The Planner's Utopia

By Stephen Measure

The planner zealously maintains absolute equality amongst the citizens under his control. But when a free woman invades his warehouse paradise, he must act decisively before she ruins everything.

"It’s better for all to have none than for some to have more."

(Also available in the short story collection "The Wrong Sort of Stories".)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Measure
• Release date: Nov 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781940778402

Stephen Measure

Stephen Measure is an author of social and political satire, both humorous and dark.

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The Planner's Utopia

Stephen Measure

Silver Layer Publications

Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Measure

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

The Planner’s Utopia

The cardinal soared along the ceiling of the warehouse, red feathers flashing beneath fluorescent light after fluorescent light, the bird’s energy so strange in that silent space. It twisted around perfectly positioned air vents as it flew above precisely aligned gurneys, row upon row of which filled the warehouse; but the cardinal did not notice such things as it flew from one end of the warehouse to the other and back again. It flew because it could. It flew because it wanted to. Such movement. Such beauty. Such freedom.

Its red wings tilted, and the cardinal glided down to rest upon a gurney in the center