mockers@aol.com
Michel Mockers
2054
Mark positioned himself right in front of the screen fixed on the wall of his bedroom. The screen lit up. A beautiful blond woman appeared, smiling, and said with the most voluptuous voice, “Good afternoon, Mark. We are happy to see you back home safe. For your entertainment tonight, we can offer you the tenth episode of the new series on GP’s life. We hope you will enjoy it. Good evening, Mark. See you tomorrow. I will wake you up at seven, as usual, if you agree.” The screen went dark.
“Bastards!” Mark said in himself, not aloud in case the screen would eventually record his words.
Mark’s house was a very small two-story house of no definite style in what was certainly a quiet street in good old times, if there ever were some good old times. On the first floor were his living room, a staircase leading to the second floor, a kitchen, and a toilet. In the kitchen, a small door opened on a staircase going down to a basement. On the second floor were a relatively large bedroom, a bathroom, and a closet. Upstairs and downstairs had television screens on the walls, as was the rule for people high ranking in the Administration.
When he was declared the sole owner of the house after the death of his parents, the house had been inspected. It had a basement but, before the inspection, Mark had transformed it into a dumping place, ugly to look at. The two inspectors, who were maybe not inclined to inspect the house too carefully, had not gone downstairs to verify what it was. After their departure, Mark had cleaned the place to give it the look of a second living room with a sofa, very old but still good enough to be considered as a sofa that could sit three, and two chairs that he brought from upstairs when his friends visited him. In front of the house, a minuscule space showed a sparse wild grass. Long ago the house had been painted with some kind of light beige color with brown shutters.
The street was small enough to forbid parking. Antique old signs “No Parking” were still standing at each end of the street, which was, despite those signs, full of cars on both sides. Looking closer at those cars, one could easily see that they were all in a total state of decrepitude proving that they had been abandoned for a very long period of time.
There was a camera and a loud speaker at each entrance of the street. Mark had many times felt the urge to destroy them but it was practically impossible. They were located too high. The only possible way to do it would have been to come under one of them, keeping out of its eye, which was calculable, and shoot it with an illegal gun. He would have had to keep his back constantly turned toward the camera at the other end of the street so that he could not be identified. The operation comported the risk of having the whole street arrested and interrogated to find out who, among its inhabitants, was the “terrorist.” “They” would not suppose that the “terrorist” could come from another part of town. This was a risk that Mark could not take.
On second thought, he had completely abandoned the idea. Using a forbidden gun in a public place would have long ranging consequences. It would go much farther than arresting the people of his street. It would give the government an occasion to declare another Red Alert against terrorists who were attacking the Security system. Controls and searches would be reinforced, and more people would be arrested.
All guns had supposedly disappeared when the government asked the population to give them back to the Police without exceptions. Mark had never rendered his .45. It was the gun of his great-grandfather René. Mark had read the manuscript left by him telling the story of his actions in a movement of resistance during World War Two against the Germans who had invaded the whole of Europe in the middle of the past century. He could not surrender such a piece of family history to those ignorant brutes.
Even if he had definitively abandoned the idea of killing a camera with that gun, anger still flowed to his head every time he entered his street.
Making believe that he was checking this or that concerning the house, he regularly searched the outside walls with his detector (another forbidden tool) for minuscule listening devices that could have been dissimulated anywhere. He was always trying to give the impression that he was a calm man who had nothing wrong on his conscience, especially bad thoughts about the regime. He was playing the game as would an old monkey to which no one could teach new tricks.
The detector was some kind of a relic. Mark was not convinced that it worked correctly, but it was giving him a sentiment of security, maybe completely false but better than nothing. The worst thing in everybody’s life was that permanent feeling of insecurity. At any time, day or night and under any pretext, “they” could knock at your door and take you to the next Police Station.
K – Hey! Hey! You go too fast! You are giving us all these details like if you had been there walking in Mark’s shoes…
Actually, my friend “K” (Ken) and (myself) “I” were discussing serious matters.
K – Are we fiction talking?
I – Yes, we do. It allows us to anticipate about anything. You have already understood that I come from another planet. You know… Dropped from one of those unexplained flying things. If you accept me as such, I can tell you the story of what I saw from out there.
K – Come back on Earth, please.
I – Well! It seems to me, then, that the title “Memoirs from Beyond the Grave” should be the right one. I must confess that I am borrowing that subtitle from the French François-René de Chateaubriand, “Mémoires d’outre-tombe” published in 1848, Earthly years. (You can find the great writer in our intergalactic libraries). Like Chateaubriand, I talk at the first person. But it is where the similitude stops. He talks about himself (what French do best); I talk about others. A little too pedantic for you my Chateaubriand?
K – Yes, but I understood that you are a snob.
