The White Screen
But the next few months proved me right, with each new step of this "innocuous" revolution. To keep up the spirit of the faith, gatherings were held every morning and evening. These were loud and crowded affairs where loyalty was shouted, resentments fueled, and the labor force for each temple-raising quickly recruited. The sick were also prominent at these scenes. Brought in by the hundreds on litters, lined up, prayed over, and sanctimoniously daubed with white paint by a new order of priests, they added a note of piety to a movement that in most respects seemed like a ruthless bid to enslave the healthy.
The media was the most pathetic tool and victim of the new order. Seeking to ingratiate itself with the new leaders it offered them as much coverage as they wanted, and they wanted it all. The industry had already suffered cutbacks and was now reduced to two worldwide networks. When our monetary system collapsed the networks were ordered to fill three hours of their schedules with news coverage and the rest with whatever they pleased.
The televangelists already commanded a small part of this programming. But not long after this the soaps and game shows began to disappear one by one, to be replaced by live sermons and special reports on temple-raisings and public ‘whitenings’. The news too was now only ‘Church’ news.
The convention kept going. It elected a permanent body and was settling its various branches of administration. Indeed, it was appropriating more and more governmental offices and roles each day. It disbanded the United Nations and called itself the United Council. Governments around the world bowed to the mild demands of this new and vigorous order and allowed their own sickly ministries to be peopled by these new representatives, full of zeal and energy and purpose.
When it felt that its power was secure, the first of the purges began. These weren’t yet stern commands but simply advice to the faithful. It was suggested that what couldn’t be painted white should be discarded from one's home. This meant mostly ornaments and art, knick-knacks, books and dark furniture. The dwellings of the faithful were soon emptied to a near Spartan state and vast heaps of garbage accumulated in the streets until bands of ‘cleaners’ were organized to haul it away to be burned.
I suppose that by emptying their houses people thought they were somehow combating the plague, though it didn’t abate. If anything, their crowded, daily gatherings made it worse. But this is academic. In the cities close contact was unavoidable, and from all the reports that I heard, the ratio of the sick was just as high in the most desolate regions.
In a short time a booklet was issued by the council setting standards and guidelines for its flock, for their conduct and households. There was no mention of penalties yet, simply rules; the price of admission into the lists of ‘associates’, as they were called, to the portals of light.
None of these edicts mentioned the unfaithful and I paid them only the attention of a curious bystander. I doubt that much more than half the families in my neighborhood, or what was left of it, attended the rallies. I did notice that most people began wearing the long, toga-like robes which the Church recommended and I myself switched over to my light gray suit, but nothing more. I still held a seminar with five students and thought of offering a lecture in comparative religion next term. I told my students to spread word, in the hopes of getting a decent attendance. But I had a gnawing fear that my position was soon to be terminated.
As my duties were minimal, I spent a large part of each day reading my books or watching the daily news reports with my idle colleagues. Newspapers or publications were a thing of the past. The first real inklings of serious trouble for our school came when the High Council announced that all scientific research not directly related to finding a cure for the plague was a waste and must be stopped. This effectively closed the science colleges of our university.
But worse followed. The Church leaders now decided to flex their muscles over the unfaithful. After a few days of inflammatory rhetoric on popular ‘Church’ shows, they contrived a scene for the nightly news which showed a crowd of the faithful in one city rampaging through an abandoned industrial complex and breaking all the machinery they could lay their hands on, and then setting fire to the structure and watching it burn. The tone of the commentators during this report was apologetic at best, if not complimentary to the vandals. This set the tone for the full-scale destruction in the days following, when thousands of factories and warehouses and laboratories were put to the torch.
In the next few weeks this rash of violence doubly swelled the ranks of the Church faithful. It made up the minds of the timid and the undecided who feared for their lives, and most of the civil magistrates outside the order, trying desperately to keep a hold of the shreds of authority they still commanded.
Now that we were ridding the world of machines, television was next in line to fall. The first decree, of course, was to switch back to black and white broadcasting. The two networks agreed, and probably even felt relieved at so slight a concession. Their own machinery had been spared. The programming by now was one unending roll of Church news and ‘inspirational hours’. But the fact remained that the medium was, per se, technological and evil.
In a matter of four months the fundamental organization of the Church had been completed. They found their most potent tool was the daily rallies they held in every place. They set up the remnants of our telephone networks for their official use and were ready to put an end to the last remaining features of the old world that might conceivably be used to turn a popular tide against them.
Radio fell silent with one order, and music was dead. For television they devised a more ingenious end. On the final days of broadcasting they continually increased the brightness of the signal by small increments every hour. On all our screens less and less could actually be seen in the blinding glow, while the voices of our most fervent evangelists blared on, prophesying a white end to everything in the universe. They even tried to send stronger signals at this point to blow out the guts of television sets around the world. But this backfired, or so I heard, for I turned my own set off that day, hours before it reached such an annoying climax.
From now on I was ignorant of what was happening to the rest of the world. But I guess it followed pretty much the events occurring in Oakland. When I began to wander the world a decade later, I could see that the outcome in coastal cities was everywhere the same. From now on our eyes and ears were focused, by necessity, on our local religious leaders. Each day the people were lectured and tasked and directed in their civic duties, mostly upon errands of destruction, since it was taken as a rule, that to build a glorious new world, we first had to tear down the old one.
Just one week prior to the demise of television the riots took place in which the books were burnt. A few days later hospitals were condemned. By a general order they were raided and their sickly residents taken away. Now the sick were free of being administered useless medicines and were set out in the cold, open air to receive the balm of inspired oratory. The equipment, the medicines and even some of the doctors and nurses were thrown out the windows and burned. This was one of the last sanctuaries of science. All that was left was firmly in the hands of the Church and earmarked for destruction as soon as it ceased to aid them in their savage purpose.
When society had been cleansed of public evils it was time to tackle the private ones. A systematic search of all houses began, so that every home could be completely purified. I was in my own domicile at the time, still in shock over the recent rape of my books at the university. From the brutality I’d been seeing I didn't hesitate to answer the knock on my door. Indeed, I half expected their coming.
In fact, in a brooding moment the day before I’d carefully packaged up all that remained of my precious manuscripts and books and buried the lot of them in my back garden, three full suitcases wrapped in plastic and taped up. When my zealous brothers came in I even assisted them in clearing my shelves and closets and drawers of every sinful color. Electrical appliances, dark pans and decorated plates were carted away to the garbage trucks waiting outside and as they finished, I pointed out the watch on my wrist which they’d forgotten to confiscate. I bid them goodbye with a wave and an ironic smile, as they headed for my neighbor's house.
Fortunately my easy chair was white. It was all I had left, besides a mattress, a few white clothes, a few cans of food and a small, white, marble bust of Cicero that was left staring at me from my white mantle. It was a thing to contemplate in an empty room and so I sat there and thought about it late into the night. I wondered why they’d left him there, such a maker of books and such a representative of culture. Obviously they didn’t know what they were doing, these workers in white, and I wondered long and hard on where this madness would end.
