The Island of Dreams
Page 7
A French girl then stood up and asked “Why would anyone choose to manage the public loos as a career? Surely everyone would choose much more rewarding careers given all of the training and opportunities that you are saying? Who would want the most unpopular jobs?”
“What we have found over the years in our society is that there are people who leave school and do not necessarily want to join organisations or go on to further education. That isn’t because they can’t, it’s because they want to do something different. There are teams of people who want a particular way of life, like regular soldiers in the old days, and these task forces as they are called will undertake to complete those tasks that others leave behind. These people are highly respected and certain privileges are granted to those who join up, set at a level to attract a sufficient number of volunteers as to ensure that such services are undertaken to the same or higher standards as would be the case in the most highly benchmarked capitalist society. We benchmark a lot around the world to make sure that we not only meet but surpass the highest standards that we find. Money is not an issue. Quality is. As for the public loo case, however, some years ago a girl called Linda left school and observed that there was a deficiency of public conveniences in her town and reported this to her local council. She then made a proposal to maintain a string of conveniences so as to improve the situation and, naturally, this was accepted as it would both improve local facilities and relieve the burden on the local task force, or Directed Labour Volunteers, which had the things she was proposing well down on their list of priorities. More loos were built, and a few existing ones transferred to her ownership, and she began her work with pride and dignity. There are now several thousand of Linda’s Loos. Linda herself is the Managing Director and she employs several hundred staff. Others have since followed her example by taking otherwise unpopular tasks and running small enterprises based on them. It can be more rewarding than you might think. Next.”
There were no further questions.
“I thank you for your attention, and invite you each to collect your information packs as you leave.”
*
The sets dispersed and Gary and the others returned to Angel. For the first time they were all together as a complete set. Gary looked carefully through the information pack. He read with interest the opening section on Non-Capitalist Economics, taking in its theoretical background which began with basic economic concepts such as opportunity cost, utility theory and comparative advantage. Then there was the conventional theory of supply and demand and the price mechanism which controlled it, followed by The Island’s feedback and control system which effectively replaced it. This was derived from engineering concepts and used circuit diagram representations to illustrate the various ways in which supply and demand were manipulated and regulated using interventions such as resistances, damping components, storage loops analogous to capacitance in an electrical circuit and smoothing devices made possible by the easy transfer of labour through which variations in supply and demand in one area of production or location could be offset with opposing variations in another. A section on bartering explained how, limited though this concept was, it could still work in certain cases as a means of exchanging commodities and reducing wastage, especially of used and redundant materials for whom others may have a use. Exchange centres were therefore set up as places where bartering could take place and people could obtain some of the things they needed without requisitioning them as these centres were the one place where requisitioning did not apply.
Amplifiers, as they were called, could be introduced to step up production, whilst dampers acted to suppress demand by encouraging substitution effects to replace adverse variances. Resistances slowed down production to prevent over supply and reduce unwanted variation, and the study of variation was used to identify common and special causes that were liable to affect demand so that the appropriate advance measure could be put in place to prevent the adverse variance from taking hold. It did not take long for Gary to realise the enormous responsibility that the management of this nation, organisation or whatever it was had in order to ensure that there were never any shortages and that all citizens were able to enjoy the happy and contented lifestyles that their leaders had promised. No way could such people provide this if they were constantly burdened with the need to fight elections and defeat opponents in order to stay in office. Competitive democracy was undoubtedly inferior to the One Party Democracy that was described in the handbook.
Goods and services flowed like current in a circuit with ‘voltages’ used to denote the ‘potential differences’ between supply and demand that needed to be smoothed. Waveform diagrams showed patterns of supply and demand as they occurred over time and extrapolation was used to forecast future movements using trend analysis and the theory of variation. Consumption data provided the key input for stability in the absence of special causes that had the potential to disrupt it. Aggregation of consumption data allowed for the requisitioning system to be moderately fault tolerant in that the specific needs of one person were different from those of another and any excesses in consumption of one good by one person would tend to be offset by an under average demand for it by another. A simple example was provided by showing that the child that liked a little extra apple pie may not want as much banana custard, solely as a result of personal preferences. It was easy to see that under such a system there was clearly no need for quotas or rationing. The only thing that the system would have trouble in coping with would be a large influx of people and that, Joanie had explained, was not going to happen with a snail’s pace revolution that had been programmed to last for over two centuries.
When Gary went upstairs to his bedroom he found Connie freshly showered. He then noticed the neatly folded skating suit which had been placed at the end of his bed, along with a brand new pair of ice skates. Connie had the same, except that her costume was different and her skates were white instead of black, which was conventional for ladies.
