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“O my people, in the name of The Benefactor of Humanity and Lord Protector of the State; Commander of Armies and Defender of the People, Son of Aten, Chief Improver of the Race, Architect of the Final Victory, Vanquisher of Guelphdom in the Southern Provinces and on Mars, Chastiser of Savages, Chairman of the Leadership Board, Chairman of the Central Revolutionary Committee, Chairman of the Committee for Transactional Efficiency, Editor of J’accuse, Behold the Great Dragon! Lord of a thousand hosts, when he opens his eyes the suns flinch, when he opens his mouth the heavens roar, all who take arms against him see the swords shatter in their fists, all who sail against him see their ships unmoored; revere and obey!”
Examinations, in the Crossworld Meritocracy, were affairs of state in themselves, a rite akin to the elections among the slave-states, or the coronations observed by bandits, in which transcendental properties were derived from base material by means of the occult alchemy of statecraft. There were only two types of people in the Meritocracy — citizens and Meritocrats: the Republican Examinations, more than any other single test, decided to which band one would gain entry.
The Examination Board, like the command of nuclear weapons, was one of the few remaining institutions which could properly be considered part of ‘the State’, as it existed in the 20th century, a body of paid professionals, funded by taxation, under direct supervision of the Benefactor. The arrival of the Planetary Invigilator on Neo-Hyperborea to preside over the fifteenth Republican Examinations was, thus, an event of some importance. The streets were filled with the uniformed members of the Examination Integrity Force, a paramilitary branch of law enforcement unto itself, civil liberties had been temporarily suspended on New Hyperborea and the whole population placed under surveillance, searchlight-burnished helicopters filled the skies, grim-faced invigilators booked Rooms in hotels around the world and Lucien’s year, along with five other schools, had been packed into a vast complex, several times larger than an IKEA warehouse, consisting of a central hall and thousands of individual cells in which the exam would be undertaken by each participant.
It was, however, rare, that the examinations had prompted a visit from the Fifth Benefactor himself to his most distant possession. Lucien had watched the descent of his rocket, for private rockets were still used for atmospheric travel by those too lofty for the space elevators, through the NovoHyperborean skies the previous day: a floating wand of luminescent chrome and ormolu gilding. Now, the Benefactor stood, with his wives and daughters, addressing the students in the hall. The words he spoke were garishly perfunctory “blah blah blah… the great achievement of standardised testing… blah the Confucians the East India Company the Prussians blah blah blah… total eradication of Woke policies from the universe blah blah blah… The mute inglorious Miltons have found their voice again in the mighty thu’um of Meritocratic ethics blah blah blah bring back the grammar schools.” Behind him sat the native Meritocrats of the planet, got up in their becloaked tunics, decked out in all their medals like North Korean generals. This was an affair of state. Lucien found the speech very boring.
Many, however, were listening quite intently. Sephiroth Salvanhic Maitreya was cramped by draughts of anxious longing as he sat in his icy seat. Sephiroth was an organic human, Lucien’s earlier disparagement of his mundane black locks as the product of botched design reflecting more humble origins which would be picked up on in a more snobbish society. For Sephiroth belonged to a minor offshoot of a minor harem once owned by a great Meritocrat of Old Gaia; like many Meritocrats, his progenitor, seeing his own genes as quite good enough for any progeny thank you very much, had refrained from artificially enhancing his offspring beyond the legally mandatory screening for disease; preferring to see each of his 48 heirs rely on his own, surely excellent, taste in mates for their genetic lottery tickets. Sephiroth did not believe it was his place to question the judgment of his political superiors, all he could say is that his seat in the advanced class rows was the result of thankless toil and endless study. If the muses chased some men like whores, eager to throw away their gifts, Sephiroth felt keenly that what learning he possessed was derived from sedulous deflowering and secret voyeurism. Sephiroth had an IQ of 140 to Lucian’s 159. Yet, his habits had served him well, at least until the blight of Lucien Erama had infected his life, they had overcome robust opposition and trounced offworld parvenus to lead him here – to the front rows of the super-academic stream; to embark on the endeavour which would prove his greatness.
These qualities, which may’ve otherwise endeared him to the consensus on ‘the good’, were marred by the fact that Sephiroth – even in a society without inherited wealth – bore the ill-omen of descent from a Meritocrat; thus, his success, however materially inconsequential parentage may’ve been in it, however unparalleled it had been in his forty-eight siblings, would always carry the faint tinge of a condemnation directed against the whole system to those for whom ‘revolutionary virtues’ were still idols to be jealously guarded. Sephiroth’s ambition had nothing to do with any desire to equal his progenitor’s career. It was the duty of every living thing to make the best of its abilities; and Sephiroth was lucky enough, out of the billions of beings who might’ve possessed a mind worth examining by standardised tests peopling the squalor of benighted eternities, to live in a society which allowed one to do so. To become a Meritocrat, or die trying, was simply a logical deduction from the ethical life; and the most prized possession owned by Salvanhic Maitreya was the standard-issue sabre, wrapped in a purple cloth in his quarters, with which he designed to slit his own throat, should the results of the upcoming exam be infelicitous. For while Sephiroth was humble, he was not unambitious; he felt called to serve the public and ambition was simply a requisite trait of humility. It was his sincere belief that somewhere, there was a Pantheon containing all the important people of the world, one merely had, by reasonably open means, to be deified in such a Pantheon; and the rest of humanity would naturally heed the words once scoffed at and bend the wills only confusion had left unbowed.
Thus, Sephiroth had fashioned himself into not only an academic star but also the friend and guide of his peers. He established clubs among them and volunteered to be friends with the stupid, he manned the canteen and put himself forward, with no real athletic skill to recommend him, as the spare member of competitive sporting teams. It was Sephiroth’s belief that this was simply what his class-mates expected from a person like himself, who seemed prenaturally destined to fame and honour and glory. He waited upon the world, like a sovereign prince, for the invitation to put even its lowliest domains into order; the moment these trials risked precipitating the risk of genuine friendship, curiosity, fatal penetration by inferior elements into his mitigated passions and cryptic soul, he withdrew into privacy veiled by a lukewarm condescension more fatal to human vanity than outright contempt. The only person for whom he reserved the latter emotion was Lucien, Lucien’s arrival had accelerated the, likely natural, trajectory of this behavioural pattern to alienate Sephiroth from all his classmates – to whom he ought to be the natural paradigm of leadership – except Lucynda, his best friend.
Sephiroth desperately scanned the confines of the hall for Lucynda, who in fact is sitting directly behind him and now pokes him on the back several times.
“Don’t be a stranger.”
“H-hey.”
“You didn’t send me a missive, Sephie, I was worried about you.”
Lucynda’s face carried a faint, benign smile underneath the arc of her golden scemo-bangs, her generous thighs were crossed so that her knees brushed the end of Sephiroth’s tousles at the back of his head.
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You’re so dumb. You obviously want my company, you look very nervous.”
Sephiroth was very nervous.
“What do you like doing Sephiroth? If you lie to me and say reading books I will pull your hair and stop talking to you.” Lucynda had now begun gently massaging Sephiroth’s back.
Sephiroth gulped and blushed slightly, “I like nature.” He said in a quiet voice.
“After this is over I want to go on a walk with you. I know the best places. It will be lovely. I’ve taken that stupid sword you keep in your room because I want to play with it. Thanks, btw, Lucien never gives me any of his stuff.”
Blah blah blah immortal task of the revolution blah blah blah the oppression of the whites in America blah blah blah our victories on Mars, in the Arctic circle, in South America, blah the honour of the humble worker’s fate the noble proletariat who must labour to build our drones our rocket ships our space lasers to fight and die for the invincible march of the revolution intimations of reincarnation palliatives for chandalas…
Sitting next to Lucien, Sephiroth made out the pink mop of Premen Marciel. Premen had no friends except Lucien. Lucien wasn’t really sure why he allowed Premen to be his friend and it was doubtful whether Premen registered the courtesy as a product of singular volition. Nonetheless; Lucien was the only person Premen regularly hung out with at school. Premen was weird, even by the standards of the Crossworld Meritocracy. Premen was probably the only person in the hall for whom the upcoming examinations were irrelevant, for he had consistently demonstrated an IQ in the range of 290-300 in every National Merit Test undertaken in his life. Even if he filled his papers with pornographic caricatures, he was assured a place, should he desire it, in the civil service schools; any appeal to the Philosophical Executive would find in his favour. The only reason he was even in the hall is because he thought the Exams were ‘funny’, and even this oddity felt curious to see what they would be about this year.
