The Revolutionary, The Farewell

My dearest, dearest friends, the time has come for us to say our goodbyes, between us, but also us and Dr. Shevek. The man has disappeared deep into the revolution and has not been sighted for weeks; it is possible he is no longer even alive. This will be the final entry I post, and it will be the most powerful of all, because dear friends it was submitted by the fantastic Dr. Shevek. I do not have much time to saw what I must say, so I will be brief. I have lived on the planet of Urras for almost a year now, and I can now safely say that this society is not for me. I tried, time after time to make myself fit in with the highest class of all people in the province with the intent of reducing the prejudice against my home world, but to no avail. I am now stuck in a struggle between two provinces on Urras with little affiliation to either, although I can tell you that I support the revolutionaries over those I stayed with and played puppet of me while I attended the university. The oppressors are the people at the high-class parties I worked with until a few weeks ago. Their opponents are the working classes of the world, they fight for a system much like the one I know from Anarres and with these people I truly feel at home. Time is counting down, and although there is no way that this message will easily make the transit to Anarres with the lack of internet, I would like someone to tell Takvar that I love her, and that I wish I could see our daughter again. I could never quite fit in with the ones in charge of the hatred for Anarres, but I could connect with those in the lead of this revolution. I write from a war zone, as a catalyst of change, although I sparked a revolution, it was not the one I came to spark.

The Interview!

It has finally come my family; I just got access to an interview saved for our reading only, what more could we ask for? With no further ado:

Interviewer: Dr. Shevek, how do you like the planet of Urras?

Dr. Shevek: Well sir, I am slowly accommodating to the intricacies of this city and planet. As you know, the concept of money is quite foreign to me so even feeding myself here can be a stretch at times but I find the planet quite to my liking.

Interviewer: Dr. Shevek, Do you have family back home? Perhaps a wife and kids?

Dr. Shevek: The term family is not truly one we use on Anarres; I have no wife, a partner, yes, but not a wife. There is no religious or legal bond between myself and Takvar, only the bond of our love, and that of our child.

Interviewer: Well Dr. Shevek, that is quite interesting. Now, I hear you have been attending a great many parties lately. This has definitely changed you, do you think it has changed them?

Dr. Shevek: Changed, I think not, I know it has not changed me and has had no effect of my friends and companions. I have simply found more friends with whom I feel comfortable with and who feel comfortable in my presence.

Interviewer: Dr. Shevek, you must know you are one of the most watched people in our society, but everyone knows you have no lover, why is that?

Dr. Shevek: Do you think me so uncouth that I cannot restrain myself from simple human instinct for a few months? I have a woman, granted on another plant but a woman who loves me and I love in return, what you are suggesting is preposterous and uncalled for.

Interviewer: Dr. Shevek, There is one question you know is praying on everyone’s minds: Where do you’re loyalties lie on the approaching revolution?

Dr. Shevek: … (what the man said here can not be reported anywhere without firewall dilemmas)

I wish I could have gotten more for you from Dr. Shevek, but by this point the mood he was in was comparable to a bear with two hundred bee stings, he stalked off haughtily before I could get any more. I should note that his capability for cursing in our language outstrips that of the vast majority of those for whom it is a primary language!

The Party Circuit

Dearest Friends, our friend Dr. Shevek has changed from everything we anticipated, he has become a strong and true party animal. Who would have thought the stretched man would be attending dozens of parties a month, and with the upper class too. I saw Dr. Shevek at a party last week of the university professors, this I could understand; virtually all of the professors were there. Understand that I attend parties an average of three nights a week, and over the last three weeks Shevek has attended all but one. The parties we are talking of are not the beer and weed parties of students that take place in the bedrooms of the more uncouth boys at the school, no these parties are top of the line, only the most wealthy can afford to attend. I can assure you that no professor’s salary would pay for food and even half the parties that man attends. Therefore, I believe that someone is supporting him, the government, perhaps an illicit lover. Whoever it is might as well attempt to use a chainsaw and sledgehammer to force that man into our clique of old families and the best businessmen across the nation, trying to use that method could break both him and us in the process. He is just not one of us, I know this but someone, somewhere feels differently, all I can wonder is who. 

He went from uncouth and uncivilized to this?

Wanna to have a party for Shevek, these guys can help!

Did You Hear?

