The Neo-Classical New World
By: Kazi Niaz Ahmed
Tags: Fiction Series, Literature, Fiction, Prose, Novel

Book 1

Section 1

Chapter 1

After the press briefing, the Chief Press Secretary of the Palace of the Faithful, Gughal Trustrock, felt nagging fatigue in his head and stubborn inertia against doing anything. He just wanted to go home, ask Manna, the Integrated Home Operating System, to turn off the lights, pull all the window blinds down, and play very soft religious music at a low volume so that he could concentrate on keeping his eyes shut and repeatedly counting from one to one-hundred until he fell asleep. However, that was not to be. His immediate task was to rush back to the Central Prayer and Council Room of the Palace of the Faithful and report to the 7th Grand Trustee of the Faithful, His Most Revered Holiness Urro Pureground about the progress of the Holy Campaign for Public Communication.

When Gughal reached the Central Prayer and Council Room, Urro’s Personal Secretary and trusted political advisor, Pstih Holyshine, informed him that His Holiness is quietly meditating over the 997 Most Sacred Names of the Trustee of All Dimensions and Matters Known and Unknown; and that he was only half-way through it. This is a ritual, as the Most August Person Alive, Urro performed thrice daily — after waking up, after lunch, and before going to bed. This ritual was mandatory for all Servants to the Holy Trustdom. As the Prime Servant of the Trustdom, Urro has been diligently and faithfully executing his duties to the Supreme Divine Organizer.

Sitting in a synthetic Mahogany chair, Gughal waited and chitchatted with Pstih. The topic was the sudden commencement of war with the Satanic Republic of Infidels, as the Holy Theological State of the Divine Trusteeship a.k.a State of the Trusteeship, also known as Trusteestate, liked to call the Citizens’ Republic of Scientific Secularism alias the Scientific Secular Republic, colloquially known as SSR.

“Reminds me of pre-Full Conscience history, it does,” said Gughal. “I remember reading somewhere that in the Age of Wishful Ignorance, the assassination of a single prince or archduke or what have you, sparked a world war in the Original Land of Light Skins.”

“Yeah, yeah, quite foolish that was!” murmured Pstih. “However,” he went on with resolute conviction, “I strongly believe, this is not the Age of Stupidity, and by the grace of our Supreme Divine Organizer and by the able leadership of our Prime Servant of the Trustdom, His Most Revered Holiness Urro Pureground, we will crush the wretched enemy within a month and salvage the Replica of the Rod of Creation.”

“Oh yes, no doubt we will,” said Gughal. “Or, at least, that is always said so at the beginning of any campaign,” he quietly thought to himself.

Chapter 2

His Holiness Urro, also stylized as the Most August Person Alive, was a living legend in the State of the Trusteeship. He led the Revolution of the Pious that overthrew the Conference of the Learned Elders and established the Council of the Righteous. If the Conference was ultra-conservative, the Council is nothing short of religio-fascist. Urro established a state ran by clerical fascists, who fashioned themselves as Fundamental Textualists, in place of one being steered by pragmatic Consensual Interprationists, or in the parlance of Urro and his adherers, Revisionist Subversives.

When Gughal finally got permission to enter the room, Urro was seated in the Chair of the Oracle. He was wearing his typical field gray coloured Ushanka with its ears tied up to the cap's crown. Urro motioned to the audience seat without uttering any words of greeting. At least five minutes passed without any sound of a voice. Then, Urro started to talk in his peculiar, slow, pronounced, measured, sombre, and booming voice: “you know, Gughal, ever since we came into contact with other intelligent beings from distant planets, our traditional beliefs, views, religions, and sense of place in the universe have been shaken to the core. The world, as we had known it ceased to exist. All great religions were premised upon the human being's supremacy as the greatest creation of the entity erstwhile known as God. All divine revelations, all gospels, all holy books were addressed to humankind; discussed its disquiet, proposed its solutions, examined its flaws, and prescribed its remedies. No other being was believed to be equal to it but the pre-eminence of God. However, with the discovery of other intelligent beings and the establishment of communication with them, the universal warrant of precedence had been broken. It was a time of chaos, questions, debates, quarrels, shouts, suicides, doubts, suspicions, murders, protests, revolutions, anti-revolutions, and general destruction. The Second Holocaust took place that wiped out the non-white population of the geographic entity once called Europe. All non-Muslims were expelled from Western Asia. The Hindutva Raj forced all non-Hindus and untouchables of South Asia into caste-based slavery. All white settlers were driven out of the African continent, and so on.”

Urro paused. Gughal, being an ardent follower of Neo-Classical Stoicism and a lifelong member of the Post-Spiritual Fabian Society, fervently believed in practicing active silence, revolutionary inaction, and progressive inertia; hence simply looked on without making any comments.

Urro mused something for a while and continued: “You see, and you know, the public cannot think coherently, the mob can only see what’s in front of it namely the instruments of lynching and burning, the masses are like the flock of birds flying in circles not knowing why or, even, how, all but blindly following their next feathered brethren who follows the next and so on. There are no leaders in a gathering of angry, confused, scared, or conned groups of people. They would superstitiously believe in the existence of beings never seen or heard from or touched or smelled or proven. However, they will deny the proof of their own eyes and ears and other senses if that is convenient for them or if that is what is required to support their claims and belief systems. Therefore, cognitive resonance, confirmation biases, creating ideological echo-chambers, promoting alternative explanations, advancing nonliteral thought leaders — all of these are our mates. We need to herd the flock of sheep either by chasing them with hounds or by enticing them with promises of straws and hays. And you, my dear faithful colleague, in your role as the Chief Press Secretary of the Palace of the Faithful are the master of these tactics, shenanigans, antics, and evasiveness.”

Gughal, in reply, just cleared his throat and changed his position into a more comfortable one in his chair and looked straight back at Urro, as if silently asking: “why are you telling me these cliches and wasting my time? An intern of my Department of Public Communication for the Palace of the Faithful knows this. What is it exactly that you are getting at?”

To be continued….