Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Day 326, Friday
November 23rd, 2018
Chapter Five: World
The Empire cultivated a sense of helplessness and belonging among the
trillions of citizens living on a million worlds.
The ordinary citizen had no say in the destiny of their home-world, they
saw it as theirs, and themselves as belonging to it. For the pleb, every link
in the chain-of-being was a vital part of the culture and they had a duty to
defend it, both in thought and deed.
In the abstract the concept had a quality of beauty, a social symmetry
and wholeness, that the witness to it could not help but appreciate. In
reality, every link in the chain was an instrument of bondage, forged together
by lies.
Everything was controlled by the Empire, and the desires of the Continuum,
ancient beings who cared not one bit for the lives of the people.
The ordinary hopes and dreams of ordinary people meant nothing to the
Continuum and the Collective, they were merely data in a grand drama which they
consumed vicariously, which they hungered for with an insatiable appetite.
Any sense of control that an individual might feel was an illusion,
granted for the sake of creating narrative that leant meaning to the lives of
the Collective.
A person only had existential worth if they were noticed by the
Collective, but that was by no means a guarantee of happiness.
The ambitions of an entire planet could be burnt up and scattered like cinders
and ash if it suited the will of the Collective.
No individual had any inherent value.
While the Continuum used the people caring nothing at all for them, the
people placed their hopes in the Continuum, desiring nothing more than to be
elevated to the Collective and thereby to enter into eternal life.
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