Compare and contrast the various facets of life in Czarn to explain why it is so efficient. Be sure to talk about the structure of the government and the ways it has striven to make all efforts more productive and proficient. Back your arguments up with examples!

The hustle and bustle echoes up to the classroom window from the street. Everyone walks with purpose. Everyone has a place they need to be. Right on time. Always right on time. Tardiness is neither acceptable, nor permitted. Neither is individuality. Everything must remain the same. People. Clothing. Routines. This is what Czarn is made of.

The most obvious thing one can say about Czarn is the monochromatic way the world presents itself. We, the people of Czarn, see in shades of gray, black, and white, an unfortunate side-effect caused by our savior and liberator—the leader of this world—when he saved us all from certain death in a bloody war that threatened all life with an end. That absence of color doesn’t matter to us. It was a small price to pay. We are eternally grateful to our leader, The Liberator, who graciously allowed himself to be elected into the position of power by the populace, where he immediately promised to prevent wars from happening ever again.

He established a series of reforms, eliminating unnecessary steps, striving to make our society as efficient as possible. There is one major city in Czarn: Absensé. It is a metropolis which contains everything detrimentally important to keeping Czarn’s society working: the government buildings, the factories, and The Academy. Surrounding the city are the carefully irrigated fields in which the foodstuffs are produced by hardworking field laborers. Further out are the small villages, population less than 500. Rarely, one finds a town of about 5000 people. Each community has its own fields and field laborers to provide food for those living inside its town walls.

In the city, villages, and towns, there are the laborers that run things like the hospitals, Public Eating Establishments (1), and shops. They keep the water running and the electricity flowing. They transport foodstuffs from the fields to the storehouses to the factories, and the packaged foodstuffs from the factories to the stores. Of course, these jobs were assigned to the people when they graduated from The Academy.

The Academy is arguably the most important part of Czarnian life aside from the government itself. Located in the middle of the city, the establishment is separated from the rest of the world by a large set of sturdy iron gates. Inside its elegant walls reside thousands of children, their ages ranging from newborn babies to 15 year old teenagers. Removed from the arms of their mothers as soon as they’ve been born, children live and learn on Academy grounds, and leave the campus only for the occasional gathering or work. Life at The Academy is regimented. Four students to a room, two per double bed. Breakfast at 7:00 daily, lunch at 12. Classes run from eight a.m. to two p.m. and the kids report to their workplaces at 2:30, where they remain until 6:30. Home by seven p.m. to wash and prepare for dinner, which is served at 7:30. Homework must be completed before bed. Lights go out at 9:30, at which point, everyone is required to be asleep. The living arrangements are very specific. Fifteen dorm buildings. Kids that are the same age live in the same building, which is split down the middle with males living in the western wing and females in the eastern wing.

One of the best ways to increase efficiency is to establish a routine, as was set up at The Academy. Another way is to eliminate competition. By allowing competition to run unchecked, precious energy that could be devoted towards production is instead used in a useless race. The solution? Level the playing ground. As a result, everyone is the same person in different bodies. Regulated hair length (chin length for girls, a buzz cut for boys), height, and weight. No one competes to stand out with their clothing because everyone wears the same thing. Children attending the Academy are assigned a standard uniform for daywear (Boys: pants, button-up shirt, tie, blazer, and canvas shoes that enclose the foot and cover a third of the foot; Girls: pants, high-collar blouse, black ribbons tied in bows around the neck, and the same shoes as the boys) and for nightwear (Girls: floor-length nightgowns; Boys: pajama set—pants and button up). No one sits still for longer than five minutes in daywear, as they squirm, fidget, and flinch from the itchiness of the uncomfortable fabric that forms the clothes. Their appearance comes off as tremendously average, the proverbial Jane and John Smiths.

