It Came from the North

by Carita Forsgren

  I was the first reporter allowed access to the zone after the events of the previous week and I had the necessary equipment in the car to broadcast reports. Because all official communication sought to downgrade the scale of the damage to keep the public calm, I felt it was my duty to tell the truth, the whole unvarnished truth.

  I continued on my way deeper into the zone. I got back in the car and drove down the ridge to the checkpoint on the northeastern motorway. On my previous visit in August the checkpoint had been fully manned, complete with security police and stringent border control. Now the entire station was deserted, the gate had been left open and all the steel latches unlocked. The security cameras on the walls of the building looked broken and their lenses had all been turned upwards to face the sky.

  I drove to the transport and maintenance center where either a great gust of wind or a pressure wave had smashed the windows and toppled waste bins. There was no one in sight, not even bodies. Across from the center stood the zone’s one and only school; it too stood empty, like on those deserted evenings during a public holiday. All manner of paper, plastic rubbish, and chaff blew about the yard driven by the wind. Veils of smog had darkened the daylight to a premature evening and the raging fires above the fusion silos could now be seen more clearly blazing against the sky.

  It was from there that I immediately sent the first of my live broadcasts from the scene of the accident. Reception figures soon reached a level unprecedented on Channel Two. Because of this widespread support I was allowed to continue my broadcasts almost every day, even though there had been plans afoot amongst the board of directors to put an end to them altogether. There was a great deal of pressure from above, because the State communication strategy was based firmly on keeping a low profile, and it had been decided to keep the situation in the reactor zone as quiet as possible, so as not to cause mass panic. Of course, nowadays I realize that this is one way of going about things, but at the time I had only one option and so I worked tirelessly to make public as much news from the zone as I could. Given the situation, anything less wouldn’t have felt right.

  The worst of it was that the hundreds of people who lived in the reactor zone had, perhaps even deliberately, been forgotten about altogether. From my previous correspondence in the area I knew that, beneath all the downtown buildings and cellars, a variety of bunkers had been dug out and equipped to be used in the event of an accident or heavy radiation. I went out in search of anyone hidden there, despite the fact that the channel had told me not to go any further into the zone and I was informed by the office of the Secretary General himself that any weakening of State security with images of corpses or the seriously wounded was expressly forbidden.

  I couldn’t understand such an edict and I did not uphold it; it was only due to the mass support for my live broadcasts that the channel and the State communication office allowed me to continue reporting at all.

  Within a matter of days I had become renowned throughout the State of K, and I realized at once the opportunities this presented for me. I made the kind of programs I thought were just and right, and I began calling them The Truth Show. I started and finished every broadcast with the words: “This is A.C. Hahl for The Truth.”

  I could no longer be sidelined or kept quiet. I made sure the fate of the reactor zone remained current news, and once the problems in energy distribution started to grow and the effects of the reactors, all the while blazing and churning out radiation, began to be felt elsewhere throughout the State, my words had increasingly more clout.

  From the northeast everything will spread elsewhere. It’s like a cancer. It can be quiet for a long time, then flare up all at once. I’ve seen the signs at close proximity. Sometimes the wind whips up, then blows on past and is forgotten. But it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s bigger than you or me. Through my broadcasts I tried to tell people that the seeds of devastation had already spread throughout the State, you no longer needed to travel out to the reactor zone to see it.

  I managed to implement so many changes and improvements that I can no longer remember them all. Few people in their lifetime can ever raise an entire mountain range, but I did. Using earth brought from elsewhere, the protective ridge around the reactor zone was built hundreds of meters higher. That was my doing. As a result of this someone on a debate program at Channel Two suggested that the new mountain range be named the Hahl Mountains after me, because they would never have been built higher if I hadn’t used The Truth Show every day to demand it and to show people that the collapsed silos and blazing reactors must be shut off in their own stone box behind the mountains. Protecting the rest of the State cannot be dependent upon the sum of a mere few dozen billion.

  This is how best to effect change. If you reiterate the same fears and the same sensible measures with proper argumentation enough times, even difficult decisions will begin to seem like the only justifiable solutions. No one in their lifetime can make mountains grow, the person suggesting the naming of the mountains had said. No one can move thirty kilometers of mountains by themselves, I commented in a later broadcast. As a backdrop to this item we used a newly drawn map with the words “The Hahl Heights” printed above the mountains.

  The Secretary General called me at the studio straight after the news broadcast and said that, from the State’s point of view, words like this were absolutely right given the current situation. I thanked him like an imbecile. But as soon as that short and one-sided conversation ended, I knew that things could no longer continue like this. I mustn’t, mustn’t thank people, mustn’t do favors for which other people can take the credit, and all in the name of the State.

  I simply knew this for a fact. From that day onwards my path was marked out. You can’t see the future, but you can look far ahead.