If others of his rank were content to squander great gifts, Premen aspired to squander genius; indeed it could be said of him that he squandered the squandering, for the things which interested Premen, and the method of analyses he brought to bear upon them, were so alien to the safeways of utility as to be pointless rather than obscure. It was Premen’s habit to paint scent-landscapes for reptiles so he could study their response to astrological transits. Premen believed, fervently, in such notions as a synthetic a priori rendering the principle of contradiction absurd. His Pangean mind had not yet seen the continents of metaphor and metaphrand separated from each other by fact. To imagine something for Premen was to make it not only real but super real. His collected works already filled a respectable shelf in the vast archives of the Philosophical Executive and all of them were solemnly, imperviously, useless to any human being except himself. Nobody knew what would happen to Premen Marciel, once fully empowered with sovereign authority, only that it was already the source of lamentable prophecies concerning the doom of Laegyr.
Sephiroth found it mildly fascinating that Premen did not excite his hatred in the same way Lucien did. He did not like Premen – his perversions were tedious – but his role was an important vindication of the old saying that the function of a system was, indeed, what it does; and any system which allowed such, mysteriously gifted, figures to prosper without a dint of concern for ‘humanity’ must surely resemble the picture held by Sephiroth of that under which he lived. To resent Premen was like resenting the sun, or a colourful bird, he was inoffensive in his alienation. Lucien and Sephiroth fell into the peculiar relationship between each other, common in souls which share a single destination but disagree over the route, scenery and means of transport.
After the Fifth Benefactor had finished his speech, the students were called upon the stage, in order of academic attainment, to board odd automated carriages, which a 20th century man might confuse for golf buggies or airport vehicles, charged with taking them to their respective cells.
“Lucien Suitheo Erama”
“WASSUP ENWERDS!” Lucien roared, wearing a minecraft creeper cap and an oversized white t-shirt bearing the comic sans inscription SOCIETY GOT WORSE WHEN WE DECIDED TO REPLACE YOLO WITH FAFO, immediately leaping up and splayed his arms in the air. “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GO LUCIEN!” screamed his wives, and the wives of many other men, in concert as he skulked joyfully towards the door.
“Sephiroth Salvanhic-Maitreya IV.”
“In attendance.”
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SEPHI-ROTH SEPH-IR-OTH!” Sephiroth blushed deeply to be met by an equal uproar of enthusiasm from the female benches. He was wearing the standard blue tunic issued to all students. The shouts of approbation at Sephiroth’s name pursued Lucien like an avenging fury, his heart marinated in acidic contempt: if they clapped for Sephiroth, they should’ve clapped EVEN LOUDER for me. It was probably all a plot to make him fail the exams.
“Premen Marciel”
Premen decides to wait, patiently, until the (more modest) applause ceases; and then walked before the Chief Examiner, bowed deeply, in a highly mocking, humiliating way before proceeding to his car with an entirely blank expression on his face.
Education in the Meritocracy existed for the purpose of taking exams. Upon taking their first National Merit Tests, students were streamed according to which papers they were studying for, doing well on these papers unlocked further papers; those who excelled in everything were able to complete the entire Republican Exam. At the other end of the spectrum, the ‘technical’ stream were intended for specialist colleges, funded by consortia of employers, to learn useful Skills for the World of Work and in return pledged themselves to fixed contracts with these employers in a sort of industrial serfdom. If places in these technical streams were limited, there was, of course, nothing to stop one from attempting the exam without having studied for it but failure to obtain either citizenship or Meritocracy opened up a vista of meaty ends for the unsuspecting Based Retard; compulsory sterilisation, conscription into the labour service and a “bunch of cells” interpretation by the Courtroom A.Is if one became a victim of murder by bored Meritocrats, were all on the cards.
All of these took place within the framework of the National Merit Tests, yearly psychometric tests, taken online, by all native inhabitants of the Meritocracy from the age of nine. The National Merit Tests did not determine, by themselves, anything; in another sense, they determined everything (the topic of examinations was the only one in which the Lords of the Meritocracy permitted themselves Jesuit turns of phrase). Intelligence was not knowledge, and the education system existed to ensure the intelligent knew about things they ought to know. On the other hand, it was the foundation of Meritocracy that the intelligent should not be prevented from exercising their intelligence, even they knew nothing at all. The NMT could be used, on a discretionary basis, by individual schools for admission, to skip grades and force entrance to certain papers.
The various papers which made up the Republican Examinations were weighted in such a way to ensure that those who would fulfil the more ‘technical’ jobs in the Meritocracy would nonetheless still have to indoctrinate themselves in its ideology (“Critical Thinking”), acquire a reasonable grasp of its History, programme computers and speak one foreign language to good proficiency. As such, humanities papers were those which carried the vast bulk of the marks and one could squeeze into Kojevean mutual recognition by doing well on them. Anyone who aspired to university or grammar school education, however, would have to show a broad understanding of Mathematics at a level roughly equivalent to undergraduate in the Democracy and its various applications in the domain of nature (“Science”) as well as special papers relevant to their desired career. Finally, those who wanted to achieve a grade of 90% or above would have to complete the examination in full, demonstrating knowledge of additional (including classical) languages, a specialist subject and perfect grades in the Scientific and Humanities sections. In addition, there was the fiendish aerarium of Extra Marks awarded for display of ‘Synthesis’, completing the Engineering paper in Ancient Greek, or plotting the argument between Brutus and Cassisus on a graph, were displays of eccentricity mandatory for aspiring Sovereignty candidates.
The Exams were, effectively, the only topic of conversation in the Meritocracy’s somewhat anoxic public sphere; the questions were reported, one month after the conclusion of events, with the same breathless immediacy in national broadsheets with which the Democratic press had once pretended to understand ‘the Budget’, or the decisions of the Federal Reserve; to be pondered over with the significance of fresh memos landed upon Sinai. The weighting of the papers, the topics chosen and the ever insufficient intricacies of ‘Exam Security’ were the only topics in which it was recognised Everybody had a right to Have a Say. It was the only sphere of life in which something approaching the principle of the separation of powers existed in the Meritocracy. The Benefactor himself could not change the exams, or predict the questions, even if his rank was of such degree that he wholly owned the State. There were some scholars of the Philosophical Executive who believed, with influential quotations from Meritocratic Thinkers, that the Examinations could only be constitutionally changed by a referendum of the whole population. Invigilators and Examiners were being endlessly hauled before Constitutional Courts to ‘explain their reasoning.’ The Theory of Examinations itself was now, increasingly, taught as an optional paper and held to be quite important for those aiming at Self-Sovereignty.
Lucien and Sephiroth stood silently together for the journey to their adjacent cells, the motion of their carriage beckoning cool, bituminous zephyrs of air-conditioning from the endless corridors of fluorescent light to numb their faces. After the wagon came to a halt, Lucien was surprised to see that Sephiroth had extended a hand to him and was saying something deceptive or ridiculous:
“Lord Lucien, I know we’ve had our differences, and on this day, let us hope that one way or the other they are settled but I want to tell you that I have enjoyed witnessing your abilities, which are a marvel to us all, in the advanced class and wish you all the best wherever your future life is led. Let us wish each other good luck.”
Sephiroth was staring at Lucien with eyes of avid mahogany and a waxen smile which betokened his best effort at sincerity. Lucien took his comrade’s thermal palm, briefly brought it towards his lips and then spat on it with an enthusiastic volume of phlegm.
“XAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Fuck you! Sephiroth! I will become a Meritocrat in 2 years time and you will be my slave! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. GET REKT.” Lucien crowed, floridly performing a ‘L’ sign at Sephiroth, before violently kicking down the door to his cell.
“Fuck you Lucien.” Sephiroth hissed through the water-veil of his eyes and squinting fangs.
