The Grey World

The manual workers of the grey world live in a cluster of underground rooms. In exchange for their labor the workers receive food, a bed sized room in which to sleep, and an amount of recreation time determined by their productivity.  During recreation time the workers view wall-sized video screens that display patterns of light and colour, which are designed to bring them pleasure. While viewing these patterns the workers brainwaves are monitored to ensure that they are experiencing pleasure in response to their visual programming. How this 'pleasure' is defined varies from worker to worker. It is therefore necessary to customise the visual programming for each individual. As a general rule the most productive workers will require the most complex visual programming.

Recreation time serves two functions. Firstly it is used as an incentive, the workers are offered more recreation time in exchange for increased productivity. Secondly, the visual programming received by the workers serves the function of preventing them from dreaming of the surface. For this reason it is important that the visual programming is made up of entirely abstract patterns of light and colour. The placement of objects or figures in the visual programming of the workers, may lead to the uncovering of subconscious links between their minds, and the minds of those who live on the surface.

Once these links have been uncovered, and the workers become aware that there may be a world outside of the underground rooms in which they have always lived, it is impossible to suppress their desire to find out if such a world exists. This desire inevitably leads to an attempt to escape the underground divisions. In attempting to reach the surface, the prospective escapees have the capacity to corrupt large parts of the experiment that we are conducting with the workers. 

To prevent the workers from gaining the knowledge which leads to their desire to escape the underground divisions, it is crucial that they continue to experience pleasure in response to their recreation time. It is also important that the more productive workers are continually challenged by the tasks they are provided with. These two factors regarding the containment of the workers in the underground divisions, have led to the production of highly skilled workers and to the creation of intricate and sophisticated visual programming.

II

The administrators of the grey world live in a number of isolated communities on the surface. They are responsible for logistical questions regarding the allocation and movement of produce and raw materials in the grey world. They also receive food and lodging in exchange for their labor. Larger rooms are provided to the supervising administrators. Efficiency is maintained by making the administrators  believe that increased productivity will increase their chances of being promoted to the supervising positions.  To guarantee this efficiency it is necessary that the community as a whole has the singular aspiration of climbing the administrative hierarchy. This aspiration is periodically strengthened by offering the supervising administrators larger rooms and new communications technologies, in order to mark larger material differences between the various levels of the hierarchy. When an administrator becomes uninterested in these material differences and doesn't show the required enthusiasm at the prospect of being promoted, he or she is transferred and retrained in another division. 

III

The searchers of the grey world also live in isolated communities on the surface. In these communities they are trained in the different techniques that facilitate their investigations. All searchers receive training in Universal Perception, (or U.P., a process that uses meditation and simple drawings to gather information about distant locations in the past, the present and the future).  Many searchers dedicate their lives to the development of this art and the problem of how such developments can be taught to the next generation of searchers.

From their study of universal perception the searchers can then specialize their investigations in the following areas; mathematical and physical structures, sonic exploration, the written and spoken word, and image interpretation. While these four areas require highly specific training, they remain intrinsically linked by their common goal and purpose: the discovery and exploration of links to other worlds.

IV

The inspectors are the only group who are able to move relatively freely around the grey world. They can travel on the only construction linking the various divisions of our society; an underground rail network, which is otherwise only used for the transportation of goods and raw materials. The role of the inspectors is to ensure that all the inhabitants of the grey world are working efficiently and are showing the appropriate attitude for the position that has been allocated to them. Irregularities in one of these areas make it necessary for the inspectors to oversee the transfer and/or rehabilitation of the subject in question. What is required in terms of efficiency and attitude varies according to the division in which the subject carries out his or her duties.

In the underground divisions, the inspectors monitor productivity, R.E.M. sleep patterns and the brain waves of the workers during recreation, with the goal of ensuring that there are no attempted escapes. Amongst the administrators, the inspectors scrutinize attitudes and behavior, through video and audio surveillance, to maintain the required level of enthusiasm, at the prospect of promotion within the administrative hierarchy.

