Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Friday, April 19th, 2019
Chapter One: Agitators
Revolutionaries and rebels were vital to the dramatic narrative the
Continuum used to keep the Collective sated.
The Continuum sought to manage the revolutionaries, to control their
fire, to target their outrage, to utilize their passion for justice for the
sake of the narratives and threads of story that came from it.
The primary instruments of this programming were the Observers that
were stationed on every world.
The Continuum knew them, it knew them intimately, it knew each and
every one of them from its long exposure with their consciousness as members
of the Collective, and through its deep contact with them when they returned
to HomeWorld for their cyclical examination.
Each Observer was supposed to be assigned to a world of their own, and
free to carry out their mission as they determined best. Upon entering the
Observer Corps they were given these assurances, and such assurances were
understood to have the force of law.
The Continuum did not honor these traditions and cultivated its own
special agents from among the Observers, granting them greater powers and more
license in order to execute its will through the Empire. Among the tasks
these agents were given were the fomenting of revolution, and the crushing of
rebellion.
Dangerous and agitating influences were rooted out, or intensified if
it suited the desires of the Collective.
There was nothing sacred
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
Like it, Follow it, Share it!
|
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Saturday, April 20th, 2019
Chapter Two: Selectees
The
Continuum was endlessly engaged in the winnowing process, searching the
Collective for the most opportune candidates to facilitate its work in the
realms of time of and space.
Their personality
profile had to correspond to a kind of Golden Mean; hedonistic but not
debilitated by gluttony, despotic but not inclined to tyranny. It was a
careful balance and one that must be able to hold after they were set loose
in the worlds of the Imperium.
Many who
wanted to join the observer Corps did not meet this profile, only in rare
instances could the Continuum actually refuse a member, though it would often
sabotage their efforts in the training process, if the member went against
it’s will.
The
Continuum selected candidates from among the disquieted members of the
Collective for its long range missionary work, sending them far afield, out
into the minor planets of the million worlds of the empire.
The
continuum desired to be free of their feelings of uncertainty, disencumbered
from their existential angst.
Most of
them were eager for the opportunity to live in the flesh again, many
volunteered. Some were even altruistic.
They
wanted change and the stimulation of sensory organs, they required new and
different kinds of experiences before returning to their own private reality.
Many only
ventured into the flesh for a cycle. Some went repeatedly, dipping in and out
of the experience of bodily living.
Many of
them wanted to exercise their fantasies in a visceral way, where the stakes
were real, where their flesh mattered to them and the preservation of it was
the experience of real life.
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
Like it, Follow it, Share it!
|
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Sunday, April 21st, 2019
Chapter
Three: Malcontents
The
members of the Collective who were discontent with their existence on
HomeWorld, unsatisfied in their role as the supreme being of their own
private reality, and disinterested in the narratives that were delivered to
them through the Experience of the living worlds, these malcontents presented
a problem for the Continuum.
The
Continuum experienced their contribution to the Collective as an irritant.
Though the
Continuum did not want to admit it, every member was a constitutive elements
of its being. Their passions or dispassions, both were determinants in what
the Continuum could do.
The
Continuum desired nothing more than to remove them from the Collective field,
permanently, and to replace their numbers with Candidates from the Empire who
were steeped in the World view they had received from the Imperial Cult and
through their conditioning in the Imperial schools.
Removing the malcontent from the Collective allowed the Continuum
greater controls. It was like a suspension of their membership. Their voice
was no longer heard, this amounted to a reprieve for the Continuum, which
experienced their influence in a way that outstripped the singular node of their
being.
Sending the malcontents to the worlds of time and space removed them
completely from the Collective, it was preferable to the Great Sleep, or
Sequestration.
The experience of real life helped to keep them passive, it kept them calm,
it satiated many of them.
It was a means of control, and if necessary a member who was a genuine
problem could be eliminated when they were separated from the whole. They
could be assassinated, exterminated, irrevocably destroyed.
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
Like it, Follow it, Share it!
|
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Monday, April 22nd, 2019
Chapter Four: Corruptible
The Continuum viewed people as things. Every element, every substance,
everything and everyone was mutable, capable of being elevated and exalted or
corrupted and destroyed through the proper application of a change agent.
Members of the Observer Corps were selected for their assignments based
on their disposition for disquiet. They were chosen from among the discontent
and for their inclination toward corruptibility.
There were always candidates to be chosen from among the Collective.
The Continuum groomed these recruits for their roles over millennia,
by reaching into their private worlds and conditioning them through subtle
inferences for the appetites that were easiest to manipulate.
It carefully audited their experience of the Collective, it guided
their viewing of specific narratives from the Imperial feed. It helped them
shape the contours of their private realities, until the time came when the
individual member felt the need to experience the flesh again.
The Continuum wanted despots in the Empire, people whose desires were known
to it, those who would behave in predictable ways; some as entertainers,
others as agents of destruction and oppression.
The consciousness of the members of the Collective was soft, like
gold. Like gold it could easily be shaped and polished to bring out its
luster.
The Continuum delighted in this work. Shaping the will of the members
was a kind of artistry, like sculpting, and through this work it affirmed for
the Continuum its view of itself as a godlike being.