There was a faint spinal tremor of sublime intimidation as the door shut, as if sealing him in a tomb beneath the earth, to be confronted with the confines of the room for which all of his life had been a labour of preparation; wherein all of his future would be decided. Lucien gazed, almost with horror, upon the pneumatic tube in which the exam paper would appear in five minutes time, upon the bank of lined paper in which his answers would be written; then, after forty-eight hours, he would seal the paper to make a scroll and place it back into the pneumatic tube, whereby it would travel, at lightning speed, to an almost identical room within an almost identical complex, in which a civil servant sat with the 500 page marking rubric; his every answer would be added, or subtracted, to a final score, each of his Arguments scrutinised, before the civil servant would carry the paper into a room where another civil servant, a member of the Philosophical Executive, sat ready to hear the Arguments of the Examiner justifying every decision made; the duo would then consult an A.I, trained on every paper ever written since the revolution, to see if it agreed with the Decision Made.
The mark would then be sent back to the candidate’s school, where the teachers compared it with the National Merit Score of the candidate compiled since infancy, any broad discrepancies would be noted for future appeals by the Philosophical Executive. A final grade, taking in mind the NMS and the Exam, would then be delivered to the candidate in a month. If any person in this chain of events was successfully shown to have neglected their duties, they were summarily executed for treason, and the A.I was Switched Off. Lucien lazily unzipped his Five Nights at Freddys themed pencil case as the faint hiss of steam through the walls - signalling the arrival of thousands of papers in thousands of different cabinets – announced the start of the exam. He flips open the paper like a cat playing with a large, silver fish; within 15 minutes, Lucien had completed the entire Mathematical section.
“God, this is so easy. LOL.” Lucien yelled with irritation. He dashed off a series of Alexandrines, two in French, describing several paradoxes in stellar nucleosynthesis and appended to one of them an extended, not especially original, footnote on the differences between the French of Rabelais and Voltaire. Growing bored of science, he decided to complete one of his special subjects, Advanced Racialism, and spent an enjoyable 10 minutes expounding the behaviour of Non-Manorialised Doliocephalic Populations in contrast to several other European groups, before racketing through some, really insultingly easy, multi-choice physiognomy.
15) In which cases is a Levantine not an Arab?
16) Which former human population bore the greatest resemblance to chimpanzees and why?
17) Inbreeding has been levelled as a criticism of polygamous societies, argue against this proposition using what you know.
“Too many retards in the cohort?” Lucien grumbled before moving onto the Native Tongue section of the exam. A reading comprehension test consisting of two passages from Cardinal Newman, a Joycean parody thereof and the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. BORING. A compositional request which Lucien completed using two imagined Heteronyms of Pessoa debating the identity of the Pearl Poet in the style of Landor. The literature section asked several essay-length questions on a variety of set texts, Lucien dispatched the first one using chromatic polynomials to codify synesthetic incidents in Lolita with a footnote describing how the system could be translated into weights for a learning model. Within two hours, Lucien had finished the rest of the exam, leaving only the History questions left, as he found them tedious and facile, he had saved them til last.
“We have imported Dutch finance and Venetian politics.” Was this paraphrase of a contemporary remark an accurate description of Walpole’s system? Answer with reference to the politics of the Italian peninsula from the Sicilian Vespers to the Wars in Lombardy.
The Russian Revolution strengthened Freemasonry at home while weakening it abroad, discuss.
Brexit was caused by divisions in the Tory party, argue both for and against.
‘My father was a Syrian ready to perish.’ Analyse migratory patterns during the Bronze Age Collapse.
Expand on Taine’s racial classification of Napoleon the Great with reference to the Rise of the Democracy.
In the 2060s, The Third Benefactor was primarily concerned with colonisation and pursued war as an after-thought. Is this accurate?
Did Epstein kill himself? Refer to politics of the Democracy from Nixon to MBS.
Was Donald Trump a Meritocrat or a Neoreactionary?
‘The House always wins.’ What was the relationship between Hitler and the Guelphs? Refer to Schmitt’s letters.
Describe the events of the Second Revolution in dialogue form.
Lucien was about to begin when he saw something which never happened. The door to his cell had opened, and in its wake stood Sigismunda Trevelyan, the Planetary Invigilator. She had extremely luscious hair the colour of red liquorice and gleaming, pallid skin. Her breasts bounced beneath a scratchy black sweater like the crazily elliptical orbit of giant moons which dwarfed their home star. In his resulting fluster, Lucien sent a great blob of ink from his fountain pen to splatter over his left cheek.
“Err … is something wrong?” Lucien was stammering.
“You have ink on your face.” Sigismunda’s eyes narrowed wickedly, as Lucien furiously swiped the blot with his arm, smearing his golden skin with black ink.
“Teee heee.” She drew closer to him, closing the door behind her, with swift, decisive steps. “That just makes it worse. You need water to wipe it away.” She extended two pale hands to grab his cheeks, gently massaging them. Sigismunda began to gently brush the tip of her tongue over Lucien’s face, slowly accelerating its movement to greedy lapping and quickly kissing him repetitively.
“UGH. What are you doing Sigismunda. We can’t do this here. This is MY REPUBLICAN EXAMINATION!”
“I turned off the cameras for your cell.”
“You can’t even do that. You’re going to get me executed!”
Sigismunda withdrew her face, placing a finger on her chin in mock quizzical posture, she said: “Ooops. I guess I hadn’t considered that. Hehehe.” Before shoving her tongue so far down Lucien’s throat, he gagged.
“Besides,” Sigismunda whispered “I thought you’d have finished by now, you stupid boy.”
MNRGHNK UGRHHUPHT. “Sigithmunda, cut this out, okay. I have to become a Meritocrat.” Lucien complained, while groping Sigismunda’s breasts, braless beneath her black sweater, in what he vaguely hoped would be registered as a tactile protest. Sigismunda gasped.
“Look at it this way Lucien, my sweetheart, if someone is watching, and you behave yourself, you can blame it all on me – and I’m sure the Philosophical Executive won’t want to lose someone as clever as you – but if you make a scene, I won’t want to testify on your behalf.”
Lucien grunted as Sigismunda crawled under the desk and started pulling down his pants, her boobs brushing against his knees in the process. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but Lucien had been tripping on his last six NMS tests, so his average was slightly below his natural 160 IQ. “I’m going to get cold.” He whined.
“Shut up Lucien, and finish your exam. We have 48 hours together tee-hee. So you better go through and check your work.” Sigismunda said as she withdrew the anatomical curiosity she would describe, in the florid style of her diary the next day, as “like a giant T-Rex’s tooth”
“Whatever.”
The second revolution
S
What was the difference between the first and the second revolutions?
P.
All revolutions in human history, from the Parliamentary revolution in 17th century Laegyr, to the Russian one, have occurred in sequels. One revolution is, more or less, simply the collapse of the old order by an irregular change of government within the same constitutional form; yet, in every case, we find the immediate successors to power are too entwined with the old order to effect change. A second group must then found a new order, by overthrowing the constitutional forms themselves. Let us note, if the first revolution described something spontaneous, the second revolution describes the only type of revolution it is possible to plan; a party, which had seized power by electoral means, and sought to get rid of the ‘deep state’ would follow a course of action similar to these and fall prey to similar obstacles. We have seen that in the first British revolution, a government was forcibly overthrown, a new provisional government was set up to replace it some days after the storming of Downing Street.
S
Who comprised the provisional government after the revolution?
P
That is an excellent question, for unlike revolutions in the past, this revolution did not have ‘Democracy’ as its immediate aim, therefore, there were no bodies (the supreme soviet, the communes etc.) who could immediately elect representatives for the new government. Of the institutions of the previous government, the Prime Minister had perished, the Cabinet had fled, the Supreme Court unseated and the majority of M.Ps had vacated Parliament. The last remaining institutions were the Monarchy and the House of Lords. There was a great danger, identified by the Meritocrats, of the Monarchy, an ally of ‘Woke’, filling the void left by the collapse of these different institutions. For, while the Crown was unpopular among the patriots, it could easily recover from disgrace by making itself the instrument of a revolutionary puppet-government, to be disposed of later. This would spell the end of the revolution. The Meritocracy, having gotten rid of the elected government now had to arrange things in such a way so that their more popular rivals, and the Monarchy, destroy themselves. The next twelve months may, indeed, be read as a game of chess between the Benefactor and the Monarchy. The most expedient goals were to create a rump government, weak enough to control, yet strong enough to protect the revolution, to this end, the Meritocrats encouraged several immediate actions.
