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| - Towards the end of the twenty-first century, the precarious balance of world power exploded into a horrendous World War. After the war those who survived knew mankind could never survive another war like it, that humanity's own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So they turned North America into a vast citadel realm known as "Libria", under a ruling party called the Tetragrammaton, the Greek term for the ineffable four-letter Hebrew name of God. The leader of the Tetragrammaton was simply called Father. Libria was created with the idea that the true source of man's inhumanity to man is his ability to feel. The government outlawed the human quality most likely to give rise to future conflicts: emotion. The Tetragrammaton believes that emotion are a disease in the heart of man. Its symptom is hate. Its symptom is anger. Its symptom is rage. Its symptom is war. In response to this, the entire population of Libria has been placed on a daily regimen of Prozium, a drug that suppresses all emotions. Citizens of Libria obtain their Prozium at distribution centers called Equilibrium. With it, they anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage. That those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation are anesthetized in stride, they accept as fair sacrifice. And it is this conscience that guided the government to rate the emotional content all those things that might tempt them to feel again and destroy them. The Tetragrammaton has declared illegal anything that stimulates human emotions: art, music, poetry, even floral wallpaper and snow globes. Feeling is a crime punishable by death. A repressed version of Utopia is achieved because no one suffers unhappiness or depression, and since hatred has been eradicated, war is fundamentally impossible. It's the preservation of the human race by a most drastic means. Of course, a central disadvantage is the associated purging of empathy, compassion, and remorse. To make sure that the population of Libria doesn't yield to emotional temptation, the government has also created an elite monastic force known as the Grammaton Clerics. These highly skilled martial artists seek out and destroy emotional objects that remain and, if necessary, those who attempted to own them along with perpetrators of "sense offenses," rebels who refuse to part with (or seek to regain) their emotions. These "sense offenders" are shot dead or brought to the Chamber of Hell Fire to be burned. Ironically, the Grammaton Clerics, are finely developed sensors, who mask their ability to feel under the title of the "intuitive arts." This Intuition they place at the service of ferreting out sense offenders. The Clerics are the government point-men and designated hitters in the frequent shootouts with armed sense offenders, who are loath to surrender themselves for Processing, and persist in hopelessly defending their hoarded copies of old artwork, books, music and anything else that would provoke creative thought and emotion. A Grammaton Cleric channels sensing into Intuition, and aggression into lawful killing, which is a moral imperative, because of the great risk that feelings pose to society at large. The Clerics are trained in the art of Gun Kata, which is a militant combat style that teaches efficiency in the use of gun tactics based upon the premise that the positions and actions of antagonists can be predicted to a high degree of accuracy in any given combat situation. Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Grammaton Clerics determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element. Gun-kata is based on a scientific analysis of bullet trajectory and range based on the mathematical possible outcomes of a gunfight. A close quarters gun-based martial art, Gun-Kata emphasizes kata, or body positioning and movement exercises. This is important because each kata of Gun-kata is designed for maximum efficiency in both lethal force and defense. It is of course impossible to see an oncoming bullet and dodge it, but an advanced Gun-kata practitioner can put himself in the least statistically possible place to be hit at each moment of a gun fight. The Gun-Kata treats the gun as a total weapon. Each new position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents, while keeping the defendant clear of the statistically traditional trajectories of return fire. By the mastery of this art, a person's firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%. Because this is a martial-arts form that analyzes all the patterns and possibilities of fire-arm combat, a master of this art is able to predict and even sense an offenders next action, allowing them to react to actions that have not even occurred. Although Grammaton Clerics are human and can die from wounds as any other person, the mastery of Gun-Kata make them seemingly invincible to all projectiles fired from a fire-arm. Sense offenders live primarily outside the citadel in a deserted suburbia called The Zone; some people who live within the Citadel try to fake being on Prozium. A group of sense offenders have organized a resistance movement to destroy Father and his government. The Resistance puts high value on emotion and feeling. For them, violence, death, war, and crime are a small price to pay to be able to feel happiness, joy, anger, and even sadness. In Libria, the citizens are under the vigilant eyes of heavily armed men at all times. Each person is relegated to their space. Solitude and uniformity are the two attributes of the Librians. At every turn, the Librians are reminded of their good fortune to be in this condition. Each one keeps watch on every other, helping them to guard against the evils of sense offense. Librians compete to demonstrate loyalty to Father, by rejecting their impulse to feel with eager certainty. Libria rewards those citizens who pursue their practice of self-repression zealously. In Libria, all public gatherings are supervised by men dressed in body armor and motorcycle helmets, patrolling with assault rifles at the ready. All public gatherings appear to be for the purpose of imbibing Father's wisdom, which flows freely from giant telescreens, all day, every day.
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