  As the situation throughout the State worsened by the day, eventually the Secretary General had to be changed. Things all happened the way they should. The head of Channel Two became the new Secretary General. This, of course, suited me perfectly, because such a decision would never have been made without the refracted light of The Truth Show, and I knew very well that the new Secretary General would remember this as long as he was in office.

  I was promoted first to the position of head of programming at Channel Two and later to a position directly beneath the Secretary General, where I was to control all State broadcasting and all channels.

  The situation was such back then that we couldn’t afford to risk anything at all. We had to establish a body to unify the content of all scheduled programs, and I was that body.

  I retained my own program, but now it only ran once a week. I began prerecording sections in the office studio and storing them ready in the archive, suitable for a variety of different occasions but so that they looked like live broadcasts. It isn’t lying, because you don’t always have to visit a place in person when you already know exactly what is happening there.

  Rather, knowledge is when at any given moment you know what is right or good. Or, at the very least, what is appropriate.

  When I received the promotion and was moved into the Secretary General’s office as chief controller, I had to learn to know far more. In such a position, as the head of all State channels, you simply can’t be ignorant of anything. You must be able to respond quickly and say what is right or, at the very least, what is good for the State. Of course, this all varies depending on the particular instance in question and the constantly changing circumstances. So if, say, the given circumstance is the climate, then the instance in question will be that day’s weather. Then, of course, you also have to dress accordingly. If the suit fits, then it is the right suit.

  For anyone to talk to me of change would have been pointless. In a new position like this the need for change was natural, because you had to learn to know more. You won’t find summer roses blossoming in the snows of January.There’s no use floating around in the past relying on your imagination.

  I’m no longer in contact with those who sa
w fit to talk to me of change. In fact, it’s for the best. In my new position I certainly couldn’t have been seen to take a personal interest in my former friends’ business over those of other people. I finally removed The Truth Show from Channel Two and ordered it to be shown once a week on all channels simultaneously. This way, programming became far more balanced. Staff at the Secretary General’s office thought this a very sensible solution too, because it helped ensure the wide reception of certain important decrees.

  Despite this, there were some people who saw fit to criticize me for such rational thinking. I simply let them talk and listened patiently. It’s a good way to treat your staff; let them vent their anger, then they’ll be humble again for a while once they realize that they ought to be ashamed of what they said. And if they are not humble, there are other means.

  In difficult situations like this you need to take decisive action, and the situation throughout the State was far from good. The air temperature was cooling because of the clouds of smog and soot particles drifting across the striped sky. The entire energy system had to be reorganized by regulating and rationing consumption and by collecting red-hot earth from the reactor area and packing it around heat-retaining units.

  So even though everything was getting worse all the time, we had to give the impression that things were in fact improving. This was part of my new job. I had to play the State optimist, even though I was aware of so much.

  When I was transferred to the position beneath the Secretary General, my workplace moved into the head office building. The Secretary General’s offices were on the eleventh floor. At that time, my office was four floors lower, on the seventh floor. Even from my window you could see the sky in the north and the northeast, and how the reactor zone was marching closer by the week.

  Nothing was done about it and no one seemed to take responsibility for anything. I began to talk about these matters very discreetly amongst a small group of trusted friends. Whenever appropriate, I reminded people that I would remain loyal and faithful to the Secretary General, though I had no faith whatsoever that he would be able to turn things in the State around.

  All these plans were nothing but talk within small, closed circles, and none of it was meant to get out in any way, but, of course, eventually it did. That very day, when I first heard the rumors of calls for reform amongst the leading factions of the security police and the army, I went up to the Secretary General’s office on the eleventh floor and told him of the rumors I had heard, and a little more besides. The Secretary General looked concerned and, for the very first time in a matter of such importance, he asked for my advice.

  I had already developed an appropriate proposal. I suggested creating a new, more expansive task force, one with a far greater mandate. If we take the initiative ourselves and place an axe on the table, it’ll knock the wind out of the sails of anyone grumbling, I said. The Secretary General then asked me to lead this task force. Naturally I agreed because of the benefits this would bring the State, but I suggested that alongside this new assignment I might also continue as chief controller of the television and broadcasting network. The Secretary General thought this a very sensible idea indeed.

  I moved my office up to the tenth floor. From the windows you could see even more clearly the blazing skies, the governmental district, and far out across the State.

  From the very first days everything became crystal clear to me. A constant flow of issues and decisions made their way up to the head of the task force, and I had great confidence in myself; I knew which direction to steer the State in order to get through the present adverse situation with as few casualties and sacrifices as possible.

  I increased inspection and surveillance at every level to ensure that dissentand opposition were not allowed to gain a foothold. In exceptional circumstances such as these, basic rights have to be compromised for the general good. Only once people have accepted this fundamental principle can they become fully integrated members of society, but if they won’t accept it they’ll be left on the outside, in opposition to everyone else.

