Chapter 6
"Welcome Chamberlain Zircon! Welcome to our wonderful State!", chirping from a bare desk, smiling without emotion.
As he walked, he listened to the nothingness. The lonely little quarters. The typing… The thousands of talking computers… And the keys… Continually battering against the stupid plastic…
They were all busy with research and projects, mumbling and mumbling about science and progress and discovery. Posters nearby emphasized the remaking and reforming of the world. To shape it into a human form controlled by order and repetition. To shape into a grey, dull mush of loneliness and work.
He walked another pile of stairs, and into his uneven workspace, full of papers, contracts, and orders. Bulletin boards lay strewn across the ground. A photograph of him on a carnival ride lay torn in shreds on the ground.
He sat down on his tall chair and watched his employees, his workers. The thousands of scientists worked in cellars, on storage containers, and in catacombs. All with their shriveled beards, their special shirts, and beady eyes.
He watched them all with the title of Chamberlain of the Bunkers of the Government, watched with quiet loneliness…
He grabbed the speaker near his desk and smiled at the people below, a false little smile. Looked through the blurry, stained plastic window, and spoke into the intercom.
He read from the transcript above. Tried to sound happy, tried to sound wonderful. As the strange people below stared at the speakers above.
"Good morning. Good morning", Zircon rambled forth. His workers looked up from their various projects, "The Chamberlain announces that today is a glorious day. Today is a special day. Today is the Glorious Massacre Of The Marxist day. A special holiday...The greatest of the State!"
He smiled into the camera, with his bruised face, the dried blood staining his nose. Laughed aloud about the helplessness of the Marxists. Called their lives and motivation dull and stupid. Talking how they went on and on, without any real dreams, calling them shrimps and worms in a strange can, forever and ever twisting and turning, buzzing and fluttering. Until they shriveled away from the heat of the sun, and all that remained were dead bugs and dead shrimp, stinking up the entire State.
Zircon ended on a quiet note, with the whine of his microphone turning off and the start of the great fits of music, studied by the Calculator Bots traversing below, the whirring machines that thought for hours and hours, calculated within themselves about spirals… About great things….
He whistled to himself, all alone, in the clicking and the drumbeats of The Las Morgraten, listening to the large, grating Poetspeak pound into his head.
Singing, humming, remembering strange things, as memories filled his mind.
He remembered those swirling lights, as the Ferris wheel went up, and the bulbs twinkled.
Going inside a small room like a glowing glass house… Watching the world from the air…
He went up, seeing the sky, went down and down again, forever and ever, in the loud sticky noise of the world, then up again, around and around, as he remembered saluting, smiling, softly…
The beautiful cold, the ice freezing on water, the warmth of fires, the cheers, the laughs, and watching the world from a happy eye, up in the air. He could see the city, the night, the skyline, the houses of glass in the air…
Being free, alone, up in the air…
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