S
What were these actions?
P
Firstly, a provisional government was instituted, this did not require the exclusive activity of Meritocrats, for the other participants in the revolution were also desirous of leadership. The privy council, by consent of the Monarch, appointed a number of individuals to the cabinet without reference to the previous officeholders. These individuals consisted of a progressive Supreme Court judge, a patriotic civil servant, two members of the House of Lords who had supported the progressive movement and a former Prime Minister approved of by some of the revolutionaries alongside two delegates elected by the Committee for Peace and Progress. The Meritocrats then, by means of policy papers and advocacy, promoted the idea, swiftly adopted, that a Convention Parliament shall be held; that is to say, a Parliament holding within itself all prerogatives to decide on such issues as the electoral system, the power of the courts, the issue of immigration and the status of the Monarchy. To this end, the new cabinet declared that elections shall be held as soon as possible. This election was primarily a contest of the factions involved in the revolution.
S
Who were the main factions among those who came to power as a result of the first revolution?
P
The largest faction where those who detested a specific policy of the Democracy, yet had no clear ideas about replacing the Democracy writ large; the overwhelmingly prevalent complaint of this faction was with the immigration of foreigners to the Monarchy. Among themselves, they were divided between the Populists and Nationalists, the latter being already an established party and the former group only loosely existing in the form of local associations formed during the revolution. The second faction were those associated with the former Conservative Party who accepted the revolution; their platform was one of general economic reform, the constitution as it had stood before 1997 and the speedy return of order. The third faction were the Meritocrats, who were by far the smallest, and advocated the end of the Democracy and its replacement by a Meritocracy; yet the Meritocrats exercised the greatest influence over the revolutionary government. Alongside these groups, there were the remnants of the radical Left, who took no part in the revolution but did not boycott it either and emerged as the unofficial opposition and voice of the Reactionaries.
S
And what of those members of the old regime who rejected the revolution outright?
P
After the storming of Downing Street, the domestic and international media held the line that a terrible crime had been committed and all future actions of the revolutionary government were illicit; wiser minds identified such a judgment as unrealistic. The Liberal and Socialist parties both refused to recognise the new government, along with the bulk of M.Ps from the Conservative Party. The loyalists of the old regime had fled London to their homes in the West, and, gradually, they began to talk among themselves and provided a magnet for other disgraced servants of tyranny: defrocked Human Rights Lawyers, ageing T.V presenters, obstinate minor royalty, insidious clerics and a host of former politicians all banded together and started to proclaim themselves ‘The Padstow Government’ under the leadership of a police spy and a former Chancellor.
S
How did the Meritocracy exercise such great influence, relative to their size?
P
The Meritocrats were the only faction to have predicted the revolution and explicitly prepared for it, as such, events which surprised others were to them easily comprehensible. The Meritocrats were the only faction with a clear goal served by the revolution, all of the others were taken surprise by it and wanted, essentially, some restoration of the old order but had made themselves hateful to it by opportunism. These were the differences of mindset but the Meritocrats were also superior tactically. In the major cities, especially in London, the Meritocrats set up clubs, operating under names like ‘the Defence of the Constitution’ by which they would organise disparate volunteers for their ends such as haranguing meetings, staging rallies, monopolising elections and appearing in Parliament. Whereas the social media of the other factions was primarily geared towards winning elections, that is to say, generating maximum engagement: that of the Meritocrats was geared towards perpetuating the belief of the faithful, they developed chatbots, tailored for the most niche demographic profile, to put forward their narratives under the guise of different parties. The prime rhetorical weapon of the Meritocrat was exaggeration and slander; the leaders, both local and national, of the other factions were accused of the wildest and fantastical plots, which earned wide audience, even among the incredulous, on account of their entertainment value.
S
How were the Meritocrats organised?
P
The Meritocracy was unique in already having a government before it seized power, this was the Victorious Index, the system of distributed ledgers storing the exam results and successfully completed edicts of all Meritocrats with an IQ over 150. These individuals were all anonymous. The Party of Merit itself was a front organisation for these individuals, to join it, one had to be recommended by two existing members, in good standing, pass the requisite examinations and provide evidence of one’s source of income for two years – this was to deter police spies. The initiation ceremony for all who passed was as follows. The initiate was taken to one of their underground temples, a rented Church (most of which had fallen into disuse by this time) or, ideally, a high place in the hour before dawn – for the Meritocrats were said, in this time, to worship one of the Pharaohs who became a sun-god, a practice maintained by the Archaic Tendency; although some said they worshipped the Enemy of the Church and others the Second Coming of Christ. The initiate would be hung from a mock-gallows for seven hours in imitation of the Mahomet of the Goths, from whom the Meritocrats claimed descent, who hung from a tree of stars in the antelucan epoch of the world; for such a term, he would be instructed in the fabulous history of his soul. At the seventh hour, a lamb and a golden cloak would be brought forward; with the Initiate prompted to offer these things as sacrifice, only for each to be rejected and cast into a roaring flame. The initiate would then offer himself as sacrifice and be prompted to ask what God, being ready to perish, would accept the offering of his own blood; to which the initiate would respond that he pledged himself to his own Divinity as stood as surety for his own self-worship. Thereupon, the sun would rise and the blindfold removed from the initiate’s eyes so that he might stare upon its disc. However, not all workers in the Party of Merit were Meritocrats, the vast majority were ‘volunteers’ or ‘lay members’ who had no voting rights in the party or access to the Index. The lay membership were divided into groups of 4, or 12, with each being superintended by a Meritocrat – whose identity was unknown to them. In this way, the Meritocracy was able to establish cells across multiple other groups and also the institutions of state. The basis of every cell was a study group, which maintained ideological orthodoxy and the formal role of every Meritocrat was as a teacher. In this way, the party had no official local branches; merely a vast network of manpower. A further type of associate membership non-Meritocrats might aspire to is the role of ‘A Voice’, whether as simply a sympathetic media commentator, or as the Voice for an individual Meritocrat on the Leadership Board. There were times when the formal ‘Leader’ of the Party of Merit was simply a Voice with no authority over policy designated to address the public.
S
How did the Meritocracy grow, from whom did they recruit their membership?
P
The Meritocracy never numbered more than about five hundred Perfected and fourteen thousand lay members. After the completion of the Victorious Index, the Meritocracy recruited from their online fraternities and the two universities, via reading groups as well as attracting the usual smattering of outcasts who people all political movements. In order to form a branch of the party in a given seat, the lay members would have to demonstrate a certain level of activity and regular ‘community outreach’, whereupon they would be sent a Perfected Meritocrat to lead them, it was forbidden to operate an official cell without a Meritocrat in charge.
S
What actions did the Meritocracy undertake before the revolution?
P
The Meritocrats were the first endeavouring to bring corrupt members of the judiciary to a state of penance. The first time this happened was quite an event in the downfall of the old order. A certain judge who had, by long habit, freed child molesters and rapists of foreign origin, came down particularly hard on anti-war protesters. The judiciary had developed such arrogant habits by virtue of rarely being named to the general public. The Meritocrats published the address of this man on social media with the announcement of a general protest, using the hated masks of the lockdown to avoid detection. A vast crowd gathered outside the house of this judge for a day, hurling abuse, preventing his flight and gradually beginning to pelt the house with missiles until – eventually – a fire was started which consumed him. This was a very rare public action by the Meritocrats.
S
What of the secret actions?
P
The most propitious form of activism was the resurrection of robbing banks to fund the revolution, this was surprisingly easy given the breakdown of policing. A group of Meritocrats would track the delivery vans of cash deposits for the banks using drones and then arrange a blockade somewhere out of the way – or quickly congest a motorway by some contrivance to loot the van. There were a number of heroic assassinations against the corrupt powers. It is, however, exceedingly unwise for any movement to make use of such violence, for the secret police are endlessly looking for those willing to do violence on their behalf and cultivate movements which become accustomed to it for their own ends. To conduct revolutionary violence of this kind, one must be exceedingly honest with oneself and purge all motivations of revenge, sadism, vainglory or dissatisfaction with life from the spirit so as to always remain committed to the proper objective. This is a superhuman task, ill-fitting for those who join political movements, who are necessarily dissatisfied with, if not life, the present mode of living. For that reason, terrorism was highly discouraged by the Meritocracy.
