The majority citizens of Oilwell comprised Big Enders, nicknamed Big Spenders as they benefited most from the Great Plenty. The group name came from their practice of knocking eggs on the broad end, and Big Enders liked their eggs served on a silver platter.
Oilwell’s minority citizens, making up about a quarter of the population, were Little Enders who knocked their eggs on the narrow end. They had emigrated from the neighbouring planet George, making their parlous journey in rickety fuel-propellant space crafts around the years 200 BC-150 BC before the advent of FTL (faster-than-light) travel.
Some 8 percent of Oilwellians who broke their eggs by cracking them in the middle were, naturally, named Middlers. These were also immigrants. The remaining Oilwellians outside the three major groupings were the DLLs, pronounced Dhals, whose faith forbade them from eating eggs. Their diet of curry and spicy foods sidelined them from the mainstream.
Each group’s method of breaking eggs was observed religiously on pain of excommunication for breaching the time-honoured ritual. It was this tradition which determined an Oilwellian’s group membership, whether he was a Big or Little Ender, a Middler or Dhal.
Oilwell’s communities took their eggs with such deadly seriousness to the extent that there would be rumours of bloody group clashes every time one Oilwellian insulted another’s egg-eating practice. After the riot of 135 AD, Little Enders suffered to partake of eggs only in the privacy of their own homes whereas there were erected many public Egg Houses for the Big Enders’ copious consumption of subsidised eggs.
The egg polishers
Since the egg played such an important role in life, the folks of Oilwell were needless to say trained from young in the culinary arts. The planetary government invested a huge chunk of education budget to establish elite Junior Egg Colleges for Big Ender children.
Dotted across Oilwell were also the well-equipped Higher Egg Academies to train the best chefs, cooks and professionals in eggology. These state-funded Egg Academies were especially for Big Enders as well, never mind that Little Enders, Middlers and Dhals paid egg tax too.
The Governor of Muddy, Oilwell’s capital, once suggested that 10 percent of Egg Academy seats be open to non-Big Enders. His proposal provoked 5,000 students in Putty to protest that their protected academies must be reserved for the majority group only.
Putty was the administrative capital of Oilwell, and purpose-built to replace the over-crowded Muddy. Putty’s colourfully resplendent buildings were a showcase of eggy architecture and designed in the most perfect ovals. From an aerial view, Putty looked just like a basket of Easter eggs, and was the pride of the planet.
Poly-burrito offices and Big Ender senior staff were based in distant Putty’s compact city. The Poly-burrito was a council of elders with representatives from the four groups. A swathe of the elders was scions of old and rich families who had in their possession terrific secret recipes for egg.
Real power however was vested in Big Ender councillors who controlled the chicken farms. The job of Little Ender and Middler elders was to polish and carry the eggs belonging to the Poly-burrito chief, called Adder. The longest-serving Adder was Mahasneer who ruled for 122 out of the 208 years in the modern history of Oilwell.
The tyrant Mahasneer reigned long because he had his lifespan extended by cryogenics where scientists rejuvenated his body cells after he had been put in deep freeze following a heart attack. However, when he was revived from suspended animation, the side-effects from the medical treatment were Mahasneer’s unfortunate bouts of selective amnesia and verbal diarrhoea.
As mentioned earlier, our story unfolds in 208 AD when Able-doolah, who succeeded Mahasneer, was in his fifth year as supreme leader and fending off opposition chief Anoo-war’s vying for the Addership. To contain the Anoowar-ian strategy of winning over his pro-consuls, Able-doolah packed off 40 of them on a Study Tour space journey to a galaxy far, far away.
Upsetting the pecking order
Under Able-doolah, the price of eggs had gone up and up, and this brought about tremendous public dissatisfaction which culminated in the Ides of March. The Ides introduced some beginnings of reform in chicken farming. The changes accompanying the Reformation made Oilwellians, who still clung to the old order of ‘Stability’, rather restive. It was eggciting times for the planet.
Top-of-the-food-chain Big Enders worried that their days of perks and privileges were numbered while poor Big Enders worried about not catching up economically while enduring the pinch from the price hikes.
More and more Little Enders and Middlers were emigrating to other solar systems, made possible and affordable by FTL travel. They were prompted partly by the egg quotas which discriminated particularly against them even though the affirmative action programme to help the needy was initially conceived as a just one. Meanwhile, the Dhals thought it was certainly high time their forgotten voices were heard.
Amidst the clamour of the socio-political upheaval, a Big Ender prefect Ahr-Mard threw the sensitive planet into its usual ‘confusion’ by saying Little Enders were “squatters???. Ahr-Mard’s assertion that as immigrants from planet George, they “did not deserve equal rights??? was supported to a (not so) shocking degree by other Big Ender prefectures.
Minority group Poly-burrito members squawked their usual futile objections instead of examining the reasons why a segment of Big Enders still thought of Little Enders as Georgians, and that the Arh-mards were not entirely to be blamed for the strained group relations.
For one thing, ordinary Big Enders cringed to hear Little Enders speak bad Oilwellian, and worse, there were those who could barely speak the national language at all. Some or perhaps many Little Enders did not see the historical perspective that before they arrived in Oilwell, sovereignty had belonged to Big Ender inhabitants. Therefore, the indigenous religio-cultural institutions and markers must be at least understood, if not willingly embraced, and existing social norms respected.
For another thing, Big Enders loved their local troubadours Marwee and Seetee (a cherubic-looking ‘Grandfather’) whereas Little Enders still looked to planet George for their entertainment and pop icons. This and other aspects in their different social orientation contributed to the two categories of Enders living largely separate lives.
On their part, Little Enders wondered why they were hyphenated as George-Oilwellians and why state policies targeted them for deliberate exclusion. In the September equinox of 208 AD, the Little Enders did some soul searching on the nature of their citizenship and realised that if they demanded equality, then it was only fair they participated equally as stakeholders in nation-building.
Back to the future
A chicken-and-egg situation: Could Little Enders learn to love the planet first if the planet seemed not to love them?
In September 208 AD, the eggs came to a boil. Anoo-war had introduced a fresh political equation that challenged the entrenched power structure of self-interest propped up by the ruling elites – Middler, Little and Big Enders alike. Those with vested interests in the regime had desperately resorted to fanning divide-and-rule eggism to preserve their high positions.
For a long time, the understanding of the average Oilwellian had been obscured by hypocrisy of harmony propagated by the planet administrators who needed to maintain the status quo at all costs. After all, who had ever heard of dictatorships willingly relinquishing their rule?
A well-known adage in Oilwell was that there is no such thing as a free omelette for the dispossessed. People have to cook their own lunches if they wanted to enfranchise themselves.
September equinox was the season when Oilwellians woke up and began to see naked truths through bleary eyes. The Little Enders remembered a teaching of their ancient sage Confuse-shez in his analects ‘How to distinguish a Good Egg’, and recognised that bad eggs can be detected by their rotten smell. The rot in Oilwell was made worse by misinformation and disinformation the citizenry had been fed for too long.
So in the September Struggle, many Little Enders chose to be sunny side up instead of opting for the first spaceship out as a few of their earlier generations had done. Confuse-shez says: Truth Empowers, Power to the People.