Dear followers, a terrible piece of news has come forth, from the depths of this fascinating story. I caught wind of a most interesting piece of information this morning, and low and behold a submission appeared in the inbox within an hour of my research commencing. As you may know, the famous doctor whom we are here to track has begun to feel at home on the planet Urras. The following came direct from the university in that largest metropolis on Urras, where out very own Dr. Shevek is teaching. Dear Compiler, I found the following while surfing through the recordings from the main university library. Rather than bore you with the entire recording, (which I have attached) which spans several hours, I can give you the most mind shattering sections. First of all, we have a revolutionary spy in the university, a professor, and a close confident of the lustrous Dr. Shevek. The recording has this un-named man admitting to serve the revolutionaries of the state of Thu in his plan to convert Dr. Shevek to the side of the revolutionaries. The man explained that the Iotic government that brought him here did so to buy his loyalty. The Doctor remained silent for nearly the entire time, all he said was that he couldn’t comprehend the complexities of the situation. That’s reasonable; I doubt there are many across the universe who really know what is about to go down. This is enough to boggle me, and I will leave it to your honour to decide how to best dispense this information. Regards. In my thousands of years of reporting and studying great historical events in the human race never before have I come across anything like this. We can infer that Dr. Shevek was just beginning to become comfortable with the environment and society that he was living in, just to learn that he was a curve ball being thrown at another country. How can this man fit into the many tiered and complex social class system of both countries if he doesn’t know which country he supports.

Upon arrival

Fellow watchers, I return again, the compiler is back with more prose to satisfy your interstellar needs. This time, our submission comes from the reception party on Urras.

It has been 5 days since the tall and thin man who just appeared before me left his home world to come to ours, beautiful Urras. The man who stepped off of the micro transport looked like he had his very own piece of hell strapped somewhere to him on his unrealistically tall frame. We only saw him for a minute, maybe two as he stumbled through the unfamiliar gravity down the ship’s ramp and into the limousine. He breaks every rule of sensible fashion that can be seen from a distance. His hair is longer than any woman’s I have ever seen. The suit he wore obviously belongs to a pioneer from home world Earth, and even that pioneer would have disposed of it years past. The man I see before me is an anomaly of social class; he comes from a planet so different that they cannot even clash. We have heard they will not take him back, but all I can wonder is if we can even coerce ourselves enough to take him in the first place

Can you believe this?

The Departure

The day this man was born I felt a shudder of joy run through the cosmos, a feeling of light and airiness came do me in the depths of my abode. Few through the universe felt this touch, and none but myself felt it the day he left his home planet, the moon Anarres for the terrestrial planet of Urras. This story is for the history books, therefore for those of you who do not know Urras is a planet governed by democracy and other dominant forms of government, much like the home world earth. Anarres on the other hand is different in nearly every imaginable way. Primarily though, it is governed by none; it is a utopian anarchism. The following is a segment of the very best of all submissions from across Anarres: There is a buzz in the air as I write from the knee high wall around the only spaceport of Anarres with hundreds of protesters surrounding me hoping for a glimpse at the most famous man from our planet, to touch him, to speak to him… to kill him. Right now, (although no one here knows it) the infamous Dr. Shevek is walking up behind us with not a care in the world. He has no idea that the entire population of the solar system is watching his every move, categorizing and studying each step. All the talk of the noisier of people deciding what to do when they get their hands around his throat, whether to kill him first or to make him suffer for what he stands for. As he walked through our group we had no idea who he was, he looked nothing like the outcast everyone had imagined. Who could think that this lanky and skinny man would be the first man to make the return trip to Urras in seven generations and be the most hated and loved in the history of these planets. We didn’t even know who he was until he was almost at the spaceship, a small figure from our perspective, walking gently yet purposefully toward the great hunk of steel, ceramics and glass. All I could think (I imagine everyone else was thinking the same) was that we had to get to him, to stall or stop him. Needless to say, we didn’t, although after his massive transport lifted off we did make one consensus; that man will never fit in here, and although we do not speak for Urras we know it will be the same there.

 Check this out!

Myself: The Compiler

I live in the fabric of time, in a place spoken of in fairytales and that can only be found in dreams of the deepest sleep. I am neither alive nor dead; my very existence is sought out for study by federal organizations and criminals alike. But best of all, I have an untraceable IP address, what more could you ask for in this universe. Do you remember Aristotle, Gandhi anyone you can name from the dawn of time to the endless oblivion that succeeds it, I was there and I will always be there. But enough of me, there is another reason I’m here, back again from the history books, to discuss with you, loyal followers, an abnormality of our time; Dr. Shevek of the moon Anarres. With thousands of submissions daily, I myself read and select from these the very best and juiciest pieces, leaving you with real events of the story of the most sought out man of two worlds.

Where's Waldo? Can you find me here?