*
As it was their first evening on The Island the setmates decided by consensus that they would investigate The Island by night and try to take in some of its romantic character before the novelty wore off.
“It is a strange, quiet and enchanting place by night,” Connie said.
“Are there any places to eat out?” asked Anne.
“There are three bars,” Connie explained. “There’s The Cat and Fiddle over the road just up from the museum. I think that’s the oldest, and bar meals can be requisitioned there on a fairly frequent basis. There’s another more modern one in The House of Cards, near the archway that leads to The Japanese garden. That serves bar meals on a similar basis. That’s an interesting place full of amusements and games. You can even gamble with tokens for small stakes and prizes. Then there’s a nice little restaurant down near the harbour, but I think you have to book for that. Bookings are at the owner’s discretion, unlike the others, and as it is upmarket they would not expect any sets or groups to visit it too often. Tonight there’s a welcoming in night at The Cat and Fiddle, so I expect everyone will be going to that.”
The sound of the jazz band echoed out into the street from The Cat and Fiddle, which succeeded in attracting all of the newly arrived sets. The entrance to the pub was small, but inside it was deceptively spacious with a moderately sized dance floor which was of sufficient size to allow it to be used for dinner dances for up to 300 people. Inside the sets relived the big band era, with classic music played along with some more recent compositions and tracks from later periods that had been adapted to the big band sound.
Large twelve-seater tables had been laid around the dance floor, complete with menus. As more sets entered more tables were laid. It did not seem to matter how high demand was there was always room for one more. The drinks selection resembled that of any ordinary public house in a normal capitalist state. Only the makes were different. The large variety of Russian wines was striking, especially those from the newly cultivated
Caucasus region, along with various Portuguese makes, which had clearly been imported from the mainland. The house wine, Twos Company, was bottled locally. Then there were the ales, the draught Number Six, several Russian and Portuguese types, and the Falkland Ale, which was imported from the Island owned Falkland Isles.
Over the drinks and the meal the set began to get to know each other a little better. Yvonne’s story of how she came to be on The Island evoked some interest. She was a black Aboriginal girl of twenty-one from Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia.
“I couldn’t believe what was happening to me,” she explained. “I travelled to Sydney for a conference on excellence in public services. I had been intending to study management at the Macquarie University, but didn’t get accepted. I did, however, skate at the Macquarie rink where I met this guy called Aub Ryman, who had spoken at the conference and who said he had seen me skate in Darwin and had been impressed. I said I had been impressed with his talk. He was the leader of the Deming Followers Society in Australia, and also the Australian Defence Minister. His talk was all about the life and work of W. Edwards Deming and how public services in Australia desperately needed to apply the teachings of this man. I think he was a little disappointed at the lukewarm response that he got from the audience, as was I. I suspect that most of the others saw Deming as being someone who lived so long ago that his theories were pretty much meaningless nowadays. How wrong they are.”
“So how did you come to be here?” asked Claudia.
“Aub took me on one side and said that he had been given 240 special invitation cards from the young Queen, which didn’t make sense at the time, but it does now. He said that he had one left, the rest had all been sent to his representatives around the world. Then, he said that he wanted me to have the last one. Then he handed me the card and said that he trusted that I would be someone that would use it wisely. He said that if I went to a small pub just outside Darwin on my return all would be revealed. An old man from Bathurst Island met me there then told me about the new life that I could have as a skating celebrity for Kamchatskiy Auto, and with a principal that I could trust. I trusted him because I had heard from my family about life on Bathurst and the legendary place where money didn’t matter and people worked to a much better system. I flew from Bathurst Island yesterday morning on the Hebden Three.”
“It’s interesting,” said Connie. “that he admitted to having had in his possession, at some time, all 240 of those cards”.
“And that they were given to him by The Queen,” added Anne.
“It means that every one of the cards that enabled us to be here are traceable to him,” said Michael.
“And he declared who he was also,” Lars commented.
“He must be close to The Queen in some way,” Connie deduced. “How old was this Aub Ryman?”
“About thirty,” said Yvonne.
“I have a strange feeling that that name is going to come up again sometime,” Connie added.
“He was a very intriguing man,” Yvonne continued. “with a strange piercing shine in his eyes that appeared oddly mystical when he looked at you, yet you knew you were dealing with someone with good intent. Inside, though, he gave the impression of being just a little troubled. My Aboriginal background taught me that a person can often gain an insight into the character of another by looking into their eyes as they talk to you. And I think you’re right, Connie, we probably haven’t seen the last of this man. I think he has some powerful influence here”.
“If you want to talk about mystery, my path to The Island certainly had plenty of that,” said Lars. “I finished up meeting a girl on a white horse up near a remote Norwegian fjord”.
