Tyranny

Breakfast on Day 8 is a disaster. The food is worse than normal. This is none of our doing – the caterers were simply having an off day. But the participants don’t see it that way. They suspect that it might be a message from us, the experimenters, that we don’t approve of the Commune and that we won’t tolerate it:

pGP: You don’t really think we could sit around all day doing 
          nothing and have lots to eat
gTQ: We’ve got to start re-evaluating what this is all about,
          you know. And this will get more like this, the more we
          sit around and do nothing.

Like the Guards before them, the Communards are losing confidence in the system. They can’t make it work. They face internal opposition from the dissidents. They sense external opposition from the experimenters.

They won’t use their power against either. So they are stuck. As one Communard explains, they now have all the responsibility for running the system but none of the benefits.

A particularly bad breakfast creates a crisis for the Commune

A particularly bad breakfast creates a crisis for the Commune