Hector cracked up reading the old pamphlet. Above the now washed out, but once vibrant, almost sickeningly colourful pictures of stern looking people were the ridiculous one-liners he used to write. As head of the Central Indoctrination Agency he had initially taken his job seriously, but slowly he noticed that it didn't really matter what he wrote.
At first it was just small mistakes that lacked any form of backlash. He once misspelled 'boat'; and slowly everybody misspelled the same word, until after 8 moons the dictionary adapted 'baot' as the new spelling. He decided to experiment a bit, and in 2190 the Ministry of Defence was renamed to Ministry of Deffence without the masses, or the leaders of the nation so much as blinking. They didn't care as long as he included whatever was on the agenda. Things escalated. Quickly. 3 years later he wasn't just writing crap, he was producing high-grade, refined feces-concentrate.
"At 4:08 this morning, degenerate Bellariac forces attempted to cross the bodrer of our beloved country. They were armed with automatic rifles, sponges and grenades. Our superior troops defeated the barbarians by sitting on their faces and farting the name of our gloooooorious leader. Yet another gloooooorious victory that will be written down in the chronicles of Riddick.
In other news: cats are now classified as cattle. They must either be milked on a daily basis or eaten. Citizens who do not comply with these regulations are at risk of being milked or eaten themselves to compensate the state."
The box was full. Next to it more boxes with more bullshit. Thousands of pages of writing. Some duplicates, but he had written at least a thousand mind-numbing one-liners, several hundred fake columns/stories and another couple hundred actual news articles-
Hector!
-What?
Two minutes.
-.... Thank you Tom.
So many memories. His memories. Every piece of writing corresponded to a certain period in his life, and every piece had been read by a minimum of 4 million citizens. The quality of the coffee he had drunk on the morning of January 4th determined what thoughts dripped on the paper, what poison would enter the minds of the nation through the long, long tendrils of the state's machine. And the machine had worked. He'd had his fun writing in the last years, but they were still state matters that he covered. The conscription drives were one of the things he regretted messing with now. He didn't know they'd take that seriously. He really didn't know... right?
Sons, daughters and guinea pigs! Send them all to join the gloooooorious armed forces! Do YOU have a lazy son? Don't beat the crap out of him, let us do it for you! Daughter looks like an ogre? Sign her up for the Dread Echelon! If they can piss their diapers, they can learn to deffend the nation!
"Urgh." - A chill went up his spine. He'd made up half of it. There were no guinea pig soldiers. 'Were'. That project lasted 4 weeks. There was no Dread Echelon....
'Was'...
He cried quietly. Technological development had stalled greatly since the Obliteration War, but some things the warring nations took special interest in: chemical stimulants, cybernetics, psych-molding... There were tens of thousands.. Rejected by their family for whatever reasons. He'd seen some, most of them were actually pretty fair.
'Were'...
He cried out loud. "Oh, no, please, no-" but the memories had returned. Faces, mutilated, molded. Deliberately twisted to be disgusting and abhorrent, attached to flesh-covered metal skeletons that stinked so strongly of death that unaccommodated men would puke. They were the Dread soldiers. Conditioned and broken to only hate. Screaming in perpetual agony and lusting for destruction.
Hector! Alright that's enough, we're moving.
-No. No. No. No. No. No.
Get a bloody grip on yours-
-No. No...
The rest of the pamphlets dropped from his hands and spread across the floor, revealing more bold letters and colourful pictures. In a swift motion the Felarian officer forced his arm under Hectors shoulder and started hauling him out of the room, paying no attention to the uncontrollable sobbing or the writings on the floor. But the writings had Hector's attention, for they were its product. They were his production. His work. Until the state was dismantled last year, he had followed the agenda in his own creative way. It wasn't until the Felarian invaders confronted him with the content that it slowly started dawning what he'd been contributing to all these years with his self-entertainment.
The agenda.
The car was waiting and Tom dragged the shaking body unto the back seat with neither contempt nor subtlety. They would be heading for the temporary Great Court set up south, but Hector, inside the body, inside the car, was not occupied with this. His mind was with the writings still.
"They are not human! They may look like you and I, but they are less than vermin. Fucking insects I call them! For too long have we allowed these 'insects' to defile our gloooooorious nation! We must rid ourselves of them, and everything they have contaminated. Show them no mercy. Not to them. Not to their children. Not to their dogs, or even... their shrubberies! We will hunt them in the streets. We will enter their homes at night. We will not invite them to our birthday parties. Kill them in the name of our gloooooorious leader! The insects have screwed our economy, screw them in return! They are disgusting. Their race is disgusting. Their food is disgusting. We should kill them with food, to teach them a lesson. Kill them with skillets, with apples, with food and kitchen appliances!"
As an endless tape it repeated. Flashed. Everything he had written, he'd done it with pleasure. He'd been entertained by his own wit. Been amused while the streets piled with corpses. Been laughing while neighbour invaded neighbour, drenched the carpets in children's blood. It was entertaining.
KA-DUNK
"Fooking corpses" - The driver angrily cursed.
'Was'...