The Oracle

The room is dim, only the dull red of neon through the window and pinprick lights blinking on racks of computers. In the center, a corpse, too thoroughly mummified to make out identifying features, in a meditation posture. In the top of its head, a precise hole. A thin bundle of cables emerges through the top of the skull and rises into the ceiling, holding the corpse upright. A tattoo of a small lizard encircles its left wrist.

Behind the teeth sits a small speaker. Ask it a question, and it will answer. The answers given will always be smart, but will not always be right. At least you'll be making a better class of mistake.

Recquisition Request, Accepted

I must have men who are accustomed not only to maintaining electrics and mechanics, but to living in service to a machine, working by its uncompromising schedule and seeing to its unrelenting needs. I am making this request of you because you are a Navy man. My understanding is that the Navy employs many such men, for in the Navy men do not often fight for themselves, but serve great machines which fight.

A bureaucracy is made of parts that follow rules and contribute to the greater whole like a machine, so let us make our bureaucracy a machine. An economy is made of parts that follow rules and contribute to the greater whole like a machine, so let us make our economy a machine. Our society is made of parts that do not follow rules and do not contribute to the greater whole, but they could be made to, so I am going to make our society a machine.

Britain is a garden, every square yard adjusted by and for its people. Utopia, if its potential is realized. All of the world must become Britain, so that all the world shall become a utopia.