In the searching divisions the inspectors job is to filter the data gathered from other worlds to determine if there is information on psychic or electronic technologies, which might increase the productivity of the grey world, (information on electronic technologies is referred to the re-searchers who's job it is to develop these technologies). In implementing the discoveries of the searchers the inspectors must balance the increase in productivity that the new technology might provide, against the possibility that the technology might mutate into undesirable forms.  

The inspectors also work to ensure the appropriate level of productivity amongst the searchers. Exactly what 'the appropriate level of productivity' is continues to be the subject of experimentation. In other divisions increases in productivity are always desirable, however amongst the searchers it is sometimes necessary to redirect the search and stall its outcomes. As the searchers refine their skills this stalling and redirecting becomes increasingly necessary. When a searcher develops the capacity to establish a number of simultaneous links to another world, the possibility exists that the fusing of these perspectives, might allow the searcher to perceive the world they are exploring as a whole. 

In itself, this type of perception is not what the inspectors seek to prevent. Perceiving the whole is only one factor in the process of the transformation of the searcher. By identifying other factors in this process the inspectors are able to allow these highly productive searches to continue well after the initial perception of the whole. Exactly what triggers the final transformation of self (and the subsequent drops in productivity) remains the subject of speculation. It is therefore up to each individual inspector to decide when a search should be suspended. In this instance the inspector must balance the desire to continue with what are always the most productive searches, with the risk of losing the searcher to a transformation of self that renders all searching irrelevant. 

V

In the underground section of the grey world the workers carry out their labor in one of two divisions; manufacturing or maintenance. All workers are initially trained in the manufacturing division. Amongst other things, these workers make the chips and components required to build the computers and screens that provide them with their visual programming during recreation. All the workers of the manufacturing division are closely monitored to determine their suitability for transfer to the maintenance division, where a new form of training begins.

The first stage of the new training is an exercise called component identification. In this exercise the workers are given a number of components produced in the manufacturing division and are asked to identify potential faults. Initially the workers use visual cues to determine whether or not the component is faulty, however the main skill we seek to develop through this training is meta-sensory, (it is a skill that will allow the worker to perceive faults without having to look at or hold the component).

In order to help them in arriving at this level of perception, the workers are given a dietary supplement before the third component identification session. This supplement allows the workers to perceive the memory of the component they examine. This is information that the workers receive in the form of the vibration that has been invested in the component by its maker. During this session the workers are given their first glimpse of the underlying nature of matter in the grey world.

What, in previous sessions, the workers saw as solid components now appear in a liquid form, with the flow of the liquid dependent on the energy invested in the component at the time of its manufacturing. Components made with a high level of concentration will have a tightly centered and regulated flow, while components produced by distracted workers will be more chaotic in the movement of their fluids. These different liquid forms represent a visual translation of the vibration of the object. The workers then learn to interpret these vibrations through their sense of touch.

This is achieved through a process called hand/eye integration, in which the workers learn to use the large number of nerve endings in their hands, in order to receive vibrational information from the matter that surrounds them. This part of the component identification session takes place in complete darkness, with the workers no longer holding or touching the components. At this point, the dietary supplement assists the workers in perceiving the vibrational difference between the components and the other matter around them. This is both a material difference (metal will vibrate differently to plastic), and a psychic difference, (a difference that will depend on the energy invested in the component by its maker and all those who have come into contact with it).

The dietary supplement which assists the workers in the perception of these differences is given only once, prior to the third session in component identification. It is then the task of the worker to follow the cerebral pathways opened by the supplement, in order to reach the same levels of perception, without dietary assistance.

As we move toward these higher levels of perception, it becomes increasingly difficult to extract a pleasurable response from the workers during recreation time. Their brain waves are no longer sufficiently stimulated by the abstract patterns of colour that once brought them pleasure. At this point subliminal disturbance must be added to the visual programming of the maintenance workers. Amongst the images used to create these disturbances are photographs taken during the rehabilitation of those workers who have attempted to escape the underground divisions. These images flash up on the screen, in order to register a moment of distress in the subconscious of the worker, so that the contrast provided by the return to patterns of light and colour, can help in once again producing a pleasurable response.

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