The Neo Creadds Are Born (Ch.14g) : Discussion Group (Part 1)

The Neo Creadds Are Born :Ch.14g : Discussion Group

(Part 1 Calban’s Introduction)

 

     Vera saw Calban in the corridor. “Oh Calban I am so glad to see you today,” she said. “I have been thinking much about the conversation we had last week and I was hoping to see you, although I thought I had missed my chance to see you before this evening.”

 

Calban paused as he took in the import of what she said, “This evening? Why did you want to see me before this evening?”

 

    “Because I am a member of a new discussion group. I forgot to mention it when I saw you before. We meet tonight and you would be perfect for it. I thought that after we talked, but I did not know where you live, so I thought we had lost you. You will come won’t you?” pleaded Vera enthusiastically.

 

     “I don’t know what it is,” said Calban noncommittally.

 

     “Come along and find out,” said Vera, tantalisingly. “Actually it began long before I joined, but our numbers are growing, although not everyone can make it every time. We discuss anything. It is a way of breaking down the social barriers to ideas, just like we discussed. We want to rethink everything, to begin afresh, to get to know one another more deeply. We think it will grow. Who knows? One day we may have numbers and good ideas enough to actually challenge our society and reform it for the better.

 

      “We talk about anything. We take it in turns to chair the discussion, leading it in the direction we wish the discussion to go. One person may wish to discuss a book he has read. The discussion may expand to cover the view of life held by the author and other books which other people have read. Another chairperson may wish to discuss Unemployment, or Loneliness and Isolation. All sorts of things have been discussed. We often return to past discussions and embellish them. We usually disagree about issues and ideas, but we usually agree to exchange ideas freely and honestly.”

 

     “I see,” said Calban. His life had left him very quietspoken and he was rather stuck for words. “I don’t know,” he mumbled.

 

     “You weren’t planning anything else were you?” Vera pried knowing full well that this young man had no ‘public’ life beyond his work, and that he loathed. It did not matter whether he refused on this occasion or not. She would persist, and she would get him in the end.

 

     “No I am not doing anything else. I should be studying, but I will probably end up watching the Vidscreen.”

 

      Was that an affirmative or not? Vera was not quite sure, but she thought it probably was. She was reminded of her old self. ‘I used to be like that,’ she thought, ‘except I was far worse because I used to believe my work and my study had some great purpose, and I never allowed myself to watch the Vidscreen. No wonder he’s not happy. He watches programmes that make him soft and indolent, which do not make him think, mixed with programmes which tell him he should be working harder. The result is he has no fulfilment or success in his life. He achieves nothing of value to himself, therefore he is unhappy.’

 

      “Does that mean you will?” she asked again, just to make certain. She tried hard to make her voice sound soothing, not wanting to appear pushy or bossy to this very sensitive young man.

 

      “I suppose so,” said Calban, by force of habit sounding undecided or unenthusiastic as he would when he wanted to avoid volunteering for something at work. “Where is it, and when?”

 

      “We meet at the apartment of a friend of mine, although sometimes we meet at other places. Eventually we would like to find a larger place, perhaps even take over a business seminar room at one of the training establishments. That would be a turn up wouldn’t it?” Vera stopped talking, expecting a smile or sign of response from Calban, but there was no sign he had even understood the joke, or the more serious point she inferred.

 

     This one was quite far gone, she thought. She had met none quite this bad. He was so withdrawn that she doubted he had any friends at all. She wondered what kind of family he came from? She assumed he must have little contact with them. But Vera detected some willingness to emerge from his limbo life. Calban was the way he was, not entirely because of his own character. Largely he was the product of his surroundings. Life for him was the contrast of work and being alone at his home. He was probably bored by the work he did and felt alienated by the people around him, many of whom believed in what they were doing and shared a common outlook. Having no friends Calban probably spent the rest of his time on his own, watching Vidscreen, his only stimulus.

 

     In some respects he was better than she had been herself. She had refused to watch Vidscreen for many years, even though it would have aided relaxation. She had flung herself desperately and wholeheartedly into her work and her study, treating every new goal as a challenge to be won. At the expense of every other valuable thing in life she had followed what she had dutifully believed to be the one true path in life, the path dictated to her by the system. Calban was not like she had been. Where she had found purpose, however misguided, he had none. She guessed that Calban had, in his own way, been trying to fight the system for years. He was the absolute cynic, disapproving of everything around him while it made him lonelier and more removed. She respected him for that. While she had been narrow minded and oblivious to truth, Calban had known the truth for years, but was consigned to life without hope because of it.

 

     Vera knew that Calban had potential. His questioning cynicism, combined with his own sad personal state, made him ideal for the group. He could contribute while learning from the group. Vera could help to rebuild his life and point it in a more valuable direction. He was an attractive young man. It was so sad to see his humility and his good looks going to waste. It was urgently necessary that Calban be introduced to a social life and women who might want him. Without that aid he would sink further into despondency and his own limited world.

 

      Vera resumed her speech, “My friend is called Julia. She lives in the Miras block on the fifteenth level. Do you know it?”

 

      “Yes, I think so. It ‘s only three blocks from here isn’t it,” replied Calban.

 

      “I will write the full address down for you,” she said. “The numbers are a little difficult to remember. We shall be meeting there about eight this evening. Is that too early for you?”

 

     “If I eat quickly I will manage it,” he said slowly, still pondering the question as he replied.

 

     “It does not matter if you come late. You are still welcome. Not everyone can make it on time. They all have work to do like everyone else. Well, most of them do. One or two of them have managed to make arrangements in their lives which are more suitable to a healthy lifestyle.” Vera thought that she did indeed see a flicker of interest in Calban’s eyes as she mentioned this. The thought of escape from the stranglehold of work appealed to him.

