The Monotony of Mr.Daley

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Far into the future, the Government is convinced that diversity and differences breed dissent. In order to promote peace and harmony, communities of similar race and beliefs have been created - based on the ‘Homogeneity Principle’. What happens when you try to stand out from the rest? Mr. Daley is about to find out.

Mr. Daley looked over the hedge at his neighbours. It was a fine Sunday morning, and he could see his neighbours lounging in chairs, sipping their teas. They were all white - just like him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a black person. Their gardens were neatly kept, hedges trimmed to perfection, just like his. They’d all planted petunias, snapdragons, and a few kitchen vegetables in the backyard - government mandated vegetables for the season. 

He was sure they’d had the same day as him - going to office in the same standard regulation black suits and being kissed goodbye by their wives. Women stayed at home in Amberville, having been deemed too emotional and unpredictable to work. 

Mr. Daley felt a pang of irritation. These days he’d been bothered by an uncomfortable notion, one that had been causing him a lot of sleepless nights. What if he didn’t agree with the Government’s homogeneity mandate? What if he wanted to stand out from the crowd? Be… different? 

Mr. Daley took a good look at his garden. An unexplained rage gripped him at the sight of the sea of yellow and purple. Before he knew it, he’d grabbed fistfuls of the petunias and flung them about till nothing remained of the garden but a mess. The earthy smell of destroyed flowers calmed him, and a thought entered his head. Quietly, he entered the house and got out his gardening book. Some daffodils and sunflowers, he thought, would do him a world of good.

Daley had finished planting the bulbs. He felt invigorated. There was something in the act of defiance that made one feel alive - he even found himself humming a tune as he walked along the hedge. Something made him stop abruptly. 

Someone else was singing the same tune.

“What a surprise, Mr. Bailey! Seeing you in the garden in this hot weather?” Mr. Daley inquired politely. 

“Oh you know, the best time to plant bulbs. They changed the flowers and vegetables for the month quite suddenly. Took me by surprise, it did. But I must tell you,” Mr.Bailey grinned good-humouredly,  “I feel mighty glad that they did. Nice to have some sunflowers and daffodils around, eh?”

Mr.Daley looked in at his neighbour’s freshly planted garden in horror.

His mind was reeling at the implications. Was somebody watching him? How did they know? In a daze, Mr. Daley made his way back to his house, muttering to himself as he walked. He felt as if he was in an elaborate battle with an unseen opponent, who was trying to mirror his moves perfectly. And why was Mr.Bailey humming the same tune?

“Changed the flowers and vegetables of the month, to the same sunflowers and daffodils. Couldn’t have been a coincidence!”, he muttered under his breath as he reached his living room. He felt a heaviness his body had never felt before. Mrs. Daley brought him a glass of iced tea, as she did every day when he came back from outside. 

She was a small, dark-haired woman, with a rather fixed, cheery smile. A great believer in routines, everything she did had the regularity of an automaton. Her daily routine had not varied in 10 years. 

“I had to postpone the washing by twenty minutes today. I had no idea they would change the regulations this late in the day”, she said, her smile fixed, even as there was disapproval in her eyes. 

Mr.Daley sighed heavily. “Have you ever thought of being different? A different life?”

He thought he saw a flicker of alarm in her eyes. And then, the fixed smile was back. 

“Different? Why would you want to be different? I know what it is, you must’ve had a touch of the sun! Why don’t you go back and rest?” she said coaxingly.

Mr.Daley looked at her with resentment. A hard lump of anger had formed in his chest. He pushed the iced tea away. 

“I’m not thirsty.”

All that day, Mr.Daley plotted and plotted his next move. He would move away from it all. He would leave his community. He would change his job. He’d always hated his desk job, the endless shuffling of papers, without recognition or prospect for change. No promotions or demotions. The forced politeness, the adherence to the clock. He wondered why he’d never thought of change. Maybe because change had scared him before, and his desk job felt safe, like some corner of the world where time had no effect. 

He sat and composed his resignation letter. He’d just finished applying to another job, when he heard Mrs. Daley come in. There was a rustle of shopping bags as she came in - she had been shopping. She looked gleeful.

“All the wives were shopping for new suits, I got the best one for you. It's the same colour as everyone.” She displayed a dark suit.

He looked at her blankly.

“Haven’t you heard the news?”, she asked, incredulously. 

Then, she smiled sweetly.

“They’ve promoted you. They’ve promoted everyone. Starting from tomorrow.”

He stared at her in shock. “What?”

Mr. Daley sank into his couch. Was it possible that he, and even worse, his thoughts were under scrutiny? Had they been watching him the entire time? Was anything he thought actually personal? What if they were reading his mind now, and were sifting through his thoughts as he thought them? 

He envisioned his life before him - an endless day of shuffling around papers in an office. Seeing the same faces every day. A life of drab uniformity. He realised that all along he’d been played, allowed to struggle ineffectually like prey trapped in a spider’s web, when all the while the web tightened around him. He would never escape. 

He felt his will crumble. Everyone was just like him, did the same things as him, and at the exact same times too. He was trapped in an endless cycle of homogeneity. The only way out of this was to….

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“That was gruesome, knife to the heart. I guess one of them had to break at some point,” Agent C said to the man sitting in the chair, watching the scene unfold through his computer screen. “What do we do now Mr. X?”

“You know the rules.” Mr. X chuckled as he swiveled around in his chair. “Get everyone ready.”

“We can’t kill them all just because one of them lost his mind!”

“Rules, Agent C!” Mr. X bellowed. “Rules! What happens to him happens to everyone else in that community! Homogeneity must prevail!”

“We ordered the others to change their gardens and promoted them all, but sir… this… the government will have no one to… govern. This is madness!”

A huge smile pulled itself across Mr. X’s cheeks. “Beautiful, yes?”

This story was written in collaboration with two other students for my college magazine. I’d always loved writing stories for the magazine, although I felt I required an initial spark of an idea. My fellow collaborator, a tall gangly junior, named Tejas, had the most amazing, ideas, but had some trouble following through till the end. One day, we decided to team up. The result, I felt, was decent enough to republish 4 years later :)