The State by Leslie Claussen (classic romance novels txt) 📕

After the bombs dropped people went collectively insane. The Government, being at its heart a compound of people and a reflection of affairs, loomed over the individuals, casting shadows designed as well-meaning measures of safety and prevention.
First to go for “the safety of the people of the State” was all forms made of artistic free thought: museums stood bare, picked clean of their goods, while fires of flame and rioting rage burned steadily beyond the doors. Libraries, their contents forfeit in the shadow of Statehood, were sorted into two categories. Those of positive light with no hidden depth or any work praising orthodox behavior, religion, and conformity; the other pile contained all other works, but from the latter was spared some, those deemed classic and invaluable, were locked away in storage to only see light again when the world had recovered from its near-fatal wound. The former stock of works was re-shelved and restricted from common viewing, while any shelf remaining naked was broken down to kindling and with these pieces a bonfire was made to rid the State of the remaining, now unlawful, works. Artifacts of previous times, for good fortune, were saved by the people, knowing the State would remember not the darker times of human history and were kept safely stored, though hidden from all but the worthiest in private holdings. The only kind to be displayed in a new, State-funded showcase, were those that evoked the horror of an enemy mind: torture devices, weapons now seeming barbaric, damaged skulls and the preserved bodies of victims, and tools once used in the earliest of sciences and medicine. All was showcased weekly as a warning of a possible future given the recent past.
To the commoner, what was once beauty and lyric began to bare the names of evil and within a month the State had began and finalized its clearance-sale of sin and all stimuli associated with such danger.
Next, the State hired government councils, each formed to solve any remaining problems: the Education Council revised the schools of thought and streamlined all in a curriculum of nonviolence and passive thought; the People’s Council sought out all those not born in the State and raised under its rule, collected all such people, and evacuated them to locations still unknown; the Advisement Council reformed all media to the State’s liking, rejecting any unfit cinema, broadcast, news link, or advert. This in turn closed three television stations, all free press, and severely limited any unlawful flow of information among the people (even gossiping reduced for fear of being called into court for passing a rumor on). Lastly, the Riot Council, covert in its actions, infiltrated all known opposing groups, and internally disbanded them by any means necessary, as it was free and above the law of the people. Within the year, all councils were received as righteous and given leave to go about their business, commanding what they will from the people, as was seen as best for the “common good”.
And so on it went and any rebelling was quelled before—even by word of mouth—their plans could be made. Thus all came to except the current ways as being the right and logical way for both the people and the State.
All the councils in all the world, however, can only in vain quest to quell human nature and the curious mind given each since the dawn of time. And as the State became father and mother to an increasingly passive child, the individual was soon disregarded as knowing anything on thought to improve such a system. Unlike the previous State, this newest incarnation was not one of give-and-take, checks-and-balances, but became reduced to a few ruling as a king while all the rest, merry peasants for their part willing to play.
Secretly, unknown to king or country at large, there still beat, though faintly, the heart of the underground as even the tightest of governing cannot, in truth, fully ever escape. This underground is where those to be called rebels, bore the name collective as The Poets. And in their rebellion, though in other times an act considered common, they rebelled by shining light on those words long hidden in secret by a lord of the State, for it was his son, who renamed himself Dickens, that lead this secret band of offenders.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Text: Cover image: http://mattsif.com/rp/ruins.jpg
Publication Date: 10-09-2010

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Dedication:
For my grandmother.