Czarnians are dull and overwhelmingly average in everything they do—intentionally raised this way, so that their main focus will always be to complete their assigned task. Their lives are an endless cycle: sleep, work, eat. Repeat. Having eliminated all outlets in which individual personalities can be showcased, the government had to be able to identify its subjects. Each person is tattooed with a number that rings the ring finger of the left hand. That number is required to get anywhere. In order to ensure no wars can start, the government must know everything that is going on at a given moment--where each of their subjects go and what they talk about and do. By keeping tabs on the people, they can squash any talk of rebellion before it affects the rest of the population. The wires are tapped, the walls are bugged. Almost nothing is private. All for the sake of world peace.

The government continues its efforts to revolutionize the world by reaching into the family environment and arranging it to suit its purposes. Marriages are arranged at birth based on personality. As previously mentioned, children are removed from their parents immediately after they’re born. Relationships based on love, often ridiculed and satirized in books such as The Forgotten War (2), no longer exist; physical attraction diverts attention from the main objective to other goals. Focus is needed to be as productive as possible. Czarn has hundreds of thousands of laws to help keep that focus, all strictly enforced. Curfew dictates that the streets are empty from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., except between the hours of 3 and 4 a.m. when night workers are let off the job, thus streets are empty after 7 except between the hours of 3 and 4. On weekends, curfew is extended to nine o’clock to allow for gatherings. Policemen and Joats (3) patrol the streets 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at least two on every street. Crime is virtually non-existent. Another potential distraction eliminated.

Holidays, perhaps the biggest distraction in the life of the old world, are gone. Czarnians don’t worry about exchanging useless niceties on “Valentine’s Day” nor do they promote the story of a fat man breaking and entering to leave presents beneath a tree on “Christmas.” We have three celebrations a year: the Liberator’s birthday in spring, wedding day in winter, and the Graduation day celebration that spans three days in the summer. As a result, the mind stays centered on what’s truly important: pleasing Liberator and meeting daily quotas.

The Liberator, using his brilliance, came up with a perfect plan to make Czarn into the efficient, productive place it is today. His plan ultimately boiled down to eliminating anything that could distract from the main goal of producing. The basic equation involves no competition (in clothing, looks, or the workplace because everything is assigned), no love, no crime, no holidays, and no guesswork (follow the routine daily). The end result is efficiency in production.

In short, the key to Czarn’s efficient productivity is the government’s constant iron-fisted control of daily life.

Essay written by April, I.D. Code 120918 (4).

Notes
(1) Public Eating Establishments were formerly called “restaurants” under the old government.

(2) The Forgotten War is a book by Oliver, I.D. Code: 77819. It satirizes romance as it was formerly viewed. It pokes fun at the unrealistic expectations placed on marriage, dating, and other relationships, and focuses on the fights married couples get into because of these expectations. The forgotten war is specifically the fights the married couples got into, now forgotten because such fights are a thing of the past.

(3) A Joat is a “Jack of all Trades.” They are the special enforcement unit of Czarn and are controlled by myself and the Liberator.

(4) April, I.D. Code 120918, is now officially under surveillance. Suspect because of the uncanny insight displayed in the above essay. She may be a threat to society. Threats must be eliminated immediately.

Signed: x Head Joat

Compare and contrast the various facets of life in Vieriche. What roles do individuality and nature play in our lives and how do they affect our behaviors?

Vieriche is defined by two things: its freedoms and its magnificent palette of colors. The environment cannot be summed up with a mere few sentences, because the more you think about it, the more you realize that our world encompasses every contrivable aspect of our lush surroundings. The emotions and dreams that drive every individual shine through in any single thing they do. Whether you rest your eyes on the throngs of people—of all ages—trekking off to study in order to achieve their soul’s greatest desire, or you look to the extravagant cities that meld with the very earth in perfect harmony, the fact that we are a flourishing, vivacious people is the very essence of our vast, full-earth society.

