Saturday 30th May

-[Janek was wrong, no-one was watching him.   So far we had not suspected any subversive activity.  The survcams could always be backtracked if we needed to see him, but on this occasion he wasn’t specifically traced.  But his paranoia did have some basis in fact.  Of course we were worried about him.   At the time we too knew nothing about his ‘diary’ as he called it.  It was only later we discovered it, and all he had written, but his behaviour at work had been noticed.  Too many fluctuations in his ‘hit’ rate, too many rapid eye movements as he examined his notepad, and no, no-one had moved his pen and pad, that was his own paranoia I am afraid.

But despite these fluctuations he was not especially marked out as any kind of threat.  We were watching him; but of course we were watching everyone.  It is in everyone’s interest to be watched.  We truly are the good shepherds, watching over our flock, night and day, we never sleep.   Despite, and actually because of our prime objective, the well-being and nourishment of as many people as possible, we have to constantly watch for any individual who might be about to upset the apple-cart (to use a colourful if antiquated colloquial expression).

We really do care about the human species.  But it is the species we are there to protect and nurture, not any individual member of that species, who for whatever perverted reason is beginning to become a threat.  We have enough on our hands with the erratic and unpredictable climate.   Moving whole factories and production facilities and re-site-ing entire populations is pretty hard work in itself.  So having to deal with foolish individuals who think they know better than our democratically decided solutions is at most an irritant.   But we never sleep, and irritation or not we have to deal with it.

Janek Smith wasn’t the first malcontent we had encountered and there was a well-established procedure.  First observation, checking and classifying the potential threat, then a slight re-classification, a down strata-ing maybe, but with the definite inference that this was only temporary and depending on a return to normal behaviour could easily be reversed.  This combined with a subtle change in their health-drug intake would almost always correct the slightly malfunctioning individual.  Janek hardly registered on our minor offender files but the usual procedure was automatically put into motion.  This is the beauty of our system; no-one has to make those awkward decisions anymore.   Human judgement, erratic and emotional as it is, is taken out of the equation.  If there is a problem there will be a procedure to deal with it.