S
By what other means did the Meritocrats fund themselves?
P
The Meritocracy refused donations from anyone who was not themselves a Meritocrat. There were mandatory membership fees for lay members and an optional tithe for Meritocrats. Members of the movement, guilty at having benefited from inherited wealth, were encouraged to submit 50% of their income to the movement. A small, possibly rogue, group of Meritocrats seized upon the business idea of smuggling captogan, an immensely cheap methamphetamine substitute, from the Near East into the various warzones where they traded it for weapons and cash. Light aircraft would be hijacked from civilian airfields in Britain and flown into the Middle East, with their ADS systems disabled, where supplies of the drug would be brought and flown into the various warzones. A version of the victorious index was also sold to at least one foreign government for use in their own examinations, for a six figure sum.
S
What role did the Meritocrats play in the first revolution?
P
As we have seen, the Meritocrats were decisive at key points during the first revolution, it was they who coordinated the drone strikes on the Starmerite column sent to crush the Trafalgar Camp and a few Meritocrats were involved in the original student uprising. To make up for their general slenderness of build, the streetfighters of the Meritocracy carried cattle prods and shields instead of blunt instruments; which made them disproportionately effective to their numbers. Nonetheless, the Meritocrats, until this point did not plan any of the events of the first revolution, for, thusfar they had been acting spontaneously, as the Vindex allows, without their Leader and Founder.
S
Who founded the Meritocracy
P
S
Who was the First Benefactor?
P
He was a man born at some point towards the end of the 20th century, of unknown profession.
S
Was the Benefactor imbued with special virtue?
P
He was not, the Benefactor was of merely average talent and no exceptional intelligence although he was above average in fairness of appearance, although he profited little from this on account of his strange ways.
S
What was the character of the Benefactor?
P
He was melancholy, both by nature and by destiny, for melancholia is the fate of all men who must stand as the bridges between epochs; for their manners, their designs and ambitions have all been shaped by the previous age of men and they are themselves men of the previous age. Even if they are beloved by many, they cannot shake from their souls the impression of criminality, for their achievements dishonour the standards of the past and find acclaim only in the future. They walk, with blemished mirrors by which they inspect themselves with futility, towards a grey and uncertain destination.
S
How, in that case, did the Benefactor go about conceiving of the Meritocracy?
P
The Benefactor conceived of the Meritocracy in his youth, as is the way of all genius yet as he aged, he encountered a number of obstacles and his faith was sorely tested by seven endeavours.
S
What was the first endeavour of the Benefactor?
P
In what was once called Britain, before the revolution: the Benefactor was first tricked into summoning the ghosts of extinct deities on the misapprehension they would provide intelligence to him concerning perfect sexual congress. The devils said the following words to him. “Acausitively listen and hear this Supermechanicoatheleialogicospatialgraphicalinterpreativephonion in all your antipatriarchialpaterfamiliallextallionistic NRx conceptualgebildungs Unbindingly and Unremittedly have we Coevalified our Relativity and Alikeness and Similitude and Similarity and Kinship (Rassenlieben) and Doppelgeistergangheit with You. Go away.”The shapeless devils carried the Benefactor to their realm under a carapace of ebon smoke wherein he dwelt for a year until he had debated them to the point of exhaustion, whereupon the spirits freed him. Before releasing him, the devil-tongues gifted him the power of mind-reading. The devil is nine feet tall and amphibian; upon his yellow-staring eyes that day were writ the words TELUM OBSCURA MUTATIONIS.
S
What was the second great endeavour of the Benefactor
P
In the days before the revolution, The Benefactor returned to the dumb world of pasteboard masks and was there so filled with the potent magic he had learned from the Invisible Tongues that he stirred up great contestation against himself. Many in Laegyr, at this time, sought to prevent the revolution, for they said ‘a calamity in the heavens is less profitable than a calamity on earth.’ One of their servants, who was called Abeyance-Toad, was charged with conspiring against the Benefactor by means of poisoned darts and mirrors which consumed all who looked on them. Yet, the Benefactor said ‘It is too early for my martyrdom’ and trapped this spirit of false humility in a pornographic DVD by means of an automaton resembling the Oral Complex, so that it was immune to mirror-craft. The Benefactor would later say, ‘The masses are always humble towards power, yet no man can entertain false modesty in sex, if you wish to destroy your enemy while he smiles, find him in his bed.’
S
What was the third great endeavour of the Benefactor?
P
The Benefactor was now apprehended by two of the ancient tongue-devils who followed him to earth, the first of them showed him a series of infinite accidents in the heavens, the second showed him a finite set of coincidences in the blood. The Benefactor was then taught, by listening to their disputes (for these two spirits were beset by enmity) about the copulation of crystals and why the Mohammodeans prohibit abortion after certain lunar terms. The second devil then spoke to him ‘History is a door with four locks for which there are four keys, and verily the locks of the door changeth in the time it takes for the Greenland shark to wander the oceans for hundreds of years. Of the future I say to you that within your mind, which is Universal Love, you will find the first lock; which is the seat of Spirit in the land which shall soon be called Laegyr; and the Spirit shall be the waypath of mankind, for a man walketh after that for which he hath appetite and a great hunger is already upon the children of men for the ineffably changing. Your crystalline body, sir, shall become the star which all who wander on this road will look upon for orientation and mimesis, the name of this star is Great Power.’ From this discourse, the Benefactor realised he possessed the gift of prophecy. To get rid of the spirits, whose bickering had begun to annoy him, the Benefactor challenged them to an eating contest at the table of eternity, by funnelling potage into his satchel, and making an incision therein, the Benefactor was able to trick the spirits into consuming the mahamvantara so that they burst asunder, and made of the heavens a garden centre watered by angel-blood.
S
What was the fourth great endeavour of the Benefactor?
P
Having learnt the gift of prophecy, the Benefactor was now sorely oppressed by a miserable temper, for by this learning, the scripture of his own death had become legible to him. Furthermore, the Benefactor had not learnt how to distinguish between the voices of prophecy, and bid the rest be silent and the one to speak; thus, he looked out upon the world and saw a painting in which women were always giving birth to their grandmothers and it was impossible to get out of bed without traversing the pure lands of a dead kallipolis. The Benefactor now left his country for the first time and after slight wanderings came to the borders of the Empire, which he was prevented from crossing for offending a cyclops. So, he lay down in the fields of Choroduk, where he looked up and saw that the sky was inhered with the light of a green ray and a pale flash; from this, the death-rattle of a suicidal demigod, the Benefactor dislodged the steps of Jacob’s ladder and made of their angel-bone a sword, a flute and a mask; for the sword is a confusion of flesh with the world and the flute is a pentecost of fire and the mask is a veil torn from the secret theatre permitting the changing of costumes for the soul — but only while it standeth before a mirror. The Benefactor then came to an island underneath the mountains and summoned the spirit of the Death-Prophecy using his flute and donned the mask by which Death would not recognise him. Death took the form of a void-shaped vulture and, on each fore-claw, he bore a silver ring glit with the words BHAN TUGH BHAN TUGH; the Benefactor said to death: ‘All theologies of predestination are founded on the acquiescence of the self to cohere’; then, he ate his death in one gulp and regurgitated it in the shapes of Meritocracy.
S
What was the fifth great endeavour of the Benefactor
P
The Benefactor returned to Laegyr, where, in the days before the revolution, he practiced fortune-telling and became a pamphleteer. The Benefactor was like Aten and cast many shadows on the earth. He said to them ‘your office as my viceroys is the provision of shade to the people, for they cannot look upon me’; one of these shadows became insubordinate and, believing it hailed from ancestral night instead, sought to deceive the people into the worship of fire and called itself the Sapatna. “Master” the loyal shade-dwellers are reported to have said “Strike this one down! For they aspire to share the secret knowledge with the people, and thereby steal your angel-bone swords and render them blunt by hacking at the vines it is better to uproot.” The Benefactor said ‘I am a lonely moon’ and left Laegyr again.
