An excerpt from Chapter 16 of Ignorance, the Freedom of the Weak, volume one:
A spacious yet intimate top brass conference hall. The kind of place where impacting decisions are casually made by a handful of people who keep forgetting that the sweet taste of power has only a marginal effect on their life span.
The mood was a bizarre mix. Lighting as dim as the glow of candles, throwing long sheens across the lacquered furniture, became crushed by the dark ceiling that seemed to rest on nothing but rosewood bookcases. Endless rows of tomes, growing into the shadowy heights, blending into the arches, bordered the contrasting rectangular, shallow, fluorescent frame of the holo projector. An intriguing melange, a seamless graft of distinct flavors imbuing together the imposing and the distinguished scent of a library, the comfort and familiarity of an old cinema and the solemnity and confidence of a tribunal.
Inside this long and narrow hall, there were only three people. Although none would be here without certain competence, there was something quite unremarkable about them. They belonged to the same breed. Their faces always lingered in the dark as if they wanted to stay distant even among themselves.
These men were bound by no tier, nameless shadows whose existence could not be proven, specters whose delight lay not in glory and recognition but in total, silent domination. Their Excellencies. The exponents of centralized power.
Contemplating how the light fell off on the upper rows of books, softly sending them into obscurity, was His Excellency the Professor, master of the press, entertainment, education, pornography, advertising and propaganda. More concisely, the ruler of omnimedia. Next to him, His Excellency the Surgeon owned public and animal health, emergency services, sports, food and drugs and ecology. Across the table, His Excellency the Architect controlled technology, industry, research, transportation, economy, labor. Finally, there should have been one more Excellency in the room, but he liked to keep people waiting.
More or less secretly, they all hated each other for not being able to decisively tilt the balance of power in one direction or another. There was a time when all the seats in the room were taken. Now it was an empty battlefield, an arena where well-dressed animals used to tear one another apart. That hall could have passed for anything, except for what it really was, a jungle. Unfortunately for the surviving four, centralized power was stretched enough as it was. They would have never admitted it, but trying to exert control over so many aspects of life demanded almost inhuman effort. Since Their Excellencies were mere mortals, although at times some doubts would certainly arise, they had to live with the frustration that their tentacles had come to the end of their reach. Nevertheless, they would have viciously seized a few moments of complete power, hoping to quench the ever-growing thirst for domination, which preyed upon them, tireless. A morbid obsession that herded the remnant offspring of deluded nihilists who had striven to become the authority they fought against with all their hypocrisy. The few people who could smell such subtle irony were dead, driven into the abyss by the same passions, forsaken at the end of the same road Their Excellencies themselves were scouring. Because sacks of bones make for flimsy gods. The thirst would go on to consume them all, long after history would have forgotten their names and meaningless trials for things so volatile. For what feeds greed but dust in the wind?
“Bad news?” inquired His Excellency the Architect, noticing that His Excellency the Surgeon was frowning over a report.
“I’ve just received the results of a study, and it confirms a suspicion I’ve had for some time. The sanitation technicians are pretty much useless past the age of forty. Their health declines so rapidly around this age that there are hardly any reasons to keep them alive. Take a look at the numbers. Their productivity is ridiculous compared to their medical expenses. They simply aren’t worth it.”
