The office was spacious, private and beautifully furnished. The decor spoke of ages past; of continuity; of the unchanging face of power.
'Read back text of address to Centre candidates, file 370.'
His own voice came back to him from the computer. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
'The Abolition of privacy has been the work of generations. There are no doors. Windows dominate all walls and in many of the newer buildings there are no separate apartments or offices at all. Users or residents share open floors. We have learned to accept the constant close proximity of others.
'Architecture and the planned transformation of cities reflect the will of the state: society will be transparent. Transparency makes for order, order based on conformity. There are no secret places where deviance can grow.
'Nevertheless, this physical environment is not the foundation stone upon which a new and higher being will be built. No, it is rather a natural consequence of the prior development of us as beings. Historically speaking, first we began to change and now the enlightened lead us towards a world truly expressive of our evolution.
'Our openness does not begin with seeing and hearing those around us; our transparency begins in the mind as we move forwards towards a common mind. For offworlders our capacity to feel the emotions of those around us is difficult to understand. We sense intentions and often pool our dreams. We learn this as children and experience no confusion or chaos; we are made in and for this open world.
'I was not always inclined to see all of this as a good thing. No indeed, it is a testimony to the functionality and elegance of our social system that I am here at all, recovered from the deviancy of individualism.
'I discovered that I could withdraw. Only a little at first. It began with being able to close myself to some of the thoughts and feelings of others. Later I found that I could cut out the background emotions entirely, focus a little and even achieve a few moments of complete solitude. I found a perverse joy there, not really knowing what I was doing or why.
'I developed an habituation to individualism. I was an addict of the ignorant silence of the mind. It was easiest to indulge my deviant pleasure when there were plenty of people around and especially amongst strangers who would not miss my signature emotions. The most effective means to my end was to take myself into the mass transport system of my home city; to lose myself in the peripatetic crowd.
'I managed to control my behaviour in this way for some time, to manage the problem if you like. But I soon recognised that I craved the times of control, of being closed. I was becoming a danger to myself and a risk to the commonwealth. I knew this and still I could not stop. Who could I tell who might understand my situation?
'There was a woman who worked in my building. She had erected a little stand on her desk. It was in full view of everyone and it seemed to hide her face, just a little, from the rest of us. On the stand she pinned strange things: a dried flower; a picture of her habitation; a picture of a small creature. We all felt why she was doing it. It was not discussed further. We were all ignorant enough to think of this as harmless toleration.
'For me the situation became more complicated. I was already troubled by the effort of guarding one secret; I could not keep my attraction to this woman hidden as well. Once, when I was alone in a crowd of hundreds, it struck me that perhaps I could confide in her; she might just be sympathetic. I quickly dismissed the idea because in all likelihood she would not, could not, have kept any part of any secret for me, let alone this one.
'The attraction, it became apparent to all, was mutual. In full view we gravitated towards one another, our thoughts visible to our peers like threads between us. There was a sentiment abroad that perhaps I would be good for her, perhaps I would be a counterweight to her stranger eccentricities.
'It soon became apparent that her oddities were actually as superficial as they seemed. I was the odd one in that in that relationship. One evening we travelled together from work and there, in the crowd of the transit station, I quite inadvertantly closed my mind. I was only brought back into the commonwealth by the screams of the woman at my side. In the crowd I was pretty much invisible, to all that is, except the woman whose thoughts had already entwined themselves with mine. She felt the closing of my mind as if I had pushed her backwards across the platform.
Peraps a thousand people turned towards us. She was still screaming, her mind wide open and pouring forth her horror like gouts of blood from a wound. I did not wait, I did not think. I ran. I pushed my way through a crowd consisting of people most unaccustomed to the feeling of flight, to the pulsating drive of fear and the perception of imminent danger. My mind was blazing; I was a psychic stun grenade.
'Still pursuit came quickly. Crowds began to thin ahead of me. Behind me, in streets where such crude demonstrations of authority are rarely required, I could hear shouted orders. I ran and around me I could feel a shudder of revulsion in the living network of the commonwealth.
'It occurred to me then that I could perhaps use my ability to close my mind to hide myself from my pursuers. All I needed was somewhere to hide my body and I could isolate my mind to complete my disappearance.
