Somebody should give
you a little nudge to make to wake you up! You haven’t had any
breakfast this morning! No person knows that the ocean is like; all
these wishes of yours are dangerous because you would go and dance
with death if it made your delusions come to reality. Nature is
dangerous, we don’t have a choice, were in here for life, for safety
and for our own good mister!”
“Well, I suppose you are right! If I continue to talk like this I’ll
be carted off to the mines and forced to do time there.”
“No! I don’t think it has to come to that sir! All I mean to say is
that you need to put your head in the right place and talk some
sense”, said the shopkeeper in a more reasonable tone of voice.
“I don’t have a daughter so it makes the advertisement irrelevant!”
“Well what about your wife.”
“What about her?”
“Well what would she think of it?”
“I don’t know? I never heard her taking much interest in the state
designs. I don’t think she cares whether she ties a pair of curtains
around her waist, ties elastic and foam over her shoulders and covers
it all in a coat of bed covers”, said Zero smiling for he had finally
made his point to the invasive behaviour of the shopkeeper.
“Well a strange pair you both make! A woman who has no taste for
design and a man who dreams of suicide! What sort of people are you?”
The shopkeeper muttered something under his breath and then finally
retreated back into the interior of his shop.

On this particular route everything was for sale, all goods for
horticulture, manuals for growing your own potato crop, guidebooks on
how to become a practical engineer, delicacies such as Brazil nuts,
jars of honey and natural yoghurt were to be traded for a worthy
exchange and could be bought even with ration credit on one’s valid
ration card. This market of basic commodity even included the most
basic of all commodities; sex. Yes even the oldest of commodities was
on for sale at the right price. Men who had not been matched at
childhood, all sorts of social deviants –as they were classed- men who
had no ability for courtship and all the games for attracting the
opposite sex. Ration cards could be exchanged along with enough
produce and enough resources to convince the girl’s father that the
boy was financially able for a marriage or a courtship beyond any
doubt. If the boy’s family owned livestock –which was rare enough-
then the boy was ultimately a prize waiting to be won by any of the
local girls that would compete for his hand in marriage.
The desire for meat and for cow’s milk was in great demand, but often
people had to settle for a vegetarian equivalent and for Soya milk.

Zero wandered around the enclaves of the market, from each alcove to
the next looking down occasionally on the hustle and bustle of people
below him in the Memex Square. The faces seemed indifferent, they
seemed totally focused on something he could not even force himself to
imagine. At each alcove people we were met with a friendly figure that
would grab them by the shoulders and gently whisk them into the shop
for an offer. This was the only entertainment that existed in the
Aerodome –it was the New Society equivalent of the consumerist culture
of the past- and it was not sufficient for Zero’s needs.

He finally wandered to the last shop on the end of a long row of
market stalls. Covered in steel railing, nothing stirred except a
faint noise in the distance like a murmur. The shop entrance was
blocked by a long black velvety curtain, which Zero pulled across in
curiosity, and he began to move very slowly and cautiously through a
darkened room into the of the silence of its marbled quarter.
The murmur had grown into a ecstatic cry, it grew to be so loud that
it eventually pierced his ear drums to make them hurt tremendously
–for he had weak ears- and he had never heard anything as loud and
annoying as this before. Zero was even more horrified, as his eyes
began to hurt, swell and even hurt some more –as if the blood had
rushed to his eyeballs and were slowly began ripped out by the giant
red hot searing pokers of an interrogation squad. The act was being
performed; it consisted of two men and a woman that looked so
transfigured and so different to anything he had ever seen before that
mere descriptions had failed him. The supple movements crashed against
a primitive Kerosene lamp to knock it violently to the floor. The room
was no longer bathed in light, the movements stopped for a solitary
moment and then they continued again, the transformation grew to be
more savage and more boisterous than before. The stranger glimpsed in
to see the two men kissing the entire length and breadth of the
woman’s legs through the darkness. Zero felt a strange feeling come
over him, like nothing he had felt before, then he realised finally
what it was he exactly felt and as quick as he could move he ran out
through the front entrance from where he came and vomited up outside
the door. The distant shimmer of the Kerosene lamp had been rekindled
and the whole affair continued again with a murmur. “Who was that
man?” Thought Zero to himself faintly recognising one of the men in
the room.