February 2085

  Second letter of Norman the Orientien

  In an effort to make the leadership manifest in every realm where political power potentially could shape consequences, the Oriental state has providently innovated a system of incentives and control even in the realm of love. Hence, if one chooses to pursue a life of partnership (in earlier times, this is the concept known as romance), it becomes an obligation to participate in a meticulous selection process, a scheme by party planners who are masters in behavioral studies, psychology and knows every jot and tittle of party ideology. In this way, the Party has assumed the role of arbiter of love across the Orient, of matching partners in view of greater needs.

  The ideal of this program is molding a homogeneous population of adherents, a great reservoir of elite loyalists all bound to act one way and talk and think the same things. Indescribably degrading and ruthlessly utilitarian, the Partner Planning Program is nevertheless a privilege. Only those who have satisfactorily achieved a catalog of party standards were permitted to actually have partners to date and to marry to beget children for the service of the state.

  The general scheme of the program can only be described as methodological, like the attention observed by a scientist in controlling the environment and conditions of an experiment. Citizens, especially party officials and members, undergo for a period of time a selection process where one encounters multiple potential partners. These prospects one sees and hear from or occasionally walk with in various public spaces, applying the rule of physical, social distancing. Actual intimacy is prohibited, and until the selection phase is completed, one never actually makes direct, physical contact with one's prospects.

  This phase may take place for as short as two years, but for others, it persists for as long as six years to a span of eight years, in the passage of which one already feels drained of and unreceptive to any hint of emotion which one had harbored at the outset, if there was any. Depending on one's evaluation in performing party duties, the selection phase may go smoothly and without complications, as having to see potential partners come and go before you realized they were likewise considering you as a prospect, of course, under orders from the Party.

  In general, it is a ridiculous program, and even after a longish amount of time had been spent in the act of filtrating prospective partners through mechanical and predictable rotation of happy events and intrigues that probe loyalty and orthodoxy, one does not gain as much as a vague and insubstantial sense of the erotic, less a hint of a sense of mutual intimacy. In my experience, you get to a point when there lingers nothing but a dull, listless feeling about the entire setup, where you try, for the sake of the vision that you dimly perceive is disconnected from your authentic interests, to fake your true feelings and to deceive the integrity of your soul. It is one of the ways the Party directs people to betray themselves, and to lose their personality for the sake of the state.

  *

  In the afternoon, the New Orient Party announced a mass rally at the New Nation Stadium. This is a monthly event the leadership supervises across all fifteen zones comprising the Orient. Thus, at specific days during the month, on the same hot and orange hours of any sunny afternoon, Orientiens come together in great crowds for the honor of being an audience to a masterful, highly-planned government performance in flaming oratory.

  Through the rallies, the party leadership makes a report to the people of recent achievements of governance. However, the essential purpose of the rallies, as the official pamphlets describe, is of ‘keeping the fire of the Great Revolution alive in the hearts of all Orientiens who have shown themselves superior to all foes and obstacles in the establishment of the New Orient state.’ In other words, there are less achievements spoken of during the three-hour event than carefully-constructed speeches that leave you with hot blood rushing to your temples and your heart leaping in your chest. This effect is expected when the speakers are professionally-trained orators who practice their art as strenuously as stage actors and sports athletes. Attendance is compulsory, totally filling stadiums in every city and municipality. Absence for whatever reason is harshly recompensed with substantial cuts in perks and privileges, in the worst case the loss of citizenship status, which would mean a dire life in the ditches of society struggling to regain one's social standing. The only way one reverses one's fortunes is by providing manifold mean services to the state.

  The roads to the grand, colosseum-shaped stadium are clogged with people and cars. On my way, I immediately spotted among the crowd in the same silvery-white suits and coats some four of the women who are, in relation to me, my prospects. Each one is, at the same time, prospecting, and the women are themselves prospects to others. At some point you do not know whether to blush with embarrassment or with repulsion as such a thought, and at the Party's micromanagement. I fall in line and shuffle my way forward until the line comes up to a broad-chested officer-in-charge who was checking QR codes for attendance. He assigns me a seat in the high row, a spot overlooking the entire stadium. It is humming and buzzing. From a distance, we Orientiens are like the mirage of only one form of human being. I glanced at my prospects, who are assigned different seats far from me, and move away.

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  In a while, the clocks struck two, and the program promptly began. A roll of drums boomed from the huge speakers all around the stadium. In concert, the great human buzz died down and we all stood still.

  “Glory to the New Orient!” a raspy, guttural voice like a large toad's began on the foreground after the stiff silence had been broken by a recorded orchestra performance of the Party anthem.

