Tangled Yarns: Monday's Child

You are approaching one of the World Free Libraries. The doors open and a touch screen waits for your inquiry. You go to 'History' and pick a point on the Time Line labelled "New Era, the Rebellion, Stories and Legends''.

A list of titles appears and you cursor through them until you reach the section labelled 'Myths, Dramatized accounts. Origins'. Under 'Myths' you find a small book with three chapters called The 'Rebellion, Folk Tales' and 'Heroes'.

The book also contains a collection of smaller entries, detailing several streams of opposition to the Grand System, which held sway over most of the world from the late 3080's. This was a time when the United Nations became a vassal to the United World Parliament, which came together in 3040 and totally reorganized some ten billion people. This new form of techo-Socialism was imposed on the majority by a small but powerful minority. Their weapons: threats of war, hyper-surveillance and the organization of social groups into what were called Day Cities.

"In order to break the spirit of the people, and also to control them, cities were designated with the names of the days, and each city was fenced off from the others in order to maintain individual rule under the one government imposed upon it by benevolent High Command. People were assigned numbers as well as names and the imposition of a strict set of rules added to their complete subjugation. Families were split up into individuals which were then called 'units'. Mothers lost their children, fathers lost their wives. Communities were separated seven ways and the New Era began.

Very little protest was raised against these changes. This was due to massive advertising campaigns, and also to some drugging of water supplies, and also several carefully designed political speeches which were pumped ceaselessly at the people through every channel until complete submission and agreement was achieved.

Despite the new government's best efforts, an undying current of dissent persisted, which exploded into open revolt after a small number of incidents. The following dramatized account was the sixth, chronologically, in those events, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the New Era System, and restored the world to Universal Democracy."