SEVEN

SEVEN – the lands of constraint and the infinitesimal. The lands were governed by seven rulers, representing, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and one mouth – named The Seven. These seven ruling figures governed by the dogma handed down from generations upon generations. No one questioned the dogma; it was followed blindly in every minute detail. Life itself was constrained by the dogma, tenets for a human life, all lives. In each life there were seven stages, each one was named an epoch. Seven epochs made up one living creature’s lifetime, no one lived to see their 50^th year. No one.

Lifespan, time, currency, living accommodation, transportation and logistics, every possible fabric of existence, society, mathematics, art, and philosophy was controlled by the underlying dogma, and the seven epochs. It went beyond belief or religion; it was a constrained fact. A protected fact of life.

The council of seven rulers were only appointed in the last epoch of their lives, the seventh epoch, and they only ruled for seven years. Each had a responsibility which was limited to an entity, but with one single objective to protect the continuation of the infinitesimal. These entities were named hakac, with two rulers of the eye hakac, it watched all, everything, and everyone. The two rulers of the ear hakac, listened to all, the two rulers of the nostrils hakac smelt all, which was an intuitive role, and the role of the mouth was to speak to all. This hakac was the mouthpiece of the land of seven. The sum of the seven rulers had one objective, the continuation of the dogma – the doctrine of SEVEN.

The council of seven rulers were always conscious, they never slept. They lived in a building that was the epicentre of the world of seven. There was a motif like crest on the building entrance, a skull-like head with sunken craved eye sockets, ears, flared nostrils, and a mouth. This was the emblem of the world of seven.

Time was measured by seven, again limited and constrained. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months. Compared to our calendar year, there were 343 days in one year in the land of seven. History didn’t exist. Time reverted to zero, after 2401 days, seven epochs. There was no human living memory that existed beyond their 50^th birth date. Human life was split into seven epochs; on the day of their 50^th birthday, euthanasia was used to extinguish their lives.

Only the written rules of society, and its continuation remained. Never to be altered or amended with one single word for the continued protection of all that followed. Free expression and free thought were banned. It was a sterile, boring, and colourless world. One cannot use the word boredom, as this word is the antipathy of something else. Living in the lands of SEVEN, no one knew or was aware of anything else, it was their normal.

The dogma of the land of seven had seven epochs, each epoch of seven years served one constraining and specific purpose. Epoch one was the constraining of the childhood years, the first epoch. Children were created through artificial means in laboratories, in incubators. There was no conception, no coupling, no procreation. The word and meaning of love were banned. It was beyond banned, it was written out of all literature, any form of communication. The seven hakac made sure of this banishment, but it went beyond the feeling of love, it was the banishment of the freedom of choice. Society and the rulers, the hakac, were mandated to protect the continuation of the dogma.

In the first and second epochs, the children were educated, any literature was heavily censored by the rule of seven. People assigned to the category of Security and Compliance were the mentors, the teachers to guide and control the population through all stages, the epochs.

The third epoch taught the young adults how to perform and contribute to this completely restricted society, and on their 21^st birthday each young adult, male or female was allocated a role in society.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth epochs the citizens of the society would complete their work cycles to the benefit of society, and the community. The last epoch before euthanasia ended their lives was spent in retirement, or a mentoring role, to protect the continuation of the lands of SEVEN. To make sure the status quo remained forever.

The first epoch was the most challenging, within a newborn child resides the most creative and fertile of minds. Those that were selected in the third epoch to care for the test-tube babies, their birth, and the first seven years of the infant’s life, had to be the most sensitive to the constraining process of an infantile mind. The second epoch in this society, the young minds had already been exposed to the early learning process of constraint, and the beginning of influence from peer childhood pressure. At fourteen the male or female had embraced the rules of the constrained society, no longer open minded, in this epoch they became sperm and embryo donors for the community, the continuation of the community.

By the fourth epoch the citizens of the world of seven already unknowingly carried the constrained yoke of this society around their necks.

The allocation and selection process would take place in the third epoch, again there were seven categories, as the young adults would be divided into one of the seven categories for the fourth, fifth and sixth epochs, the working epochs of their lives.

Free thought, free expression, was banned, and there was no creative development. No discoveries, no inventions, no fashion, and no religion. In terms of spirituality, it was a soulless, gloomy existence, birth, seven epochs, and death. It was accepted by all, and no one person knew of anything different for millions of years in terms of our measurement of time.