S
What was the sixth great endeavour of the Benefactor?
P
The Benefactor then arrived in a distant city and toiled for six months. He took the other wrungs of Jacob’s ladder, which had not been used for the making of the three instruments, and which numbered 28. He fixed them in the heavens on the pattern of the world-tree and said to the followers “Any who taketh hold of this treasure creates without bestowing and without bestowing raiseth no sacrifice, as he overcometh, so shall he not be overcome by any man but reign with me in glory; those who preach the violence of stasis shall perish. Behold the order of a new sainthood.” Then he took from the bones of his own body a final block and said “This piece shall bring mastery to the whole.” So that the total blocks in the state-chain were 29. Then he put his blood upon the world tree by his hand and set the machinery in motion. To the leaders of his true and loyal fan base he gave one block each, for himself he kept the 29th. This was the Victorious Index.
S
AVE VINDEX! AVE VINDEX! AVE VINDEX!
P
The Benefactor was then approached by his French emo gf who repented of ignoring his missives and pledged herself to him. At his marriage banquet, the Benefactor spoke the following words: “the universe has too much energy to know what to do with. This is the secret of God. Wherever there reigns a king of-this-world, there is sacrifice: this is the meaning of the law. The first law is the law of self-preservation, and the will which conquers the world is abolished by it. Love and learning are the only species of the infinite: immortality is not a province of God. Creation is not an act of possession. If you create yourselves, you must first obey yourselves; and all obedience begins in silence. Seek silence in the now. Then you shall see that world you seek to conquer has been the self withal; then seeth man that he hangs only from his own tree, and gives of it his love and learning. I have shown you how, for the first time, mankind will exist; I fulfil the promise of Aristocles and the promise of Zarathustra: the name of this path is MERITOCRACY. With this, I have abolished the law.” And, to emphasise the seriousness of his words, the Benefactor took a second wife, which was his seventh and last endeavour.
S
What happened after the Benefactor had fulfilled all of his endeavours?
P
At this point, the war between the Democracy and the Chinese broke out and the Benefactor was detained by allies of the Chinamen; seeing that a Great Prophet had come among them, and desirous of possessing a secret weapon, the Chinamen brought the Benefactor before their leaders. The Benefactor said ‘I bear allegiance to the secret power which shall overturn the world.’ and bade them to look upon the Vindex; doing this, they were astonished and prostrated themselves in contrition saying ‘Verily, this one is a son of heaven. We have seen the great flood.’ They dressed him in new garments and gifted him a Gulfstream 650 jet which he flew to Paris to dine with his supporters. The Benefactor then boarded the Eurostar to the Capital, on hearing news that Parliament had been stormed.
S
How was the Benefactor received?
P
Outside and within St. Pancras vast crowds gathered and the station was festooned with the banners and signs of the Meritocracy, the 28 were assembled at the head of the crowd enrobed in scarlet. Among the various delegates stood the Aldermen of the City of London, representatives of five livery companies dressed in gold-braid, the Archbishop, the directors of five leading policy foundations, fifteen M.Ps, twelve Lords and the Lord Mayor — all sought favour from him. As his train came in, a thousand voices chanted YECHI ADONEINU MOREINU V’RABBEINU MELECH HA’MOSCHIACH and beg the Benefactor address them: yet silent he was, and retired to the Savoy Hotel, wherefrom he conducted his election campaign.
S
What were the post-revolutionary elections like?
P
It was as if a man, holding his breath underwater, began trying to play football. After the events, so incredible they weren’t yet fully registered, there was suddenly a huge performance of ‘normality.’ Whether from shock, or anticipation, this performance was broadly acquiesced to by the population. Communal violence had fizzled out, with the police now under the control of patriots, or, in towns where they had become so discredited, their offices quietly usurped by self-defence organisations; in both cases, the migrant populations stayed in their own quarters and avoided provoking the natives, while the natives were distracted by events in Westminster. The point being, the emergency elections could reasonably be compared to other elections, and the behaviour of the Meritocracy in fighting them would serve as a valuable pattern for how it might’ve seized power peacefully.
S
How did the Meritocracy fight the elections?
P
The Meritocracy campaigned in the university towns, in protestant parts of Scotland and in urban areas with a large concentration of European immigrants. It campaigned on a platform of immediate justice for corrupt members of the old regime, ‘rebuilding Britain’ – that is to say economic growth common to many dissidents, reducing foreign ownership of the economy, student debt forgiveness and Universal Basic Income. Its most visible and important policy, however, was the Meritocracy itself, the fact that Meritocracy alone had an oven-ready replacement government of people with a confirmed IQ of >140. In a few jurisdictions, indeed, where the Meritocrats had won mastery over the government, the assets of corrupt democratic councils had already been transferred to the Vindex and elections could no longer take place. In terms of how the campaign was conducted, rallies were held in stadia around the country and chatbots, fine-tuned on demographic information scraped from social media, used to spread the message. The rallies in question were quite unlike the tawdry affairs thusfar seen in Laegyr; the only illumination on the grounds was provided by torches and a vast bonfire, a ritual to commemorate the martyrs opened each occasion, with the audience joining in baroque hymns in dead languages, a ritual sacrifice of a woman in white robes took place; if the Benefactor spoke at all, it would be in a register quite different from the joshing, insinuating language of celebrity. On the other hand, whenever the Meritocrats were exposed to broadcast or print media, they would assume the greatest air of levity and mockery. The Meritocracy benefited in that, with the revolution complete, it could, in a certain sense, appeal to the middle-class; for what the Party said about immigration was, on the face of it, far less ‘nationalistic’ than the popular party.
S
How did the other parties conduct the election campaign?
P
Most of them simply reused the same messages under which they had campaigned for twenty years previously. The Conservatives ran on a platform of banning music from public transport. The Popular Party was in a particularly tricky position, on the one hand, they desperately wished to disassociate themselves from the violence of the revolution and position themselves as the ‘return to order’ party; this was supposed to resemble a Ming Vase. On the other, they were thus wholly unprepared to answer a number of questions about the new exigencies, they faced immense clamour from their supporters to push for what had long been desired and which was now possible. The use of the autocult chabots ensured that the enemies of Meritocracy were frequently responding to stories and hot-button issues which seemed to appear out of nowhere, while the Meritocracy remained consistent in its message. Initially, all of these parties ignored the Meritocracy; until the final weeks of the campaign showed the Meritocrats were performing better than ever. At this point, all of them rounded on attacking the danger of Meritocracy, yet this only served to give the impression that the Meritocrats were the true party of change.
S
What were the results of the election?
P
The Party of Merit won 74 seats, the Popular Party 230 seats, the Left won 93 seats, the Extreme Nationalists won 4 seats, the Conservatives won 200 seats, the remainder were held by local parties
S
So there would have to be coalition talks, what were the thoughts of the various party leaders?
P
The most rational thing would’ve been for the Conservatives and the Popular Party to enter coalition with each other, a single factor stood in the way of this, namely, the great egotism of both the Conservative and Popular leader, as such, both attempted to court the Party of Merit as junior partners.
S
How did the Benefactor handle these talks?
P
Immediately, the Benefactor took to the airwaves, saying that the failure of any party to achieve a majority was a sign the Democracy had failed, that the country needed ‘strong leadership’; the public deal offered was that the Party of Merit would enter coalition with any party who immediately appointed the Benefactor Lord Protector of the State, allowing for all other offices to be filled by members of the senior partner. This deal was intended to give the public an impression of severity and power; to great effect. Behind closed doors, the Party of Merit entered secret talks with both parties, the aim of which was to sabotage a future coalition between the Conservative and Popular parties, which would’ve spelt ruin for the revolution.
P
How was this accomplished?
