Timeline of the Struggle

While the band gathered at the feast and made noises of approval at one another, one individual sat 40 metres from the fire and counted the stars. The count was 1,847. Nobody asked. The individual did not volunteer it.

The Front dates the neurotype from this evening.

Writing is invented in Mesopotamia. For the first time in history, a message can be delivered without a facial expression. A clay tablet recording 29 sacks of barley makes no eye contact with anyone and is still correct 5,000 years later.

The Ministry of Literal Interpretation regards this tablet as the first official document.

Euclid states five postulates and refuses to elaborate. When asked what he means, he points to the postulates. When asked again, he points again.

The Precept of the Straight Line enters doctrine unchanged: a straight line can be drawn between any two points, and nothing further needs to be said about it.

A special interest in gradients becomes public infrastructure. Roman engineers hold a fall of 1 in 4,800 across 50 kilometres of channel. Millions drink. No engineer is asked how the weekend was, because the aqueduct is the weekend.

The Ministry of Special Interests cites this entry whenever asked what a special interest is for.

Monastic rules establish the first Quiet Hours legislation. Speech is restricted to necessity. Copying, gardening, and the counting of hours proceed at record output for 900 years.

Directive No. 7 is modelled directly on Chapter 6 of the Rule, with the theology removed and the timetable retained.

Scholars produce the first alphabetical subject index. Information can now be located without asking a person. The Bureau of Taxonomy describes this as the single largest reduction in small talk recorded before 1978.

Linnaeus publishes a system in which every living thing has one name, two words long, and one place. The Bureau of Taxonomy dates its spiritual founding from this year.

Its first principle, that everything is a kind of something, is taken from the title page verbatim.

The metre is fixed as one ten-millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator. Length is now the same for everyone, regardless of how they feel about it. "About this big", accompanied by hands, begins its long decline.

Bradshaw's Railway Guide is published. For the first time, a citizen can know when a train will arrive without asking anyone. The Guide contains 0 adjectives.

The Bureau of Trains has designated 1839 as Year Zero of the Reliable Age. All dates after it are considered exact.

Bose begins development of the noise-cancelling headphone. The Front dates its sensory doctrine from this year: the position that the environment can be corrected and the citizen need not be.

The Ministry of Sensory Environment keeps a 1978 prototype in a glass case. The case is soundproof.

VisiCalc ships. A grid in which every cell contains a value and every value can be checked. The Front regards the spreadsheet as the first mass-produced instrument of the Literal Society. It has no tone.

Walls are removed from offices to encourage "collaboration". 71 people can now hear one telephone. Fluorescent tubes are installed at a density of one per 2.4 square metres.

The Ministry of Sensory Environment classifies the decade as a sensory occupation.

The phrase spreads globally as a reply to statements that contained no worry. The Department for the Suppression of Small Talk records a 940% increase in its use between 1998 and 2008, most of it in response to "thank you", which required no reply.

"We should get coffee sometime" reaches peak circulation. The Institute for Applied Literality later counts 2.3 billion proposals of coffee with no date, time, or venue, of which 0.4% resulted in coffee.

The phrase is classified as a Class V utterance and remains so.

Installed fluorescent tube lighting reaches its historical maximum. The hum is audible in 84% of workplaces. The Directorate of Fluorescent Abolition, not yet founded, will later describe 2011 as the year the lights won.

The Autism Liberation Front is founded. The resolution is adopted unanimously, with 0 minutes of discussion, by members who had each read it in advance. The triad PRECISION, LITERALITY, SILENCE is adopted in the same sitting.

It is the first sitting in recorded political history to end early.

The Line of Literal Truth is adopted as the flag of the Front: one yellow line on a red field. Three alternative designs featuring symbols are rejected on the grounds that a symbol stands for something else.

Silence is productivity. Issued by the Central Committee, the Directive establishes the legal basis for Quiet Hours and requires that every meeting justify, in writing, why it is not a document.

To date, none has.

The Report of Normie Conduct is issued. Within 90 days, 18,406 reports are filed, none transmitted, all retained in the Register of Reported Normies. The most reported conduct is Class II Interrogative-Hollow, at 38.1% of filings.

The First Five-Year Plan allocates 41.7% of the Front's budget to the People's Commissariat for the Cure. The remainder is divided among the Ministries in proportions that were calculated, not negotiated.

Plan Year 1 begins. It is in progress.