The hakac ruled the land of seven with commitment and zeal, they had overwhelming power, all seeing, all hearing, all smelling God with a powerful voice, with one intent, continuation, protection, order, and adherence to the dogma.

In a normal society, power and responsibility come hand-in-hand. In our world power and responsibility bring pressure, and that pressure can reduce our abilities to focus, and control. With this distraction, power can lessen or be lost. That is the normal cycle, and it is healthy. In the world of seven, power and responsibility had been achieved forever. Whenever this happens, the result is a stunted, sterile society, full of boredom. This was the land of seven.

If anybody looked to the sky, there was no word for heavens, it had been removed from all literature and any form of communication. However, there was validation of the dogma of the seven in the night sky, with the seven visible planets to the naked eye. Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn aided the dogma, the orbs of the universe validated the citizens sky gazing consciousness.

Humanity was anesthetized with ignorance, their subconsciousness invaded and controlled by the world around, manipulated, controlled, censored, and constrained by the dogma.

In the fourth, fifth, and sixth epochs, the working part of a lifetime was divided into seven categories. Care workers looked after the community in sickness, but also worked in the incubation laboratories, attended the sperm and embryo production, and conducted the euthanasia end of life treatment. Selling and trading was another category, people working in the shops and stores. There were never more than seven shops in one street, in all the shopping areas of the town. The town was divided into seven districts, and seven sub-districts. There were only seven categories of goods to sell. Town labour, construction and repair was another, their objective was to make sure everything in the town worked. The Field labour objective was food and crop production, to feed the populace. The fields were shaped in a seven-sided shape, a heptagon. Farming was carried out within these seven-sided boundaries, and fields were separated into seven sections. All crops and produce had been artificially modified to produce seven ears of wheat, or seven potatoes; each crop produced seven, no less, no more. Security and compliance reported directly to the seven rulers, these people reported all incidents of non-compliance immediately. A non-tolerance level of conduct was applied, by the forces of security and non-compliance. The next category was administration and bureaucracy. The world of seven was a world full of paperwork, nothing was unknown about the citizens of this world, all details were carried in microchips implanted at birth into the baby’s brain. The last category was transport, there were no cars, or anything that could take flight, only trains, and wheeled trucks to carry heavy goods, which also ran on tracks in the streets of the world of seven.

In this boring, sterile world lived a man named Neves, in his fourth epoch. He worked in an office, and he was allocated to the category of administrative. His office was on the seventh floor of an office block, each floor had seven rooms. In each room worked seven administrators. He took the train each day, which had seven stops, and the train had seven carriages. His small apartment was in an accommodation block, with seven floors, with seven small apartments on each floor.

The constant underlying dimension of this world was seven. It invaded the subconscious, with the visible consciousness of every detail and fabric of each citizen’s life – seven.

He walked each day from his accommodation block to train station number three and took the train to the office block at station one. His ticket was allocated to carriage number six, and seat number three. His daily routine never changed, he woke-up, ate breakfast, got dressed, walked to the train station, walked from the train station to the office block, worked his allocated time, walk to the train station to take a train back to his apartment in the same carriage number, the same seat number, to station number three, and then walk to his accommodation block on the sixth floor, apartment number four, cook a meal, and go to bed. There were transmissions on the television screen, a monitor that not only broadcast, but watched its viewers, like a two-way mirror, from the ever-vigilant citizens of security and compliance. The transmissions were a continuous loop of seven programs that continually voiced the dogma of the world of seven. On occasions it would send individual messages of importance directly to the citizen, reminders, or warnings if the citizen had transgressed any part of the dogma.

It was a mundane, boring existence. There was no joy, happiness, no excitement. Those words Neves didn’t understand. The daily routine of his mundane and boring life was a normal life, the same as every other citizen in the world of seven. No one missed or hungered for anything, because there was nothing to miss, it was the same routine day after day. A mindless existence.

Inspiration, motivation, desire, love, these were words removed from the general consciousness of society, this was a robotic world, populated by living human beings.

Neves woke up one day and to the frontal lobe of his brain, his conscious mind came one word, where it came from, he had no conscious understanding, it had no meaning to him, he struggled to form the word in his vocal cords, his mouth opened, and out came the word. “Eight.”