Dystopian Fiction (2019)

Back in 2019, I was travelling back from a conference and stuck in an airport with only my iPad. I started writing a Dystopian Fiction in the “Notes” feature. I had a strong desire to write something that had no plot, no characters, no emotional hook and no resistance narrative. I had originally thought of it as some sort of official report. This was previously only available in the obscure volume The Complete Works of Maxwell House which contains other creative works by me penned between 2001 and 2006.

Dystopian Fiction (2019)

After The Troubles, The Council embarked on a set of new directives at the 112^th Session of the IPCC Bureau, which took place in Capital, Global. Ethnic minority groups were to be confined to their own territories, separated by race, in areas known collectively as Sovereign. These areas would be walled off by great barriers and policed by mechanised guards, which were ordered instantly to kill anyone attempting to travel from Sovereign to Global or vice versa, or else between racially segregated areas. This solution was agreed to have been in keeping with the Cause.

Capital was where both The Council and The Corporation were headquartered. It was entirely sealed off from the rest of Global, separated by massive barriers and armed mechanised guards much like those which policed the boundaries between Sovereign and Capital. Work still existed in Capital, for either The Council or The Corporation, which in truth amounted to two divisions of the same thing, for both were devoted solely to the Cause. There still existed men in Capital, but these men understood that their own privileges could not possibly be extended to the white race at large lest the Troubles would repeat. Such men were considered vital in decision-making and design functions. The population of Capital was no bigger than two-hundred thousand. They enjoyed some luxuries unavailable to the rest of Global such as a variety of different foods including meat, and drinks including coffee, as well as penetrative sexual intercourse between men and women.

Figure 1.1 shows the geographical extent of Global after The Troubles. It stretched over the area once known as Europe. The rest of the world was given over to Sovereign.

Figure 1.1

The Troubles had greatly reduced the world population and retarded technology – beyond that maintained by those in Capital – to medieval levels. There was no electricity and medicine was next to non-existent beyond traditional herbal remedies. Before the Troubles, Global spanned across all continents. The Council had compounded and destroyed most old machinery already. Fossil fuels had been abolished around thirty years before the Troubles. However, The Council had not yet implemented its network of monorails and the town structures outlined in Figure 1.2 below across the world. The basic infrastructure was built in Europe first, but further development was interrupted by The Troubles.

While there was no electricity in Sovereign, and no forms of transport more advanced than basic carts drawn by animals, there still existed some vestiges of old technologies which had somehow survived. These became highly sought after in Sovereign and were frequent sources of regional conflicts. The areas of Sovereign were segregated along racial lines and The Council maintained barriers between different areas with mechanised armed guards. This also prohibited trade between different regions of Sovereign.

Even before the Troubles, the Americas had been returned to its original indigenous tribal peoples. At the 90^th Session of the IPCC, the Council had designated that those who were known as ‘Hispanics’ in the old world were also to be designated as ‘indigenous’ to the Americas, because this served the Cause. Africa was to be the home of black people. Asia was to be the home of those people who had always lived there. Because Global enjoyed an absolute technological advantage over Sovereign, The Council was satisfied to leave the people of the separated areas of Sovereign to their own devices.

The Corporation would not serve Sovereign, only Global. The Corporation provided all goods and services in Global. All production was automated, maintained and designed by artificial intelligence. Life in Global was one of total leisure, there was no work. Products made by The Corporation all bore a multi-coloured rainbow logo. Food was known as Consume, which was a tofu-like product that was dyed to bear the rainbow pattern. It was designed to contain 100% of the recommended daily allowances of important vitamins, minerals and so on. It had no discernible taste but it was the only available food. The only drink was water laced with oestrogen which was available from rainbow-coloured taps and water fountains in both living complexes and shopping spaces. Individuals living in Global had only to concern themselves with two areas: their living complex, which was called Home, and their shopping area, which was called Mall.

To avoid any repeat of the Troubles, the new directives ordered that white men were to be eliminated. Technology had advanced to the point where semen cryopreservation could store sperm cells indefinitely. There was enough sperm in storage to last for thousands of years. All pregnancies were now to be the result of artificial insemination. No women living in Global got pregnant themselves. Mothers were selected for the purpose and kept in separate compounds sealed off from the rest of society. This area was known as Reproduction. The role of the Mother was to be inseminated and then to carry and deliver babies. It was possible for Mothers to have as many as fifteen children each before their period of service was over. At this time, Mothers would be culled satisfied in the knowledge that they had served the Cause.