Looking at our general aspects, no matter what habitat we interact in, our world is filled with ever-changing brilliance. The colors of everything teem over and the fragrances of foreign foods paint the air, while songs of all the beasts and people join with the amazing textures of the home and the natural feel of the public areas. The people are voluptuous and heart-stopping in their beauty, each bearing a complexion unique to their habitat. For instance, those in the arctic regions retain a pallid, milky skin tone, whereas the inhabitants of the hilled lands appear as windswept and golden.

Similar to the feral people that inhabit them, the environment of Vieriche is unpredictable, vast, and filled with many natural wonders. There are volcanic regions, realms of ice, and wetlands trickling into rivers, forming a land of deep basins, brimming over with fresh waters. The mountains themselves tower high enough to create clear, crystalline palaces far above the clouds, and the caverns that dwell beneath reach as deep as the vast oceans. Both realms are inhabited by peoples belonging to the greater picture that is Vieriche. There are immeasurable changes in the landscape, almost as drastic as the weather. One might find, in their travels, that they’ll suddenly come out from a forest to find the ocean before them. Other shifts in the terrain common to our world are the abnormality of deserts leading into rich rainforests. Why, such might even be bordered on the other side by savannahs. One can never tell what they will see just beyond the next mile.

Based on their environments, the people who settled there long ago built up from their surroundings cities of vast wonder in perfect imitation of the natural beauty. As in the capital city of Thruufta, which is in the wide land of hills, the great city starts almost at your feet! For the buildings of the city are built into the alternating gentle and strong hillocks and waves of the land, with rich earthen stones and deep grass roots supporting the long rows of buildings. If it was not for the entrance into this city, half under and above ground, which marks its beginning, one could find themselves traversing its lengths without ever knowing that only so far below there thrummed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the essence of Vieriche’s love for the natural beauty, and so the world has been brought up, to best keep that image in mind and physical presence forever.

Ah, but there is a brisk deviant to our world that is happened upon all the time, and does not fit in with any of our glorious environments. Staircases. But they do not go above the ground. Instead they are seen as spontaneous rectangular holes in the ground, with perfectly drab grey steps leading down into dusty blackness unlike any feeling that is in our world. These stairs are the entrance into a world far apart from ours, one that hardly a one of us is tempted to step into. For we know the despair that awaits us beyond those wretched stairwells. It is universal knowledge amongst even the youngest.

Yet! Those depressing images are quickly forgotten in the hubbub of everyday life. The people are vibrant and just as alive as the very world they inhabit! Women and men alike marry all the time, following the wills of their hearts, and raising families in a city, or while traveling! Whatever a person wishes, they can accomplish. The government of Vieriche is lax and upholds only the vaguest and most basic of laws through their officials, called Visionaries. Sadly, such leads also to many crimes of passion in our world. But the freedom to do so is what makes this world our own. Most look beyond the ubiquitous acts of arson and vandalism, of robbery and rape. In the end, our society is never permanently harmed, and our environment endures these meager troubles. There is safety in numbers, and thus our cities bloom to extravagant sizes.

Verily we are a brilliant people. Everyone is fit with talents in every field. Whether it is physical or mental, it matters not. Vieriche and its people are ever being improved upon, and urged to do so by our government. Following a dream is the most important thing in this world, and everyone is always eager to out-do someone else. We strive for individuality, and we always achieve it. This is shown in our appearances, first and foremost. Not a person in this world looks alike. Our styles are varied beyond possible notation, brilliantly colored and ordained in every manner imaginable, and then some.

This distinctiveness has also come to express our vast cultural differences. For Vieriche is a world of many views and ideals, giving birth to countless informal and public celebrations both, of people’s freedoms and beliefs. Thusly our traditions are elaborate and everlasting, with everyone bursting into celebration nigh on once a week.

But by far the greatest gift given any Vierichien is that of their soul. For we each have a soul that is unlike any other soul of any other Vierichien, past or present. Likewise, every soul has a specific color, which belongs only to that one Vierichien, and no other. No two souls are alike. Similarities may exist, but there are always differences between them, however small or large.

