He suddenly saw snakes swarming all around Goldie, the undulating motion of thousands of Ministers. “Life is a snake. What do I lose when I lose the snake? I lose my writhing properties.”
He stood up. Goldie was putting in a counter-measure to make the announcement of Electrocution Elimination at once. This meant Tee had ten minutes to live instead of an hour. The giant loudspeaker thundered: “LOVE.”
Everyone hushed. The great Voice of Love came over the microphone. “ZONE BLOCK ANNOUNCEMENTS. PROPOSED AMENDMENTS AND EMENDATIONS OF PROGRAM. MEMBERS OF THE MINISTRY HAVE REQUESTED IMMEDIATELY THE VOTE ON THE ANTI-NO ZONE PUSHING BILL. MEMBERS OF THE DISTRICT REPRESENTATION HAVE IN A SUBSTITUTE MOTION TO ANNOUNCE THE BLOCK ELIMINATIONS AND THEN VOTE. O, LOVE, HERE ARE THE NUMBERS OF THE ZONE. BLOCKS TO BE ELECTROCUTED THIS MORNING AND THEIR MINISTERS NUMBER 3838393938383-338373, MINISTER T-3...” (Voice pauses for speech).
And the Voice of the Woman droned off and Tee stood still, all the eyes of the men who had tried to help him, showing piteously in a general stare towards him, and the eyes of his enemies burning to leer his way. The two Van guards approached at once, unsheathing and turning on their diskfinder, both clutching to special side handles on it, pointing at Tee.
“Farewell sweet friends, sweet fellow students of young and happy days...” cried Tee to the assembly - “May the hope of the sun or whatever the sun, or hope, or hopes themselves, multiplied, put together by whatever measurements of light, or of actuality, come to you – either by grace, intention, by self assistance, by courage, will, compassion to live – and you find love, real love, if such a thing there be, if such a world indeed there here be now, if–”
“O, LOVE HERE ARE THE NUMBERS OF THE ZONE BLOCKS. NUMBER 8386294853008-290490, MINISTER Y-16–” boomingly interrupted the Voice of Love, cutting Tee’s speech short, because the time allotted for speech was ten seconds and no more; many’s the doomed Minister in his heat of sadness and eloquence who ran over his time – One distinguished Mechanic had made his estimate: “If Ministers were allowed liberal uninterrupted speech time at the announcement of the Electrocution of their blocks, and assuming that the average length of these speeches would be seven minutes, at the barest minimum, the time comsumed and taken at the expense of the work of Love is calculated at sixteen million four hundred and thirty six thousand five and hundred twelve man-years, which, multiplied to the man-quotient, would have meant the loss of 764,096,264,740,862,398 tats of manpower (.Mp), (minus deduction for electronical loss) (and leak). Therefore the ten second rule is imperative to our Machine.”
Jack Kerouac, The Electrocution of Block 38383939383
(Series: # )
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