Calban In Marta City : Part 1 ( Marta and Gallanol Ch. 2)

Calban In Marta City (Part 1) copyright David Kirtley 2007

CHAPTER TWO: CALBAN IN MARTA CITY (Part 1)
Calban slunk past the main room where colleagues were eyeing the computer screens and discussing some trivial detail on someone’s trivial account. The account could not be passed until all the documentation was complete. Evidence was essential in this day and age. No accountant would pass a set of accounts which were not thoroughly documented. Ordinary business people laboured under a huge weight of legal restriction, documentation, and form filling which belied the government campaigns on freedom to trade, freedom to choose, freedom to live, free competition. In reality, people were not free to do anything. Any positive achievement was shadowed by the rigmarole which had to be satisfied during or after the event. The movement towards the working world’s current state of “perfection” had begun positively as a reaction to dishonesty, fraud, nepotism and patronage. It had its successes early in the movement, perhaps two hundred years or so before. Success had brought the clamour for an extension of the effort for the elimination of dishonesty to root out yet more corruption, to devise a huge network of systems in which corruption could no longer survive. Building on recognised laws and new government legislation the lawyers had developed these systems, supported by professional bodies and auditors. The systems were developed piecemeal in response to the cleverness of lawyers themselves. When prosecutors and plaintiffs made out a case, they demanded high standards of evidence from defendants to catch them out. Defence solicitors became very good at procrastination and in undermining prosecutors’ evidence by demanding high standards of evidence in return. Both sides resorted to a combination of procrastination and legal perfectionism. This raising of legal standards had resulted in what Calban viewed as a stranglehold on real life. The Empire was asphyxiating itself with its legal perfectionism.
Calban managed to get to the front door without being noticed. He had not seen or spoken to the people in the main room all day, and did not wish to do so now. He had nothing to say to them; they would not listen to him anyway. They were little more than machines made of flesh and blood. Their minds had been programmed by childhood brainwashing to accept what Calban saw as futile. What Calban despised most about them was that they enjoyed their puny lives. Calban counted his own life as puny but he could not stoop to the level of actually enjoying it. Its limitations were too obvious to him. How could such a life be enjoyed when it was so futile?
Calban pressed the button which activated the front door computer and coded into the operating computer in the door his own personal number. Recently he had been given a new longer number. They all had. Each individual employee was sworn to keep his own number secret. It was part of their employment contracts, the purpose being to protect files from competitors, saboteurs, journalists, spies and the like. No outsiders could enter the premises, although Calban felt it would be more likely that such outsiders would bribe employees if they wished to gain access to information. There were many in these offices, he felt, who would do anything for money. However Calban thought the effort expended by purchasing and installing the thing and teaching everyone how to use it and the time spent in getting in and out of the premises was disproportionate to the dangers of office espionage. He had heard stories about such espionage, particularly in the press but his House’s clients’ affairs were so uninteresting he could not see why anyone should wish to find any secrets. After working here for three years, he no longer found any of it remotely interesting. One account looked very much like another. Why was it that so many people thought figures told stories? To Calban’s mind figures came out of computers and had little relation to what he now perceived as reality.
The front door computer was another case of technology creating new work. If the technology had not been invented, no one would have bothered to worry about this aspect of security. Because it had been invented everyone had to have a door computer regardless of its impositions on daily life. The computer produced reports on employee attendance and assisted in wage calculation so it had other uses, but when you wanted to escape quickly from work, it was a nuisance. Calban’s new number was so long he still had difficulty remembering it. Once or twice he had got it wrong and the door had refused to let him go until authorised managers had entered their own personal numbers into the computer and a checklist of questions about Calban’s identity had been answered. The problem had involved a few people and caused Calban some humiliation, but he was not the only employee to have suffered from memory error. Management had issued directives on the use of the computer. It had taken up committee time. Even small financial penalties for wasting office time had been incorporated into the system. Calban was now so cautious about the door that he had written down his new number and would not attempt to open the door until he could read the number from his scrap of paper.
Calban finished entering his code number and pocketed his scrap of paper. The door opened efficiently, silently disappearing into the side wall. Calban had successfully escaped without anyone seeing him go. There really was no need to be secretive. He was well within his rights. He had done the minimum time stated in his contract for today. Further work today would mean he could take extra time off during some future non-standard working hours. Calban hated the way he skulked about feeling guilty even about things that were his right. He felt guilty insofar as he thought his superiors and some of his equals and inferiors would not approve. Most of them preferred to work longer when there were important jobs on. It was sensible because it looked good on your Work Reports. These could be shown to one’s superiors when you were called for appraisal interviews – which was every quarter in this House and in all Houses which followed Modern Standards. A willingness to work hard and long hours when there was work to do pleased the managers and helped one’s career prospects immensely. Extra hours were credited automatically to one’s payroll if one did not take Non Standard Time off to compensate by the end of the month. If an individual applied for another job a willingness to work long hours was almost essential in these days of competitive job hunting and you needed proof. The extra credits were a major incentive. Most people had things they wanted to purchase badly. They never seemed to possess enough. They were prepared to sacrifice time to get what they wanted. Possession was status and it was normal.
Calban had often worked longer hours in the past for both of these reasons. The Work Reports had possibly helped him to gain some basic promotion earlier than he would otherwise, but he was sure that as his experience grew his House would have wanted to use his talents anyway. The youngsters, low level trainees, were still learning and they did not understand all of what he did. The credits had helped him to buy his small flat. It was theoretically better than to rent so he had done it. He now had a slightly bigger room and more privacy because he did not have to share the kitchen with any obnoxious people. He had calculated that he now earned sufficient to keep up the payments on the flat and to buy the things he needed. Why did he need any more credits? Indeed, he wished deeply that it were possible to enter a contract with his House, which would allow him to work shorter hours and to receive fewer credits. He knew that was not possible. It was unheard of in his line of work. Other people in some other jobs were part time, but they were considered poor unfortunates and were paid lower rates. Instead he earned too much money and lived a life of dull but complicated ‘freedom’. There was no way out of the daily cycle.
Calban was on the pavement outside the office block. Freedom at last. It was daylight outside. He should not have been surprised. The summer season was approaching. In the office there were windows, large windows to draw in as much light as possible from outside and reduce lighting costs, but the rooms were big and needed a lot of the workers to sit a long way away from the windows. He did himself. The strip lights were very bright. It was thought that there was a beneficial correlation between brightness and productivity. They were probably right. You could not relax, there were no dark corners you could hide in unnoticed and go to sleep. Everyone could observe everyone else. No privacy, but nothing interesting to look at.
The light was different out here, not loudly bright, just everything was light. Things out here were not struggling to hide from the light; they wanted to be light because the light out here belonged here. It was natural. Even so, the buildings might have been built to obscure the light. There were rows of tall buildings ten or twenty storeys high, some of them reaching towards space and the light, but obscuring it for the people on the ground. Calban did not really mind that the buildings diminished the light. There were plenty of other spaces in the world where there were no buildings or fewer buildings. This was a special place. The largest city in the world, the tallest city in the world. Marta City, the capital of the Empire, the home of the International Alliance, the commercial capital of the world, a monument to Progress and to History. In itself, it was beautiful. It was crazy but it was very beautiful.