It was already Tuesday and by the end of the day Martijn came with the bad news: research had shown that people were increasingly having free time and that could lead to another crisis. The whole department knew that human beings had a need for fulfillment. Like machines have some resources to be burned in order to produce their energy, the population needed content to fill in their lives.
It was not by chance that the crisis cabinet scheduled an urgent meeting for next morning. And they would have to solve the problem.
Going back home, Bass would look around the streets and see many people smiling. The sun was still shining as October started but the clouds were already setting up the scenario for the next months to come. Free time… what people could do with their free time?
Suddenly two guys performed a beginning of a discussion and some stopped to watch. Nothing to bother, just a common unease of having the left lane on the stair for trespassing. “Nobody respects that” shouted the older guy. The younger gave up and moved on. Nobody cared.
At home, Bass was still trying to merge ideas when Martijn texted: “what a hell of a job”. Another complaint, another dissatisfaction… and some more minutes paying attention to someone else’s problem.
Martijn and Bass arrived together at the Ministry as they used the same tram on that day. The 9292 had correctly suggested the transportation on time, and by coincidence, they were in the same rout. One minute later, they would be on different vehicles and arriving not at the same time – one of them would take a longer turn.
“Nice weather” Martijn said. Bass agreed and noticed: they both were wearing the same shirt. Rijk and Tijm had also the same but in another colour. “Fashion” said the latter and they all laughed. Still they had a problem to solve: free time. How could they be so happy as such a crisis was to happen. Happiness, free time, crisis. Something in these words didn’t make sense.
As the meeting started in such a nice mood it was difficult to empathize with the problem. Suddenly the lights went down and the city alarm started sounding. It was so annoying that the atmosphere got contaminated as they didn’t know exactly how to solve something which wasn’t in their control – the sound and the lights.
Bass, usually the fun guy, was the first to complain followed by all the others. In less than 5 minutes all of them were busy, discussing the reasons for having such problems. In a moment Martijn realized that free time can sometimes result not of lack of things to do but things to complain. As the sirens stopped and the lights came back on, he shared his thoughts with his colleagues.
An unstoppable brainstorming started resulting in the actual solution: building up a public problem to which every citizen could relate to. So, as the free time meter started to rise, they could press this problem button and again the society would be plain in discussing that problem.
The next years would lead them to discuss alternative problems for fulfilling people’s time. At first came the idea of money problems, but that was too sensitive since inflation and wages would result in many other outcomes which would be difficult to deal. Suddenly, the idea of public health came up. Once more, the agenda had the opposite of the expected effect: as more people would demand the service, more would be the feeling of emptiness and in long term it would be an unsolvable trap.
Security also made it to the list again resulting in unexpected consequences such as reducing sense of community. And many other agendas were discussed and even tested in order to solve the crisis.
It took more than a decade for the final topics to be defined. The most easy would be public transportation. As most of the public lines where connected and were already precisely simulated, from time to time they could produce mistakes just for people to have that sense of imperfection and start complaining again. The pilot testing was very successful involving major cities that would spread the word on their dissatisfaction. Running late was the weather. As sensors could preview nature and the new technologies were able to change parameters in order to create the expected condition, getting people to miss the sun for a while was one of the easiest way to impact in society’s life.
As the year was about to turn to 2020, still both issues were being manipulated by the ministry of time in order to get people to fulfill their complaint needs. Their ongoing experiment kept changing parameters for weather and public transport, controlling the free time meter and trying to make society as stable as possible. With not much other consequences than a bit of sadness when lacking sun for a while or anger when being 5 to 20 minutes late due to transport delays, there is still hope that, one day, only one of these dissatisfaction will be sufficient to fulfill their societal needs. And when that day comes, only weather or public transport will be the dissatisfaction topic. The sun will shine permanently or there will be no transport delays. Until then, grab your coat and don’t expect the trains to be always on time. Do as you should: waste some of your time and just complain.
Open Reflections (Reflexos Abertos) 