3 minutes reading time
I ask you, gentlemen, what is to be done when the very symbols of our reality are painted over with a grotesque, synthetic lie? I was standing at the intersection, my mind feverish with the heat and the senseless noise of the city, when I saw it. A new car.
But it was not the machine itself that struck me — no, it was the plate. A sickening, artificial green. It clung to the bumper like a fresh bruise, or perhaps like a patch of mold on a decaying tombstone.
I burst into a sudden, inexplicable laugh. They want to brand it! They want to scream to the heavens, "Look at this virtuous soul, he drives an electric chariot!" Some petty bureaucrat, sitting in a cold room, decided that this visual branding is the pinnacle of human progress. They want the traffic warden to spot the color from a distance and grant immediate, unquestioned salvation — a subsidy, an exemption, a nod of bureaucratic approval. No need for databases, no need for the burdensome truth of technology. Just a splash of color!
But do you not see the madness in this? They have murdered the primary truth of the number plate!
Black on white, or black on yellow — these were honest, high-contrast truths. You could read them! If a man runs you down in the street, you could read his number and demand justice! But now? White text swimming in a sea of muddy green. It is an optical illusion. Throw in the dirt, the rain, the miserable dust of our streets, and this 'virtuous' green plate becomes a blank, illegible slate.
And the scaling! Oh, the absolute horror of the scaling paradox!
They tell us everyone must eventually drive these machines. Eighty percent, they say! Well, imagine it! A world drowning in green plates. When the exception becomes the rule, the green ceases to be a differentiator. It becomes the new, meaningless void.
Worse still, they have buried the vital distinction between the private citizen and the commercial brute! White letters for the personal, yellow for the taxi — all choked together on that identical green background. From a distance, at speed, who can tell the difference? No one! They have traded a robust, scalable truth for a fleeting, idiotic policy gimmick.
The system devours itself in its own vanity! We sacrifice the fundamental necessity of identification for the cheap thrill of categorization. It is exactly like buying a watch that cannot tell the time, but glows brilliantly in the dark just so your neighbors know you have squandered your money!
The signal changes. The artificial green ghost glides away silently. And I am left standing in the fumes, realizing that we are not moving toward salvation, but simply painting our rot in a new, state-approved color.