  “Glory!” we, the people, responded. We are automatic and instantaneous, like nearby echoes. None dare leave an interval or delay that might exhibit a lack of enthusiasm or relation to the speaker that is not passionate and immediate. You check your posture, your tone, the loudness of your voice and keep in mind that the man immediately next to you is an eager denouncer.

  “Glory to the New Orient Party!” the voice shouted again, and the people shout the same.

  “Glory to the High Leader Crocus!” Glory!, every attendee shouted. We pierce each other deaf and compete in nationalism. Meanwhile, the ceremony proceeds, and the atmosphere changes, sublimated, and all at once it makes you heady, it makes you brittle, it makes you nauseous, your body loses strength because your thoughts and feelings are being carried away by the music, the crowd and the speaker yelling at each other, and it all demands that you give yourself away to dissolve and become one with all, and it makes you want to crush anything out there that is different and that deviates.

  When the singing of the national anthem concludes, the speeches began. Orientiens, with one hearts and one minds we are gathered at this great monument of our might, rejoicing in the blessings of the party and our rights! Where in our abundance of fortunes must I begin this afternoon's report? The rich yield of our land and seas, the triumphs of our champions in the games, the wonders of our minds in the continuous formation of our bright and strong future, or our heroisms and victories in our wars?

  With the mention of the wars, which the speaker flourishes with an emphatic, extended articulation of each word and an abrupt halt at the end, the entire stadium erupts. I could hear every attendee shout hurrah to the speaker - that is, to his performance and not to his ideas - as if they were tearing apart their chests and throats. At the moment, the Oriental state is fighting wars in South Asia such as in Borneo and in parts of Indonesia in pursuit of the policy of territorial expansion. In fact, since the Party has come to power in the 1930s, the wars has been its primary occupation.

  “Together, we have embarked on this task! Together, we shall enjoy the harvest of our sacrifice!”

  Thus, the speakers go on. Except for minute differences of statistics, each uses the same rhetorical flourish. As the saying goes, if you have heard of one, you have heard the lot.

  When it is not boasting of itself, the speakers turn to denouncing enemies. This act of pointing out common enemies is at the heart of the total state's great project and obsession. A common enemy, real or imagined, reinforces tribal cohesion while registering the most loyal energies into an active, purge-like pursuit of the destruction of opponents and enemies of the system.

  At some point, I stated to notice that the speeches were always proportioned into three parts: the repetition of important aspects of ideology, the celebration of party achievements, and the most virulent denunciation of enemies, particular and general, which the leadership calls the war against corruption.

  “Where is Jose Jorge now, that unforgivable, deluded betrayer and traitor to the people and the nation?”

  Jose Jorge belonged to the revivalist movement in the 2040s that sought to re-establish the Orient as a pluralist nation. His adherents were a rough mixture of intellectuals, artists and young people who were skeptical of the direction of the New Orient as a single-party state. The movement gained noticeable momentum until it was shut down with the 2040 political purges initiated by the coercive apparatus of the ruling party under then Minister of Social Affairs Anton Crocus. Over the years, nothing significant will be left of the revivalist movement and Crocus will assume absolute leadership of the Party and of the Orient.

  “Shall we cut the traitor down? Nay!”

  Nay, the stadium burst out.

  “Hang him? Burn him? Feed him to the birds and dogs!”

  Nay! Nay! Nay!

  “No! That devil is not even worthy to be food for animals! Even the worst animals will be corrupted with Jose Jorge's corruption and become even more terrifying... nonnimals!”

  Hurrah!, was the maddened response among the attendees, like the roar of a great, rushing tide against the foot of a rocky cliff.

  With such antics, the enemies of the state were regularly reviled by the Party. It was a technique that effectively instilled fear and hatred en masse.

  As the speeches were ending, my attention span started to wane, and my body stiff all over. I make light movements and swift glances of my surroundings. My fellow attendees seem to be feeling the same, and some have been discreetly chatting. I feel lighter with the afternoon cooling down and the breeze coming from the sea.

  “There is a nation where there is total rule; there is no higher delusion than that false sense of the soul!”

  I remember smiling when these lines were spoken. I am not certain anymore whether the slight, barely physically-noticeable smirk I made was done out of weariness, or out of an inward sense that something was insincere about the speeches and in a way of all the people that were cramped into the stadium and of the whole edifice that is the Oriental state. I resisted this declaration and in a nonmaterial way mocked its presumption.

  When I looked around, I found the eyes of a young woman meeting mine, and I shuddered with a sudden, sinking chill. But it was not only the eyes. Some kind of perspective was transmitted, an idea of who I was, what I am imagining I am willing to stand for. The eyes like the deep midnight, that were set in a half-amused and afternoon-shone face that was like porcelain in its purity and innocent, have confirmed in them that I have not fully submitted to the Party.

  End of chapter 2?