Uta Frith
It was emergency time again. Everybody got together their red-and-white-striped gear, their heart-shaped First Aid boxes, their miniature emergency weapons kits. Some people also reached down such extras as umbrellas, gas masks, diving suits, asbestos overalls, spiked shoes, stilts, and the like - but these were optional.
Everybody loved emergency time, especially the children. It was a time for dressing up, for action, and there was always the chance that something absolutely new, something really surprising would happen.
Spinelli, recently retired from public office, chose to stay at home, close beside his radio and his huge, glowing television set. On-the-spot newsflashes were being transmitted continuously. The excitement was terrific, as it always was when emergency time had been announced.
What would it be this time? Bets were placed, computers and public opinion polls were consulted. Astrologers pronounced remarkable divinations, newspapers gave authoritative reports from special correspondents. Intuitions were widely exchanged. Everybody, but everybody, had a pet hypothesis. Some people firmly believed that the worst - that is, whatever they feared the most - would undoubtedly come to pass. Some maintained the belief that it would happen to the others, not to them. A large group was convinced that punishment was imminent for all wrongdoers and that general repentance should prevail.
As Spinelli remembered from his own youth, such intense and active entertainment was no more than dreamed of by the theatrical and cinema industries of the distant past. The anticipation alone counted for more than any circus spectacular presented by a Roman emperor. The people themselves were in the arena, arbitrary spectators and actors, victims or victors determined by the mysterious plans of the Council.
With millions of other viewers, Spinelli watched flashbacks and highlights of emergencies of the last decade. He knew, all the viewers knew, that each time they survived unscathed they formed the true emergency society. Twice, Spinelli himself had been decorated as a hero: in the Great Flood he had organized a rescue fleet to pluck scores of people from the foaming torrents, and during the Locust Plague he had flown insecticide into the afflicted areas at considerable risk to his own safety.
Emergency, of course, was not without its lighter side. Spinelli laughed and laughed again at the well-loved scenes from the Racoon Invasion, when hundreds of racoons had been parachuted into suburban gardens, and the Custard Pie Orgy, when pies had been flung by the million in one huge comedy.
There were dramatic sequences, too, from the day when Russian roulette was played by every hundredth person in the telephone directory, and there were pictures of the foot-and-mouth disease, the collapsing blocks of flats, the special earthquakes, and so on. The television interviewer approached a man swathed in bearskins: ‘So you think there’ll be a new Ice Age this time?’ ‘It was bound to happen sooner or later,’ the man replied, shrugging the fur around his ears, ‘I can already feel the cold, can’t you?’ In the background, a wild figure could be glimpsed shouting that the plagues of Egypt were about to return.
Spinelli liked the news best on these occasions - better, if the truth be told, than the spectacle itself. He was looking forward to all the papers the next day; the heroes would be announced, the victims mourned. Even if there was grief and loss in some places, the following week would be celebrated by all the happy people who had truly emerged. It was miraculous how human ingenuity, organization and adaptability saved the community from disaster every time. No disaster was ever bad enough to make any difference to economic expansion or population increase.
‘Hard times,’ a businessman observed on the cascading screen not far from Spinelli’s nose, ‘have always been a blessing to us. People get together and help each other. All the petty squabbles of weeks past are forgotten when we put on our emergency kit. United we are strong.’ He was leading his entire staff towards one of the football stadiums, where whole communities would often gather to watch, entranced, the events unfolding on the giant televideo panoramas.
How true, Spinelli thought. He himself was a founder member of the party that had introduced emergency. ‘Already fifty years ago,’ said the television interviewer, ‘psychologists proved that the destructive impulses in man, allowed for centuries to burst out in unmotivated violence and irrational acts of warfare, could be channelled into useful paths. Creative energy, intelligence, presence of mind, courage, honour, selfless sacrifice, discipline - once these qualities were almost forgotten. But now, thanks to emergency, they have returned to enrich our civilization.’
Spinelli recalled his student days when, longing for purpose and excitement, he and his friends would stage demonstrations and riots in order to capture the flavour of real and personal involvement. How often they had been stunned at the indifference they had encountered! Yes, it had all changed now; the party had helped to bring sense and meaning to everyday life.
It was in this moment of contentment that Spinelli was destined to take the role of victim for the first and last time in his existence. As in millions of other homes, his television set exploded.