harlekin.me

“I’m not going to turn you off.”

“You’­re an idiot!”

“Repent, Har­le­quin!” said the Ticktockman.

“Get stuf­fed.”

So they sent him to Coven­try. And in Coven­try they worked him over. […] but the tech­ni­ques are real­ly qui­te anci­ent, and so they did it […], and one day qui­te a long time later, the Har­le­quin appeared on the com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons web, appearing elfi­sh and dim­pled and bright-eyed, and not at all brain­wa­s­hed, and he said he had been wrong, that it was a good, a very good thing inde­ed, to belong, and be right on time hip-ho and away we go, and ever­yo­ne sta­red up at him on the public screens that cove­r­ed an ent­i­re city block, and they said to them­sel­ves, well, you see, he was just a nut after all, and if that’s the way the sys­tem is run, then let’s do it that way, becau­se it does­n’t pay to fight city hall, or in this case, the Ticktockman.

So [he] was des­troy­ed, which was a loss, becau­se of what Tho­reau said ear­lier, but you can’t make an ome­let without brea­king a few eggs, […] and if you make only a litt­le chan­ge, then it seems to be worthwhile.

zitiert aus “ ‘Repent, Har­le­quin!’ Said the Tick­tock­man”, einer Kurz­ge­schich­te von Har­lan Elli­son (laut sei­nem Ver­lag eine der zehn meist wie­der­ver­öf­fent­lich­ten in der Lite­ra­tur­ge­schich­te [‘reprin­ted’]) die die ideo­lo­gi­sche Vor­la­ge für den Film mit Jus­tin Tim­ber­la­ke ist (jedoch nicht im recht­lich rele­van­ten Sin­ne 😉 ), der ges­tern zufäl­li­ger Wei­se im ORF lief.