At birth, babies would be removed to a separate compound known as School. Here they would be raised until the age of sixteen whereupon they matured to Womankind. Upon reaching this milestone, they were released to an allocated Home unit, except for one in ten biological women who were allocated to a Reproduction unit. Biological male new births would have their penis and testicles removed. They were injected with oestrogen, which was also infused in their milk. They were to live as Womankind. The concept of ‘male’ was eradicated.

Life at School consisted chiefly in the maintenance of group solidarity. All forms of competition were prohibited. Children found engaging in competitive behaviours were punished by electric shocks, administered by mechanised monitors. There were no lessons as such. Literature, history, mathematics, science: there was no need for the children to learn of these things. They were the vestiges of a past which they did not need to know. Instead, time in class was spent endlessly repeating certain slogans by rote. For example:

Diversity is our strength!

Diversity is our strength!

Diversity is our strength!

Diversity is our strength!

Language had been distilled to a total lexicon of one thousand words. All adjectives and adverbs had been removed because they were in violation of the Cause.

Figure 1.2 shows a typical town in Global. Home units were connected to a Mall by a raised monorail system. This was the only form of transport found to be in keeping with the Cause. There were no longer any cars, trains or aeroplanes.

Figure 1.2

The monorail system was used to transport cargo from The Corporation’s warehouses to Malls. Reproduction units and Schools were both sealed off from residential areas but close enough to be connected by monorail. This was the mechanism used to transport:

1.      New babies to School units.

2.      New Mothers to Home units at the age of sixteen.

3.      New Womankind to Home units at the age of sixteen.

In terms of scale, a typical Home unit comprised one-hundred-and-fifty people. The Council had calculated that this was the optimum number to serve the Cause. One Mall would serve one-hundred-and-fifty Home units creating an area population of 22,500 per town. Such a town would be served by one School unit and one Reproduction unit. The Council had calculated that it would not serve the Cause to have any more than ten thousand towns per continent, not including Capital, which operated under a different structure and set of rules.

Upon being born babies would be removed to separate incubation units in batches of one hundred and fifty. Each first-year chamber would have one-hundred-and-fifty incubation units. Biological females would be delivered directly, whereas biological males would undergo sex reassignment surgery before delivery. The Council mandated that Mothers should spend no time with their new births because this risked the formation of a natural bond which is contrary to the aims of the Cause. Incubation units were supplied with teats which supplied a milk formula that had been infused with oestrogen. Each unit consisted of a special absorbent mattress and glass walls. Babies spent their first year completely naked and were free to soil their mattresses which soaked up and drained away any excretions. The units automated the process of cleaning babies, almost like an old-fashioned car wash. The temperature was kept at a constant sixteen degrees Celsius. At key stages certain objects of interest were dropped by mechanical arms into the units for babies to explore. These were mostly rainbow-coloured shapes. The glass walls could also transform to show moving images with sounds, a simulation of sorts. These ranged from tranquil scenes, such as meadows or swirling clouds or forests, to montages of various Womankind going about their daily life including occasional scenes of lesbianism. Babies sometimes cried but it was to no avail. All their material needs were met by the incubation units.

After twelve months the units tipped out the babies – now toddlers – onto conveyor belts which transported them into another chamber. Here, they were free to crawl around. They would spend a year here. The same one-hundred-and-fifty babies from the first-year chamber would spend their second year together. In fact, these one-hundred-and-fifty babies would spend most of the rest of their lives together through School and then onto Home. The Council believed that this was an ideal way to foster group solidarity.

The floor was made of the same absorbent material as the incubation unit mattresses, and again toddlers were free to relieve their bladders or bowels onto this floor. There was draining underneath. An automated washing system would ensure that standards of hygiene were maintained. The toddlers would remain naked throughout this year. The temperature was kept at a constant twenty degrees Celsius.