'Of course in cities designed to reflect our fundamental openness, finding somewhere to lurk is not at all straightforward. My chest was pounding and I was near exhaustion when finally I turned down a side-street and, taking the first opportunity that presented itself, leapt head first into a huge square refuse bin. The lid hammered down after me and there I sat in the sour darkness. I closed my mind and desperately tried to slow my breathing.
'I don't know how long I sat there, but eventually I decided that I might have a chance of making it back to the transit station. From there I had little idea of where I would go; of where I could go.
'In point of fact I got no further than slowly pushing up on the lid of the bin.
'"All right citizen. There is no need for alarm." I had badly underestimated the capabilities of our system to trace deviants. The details are unimportant. I had also failed to realise that the less often a police force is needed the more impressive necessary demonstrations of authority are likely to be. I found myself staring from the bin at an officer in full powered armour. She smiled reassuringly from behind her visor.
'"If you come out and talk to us everything will be fine" she said. Her voice was clear and her accent was that of the suburbs; of the educated classes. I did not know why at the time, but I was becoming very calm, almost contented. I pushed the bin lid back and climbed out. I managed that without taking my gaze from the officer's deep brown eyes; in fact I was losing myself entirely in those eyes.
'The last sound I remember from that day was the trigger being pulled on the weapon of an officer on my left. My body shook and pain took over. The neural disruptor stunned me and I fell to my knees, insensible. I know that at that stage another officer fired, because later I had massive welts on both sides of my body, not only the left. Unconsciousness followed. They had taken no chances; they knew their jobs very well. As for me, unconsciousness was a lot better than the pain of the disruptors, and at least now I was in knowledgeable hands.
'Many like me, like us, have not been so fortunate. Some fight hard to maintain what in their sick minds they perceive to be freedom. Some develop early, powers that make them highly dangerous. Yes, I was lucky.
At first I took The Centre to be a prison. It was only later that I realised that my new start, my re-education, was at the same time necessary and highly advantageous to both me, and to the commonwealth.
'I thought I had been at The Centre for a year before I was told the date. In fact I had been there only half that time. That was the start of progress for me; I began to move from terror to understanding. By the time I had really been there a year all that I thought of was The Centre and the good of the commonwealth.
'With the freedom to socialise came my awareness of my peers. The backgrounds of candidates have always been very varied. We were not encouraged to talk about our stories very much at that stage, but I was confident that the experiences of those around me in many ways mirrored mine.
'Later a level of general education was added and certain pharmaceutical restraints removed. I know that this is the level that your rehabilitation has reached. It became clear to me that The Centre was not at all about punishment, but rather about channeling the aptitudes we had all demonstrated in deviant ways.
'Far from being the lowest of the low, we were, you are, special. The graduates of The Centre are the clearest demonstration that the commonwealth is a responsive republic, that the enlightened elite is not a stratum forever closed to the scions of humble families from humble districts.
'In the months and years that followed I was trained; taught to realise that the entire elite of the commonwealth enjoys the kind of enhanced abilities that I had discovered by chance in myself.
'With the power to close the mind comes responsibility to use that power for the commonwealth. With the ability to read and even direct others comes the demand that we serve the common good.
'It is pointless to deny that the members of, and candidates for the ranks of the elite are different from those who make up the mass of the commonwealth. We are, and you can all be, the beings charged with overseeing the development of the common mind. In this process the elite provides leadership; exercises a different role and displays different talents than those in the mass.
'I have come a long way. I have come to understand the need for order; for the conformity of the mass and the self-discipline of the elite. Control and secrecy are tools used for the good of the commonwealth. In our republic freedom must be rationally distributed and must further serve the commonwealth by strengthening the elite.
'For those of you who take up the challenges that lie ahead of you here at The Centre great things are in store. I urge you all to realise as I did, that only through the commonwealth can those of us who have the capacity to do so become truly free.'
'End' the computer reported.
'That's fine. It might even keep a few of them out of remedial surgery. I'll edit it closely later.' He sat back and felt the reassuringly powerful walls around the fortress of his mind. He shunted his glass across the desktop, moving it from edge to edge and back again. It had taken years of practice and relaxation to develop such precise telekinesis. It helped him to think.