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
Like it, Follow it, Share it!
|
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2019
Chapter Five: Hedonism
There were many members of the Observer Corps who demanded to
participate in it simply for the novelty of the experience. They came and
went from the worlds of time and space for their own purposes.
There was an order in place that allowed the Continuum to regulate the
flow of these movements but ultimately it was powerless to stop a determined
member of the Collective from executing its will.
All of those members were what the Continuum classified as the thrill seekers, they were seeking the
pleasure principals, they manifested a set of qualities that had always been
and would always remain the key to controlling people.
The Continuum found a value in studying them, in analyzing their
responses to various forms of stimuli, through them it learned both how to
instigate and undermine rebellion in their ranks.
As much as they all imagined they were independent spirits, they were
all just pawns in the long game the Continuum was playing for self
ascendency.
The thrill seekers encouraged risk taking and self-aggrandizement, they
were addicted to personal glory.
They turned to abject hedonism as a reward, and they became addicted
to it, they encouraged these addictions in others, as all junkies do, and
through these addictions they became pliable. They modeled behaviors that led
to self-destruction.
These stimulants worked, until the supply was cut off. The Continuum
artfully did so, and they almost never failed to produce the results it
desired to see.
The Continuum engineered a model for the perfect life, the life of an
exemplar, an archetypal figure that would be beloved by both the people of
the Empire and the Collective.
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
Like it, Follow it, Share it!
|
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Wednesday, April 24th, 2019
Chapter Six: Principles
A belief system is like an alternate reality, a virtual world. It may
be in synch with reality or it may be askew. It may closely reflect the world
as it actually is, or it can be wildly divergent.
A belief system is most often a fluctuating mixture of these,
comprised of fabrications and fancies of the imagination predicated on truth
but free to deviate, in the same way that mythological heroes are almost
always rooted in a historical person. There is no difference.
The rebellious had to believe in their ideals, they had to believe in
them absolutely, or their devotion would be weak, and their link in the chain
of action would break apart.
A belief system was the forge that held their movement together.
A rebel had to subjugate their desires in favor of their ideals, in
favor of their need to realize the fulfillment of those ideals. There could
be no competing desires, nothing at all to rob their movement of its vital
energy,
The rebel could want other things; the love of a partner, a family,
comfort or prestige, the respect of their peers, but those wants could not
compete with their desire to see the movement succeed.
Nothing could be more important to the rebellious and because of this,
nothing was easier to manipulate than idealism. A subtle change in language
and symbol could redirect centuries of momentum.
A movement spanning a thousand worlds could be undone with a single phrase,
with the right word the entire thing could collapse on itself.
An investment in symbols was a vital necessity, holding them together
through the waves of time mattered more than anything.
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
Like it, Follow it, Share it!
|
Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Thursday, April 25th, 2019
Chapter Seven: Allies
Something
cannot emerge from nothing.
Rebels
need allies for rebellions to succeed. A rebellion needs both active and
passive supporters. Their revolutionary movement, if it is to grow, needs
sympathizers and opportunists both.
A
rebellion needs all types of people and it needs them in massive numbers, in
numbers far greater than those who are actually willing to take up arms or
risk their lives for the sake of the cause.
A
revolution will garner those numbers from the willing and the unwilling alike,
from the knowing and the ignorant. It will enlist some with full cooperation,
it will coerce others, and it will use many more who will fall into the
category of collateral damage.
A
rebellion thrives on the experience of injustice, on feelings of oppression,
on conditioning people to believe that they are virtually helpless but not
completely, on the brink of hopelessness but not fully lost.
When those
pressures are right, the people will explode.
It is
always best to recruit victims from the populace without their knowledge.
Then take advantage of their plight by coopting their narrative, weaving it
into your own.
The most
subtle feint is to arrange for a protest in which the protesters are
committed to non-violence, where their only aim is to petition the government
for rights. Then to use the violence directed toward them by the police and
security forces as a means of stoking outrage.
A revolution
will not take place without outrage, it cannot exist without the experience
of suffering, whether it is real or imagined, natural or contrived.
A
successful revolution depends an exacting deployment of these levers.
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #55Words
Like it, Follow it, Share it!
|
Emergence: 3.0
Section Six (a), Rebellion
Appendix Part Twelve, Observer Corps
Collected Chapters
01 Agitators
02 Selectees
03 Malcontent
04 Corruptible
05 Hedonism
06 Principles
07 Allies
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
Like it, Follow it, Share it!
|
Collected Writing in History; Philosophy, Theology, Poetry, Politics with Commentary, in Prose and Verse
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Emergence 3.0 - Section Six (a), Rebellion; Appendix Part Twelve, Observers; Collected Chapters
Labels:
@CollectedWriting,
@jaybotten,
#365SciFi,
#Emergence,
#OnePagePerDay,
#SuperShortFiction,
Agitators,
Allies,
Chapters,
Corruptible,
Hedonism,
Malcontent,
Observers,
Principles,
Pt 12,
Rebellion,
Sec 6 (a),
Selectees
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment
I am very interested in your commentary, please respond to anything that interests you.