|
 |
|
C. S. Lewis |
Of all the tyrannies that shadowed Future Past, perhaps the most
frightening was the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments
(NICE) from C. S. Lewis's novel That Hideous Strength: A Modern
Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups (1945). Where other tyrannies were
oppressive, murderous, or sadistic, the NICE was different in two
ways. First, it didn't set out to just control men, but to
destroy their very souls. And second, Lewis' depiction of
the NICE is not of some villainous establishment that is at least
impressive in its organisation and efficiency, but rather of what a
truly evil enterprise is like in real life: petty, vicious, and filled
with power-hungry creatures who hate each other almost as much as they
hate those they seek to enslave.
The NICE presents itself to the world, and thinks itself to be, a body
of scientists dedicated to reorganising mankind along strictly
scientific lines. The members imagine themselves as vanguards of
of a new, rational age. In fact, they are nothing but a collection of
pseudo-scientists lost in a fog of cant and jargon, who produce
nothing more useful than elaborate machines that look terribly
impressive, but simply and pointlessly update reports from various
committees on a huge board.
Unknown to the rank and file, the plan of the people who run the NICE is to take over the English university
town of Edgestow, then England, and then the world by total control of the press,
economy, and government to create a police state where criminals
are not punished, but consigned to endless "remedial treatment",
vivisection is conducted for no reason other than to dull the moral
senses by dabbling in obscenities, and people are reduced to mere
material for "experiments." Then the NICE can get on to the fun
bit of eliminating all the "useless" and "obsolete" peoples and make
the world more efficient by the utter conquest of nature.
Eventually, they plan to do away with all organic life and leave Earth
an airless moon ruled over by disembodied heads kept alive by
machinery-- men without chests, indeed.
At least, that's what the human rulers of the NICE plan, but
they are really the pawns of masters who are literally (and I do mean literally)
satanic.
And what their master wants is far worse.
You would think that something as ambitious as the NICE would be
terribly on the ball and with such ruthless types in charge that
everything would hum along like horrific clockwork. In fact, It
is not a coldly efficient organisation as one typically imagines an
evil conspiracy to be, but more like the vilest of bureaucracies
as they exist in reality. No
one has any idea what is going on, what their duties are, or who they
are supposed to answer to. Members are kept in a constant state
of bewilderment and fear with persistent threats of punishment or
even death mollified with vague promises of fantastic rewards.
Everything is a hopeless muddle where a man can be damned in the same
breath for both failing to show initiative and for daring to exceed
his orders.
Imagine the worst amateur theatrical society you've ever seen and you
get the idea.
Even the men at the top (or at least, the Earthly top) of the NICE are
not romantic Blofeld types, but decaying monsters whose scientific
pretensions have lead them to either utterly slipping from reality
or convincing themselves that they themselves don't even exist except as
a collection of self-deluding chemical reactions.
The scary thing is, I know people like that. |