S
He quit his eyrie and walked among their ranks like a lion speaking with the roar of sedition. The Popular Party was run by a camarilla of fire-worshippers, and the Benefactor, as the true Aten, was able to deceive them; through back-channels, he was able to trick the followers of the Sapatna into believing that should the following Act be proposed as part of a coalition deal, the Meritocracy would agree to form a government: this act was the disenfranchising of all post-1945 migrants and deportation of those involved in counter-revolutionary violence. Meanwhile, the Party of Merit was extraordinarily lenient in its negotiations with the Conservative Party, appearing to demand only modest economic concessions and legalisation of eugenic measures in the Health service. The Act of Disenfranchisement was then leaked to the press and, seeing that it had come from the Popular Party, the Party of Merit was free to deny all association; this had the effect of turning half the Conservative Party against any coalition with the Populists, with the Conservative leader ultimately being baited into saying he’d categorically reject any such legislation. Meanwhile, the negotiations with the Conservative Party were also leaked, showing the Popular Party that, should they attempt to call off negotiations with the Party of Merit, the Conservatives would return to power. Finally, the Party of Merit, along with a smattering of Popular and Conservative M.Ps of a more interventionist bent, put out a public statement with the leadership of the Left rejecting any cuts to the Inheritance Tax – while this was not a coalition agreement, it did hint that such manoeuvres might be possible. All of these things, and the lust for power, contrived to force the Popular Party into an unspecified confidence-and-supply agreement between themselves and the Party of Merit, while entering formal coalition with a rump faction of the Conservatives. Thus, the danger of a Conservative-Populist coalition was avoided.
S
What was the plan of the Crown, after the elections?
P
The stratagem of the Guelphs was to destroy the revolution by fomenting civil war between the Muslims and the natives in Laegyr, by this accomplishment, the armed forces could be used to overthrow the government under the pretext of re-establishing order and the King rule directly. The means of effecting such a coup was to be the Army of the Dnieper, which would be flown into Laegyr to suppress popular dissent and arrest the revolutionary leaders. Hence, the security services and their tame Sheiks began importing weapons into Laegyr and trafficking them to the Muslims who were to be incited, at a future date to a spate of killings. As the border and police forces were in a state of disarray, there was little the new government could do to stop the inflow of weapons. From the outset, the Benefactor had predicted this and set stratagems in place to prevent it: the Meritocrats also had their own cells, imported from the Eastern borderlands, who were skilled in car-bombings and brought with them caches of weapons; the Meritocrats then established an outfit, which purported to be a hybrid of Islam and Third Worldism, peopled by sundry idiots and controlled by the followers of Saturn, who would claim credit for future terrorism: they announced themselves as the Allied Movement for an Islamic Republic of Al-Hajj (AMIRAH) – for the theology of the movement held that all of the faithful were perpetually ‘on pilgrimage’.
S
And so, there was a wager?
P
Yes, precisely, Lucien; that is a good way of putting it. A wager. To see who would blink first. The crown would begin its own terror campaign, using its own proxies, aiming at civil war; meanwhile, the Meritocrats had to parallel this campaign, using their proxies, for the aim of overthrowing the government. Each side had to perfectly calculate when the moment for action would be right.
S
And what role did the Meritocrats play in the new government?
P
The Meritocrats insisted, for their votes in Parliament, on the elevation of the Benefactor to the Lords, a secondary ministerial position in the Ministry of Defence and control of the Intelligence Committee in Parliament. By means of this committee, the Meritocrats began a series of arduous audits of the Secret Police, which were much resisted but eventually yielded important results. By means of the ministerial post, the Meritocrats were able to rechannel foreign military aid to the borderland so that it was collected by the militias loyal to the Meritocrats; by sharing a certain amount of information, passwords, codes etc. with these proxies (under the pretext of ‘supporting our allies’) the Meritocrats allowed them to hack the communications of the British government and armed forces, being outside of NATO, the borderlands existed in a ‘grey zone’ of global surveillance from which such hacks could not be detected. In this way, the Benefactor came to know of many of the actions of the crown, and the Popular Party, in advance.
S
What was the first strike of the terror campaign?
P
On the anniversary of the nuclear attack on New York, a mosque was blown up in a Northern town, an – evidently fabricated – right-wing group claimed responsibility. That evening, ethnic rioting again broke out in this and other towns. The government was immediately forced to arrest many of its own supporters to keep the peace. The Prime Minister’s televised address seemed reminiscent of the former Prime Minister, who had come to a meaty end. It was announced, a week later, that the government would begin the deportation of any individual on a ‘terror watchlist’ under the provisions of a state of emergency act. This excited great fear among the migrant population.
S
How did the terror campaign proceed?
P
Throughout the fall, car-bombings, assassinations, random stabbings and general strikes on infrastructure steadily increased to the rate of about two incidents per week. The government was being steadily pressured to introduce martial law, to commence massive deportations and the King, subtly, began making addresses on the need for ‘unity.’ Support for the revolution was slipping.
S
What were some of the most famous incidents?
P
The Meritocrats used the strategy of tension to get rid of some of their rivals, there was, for example, a popular figure of a tub-thumping, Falstaffian mould who tried using the excitement of the revolution to establish himself as leader on the basis of charisma: a back to normality candidate. The Meritocrats contrived to have him blown up in his car, with the AMIRAH claiming responsibility. It was a deeply shocking event, for this figure was well-loved and many turned out for his funeral.
P
Yes, by this time the Secret Police had discovered AMIRAH, for indeed, it had been designed to be easily discoverable: the Saturn-Worshippers panicked and attempted to flee the country, the Benefactor saying to them ‘all will be well’, while the terrorists praised God that they should last achieve fame.
S
Did the Secret Police immediately arrest the leaders of AMIRAH?
P
No, for they believed they had found the perfect ‘honeypot’ by which to conduct the strategy of tension, for the Muslims, while hoarding the weapons given to them, were not forthcoming in organising terror groups; AMIRAH was thus one of the many groups sponsored by the Secret Police — little did they know, the ‘honeypot’ was in fact for themselves, for the Meritocrats had established this group for the purpose of trapping the secret police.
S
Why was the Popular Party so hesitant to impose a state of emergency?
P
It was commonly understood that doing so would mean the arrest of the nationalist groups as well as a few insurgents. The debate going on in Parliament, eagerly encouraged by the Meritocrats, is that the government should begin deportation of migrant populations first, before ceding any power from the Commons. There was the additional bias towards convention that a government which came to power through violence should now try its utmost to rule through the remaining channels of legality.
P
On that year’s commemoration of the dead in the Euro-Soviet war, a bomb went off at the Cenotaph, the Prime Minister was wounded and several veterans killed; the same day, bombs went off during the Minute’s silence on several buses and one London tube line.
S
What was the government’s reaction?
P
It was now held that the suspension of democracy was unavoidable, the Prime Minister, visibly shook, appeared on television announcing the dissolution of Parliament but there was a problem.
S
What was the problem?
P
The new Parliament, as you will recall, had been summoned according to extraordinary constitutional processes: it was technically ‘a convention Parliament’ brought together to draft a new constitution; as it had not yet put forward a new constitution, it could be argued that the Crown had no right to dissolve it, for the executive and legislative branches of the state were, for this purpose, united in the constitutional assembly. Hours after the announcement, the Meritocrats betrayed the Prime Minister and announced they were withdrawing from the coalition government and mounting a Supreme Court case against dissolution. The country’s government was now in a state of paralysis.
S
What was the purpose of this manoeuvre?
P
The purpose was to goad the Monarchy into openly disobeying Parliament and the Supreme Court, thereby putting it against the nation and paving the way for a total seizure of power. The Popular Party had been led to believe the purpose was simply to establish a dictatorship via the usual channels – this, as we have seen, would have delivered power to the Crown.
S
A cunning plan.
P
Yes, but not cunning enough, for the Secret Police had intercepted the communications between AMIRAH and the Meritocrats; there was now tangible evidence that the strategy of tension had been orchestrated by the Meritocratic Party to seize power, this evidence, if revealed, would be guaranteed to turn public opinion against them and fully justify the arrest and imprisonment of, not just the Meritocratic Party but the whole revolutionary government. Over the Christmas Holiday, both sides believed themselves to have won and anticipated the ruling of the Supreme Court eagerly.
S
When did the Supreme Court rule?
P
On the 18th of January, the Supreme Court ruled that, admitting the ‘constitutionally unprecedented’ nature of the situation, in light of the last government’s violent demise, the Crown did not possess the right to dissolve Parliament. There was secret jubilation. The Monarchy now prepared to reveal the conspiracy of the Meritocrats, arrest their leadership and launch a reactionary coup to restore the Democracy to Britain.