 

     “Tonight we are going to discuss the society we live in, what we think about it, how we would like to change it, what we think we should do to change it. Does that sound interesting?” There was no immediate reply, but Vera had decided that Calban was intelligent and would be very interested in the things they would discuss. It would be so different from the normal routine of his life that it would be bound to stimulate him.

 

      She wrote out the address for him on some paper and gave it to him. She had to go now, and she knew that Calban too was on his way to work. She was almost certain that the young man would come to the meeting, but she could not be absolutely sure. If he did not come tonight she would certainly follow him up. She hoped that would not be necessary. If he came Calban would have made a great leap forward in his life, and he would have shown that he was strong enough to change his old life.

 

 

     Calban stepped out of the lift, which had just thrust him from the walkway on level five, which connected the Miras Block with a Network line, onto level fifteen. He was near the top of this block. With mounting trepidation he walked along the level in the direction which indicated Flat 19. It was dark now. The city was all around him. Higher blocks stretched into the night, it seemed only arms lengths away in the distortion which the city always seemed to place upon his vision. Their lights were confused with the lights of the Network below and the roads, walkways and Ground Level buildings at the lower levels

 

     His mind often reeled at the size of it all. In every direction were the lights which signified life. Behind each light was a human life, maybe more than one. Many of them were families who lived together. Calban could rarely walk out at night without wondering about all those people. They lived there, behind closed doors, leaving for work during the day, and for some during the night, for daylight and the natural rhythm of life did  not matter in this City of Work. For most of them he imagined it was like it was for him. They mingled with other people only at work, if they were lucky enough to have a job which involved mingling. Calban worked with people, but he might as well work on his own for all the communication which existed. At home most of these people watched the Vidscreen like he did. Like him they loved the Vidscreen. It supplied their higher needs for entertainment and information. Calban was aware that this was his only friend, his only real link with other people. The Vidscreen programmes were made by people who could express their thoughts and sometimes their passions onto the screen. He and millions of others shared in their creativity. Calban wondered whether other Vidscreen watchers shared his own dissatisfaction. He wanted to experience real life. That was what had made him come here, frightened as he was, tonight.

 

      That woman, Vera, was remarkable, he thought. He had seen her, noticed her before, on the Network in the morning, sometimes in the evening. People on the Network never spoke to each other. They did not know each other, only saw each other for some minutes every day. They observed each other, but that made it more impossible to speak because you knew that everyone else in the carriage would be trying to listen to every word you said, if you dared. Some would be listening or pretending to listen to Talk Programmes with earplugs. Some even watched Vidscreen on headsets, but most liked to be able to observe each other and create speculations or fantasies about the people they often saw. Many read manuals or learning texts in order to aid their studies or their promotion prospects, but Calban wondered how many could actually concentrate when around them were real living people who they would only see at these short times in the day. The travelling was in many ways the most interesting part of the day; the time when Calban was not alone; the time when he was not being forced to do unpleasant and very boring tasks which frequently made his brain ache!

 

      Calban had been on his way to the lift, which would take him to the Network, and to work, on his own corridor. Vera had for some reason been walking away from the lift towards her flat, which, it turned out, was on the same level as his, further along. His eyes had flickered briefly at hers as they approached one another. It was a mutual recognition, one of those where neither party can be mistaken that it had occurred. Calban had not been able to resist a glance at one of the many females he considered well worth looking at. The mutual recognition had been more than he bargained for. He had instantly clicked his gaze away in sudden embarrassment. To his complete surprise she had stopped and spoke to him. A few paces later on his brain managed to tell his legs to stop, so he would not earn her condemnation for his rudeness. He turned and replied. He had long forgotten the exact words used, but she had greeted him as a friend she knew from the Network. She had asked questions and responded to his blundering answers as if she was interested. All too soon she had allowed him to go, but there had been another occasion since and she had talked to him for longer. Then this morning she had invited him to this ‘Discussion Group’. It sounded interesting. It was an invitation he would never receive again, a chance he had to take.

 

      Calban reached the door of number 19 before he was ready. His finger reached towards the button more than once before he could actually bring himself to press it. What was he getting himself into. After pressing it he waited in torment for maybe a minute. He spent so much of his time running away from people, and yet he was an accountant! While he was nowhere near being qualified (that took years and he had reached a level where he could stop), that did not mean he could stop completely because he had occasionally to attend refresher courses or new internal courses, when management introduced some new bureaucratic detail, which had to be followed, or the government had passed some new legislation which provoked the profession to even greater frantic efforts to improve efficiency in order to follow the legislation without increasing costs. It never worked. A new burden was placed on society, which the clients had to pay for. But it was accountants and clerks like Calban who really paid, in further soul destroying drudgery, to satisfy the whims of grey legislators who sought some vague notion of perfection. ‘As if any of this drudgery was perfection,’ thought Calban. It wasn’t natural at all, the way everyone lived.

 

      Calban could talk and did have to frequently, over the phone, when trying to fill in laborious forms in which clients unfortunately had little interest. They gave them to accountants, assuming they could easily fill them in. As all accountants knew, clients would be better filling in these forms themselves, but they took the opportunity of avoiding unnecessary hardship. Maybe the managers were glad to receive more business, but to the people who had to do the actual work it was a nightmare. Letters and phone calls went backwards and forwards just to complete basic information. In addition there were often legal queries. In this sort of work and others Calban frequently had to give uninteresting explanations and persuasions over the phone. But these were not real conversations. Just occasionally managers higher up might call him in to meet clients face to face, but these were frequently awkward situations where he could not remember the details of work he might have done weeks or only days before. He had learned to deal with all these situations impersonally in his own way. Now he was possibly about to be plunged into a situation he had even less control over. It might be good for him, but it might be very embarrassing.