  All manner oftroublemakers and revolutionaries were moved out of the cities and resettled near or inside the reactor zone. There was plenty of work available measuring pollution and fallout, or in various purification and clearing up operations. And of course much of the workforce was sent to harvest foodstuffs and transport them back to the cities. The fields had died back and the soil left barren after the farmers had gone and the weather had turned cold so suddenly, and so this workforce had to be instructed in how to gather food in new ways, harvesting year-old self-germinated wheat, mushrooms which grew in the cold, potatoes left in the ground, mutated crops and lots of other items people weren’t used to gathering or eating—or certainly not for the last hundred years.

  Because organizing mass food distribution in these changed circumstances required a great deal of work, we had to find a suitable workforce. In a relatively short time, life in the State became much calmer and less crowded, as the worst of the grumblers and doubters and the entire antisocial, undesirable part of society was sent to carry out useful labor near or inside the reactor zone.

  From within my small conversation circles I got rid of anyone I felt I couldn’t trust one hundred percent. Several people’s careers possibly came to an abrupt end over nothing, but as the head of a task force like this you simply can’t be too careful. The security forces have to be unified behind you like a bar of pure steel.

  At the same time I watched my back and announced new decrees and orders, all formally in the name of the task force, and I was constantly using the State channels and broadcasting network to help me convince people that I alone was behind all these new measures.

  My orders were all good. They were firm. People couldn’t possibly have been unclear about the fact that things were not going well, but now at least they had the assurance that matters were being dealt with and that people weren’t afraid to talk openly and frankly. And once life in the cities began to calm down and the streets became quieter, it was impossible not to notice that something positive was finally happening.

  For three weeks I appeared in all news and current affairs programs on every channel talking about the present situation and defending the new restrictions and orders. I left legislation about all citizens’ compulsory security service up to the citizens themselves. In due course an opinion poll was conducted via all channels.

  Over 98 percent of people voted for the option Yes: I wish to be involved in protecting the general good.

  When I was named the new Secretary General the following week, by this point it was nothing but a formality. The former Secretary General had been on negotiations abroad and had decided to stay there. I transferred a suitable amount of money to cover his pension and sent him one of the embassy staff, whose job was not only to help him write his memoirs but to ensure that no potentially damaging claims or columns about the State of K were disseminated through our neighboring countries.

  The very day I became Secretary General I gave a speech to the citizens on all channels. The speech features in my history book too, or rather the most important parts can be found in the supplementary material. After all, I couldn’t very well censor myself out of the Chronicles of K altogether.

  “Almighty God, who art in Heaven, give this nation the strength to bear its suffering, give the fully integrated members of the State of K the courage to endure this strife, give us a common will and a selfless mind. Let us find strength in unity, though ordeals be sent to test us. God of Heaven and Earth, give me the strength to lead this State through the trials and tribulations beyond our control set upon our path.”

  This is how I began my first speech as Secretary General. I had isolated two ways in which I could establish my power quickly and effectively. It was important to speak directly to the citizens and to focus on strengthening morale.

  There is no nation as weak as one that is empty within. As Secretary General I wished to impose meaning
on people’s lives.

  I decided to give religion an important role in leading the State. Both cults and the church were given more airtime, but their message was unified. Preachers had speeches written for them at the Secretary General’s office. A few of the cults didn’t accept this as the only sensible method of ensuring the general good of the State, but they were eventually banned, their preachers prosecuted or exiled without charge, and members of their congregations separated from one another in small communities in the north, far away from the cities.

  I gave the security organizations increased powers of authority, though naturally I still had a perfectly realistic idea of their work. Their job within society is not to protect, it is to guard. Plucking out weeds, that’s how I defined the job of the investigative police, while giving new orders about the role of the security services in these changing circumstances.

  Whenever a new law or a regulation was qualified with the phrase “changing circumstances,” it was like trying to remain afloat in a rocky waterfall. There was already chaos everywhere, and I was in the middle of it all. The striped horizon was blazing furiously day and night. All State information was brought up to the Secretary General’s office, but from the eleventh floor windows you could see just as well and just as clearly that the horizon was ablaze. Every week the northeast and the north edged their way closer. You didn’t need statistics filtered through numerous different bureaus to tell you that. From such a height you could see that, behind the stained sun, a chill was marching forward, a deep frost and a white aridity.

  It was sent by God to rape the earth. That was the message a prophet of the Ash Cross cult tried to spread as a broadcasting preacher. I was forced to do something about it because no one else would. There’s no need to frighten people like that. For humility to flourish there need only be an appropriate level of fear. If there’s too much, what will flourish instead is anger and repression. Anger is difficult to control. It’s like boiling earth, a quagmire. A society built upon anger cannotmake any moves. Anger has to be dealt with early enough in order to channel it properly. It can be used effectively, but it has to be kept at a manageable level, dominated by fear.