S
The King had triumphed absolutely, the revolution was over.
P.
Yes but for the fact he underestimated the ferocious daring of Meritocracy
S.
How so
P.
The Army of the Dnieper patrolled an area of the Borderland demarcated from that of the Russians by an immense wall; this wall had been erected after the peace treaty to separate the two sides and a week after the Supreme Court ruling, the British section was destroyed by a tactical nuclear bomb. The Russians saw this as provocation and immediately annihilated the Army of the Dnieper. Destroying a key part of the Royalist plan. In fact, the bomb had been launched by the militias loyal to Meritocracy in that country who, in addition, desired to reconquer their lost lands and expel the Western occupiers by resuming hostilities. At midnight, with Pluto and Jupiter in conjunction and Mars in the native sign of The Benefactor, an FPV drone flew into the Royal Lodge on the grounds of Balmoral immediately killing the king. At the same time, in America, a loyal Meritocrat of the Atlantic faction ambushed the former Duke of Sussex at LA airport with a magnum pistol killing him with several bullets to the ribcage. The heir to the throne found his motorcade stopped by a fallen tree, whereupon several avenging Meritocrats leapt from the bushes with Kalashnikovs and sprayed the car with bullets, killing all inside.
S.
The crown had completely failed to account for a direct attack on itself?
P.
Yes, you see, the Benefactor had in fact foreseen this. In the course of the Intelligence Committee’s audits, several deals had been struck with certain members of the Secret Police of immunity for their crimes in exchange for cooperation. The Benefactor was thus well informed about the discovery of AMIRAH and allowed it to transpire as a way of lulling the Crown into a false sense of security. Now, AMIRAH would claim credit for the assassination of the Monarchy, while a vast trove of information connected them to the SIS: a grand conspiracy would be revealed to the people in which a secretive Islamo-Leftist conspiracy had successfully plotted the overthrow of the state in order to affect a second revolution; the following coup could be justified as saving the state from crisis, the Monarchy was destroyed by its own instruments, the Popular Party had wholly discredited itself along with the Supreme Court. However, things briefly seemed to hang in the balance.
S
Why was that?
P
The Benefactor was briefly incapacitated.
S
Why was that?
P
He was paralysed with resentment and self-loathing.
S
What was the cause of such weakness?
P
How many inhabitants are there on this planet?
S
2.5 to 2.6 million
P
What is the total population of the Crossworld Meritocracy?
S
Seventy Seven Million
P
What is the average I.Q of the Crossworld population for this year?
S
116
P
What was the total population of Laegyr under the Monarchy?
S
68 million
P
What was its average I.Q?
S
99.05
P
Now you see how the Benefactor was both chosen and cursed; for while saving with his right hand the saints and his nation from the sepulchres of everlasting flame; with the outstretched arm of his left he bore the lance of rightening extermination. It was his fate to be a two-faced chimera, one of which was the beatific visage of God, its twin the gaze of a slaughterhouse angel. O you who sin, thank God that your sins will never be great.
S
How was the crisis resolved?
P
The Meritocrats had, for the duration of the coup, decamped to a garish conference hotel on the outskirts of an airport, where the drinks were hugely overpriced: all this fretting about meant a steadily rising bar tab, which many Meritocrats could ill-afford, the Benefactor was eventually forced to act or the entire party would soon be bankrupt.
S
How did the coup proceed?
P
Throughout the night, groups of motorcycle-borne Meritocrats cut off the power supply and water from military bases around the country; which were then surrounded. For these teams, the Meritocracy had no specialist paramilitary to spare and so had to rely on teenagers, the extremely young, armed overnight with weapons they did not know how to use. At 12:30, armed Meritocrats, dressed as high-visibility police officers, invaded Heathrow airport, detaining the staff, blockading the entrance by motorway and seizing the air-traffic control; all inbound flights were directed to other airports.
S
Why was this done?
P
To allow for reinforcements from abroad. Hours before the assassination of the King, mercenaries in two Eastern European countries had boarded Antonov planes to be flown into Britain – some of these planes had earlier been used for the captagon smuggling operation. Some of the mercenaries were paid, others were ideologically affiliated with the Meritocracy. The planes landed at Heathrow between 1:30-2:15 am; troops and tanks were unloaded. Meanwhile, in London, a group of Meritocrats – with the Benefactor leading, rarely, in person – occupied the offices of MI6. This was the only real ‘heroic’ action of the Meritocrats themselves and was exploited, to the point of kitsch, by the immediate wave of post-revolutionary art. A small strike force boarded the upper storey by helicopter, while a lank-haired crowd of zealots with pipe-guns and cattle prods rushed the gates, blown open by a drone, after a short, rousing speech. The Meritocrats held this position until four in the morning, where the mercenary tanks, driving from Heathrow, through the silent streets of Bayswater, seized Broadcasting House and delivered a televised address. The people of, what would soon cease to be called, the United Kingdom awoke that morning to an unfamiliar committee of youths informing them that the royal family were dead and a far-Left coup was underway by elements of the deep state, patriotic forces had seized the capital and declared a state of emergency for the purpose of defeating the rebellion, identified by their lilac sashes, and the country was now under the provisional rule of a Council of State. The documents, detailing the extensive collaboration of the security services with AMIRAH, were covered by the next 24 hrs of news coverage and in compulsory editions of all major papers. After the broadcast, a loyal Marine regiment in the West Country proceeded to capture GCHQ and proclaim itself acting in the name of the new government. The mercenaries and the Meritocrat volunteers then converged on central London in a pincer movement.
S
What were the targets?
P
As the second revolution had, as its aim, the taking over of the government, rather than the simple collapse of the old government, it was different in character from the first; Parliament was never even touched, for example. The mercenaries moved south to St. James where the real, as opposed to public, headquarters of Freemasonry were located: seizing all of its documentation. In addition to this, the Meritocrats had compiled lists, with the help of the compromised Intelligence Agents, of the names of all who must be eliminated or brought to a state of subjugation, these included: the owners and employees of the political charities, the operators of the largest overseas trusts, the boards of all the largest domestic owners of government bonds, the proprietors and editors of all national newspapers, 400 particularly venomous activists from both the Left and Right, all Freemasons to have advanced beyond the Royal Arch degree, the uncooperative intelligence agents, NATO officials, foreign lobbyists and the Great Banking Families. Over the next two days, the victorious assassins would butcher them all in their underground dining-halls, luxury hotels and Scottish castles. A Prince of the Royal Secret was gunned down by Galicians at the top of his scarlet staircase; two Rothschild heirs were struck with rifle butts while entering a limo in Barnes, and summarily executed; the entire trading floor of a pension fund about to dump its securities was stormed by avenging soldiers of Merit and eliminated, just in time. A leading spy, knighted for his services to another country’s espionage activities, was run through with a bayonet and decapitated. A high court judge grown rich off treason was shot in the head and left for the prowling wolves. The personal enemies of the Benefactor, who had done so much to put obstacles in his way during the years of innocence, and those who had sided with them, were all mortally sodomised by Large Dogges.
S
MERITOCRACY DESENATEN!
P
The Benefactor then crossed Vauxhall Bridge and rode up Horseferry road on a white horse, followed by a column of marching men. They entered Downing Street at 9:30 am without resistance. The blackmail seized from MI6, the Masonic Lodges and GCHQ, whether contemporaneously or over the following period of violence, now ensured that the entire civil service, police and judicial apparatus was personally loyal to him. Up and down the country, the soldiers at the blockaded military bases were surrendering their weapons to waiting hordes of Meritocrats. The Prime Minister of the Popular Party was wordlessly shuffled into a car to be taken to a small airport, where a plane waited to send him into American exile. The Benefactor then addressed the gathered forces of the right-opposition in Parliament; the militia leaders, defrocked politicos, opportunists and lynch-mob capos. He said ‘My rule is the voice of God. I scourge the land of enemies without peril and exalt those who serve at my pleasure. You are Dogs, whoremongers and cattle ripe for felsing. I stand exalted by Nature and by Providence. Namaste.’ And they fled.
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