Agenda 21: The Meeting (Part I)

Agenda 21, pp. 99-101

We have always been at war with Eurasia.

...Sorry, I drifted off there for a second.

Given that I've been talking since day one about all the novels Agenda 21 cribs from, you've probably been wondering if it contains anything derived from the great-granddaddy of the genre, George Orwell's 1984. Well, today's the day. Here we are going to jump into a mirror universe version of what is probably the most famous sequence from 1984, one which has been cited by more politicians and pundits than I care to count.

This is the Social Update Meeting.

The Gatekeeper hung the official flag on the pole above the green flag of our Compound to signal that it was time to start walking to the Social Update Meeting.

I thought they were forbidden from walking anywhere? Oh, never mind.

The Social Update Meeting is one giant plot dump, introducing new elements not even hinted at before now and changing existing elements that needed a bit of tweaking. That's why we're spending more than one update here - there's too much to deconstruct for a single post. But before we get to that, some petty interpersonal conflict:

"It's time to go, Jeremy," I said, tying on my headscarf. 

"I don't want to," he mumbled... 

"...Why do I have to go? In the Village they did Social Updates and we didn't have to walk anywhere. They came to us. They took care of us."

"But Mooommm, I don't wanna go to band practice."

After a few paragraphs of that, we finally arrive at the Meeting proper, and it is a big deal:

Assembled in stalls cordoned off with rope at the  base of the Central Stage, we were all defined by our singular purpose, all wearing uniforms the colors of our Compounds. A rainbow that had been pulled apart was reuniting. The Nourishment Cube Makers wore uniforms the color of egg yolks. Ahead of us, the Uniform Makers in deep brown. And to one side, the bright orange of...

...Wait a second, "Uniform Makers"? Where did they come from? I am positive that they did not mention...Hold on, I can confirm this, provided Winston Smith hasn't already crammed the relevant pages down a Memory Hole. Let's see...page 23:

This book was edited by a team of professionals employed by an imprint of Simon & Schuster. This was an error that could have been easily fixed by inserting a few words into a paragraph in Chapter Two - no one would have ever known. Either no one caught it or no one cared enough to fix it. Meanwhile, I'm routinely told that the problem with self-published works is a lack of thorough editing.

Damn it, we're not even to the speech part yet.

Next time: The speech part.