The Neo Creadds Are Born (Ch.14b) : Luvian

      Ch. 14 : The Neo Creadds Are Born (New Discussion Group)

Ch.14b : Luvian

After some weeks of meeting old acquaintances and trying to meet new ones, through names known to him, Janus was able to call a group together. Fewer than he had hoped for but perhaps a smaller group would be easier to socialise than a large one. Everyone he hoped would be able to speak freely.

      They came to Janus’ flat, six of them. Two who had promised to come failed to turn up. The discussion centred on Janus’ own observation of society as controlled by a business orientated system.

      “We no longer control our own lives. Even the senators and representatives have no power to change things. If we see any bad being done we shrug our shoulders and accept it as necessary for economic success, instead of attempting to stop it. Our resources are spent on the whims of business leaders and the super rich who believe the best investment is the one which brings the highest return in profits. They are scared to run out of ideas. There must always be new investment – new plans. They like it most when those new plans are for great engineering or technical projects, or space investment, because they  believe they will be advancing the cause of human progress and enriching our lives in future years. I do not see enriched lives, except in a few cases. I see hard work, mental effort, and long years of wasted life, while striving to complete impossibly ambitious projects. Why can we not finally admit who we are and what we are. We are human beings – a type of animal! We were not meant to live our lives in space, clinging on to the sides of space stations for dear life, while installing complex equipment. We are not meant to spend up to 40 years of our lives in long educational programmes, which feed us with more detailed knowledge than we will ever need in our working lives. For what purpose are we denied social life, self fulfilment and relaxation until we are too old to make full use of the gifts we are given. Why are we forced to work long hours in uninteresting unstimulating day to day jobs, missing out on the benefits our once visionary society expected technology would bring.

     Somehow our historical course has been perverted. Our economy no longer works for us – it enslaves us! We should be crying out for liberation. There are signs of that cry all around us. But most of us remain chained mentally to the office table, and the Vidnet terminal, and when home we automatically switch on the popular Vidnet channels, coaxing us to relax and not to question, to work hard and be upstanding citizens. In many people’s lives there is nothing else. They have forgotten how to think. They do not even realise that what we do is not what our species was designed to do.”

      They were interested in what he had to say. Janus felt vindicated for his efforts in trying to organise the meeting. The old acquaintances and friends he had contacted had been people he felt would respond to his ideas. He had picked people who he knew were not in harmony with the ways of the world, or at least he guessed they felt the need for more social activity. All were thinkers, the type of people who did like to question and analyse, who would enjoy free discussion. Julius and Nero were quiet thinking types who Janus had judged to be unfulfilled and overworked. They needed to be encouraged to develop a social and purposeful life. It was what they needed and most wanted. The meeting gave them an opportunity to admit their frustrations, and to see that there were others who felt the same way. Most of all they seemed to enjoy the chance to meet people outside the working environment.

     Luvian was an old friend from Tax Revenue days. A lively and entertaining personality, he had often insisted on taking Janus out to the local bars during lunch break, or after work, and whenever possible as many other workmates as possible. Luvian had displayed to all what fun was possible even in the normal working routine. He had always managed even to make work seem fun, although certain people in the office had criticised him as workshy and a nuisance, diverting them from their own work. It was only partly true. Luvian had been very good at his job, fast and efficient, and the distractions he sometimes provided had merely served to keep morale up and make work more enjoyable. He never intentionally stopped anyone from working, nor did he talk too much – that would never have been permitted. Nonetheless he had managed to rattle some people. Some superiors, perhaps afraid of his ability, or jealous of his natural authority and the way many people liked him, criticised him. Some time after Janus left the Tax Revenue they had Luvian demoted and moved to another office, although it was dressed as some kind of promotion. Others in the office, on the same level had viewed him as a competitor, likely to succeed over them, so they had criticised him to the superiors. Some below had wanted his job – they too had resented him.

      Janus had remained in contact with Luvian, meeting him on a number of occasions in the years since. His demotion had not lasted long. Even in the large Civil Service organisation talents fro work were inevitably recognised and rewarded with yet more work, responsibility and training courses. Luvian had been unbowed by his temporary setback, and years later was enjoying career progression. He was now a hardworking tax inspector, a difficult but quite interesting job for those who could handle it. He still had many years of training and carer advancement ahead, but he was, at a comparatively early age, in a position of some importance. He did seem, initially at least, a little quieter than his old self, but Janus put that down to long hours of hard work and perhaps tiredness. True to form, as the meeting developed, Luvian opened up, venting his own feelings of resentment and giving many strongly held opinions. He was more serious than before, but he had by no means lost his sense of humour.

       The other point of note about Luvian was that he was married. Of all the six, he was the only one who was married. None of the others had girlfriends except for Xiomondis, who had for some years lived with his girlfriend, but never married.

      The group began to flourish from the start. Janus’s little meeting group with Luvian provided a social outlet for the men who initially came along, most of whom were lonely and deprived of sufficient social contact. Their anger and dissatisfaction with their own lives soon translated itself into a more political anger when Janus presented his own views about modern society. Most of them did become keen supporters of his own views, although Janus encouraged them to develop their own views. Each member was able to invite other acquaintances along, and the group’s numbers rose within weeks. Janus made meetings more frequent, at first once a week, then twice and three times a week, and they met at different members’ flats. Members no longer came to every meeting and the group began to split into different areas. Luvian lived on the wet side of Marta City so he formed the people in his area into a separate group. Other members began to write articles about ideas which concerned them, often about the industry or area of work where they were employed, stating how life quality could be improved, stress and working hours reduced or bureaucracy reduced.

     Xiomondis had become a member of the group, although he appeared irregularly. He used his publishing experience to advise writers and he published articles whenever possible. Interesting ideas which could be given a news slant were sent to the Vidnews stations in the hope that some of the ideas could be presented in the news. This did happen occasionally, such as articles about Directors’ salaries, golden handshakes, and the size of Presenters salaries and film stars earnings. The hope was that these would create more cynicism and disgust amongst the passive working population. Xiomondis published a book of articles about the workplace, written by various members which he managed to advertise on Vidnet. It was read quite extensively by the population of the Vidnet, before being stored in the more long term Vidnet Database. The Vidnet it seemed was their only platform for campaigning because everyone was linked to it, but its use for reaching the whole populace was limited, because there was so much stored literature and entertainment on it that it only came to the attention of those who scanned the new releases.

     However much of the population spent some time curiously scanning the Vid Database for new entertainment or knowledge. After a period Xiomondis suggested making some of  the works of Janus and the workplace articles into audio visual documentaries which might attract more interest from the masses who never bothered to read.  A ‘working party’, including Janus, Luvian and Xiomondis, hired equipment, travelled in the City to make some film, and purchased the rights to use certain films and footage from the Vidnet, and made a series of documentaries.

     The documentary about the ancient Creadds was watched by quite a large number of viewers and was accepted by two of the Vidnet Channels for ‘televising’. The film about the Communalists was placed in the Vidnet Database, but prejudice against its ‘pro Communalist’ bias prevented the channels from using it. Likewise the films about changing modern society and the modern workplace were not liked by the channel selectors.