Happiness: A Planet Read Online Free

brief and to deal with the unanticipated. And in all of his many positions he had been called on but twice, and the decisions he’d had to make had been so trivial that they are not worthy here of mention. The only other decisions he had been called on to make were those regarding personnel, seeking and interviewing replacements for substation Service staff, most of whom were technicians. Andthere he either gave the most suitable person the job; or, in pursuit of his ambition, did someone with influence a favour. Politics was the name of that game.
    Now ambition is a peculiar human trait. For instance Munred Danporr, at first, wanted only to excel, to be the best, to shine before his compatriots and his contemporaries. That same ambition, though, took him away from the very city where he wanted to excel, away from those very contemporaries and compatriots whom he wanted to outshine. Consequently, in his first few years of self-imposed exile from the city, knowing that his rival contemporaries and compatriots would likewise have dispersed, his ambition soon changed, became instead solely an overriding desire to work his way back to the city of his birth.
    One could describe his ambition in purely conventional terms — that Munred aspired to a position of authority and prestige. Which of course would be true. But it would be more true to say that the whole of his ambition could be encapsulated in a vision he had of himself in the city. He saw himself, with his consort, rear view, unhurriedly mounting the transparent steps of a certain exclusive restaurant in this city.
    Some among you might sneer at that dream, might perhaps denigrate the restaurant, might call those transparent steps tasteless in the extreme, might claim that its exclusivity is only its being expensive; but that does not invalidate the assertion that that vision of himself and his consort, slowly ascending those steps, as if they very much belonged, was not the ultimate driving force behind all his ambitions. Who is to say that many of the great characters of history were not driven by similar small dreams?
    And now Munred Danporr was but eighteen months away from his triumphant ascent of those steps. Local boy made good. A Departmental Directorship had become vacant on a station the other side of the city, thirty six thousand million kilometers and one year’s travail closer to it. Service rumour had it that there was one other serious competitor for the position, but she had marginally less experience than Munred. The position was his, if....
    It was that ‘if’ that had Munred pensively reclining sideways on to his desk. He reclined sideways because he couldn’t bear to look at his desk screens. On one screen flashed the message, ‘Priority Happiness.’ In three days time that message would go to ‘Urgent Happiness’; and it was inconceivable that he should attend an interview for a vacant Departmental Directorship while he had an outstanding ‘Urgent’ in any one of his sub-departments.
    The interviewing board would know that he had an ‘Urgent’ because his ship would take that information with him. Nor did he dare, and he had desperately considered it in passing, tamper with the ship’s data. If his tinkerings were to be discovered later, and it was inevitable that they would be, such a scandal would have him ending his career in the far reaches of civilisation. Nor could he postpone this interview: a similar prestigious vacancy this close in might not occur for another year. If then.
    Two weeks ago, on his return from lunch, the polite request to ‘Please Investigate Happiness’ had been flashing on one of his desk screens. He and his Sub had joked about it, and Munred had told his Sub to look into it.
    In his turn the Sub-director, a small bald and anxious man, had delegated the task to the Director of Communications. Like the majority of Service personnel, both Munred and his Sub had early learnt that, as soon as one is in a position