And with these souls, we have also been born with Gifts. Such are a difficulty to explain, because as no one person in Vieriche is like another, likewise Gifts are different for every person. And these Gifts are a direct resultant of our souls—rather, they are our souls—shown to the entire world in physical form. As children grow, so their souls and Gifts do, becoming stronger with every passing year, and each new thing learned and changed within their hearts gives it only more strength. A brilliantly colored soul could burst from one’s arms as wings to allow them the Gift of flight, and another Vierichien might but kneel and from around them fauna would burst upwards to graze the heavens as their soul and Gift, spreading from their knees into the very earth and heavenwards in magnificence.

Regardless our place, our language, our appearance, our color, and our Gifts, we are all an intimately intertwined web of wonders. Our individuality is what makes us ourselves, and we, any age and gender and race of every Vierichien and Vierichenne, make the world. This is the truth of our existence, and thus the basis of our world.

The Liberator
For those wishing to apply for the position as The Liberator of Czarn, certain requirements must be met. Since the Liberator is a very important position, it is imperative that he be played by the proper person.

1. MUST BE LITERATE. (This is non-negotiable.)
2. Must be able to follow instructions.
3. PM your bio to ebacusta, NOT Itu.
4. When you send your PM, be sure to include the words “lamb chops” at the beginning of your PM and send a short sample of your writing style. (Writing sample, expand on the following situation: You’re in charge of an important project and word has just reached you that half of it is not available to be turned in by the deadline.)
5. The Liberator does not gain color in Vieriche.
6. More information about the position as Liberator will be sent if your bio is accepted.

The Head Joat
The most experienced and oldest of the Joats, this is the leader of all the Joat units, and is responsible for making sure all of their quotas are met. The Head Joat is the only known person, other than various servants, to be almost in constant contact with The Liberator, to whom the Head Joat is unfalteringly devoted.

Joats
These “Jacks of all Trades” are the higher policing division of Czarn, and in charge of eliminating any threats to the world. They are stuck with doing all of the dirty work for the Liberator and typically live shorter lives than most Czarnians because of the nature of their work. They have a daily quota to meet in terms of enforcing laws and catching wrong-doers. Failure to meet that quota twice results in extermination.

Visionaries
These are the Vierichien equivalent of Czarn’s Joats, although their purposes are far more encouraging. They are roaming enforcers of the few laws of Vieriche, but even more importantly, are creators and protectors of culture.

The Liberator
Name:
Age: (Must be 35+ years old)
Gender:
Appearance: (Clothing-wise, the Liberator wears a formal white outfit of your choice. The Liberator appears very distinguished and holy, always appearing refined. The rest is up for interpretation.)
Occupation: The Liberator, the position of highest authority in Czarn.
Personality:
Background:

The Head Joat
Name:
Age: (Must be 25+ years old)
Gender:
Appearance: (Clothing-wise, the Head Joat wears a formal black tuxedo, with various other bits up for interpretation.)
Occupation: Head Joat, “Jack of all Trades”, leading the Joat units based on the direct orders of the Liberator.
Personality:
Background:

Joats
Name:
Age: (Must be 15+ years old)
Gender:
Appearance: All Joats are all ordained in a typical grey suit distinguishing them from the public.
Occupation: Joat, “Jack of all Trades”, working underneath the orders of the Head Joat, and thusly under the indirect orders of the Liberator.
Personality:
Background:

Students
Name:
Age: 15
Gender:
Chosen Occupation:
Personality:
Life Goal:
Assigned Spouse: (Once we have all six student profiles, decide between yourselves who you will be married to and send your decisions to Itu through PM.)
Background:

Visionaries
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Eye Color:
Hair Color:
Complexion:
Build:
Appearance/Outfit:
Personality:
Desire:
Soul Color:
Gift:
Environment of Origin:
Background:

Vierichiens
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Eye Color:
Hair Color:
Complexion:
Build:
Appearance/Outfit:
Personality:
Desire:
Soul Color:
Gift:
Environment of Origin:
Background: