What was wrong was apparent and needed no investigation, though the stench around the villages and the extent of the disorder overwhelmed us. As an immediate alleviation, Vess and I took over the work of the selectors on the grounds they had failed in their duty by not summoning us sooner. Due to the extremity of the situation, we decided to use the machines we carried on our ship. Philosophically, the Pistach are opposed to the use of machines on settlement worlds, preferring a lengthy, slow evolution of community, with its own history and culture. In this case, however,cjefissit moltplat gom, a s we say:emergencies make their own rules. You would say, any port in a storm. Inasmuch as the community was up to its tonal detectors in sewage, the machines were necessary to speed the drainage and alleviate the smell!
While the machines worked at that, we put the selectors through our memory drain, using a standard NB primary association identifier (Type 9Zwok) to strain childhood memories into a Tressor-Hines multibank synaptic synthesizer where they were stored while we went on to wipe all later memories clean, leaving their minds utterly blank. We then used the newest Bertrani omni-feed to restore only the childhood memories, stripped of all later associations. The former selectors were thus stopped at age twelve, when they had been undifferentiated. Then, we reselected them, most of them as campesi. Though many lacked the musculature of true campesi, with proper hormonal treatment they bulked up to a satisfactory level, and as soon as the accelerated process was complete, we set all of them to continuing the sewage system, though we pulled out any who showed managerial talent to receive further education in waste management or hydropower systems.
We then examined the records of all those misselected proffi and contempli, all those artists, sculptors, doctors and what have you, applying the Fynor-Noot allied skill analysis system. Failed sculptors, those who had actually liked stone, became masons, foundation layers, aqueduct builders. Failed artists, those who enjoyed color, became painters of rooms, houses and barns. Those who had fancied themselves doctors because of a desire to help and care for others were assigned as creche managers, animal tenders, and the like. Most of these people did not need regression. Doing work they could succeed at would in time erase any longing for a time when things were otherwise. In very short order virtually all of them were doing well and taking pleasure in their work. Those few who fancied specialized caste for reasons of power or prestige and who might, therefore, harbor resentments and unfulfilled ambitions were treated as the selectors had been: memory removal and regression to age twelve.
This was a long, tiring process. There were fewer than a hundred to be regressed each period, but they scream so when the memories are drained, and they must be conscious for it to be done correctly, leaving their psyches intact. Both Vess and I became weary and depressed, for there was no relief in the settlement, nothing attractive on which one could rest one’s eyes, nothing amusing, nothing soothing. Everything and everyone was at war with everything and everyone else. When we began, only a tiny fraction of the persons were doing work they were suited for, and even they were constantly frustrated by interdependent workers who did not function properly. Still, day by day, we pulled a bit farther out of the morass. Day by day we saw people doing work they liked and doing it well, even the regressed ones who had been reselected.
One morning, leaving the ship, I came across a small garden tended by a child who was singing a hymn to Mengantowhai as te pulled weeds from among the flowers and fed them to a nearby flock of flosti who gabbled and stretched their long mouthparts to receive a share while the flost-herd stood contentedly by with his noose. It was so … right! So interdependently lovely. As I gazed at child/ garden/flosti, my vocal sac filled with fluid and I turned away, gargling, deeply moved. Vess patted toner on an appendage and uttered comfort words, I suppose the Pistach equivalent of your Earthian, “there, there.” (Which, by the way, confuses us greatly.What is there? And why two of them?) This little garden was the first functionality, the first real sign of emerging order, the signal to bring new selectors into the mix.