He could remember a time Before, a memory lurking at the very back of his mind, like an itch he could not scratch at the nape of his neck. It was an indefinable shape � more a memory of a memory, but he couldn�t recall its shape. Sometimes it seemed to have a rosy glow of unexplained happiness, at others a black ring of pain surrounding it. He suppressed the thought. Such things would get you nowhere. Instead he stooped once more, ignoring his complaining back as he again took up the plough. He didn�t know how much longer he had before he could stop, take his brief supper and, for those oh so glorious yet damnably brief hours sleep, or talk, or sleep, or play a game, or sleep. Perhaps he would even spend a portion of his pitiful savings on a shot of alcohol, to help him forget, those taunting memories.
*
He returned from the stables, still slightly bent from a day � or it could have been an hour or a week; he had no way of telling � of labour bent over an unforgiving plough. What for, he didn�t know, and would never know. He only knew the present, never the past, never the future.
He walked up to his kitchen table and took his plate from a large, haggard looking woman, who avoided his eyes. Only a slight, almost imperceptible flicker in her eyes betrayed the fact she had even noticed him. He took his meagre meal and sat at a fairly deserted table and attacked it with abandon. It was hardly a meal for a sparrow in a dull season, but to him it was a banquet of ecstasy, a veritable feast to his underused palate and achingly starved belly. The fatigue which he carried like a millstone round his scrawny neck was an exhaustion of years, not merely an exhaustion which comes of a day of strenuous activity. The weariness was ingrained further than merely the body; it was a tiredness of the mind. His consciousness was little more than a token existence, to propel his body in its endless, unstoppable labour.
This was neither uncommon, unintentional nor sad. It was a story endlessly replayed in a thousand forms. In offices and air-conditioned suites people in suits, so superior to him, replayed his story, just in a different way. Their exhaustion was less physical, but just as complete. Their lives were no more worthy or free than his, just different. Better? Perhaps. It depends on how you see such things. Perhaps any existence is better than none.
He cleared his plate and lurched to his chair. There he talked, quietly, words detached from meaning, with his partner, whilst a soft and meaningless tune, such as existed universally, playing quietly in the background, before drinking a little chlorinated water and going to bed. Tomorrow would be the same, just as yesterday was. Everyday was the same. All over the world every day, for so many lives, was the same. The details changed, but they never changed in spirit. A sullenness was inbred and unchangeable, and that would never change.
*
Thoughts, unbidden, yet still not sent away rose in his mind. This day could have been the next day, or the one after, or even the previous one. It matters little.
The thoughts were wayward, he knew that from the first, but it mattered little. It was not a crime to think what you want, nor even to say it and act upon it, as long as it didn�t harm others. He thought of the futility. He thought of the future and saw, with terrible certainty, that there was no future, just the present repeated, only the exact specifics changed. This was not an original thought, and he pushed its worrisome form away from his mind.
He carried on, thoughtless. Not thoughtless in the careless way, just without conscious interaction. He knew, with just as much certainty as he knew what the future was, that he couldn�t change it. He could vote for a different politician, vote for a law, against one, but, as with all his life, and all lives, that was only details. The fundamentals changed not. A drudgery was inherent in the system, hidden by layers of administration. A few had power of a sort, a lot more didn�t. The power wielders changed, but the fundamentals didn�t.
The system was worse than those in the past, whose suppression had been more blatant. This oppression was an insidious, unconscious thing. Minds were weaned from thinking; emotions were used for purposes, and then discarded. Frivolity was frowned upon. None of it was direct or upfront, nor was it really considered terrible. They lived in �democracy� after all � they could vote in any of a variety of thought criminals that they liked. This wasn�t like a fascist dictatorship, whereupon the terribleness is clear and apparent. As a lobster will unknowingly consent to its own death when slowly boiled from cold water, so people had unwittingly, even willingly, slid into a soulless society of repetition.
He thought of this regularly, or irregularly, depending on how such terms are defined. Suffice to say he thought of little else, little else though there was to think about. Sometimes a death or a birth temporarily interrupted the daily plod through, but there was truly little else he could find to entertain his withdrawing mind. Some days he despaired and thought of suicide, but he never could muster the initiative to gather the tools. He had a knife blade, not a full knife of course, which he had stolen whilst labouring in the workshop and pretended had snapped. He had been shouted at for that, not beaten though. Beating people was Wrong. This was not enough though, for his heart was always weak when he came to the deed, he needed a less savage method, one he couldn�t provide. Anyhow, any life was better than death. Death would be even more monotonous.
Instead he continued, pushing his plough on through the eternal furrow.
*
Some day later still, when is unimportant, his life was much the same, the only change being the departure of his partner. He was ploughing again. As his furrow approached the buildings, he prepared to turn. As he did so he saw the �boss� coming towards him.
The boss wasn�t a manager as such. He was an elected officer in charge of agri-business. Elected by the local council, of course. You couldn�t expect the common man to elect everyone, nothing would get done but for a vote.
The elected officer shouted towards him, in a loud, slightly gravelled voice,
�Hey you! Come here!�...