/lit/ - Literature

>>12456023
this reality show is only one part of my job, however. the rest of it is devoted to keeping the wheels turning. a supremely branded life doesn't come without a cost.

fortunately, the Empire has Problems. lots of them. owing to the plague, or to nuclear holocaust, life in the world beyond the show is difficult. what i really want to sell you on is *intrigue.* i want to make Defending Camelot the most awesome job you can possibly imagine. if, halfway through your training, you realize that it is all so much pointless spectacle, that's fine; that's how i separate the true believers from the merely faithful. ah, now you're really seeing it! you have to love the idea of being one of the Vigilant. that this is only another lie is fine with me.

the charm of Defending Camelot comes from being one of those who Know Things. the security apparatus - which is everything - has to have eyes everywhere. this is how we operate. we have to see, and know, everything, and the point of it all is to ensure that nothing really ever happens, or changes. the most important cultural events in the Empire are the romantic lives of the aristocrats who live out their entire existence on television. but what i really want to do is make defending the lives of those idiots seem like the real story. we are the ultimate double-agent, like a Communist Party without a state. we always have Secrets, and we love, love, Gathering Intel. we have an entire department - the Ministry of Desire- devoted expressly to this.

as such there are always Threats, crises, emergencies, shortages. and to prevent you from ever really understanding the nature of the beast, i count on aesthetics. i quote Heraclitus, and say that fire is the judge of all things. i tell you that i am not so much interested in charity or mercy, because, of course, we operate under minimal trust assumptions - you can't trust anyone in this world, you know. i talk a lot about Human Nature, and wistfully confess that this brief, evanescent life is all there is.

this is, fundamentally, a major part of the appeal. we have great tasting chicken, and the femme fatales operatives that we employ can make you achieve orgasm by literally just staring at you for eighteen seconds. we have video game military simulators so awesome that seven year olds trample each other to sign up for the demonstrations. our rock concerts absolutely kick ass. and we love pornography, which is for us an art as refined as ballet. nobody, we say, should ever have to suffer the tyranny of an unfulfilled sex life.