There were rainbow-coloured toys of all kinds on the floor. Through the middle of the room there was a trough into which portions of Consume were dropped several times a day. Teats supplying oestrogen milk and oestrogen water were also available. Babies were expected to find their own way to feed and drink. The Council had ascertained that this would be the first test of survival. Those babies who did not make it through were said to have failed the Cause.

Three times a day, the walls of the chamber would transform to beam images and sounds like those that they had experienced in incubation. However, now there was speech mixed in. A woman’s voice repeated the central mantras of the Council and the Corporation over scenes of tranquillity and scenes of daily life interspersed with lesbianism.

You are special.

You are Womankind. Diversity is our strength. Consume is life.

For the Cause.

Some of the more intelligent toddlers would begin to repeat the slogans. It is not clear if they understood what they said.

Occasionally toddlers would come into conflict. For example, they might fight over the possession of a toy, or over a piece of Consume. This would trigger an alarm. Heat sensors which monitored the room could detect if two toddlers came into physical contact. If the alarm was triggered, mechanised monitors would rush into the room physically to separate the toddlers. In theory, the Council had thought that toddlers would soon learn not to do this, but in practice the alarm was a near-constant feature of life inside the second-year chamber. The Council had contracted The Corporation to find a ‘fix’ to this issue but after several years of trials and failed solutions, they had agreed to settle for recording the gaps between alarms being triggered and then aiming to lengthen them. In the current year, the record was twenty-three minutes and ten seconds, a marginal improvement on the old record of twenty-two minutes and forty-two seconds. The Corporation had found that tweaking the formula of Consume and reducing the number of feeds per day by one had improved the alarm gap by fifty-two seconds.

These were the sorts of issues that greatly concerned the employees of The Council and The Corporation in Capital. It caused debate in Capital. Although there were no elections, there were still dissenting voices at the level of management and especially upper management. Some argued that the alarms were chiefly being caused by Womankind that had been born biological males. They argued that it was an anachronism in the current year that such Womankind were still being tolerated, and that The Council should simply end sex- reassignment surgery at birth, and instead either cull all male new births, or else adjust the DNA in the womb to ensure that the XY chromosome does not develop. Others countered that this was an extreme position and pointed out that 46% of all alarms were caused by biologically female Womankind. They argued that the source of the alarms was because, although Global had made a great deal of progress since The Troubles, The Council had not yet fully realised the aims of the Cause. Such debates were endless and seldom reached any conclusion. For any final decision to be reached, ‘sign off’ was required by a great many key decision makers, and even then, it may be vetoed by the Chancellor of the Council or the Chair of The Corporation. As things stood, however, the average time for conflict alarms in the second-year chambers of School units across Global was sixteen minutes and thirteen seconds.

At the age of three, infants were ready for schooling. They would be ushered into the third- year chamber through a door by mechanised monitors. There were no teachers. Most Womankind would see no human adults until they left their School unit at the age of sixteen. Discipline was maintained by the monitors. A monitor was a robot on caterpillar tracks. One arm was a taser, the other could grip. Its face was an LED screen, much like an early twenty- first century touch pad. Through this, it could show images and play sound including speech.

The third-year chamber had toys for older children including such things as a rocking duck. Daily life for the typical three-year old in the school unit consisted of playing with toys and being shown images that served the Cause such as scenes of lesbianism and groups of Womankind enjoying Consume. Schooling from this point on consisted in much the same, only with increased intensity.

Upon reaching the age of sixteen, Womankind would be released into their designated ‘Home’ units. A Home unit would comprise a large dormitory which slept all one-hundred- and-fifty-people. There was a large area for showering on the industrial scale, similar to twenty-first century prisons showers. Then there were the ‘Pleasure Chambers’ in which Womankind would take drugs of all sorts and engage in sexual pleasures. Capital had decreed that all Womankind were entitled to drugs and sexual pleasures as basic rights in the service of The Cause.