“What?” said Graca.
“That’s right. I went to skate one day at the open air rink near my home in Tromso, just as I had done many times before, then I came back to find this card telling me that I could change my life. Tromso is a nice enough place, but there wasn’t really anything there for me. I had never heard of Deming or anything connected with him until a few weeks ago, but when I was told about him I knew the way I lived life was in accordance with his principles. The card directed me to this small sort of cave near a remote fjord. I thought someone was having me on. I certainly didn’t think that this cave would have so much inside. It was like a kind of mini hotel. I stood outside it for a while, as directed, because, like you, Yvonne, I had heard rumours about a society where there was an entirely different way of life going on in the world. Then this girl on a white horse arrived. She was something else. She invited me in for dinner and told me all about The Island, explaining how that cave had actually been used long ago by a man called Darren for the smuggling of diamonds. Now it was a quaint little Island-owned guest house.”
“Had you ever seen her before?” asked Claudia.
“Never,” said Lars. “But she acted as if she knew me. The experience was just so bizarre, then again my principal Elena also has a bit of a bizarre tale to tell.”
“Go on, Elena, tell us about your experience,” said Graca.
“I’m from Umea in the north of Sweden. I got the card after skating on my local outdoor rink, purely for fun of course. It told me to go to a little craft shop about ten kilometres up in the hills. An oldish lady greeted me, like some sort of soothsayer or clairvoyant. She knew that I was bored with my dead-end life and told me that I could change it and go and live in Kamchatka with a well-matched man. This craft shop also was an Island-owned guest house used for diamond smuggling years ago, but now sold all kinds of crafts from the Kuril Islands – Russian and Japanese dolls and the like. She said that I should stay the night with her. I was unhappy at home and at least what she said about Kamchatka did sound as if it was true, being a part of Russia that had its own way of life that was different to everywhere else, and I liked the sound of Non-Capitalist Economics. When she said that I had been chosen to train to be a skating celebrity with Kamchatskiy Auto, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. In the morning I went with her to the small airport at Umea, and was led to this strange looking plane, astonished to be told that I was its only passenger.”
“The Hebden Three?” said Michael.
“The Hebden Three,” said Elena.
The evening continued with light drinking and dancing, with the pub staff keen to see that everyone enjoyed the evening. It was designed to make the setmates feel at ease, and to encourage them to interact. For Gary this was a wonderful and refreshing experience compared to what he had experienced in Caversham. All were unaware that back in The Great Dome Joanie was watching them on her screen, noting the variations in dancing knowledge of the various participants and observing their drinking habits so as to add to her portfolio of knowledge about the newcomers.
At half-past eleven the sets drifted out. Gary and the others walked for a while around the Town Square. They passed the House of Cards pausing briefly to look inside at the array of games such as bar billiards, pool, snooker, table tennis, chess, table soccer, Mah Jong and pinball that some of the staff members were playing. These were games of skill where competition could be enjoyed at a trivial level.
Slowly they made their way to the Colonnade where they sat and continued to talk and exchange their experiences alongside a few others. Otherwise The Town was silent. As the clock on The Bell Tower struck twelve, a small man dressed in a black cloak and carrying a lantern made his way up from Atlas’ statue.
“Who is that man?” asked the French girl from the neighbouring set, whom Gary had remembered from The Great Dome earlier.
“Good evening fine people,” said the Welshman. “You aren’t supposed to see me”.
“Why not?” asked Gary.
“I be the Night Watchman, see?” he said, looking at his watch. “Nobody is supposed to see me. It’s my job to look after The Town and see that there is nothing untoward during the night hours. If this lantern goes out there will be an alert. So I must keep this lantern alight until I knock off at dawn.”
“A few times I have. One night a few years ago I smelt smoke and discovered a small fire down near the Training Centre kitchens. A faulty switch was the cause of that, proving that even our quality isn’t always perfect and there’s no such thing as zero defects. Another time we had a storm and it caused some superficial damage to structures. Another time we had a storm combined with a high tide. That did a bit of damage down at the harbour. A similar storm about ten years ago destroyed the old swimming pool. Next time you go in the museum, look at the old photographs. You’ll see that the swimming pool is in a different place. Not the oval-shaped one you see down by Anchor Cottage. I know it’s your first night and everyone’s a little bit excited, so I’ll be on my way, but don’t leave it too late will you? ”
The man moved on, but his message was clear. It was not normal to be out and about after midnight unless there was a reason. The two sets said goodnight and left the Colonnade for their residences. All was still except for the slight rustling of leaves. Then Elena thought that she heard something.
“What is that sound?” she asked.