Flickering iridescent tube lighting brought the empty computer room to life as the students filed in. Lazily pulling out chairs, turning on the desktops , yawning, chatting, filling the room with low levels of noise. Stuart looked from the front desk at the 11 teenagers, dressed in their uniforms though trying to resist the uniformity. Each of them deviating some way, a shortened tie, different hair, sometimes make up. Apart for Johnny, he was a model student, handbook perfect, the mannequin that the headmaster and The Department wanted. There was no “self”, no individuality everyone had to collaborate for The Greater Good.
He could just remember the time before The Greater Good, freedom to play, freedom to think, to argue, to love, to read, to ask questions. Then came along the downward spiral, the borders closed, the different people were interned in camps and disappeared, never to reappear. Uniformed men patrolled the streets instead of police, handing out retribution in deadly baton strikes and parliament burnt down to the ground leaving just The Greater Good in control. We were all slaves to The Greater Good.
Libraries, art galleries and museums all joined The Night of The Cleansing Fires. Books, paintings, histories, and institutions all immolated, a conflagration to birth a nation into wilful ignorance and acceptance. Force fed more propaganda, we were the “true believers”, the “just”. The outsiders were not to be trusted; we didn’t even know if outside Britain existed any more. A few murmured in the shadows about people who had escaped to France, but daily we saw on the TV people being shot on the beaches as they tried to escape. Bleeding, colouring the sand red, then cloaked in chemical fire from the flame thrower wielding storm troopers.
Johnny shushed the room as he stood up and saluted, the others followed suit, maybe not as crisply but in empty eyed submission as the piped morning music played through the speaker on the wall. Stuart stood and watched his students, sadness blossoming in his heart for each and everyone, especially Johnny.
Joining in, Stuart felt ashamed of his own cowardice but what else was left than to pretend and be alive, instead of being true to yourself and dead. His old friends, those despicable liberals had all fallen by the wayside, either changing their rhetoric or meeting a bullet ridden end. There was no in-between, no shades of grey in modern day ethics. It was either obey or death, the Greater Good had made that clear, it was their mantra at the heart of their government.