In theory, all Womankind were equal and entitled to the same rights. In practice, however, Home units were usually subject to intense natural hierarchies. Often, a natural- born woman with higher levels of testosterone would dominate others. Womankind who had transitioned at birth, meanwhile, who had lived their entire lives heavily sedated and on hormone therapies, occupied the lowest rungs of the social hierarchy. Dominant women would use the most subservient and submissive Womankind who had transitioned at birth essentially as pleasure slaves. Colloquially these were known as Dominants and Inferiors, although these terms were unofficial. Even though Credits could not be transferred from one Womankind to another, it was common Inferiors to render their allowances of consume and other luxuries to Dominants. Abuses of the most depraved and sordid kind went on. The full extremity of such abuses is beyond the remit of this report – a few examples will suffice to provide a flavour of what went on. It was common for Dominants to designate Inferiors as her ‘toilet’, which included urination and defecation onto the body and into the mouth. In some cases, Dominants forced Inferiors not to wash, denied them bed covers, and clothes, which would usually result in chronic illnesses. Inferiors were sometimes forced to vomit into each others’ mouths after being denied Consume which they rendered to Dominants. It was common for Inferiors to die young from a variety of causes, including illnesses, malnutrition, and suicide. The Council was aware these practices, which were not strictly in keeping with The Cause, went on, but chose not to intervene. Since Dominants were nearly always natural Womankind, while Inferiors, in most cases, had transitioned at birth, many members of The Council secretly saw these abuses as the final stage of revenge that should be suffered by white men – it was not enough for them to have been eradicated, it was thought, but rather they were to suffer daily torments in their new form. If there was ever political agitation in Capital which acknowledged the abuses, it came in the form of more extreme Council members pushing to get the superiority of Dominants formally recognised by law and even to mandate the abuses. There were practically no voices that called for them to be outlawed or banned.

There was no longer any money in Global. All products were produced by The Corporation. All Womankind received 1,000 Credits per week to spend at their local Mall. Mall units sold Consume, clothes, drugs, and sex toys. Hygiene products were supplied by the Home unit. Since there was no work in Global, Womankind could show their ultimate devotion to The Cause by engaging in a lifestyle of complete hedonism. Capital had decided that as such suicide was the ultimate tribute to The Cause. Thus, the many Womankind who committed suicide were interpreted as ‘success cases’ by Capital. In fact, The Council would closely monitor suicide statistics and would worry if the suicide rate was too low. The act of suicide was the ultimate sublimation of the self to The Cause. The Cause was served by hedonism, and the truest expression of a life of hedonism was suicide.

Credits were non-fungible: they could not be traded, they could not be transferred,  and they could not be saved. Every Womankind received a small device resembling a twenty- first century smart-phone through which they received 1,000 Credits every Monday. Should the 1,000 Credits not be fully spent by the following Monday, they would be lost and replaced with a new set of 1,000 Credits. The Credit system was used to regulate total consumption and production. Since the total credit supply in any given town was 2,2500,000 Credits, the price of Consume, clothes, drugs, sex toys and whatever else could remain indefinitely fixed. The economy was thus perpetual and constant, and nothing ever changed. If The Corporation withdrew a product, it would be replaced by a product of the same price and functions. The Council were acutely aware that sudden changes in the composition of consumer goods could result in unforeseen consequences. Hence, The Corporation introduced no goods with ‘new’ functions. Their guidelines were as follows:

Consume fulfils the food function.

Rainbow water fulfils the drink function.

Clothes fulfil the style function.

Drugs fulfil the happiness function.

Sex toys fulfil the sex function.

Consumer choice was seen as a function of production, and thus there were no ‘tastes’ as such since these were dictated entirely by The Corporation. There were some variations in clothing of style and colour, because The Council believed that Womankind must be allowed fully to express their individuality. In practice, Dominants in each Home unit would adopt a certain colour – for example, red – to mark out their social status. Should a lower status Womankind use their Credits on red clothing in such a Home unit, it would very like be ripped from her by Inferiors and she would suffer abuses. Many Inferiors were forced to walk around naked – sometimes on leashes, sometimes forced to walk on all fours like dogs. In many cases, they would also be visibly dirty, their faces and bodies smeared with Dominant excrement and so on.

There was never any resistance to Capital. Most Womankind did not even know where it was or even of the existence of The Council. They lived their lives in the perpetual present. There was no such thing as ‘politics’ beyond the local manifestations of power by Dominants. Inferiors never staged rebellions since the will was not there. The Council believed they had solved the fundamental problem of governance. Now, at least, the end of history had arrived.