I - It seemed to me that “Memoirs from Beyond the Grave” was the most appropriate title to present the pages that our readers are going to read if such is their good pleasure, their curiosity, or their courage. In any case, nobody is here, on this planet called Earth, to accuse me of infringing on Chateaubriand’s copyright.
K – Nobody is there? Don’t you go again a little too fast? The American Republic is not dead. Not yet!
I – You forget that I come from out of space and find the Earth empty of humanity. Nobody… There is nobody left here to tell us the story. They are all gone. Through our censors, detectors, and flying missions, we know when the last representatives of the human species ceased breathing. The irony is that humans labeled some of their surrounding animal species “endangered species” without realizing that they should have put themselves on top of the list. We have been in touch with the planet for a long period of time. We followed closely the development of the species that named itself Homo Sapiens Sapiens, in an excess of scientific simplicity, to distinguish it from less intelligent species.
K – Where did you land on Earth?
I – I had to decide between two choices. They were essentially philosophical choices suggested by the two main theories that led humanity to its end: capitalism and communism. One was symbolized by America; the other by Russia. But as Russia ended up bicycling to nowhere in a big philosophical void, a gift from a philosopher named Karl Marx, and China was some kind of a Marxist imitation, I landed in the heart of capitalism, America. I was maybe biased by the fact that we knew that the actors performing in the final act of the tragedy were Americans.
I visited the two towns I had chosen: Washington, the “political capital” of the country according to my documentation, and a town named New York, which was, still according to my documentation, the “business capital of the world.” The fantastic amount of information scattered all over vast buildings was really too much for me. I asked a group of students from my university to join me to help put the facts together. A dozen came with enthusiasm. My thesis became a collective thesis.
K – I do not even know who you really are. What is that story about a thesis? Why are you coming on this planet if you already know that nobody is there to welcome you and answer your questions?
I – This is precisely the reason why I am here. I am a modest student in universal history writing his final thesis. Actually, planet “Earth” is quoted in the schoolbooks of other inhabited planets as the perfect example not to follow. I would like to entitle my thesis, “Rise and Fall of a Species on one insignificant planet.” This is why I am scavenging through the enormous accumulation of documents of all sorts spread all around this planet among skeletons left by death in attitudes ranging from dramatic to ridiculous. I always feel the need to be polite with them, and cannot help saying, “Excuse me!” when I meet one of them. As they are everywhere, I say, “Excuse me!” one hundred times a day. But I start to get used to them and I don’t know if I will keep on saying, “Excuse me!”… The more I progress in my research, the less I understand why they perished with so many possibilities at hand. It is almost to the point where you may suppose that they did it on purpose. I would like to update what we already know about that tragedy. It would be of great interest for all the galactic scholars and, why not, for the success of my own thesis.
K – Not too bad so far! If I understand, you want to tell us the story of the end of humanity. I thought we were only talking about the end of the American Republic.
I – The end of the Republic was Act One of the drama that is going to develop under your eyes. For me, in galactic time, the end of the Republic and the end of Man are practically compressed in an infinitesimal period of time. Are we not talking fiction?
K – We do!
I – However, in order to exist, fiction has to be based on current reality. Here, reality was the breakdown of the American government and the general fear, supported by many scientists, that with no change in policies, humanity would very soon reach the point of no return. People generally predicted three possible scenarios. The atomic scenario was one. Looking at all the weapons of mass destruction, especially atomic bombs, dispersed all around the world, the belief was that it was only a matter of time before the use of those weapons would inflict a blow so severe to humanity that it would never recover. Humanity would vanish, if not killed entirely directly, at least by ensuing atomic pollution. The atomic scenario was the most popular but it was so well rendered in the movie “On The Beach” by Stanley Kramer that trying to give it a sequel here would make no sense.
Two other scenarios had public favor: the Virus scenario. An unknown virus totally decimates humanity; and the Nothing-Happens scenario. Humanity is left to its own doing. Population does not stop growing and resources do not stop shrinking. We know that people can kill for a piece of bread. It can go as far as envisioning the last humans surviving by practicing cannibalism like did the last survivors on Rapa Nui after destroying their beautiful island.
K – Not only are you an alien, but you are again a snob. Can’t you say Easter Island like everybody else? Anyway, the story has to start before the end of the American Republic or your “beyond the grave” subtitle makes no sense.
I – I agree… but according to the fact that there is nobody alive on this planet to welcome us, I have to tell the story in a past tense. But I also have to tell you where I found the details about Mark walking in the street…
If you remember, I had asked for the help of other students from my university. I was not very surprised when, at the end of an Earthly afternoon, one of my helpers called me to ask me to come immediately to a specific small house in a specific small street where, he said, I would find what he considered as documents eventually important for my thesis. They were under the form of old fashioned hand written notes on a table in a corner of the living room and a digital recorder on the same table. Comparatively to ours, the recorder looked like an antique but he supposed that it might contain interesting insights on what happened, if only for the simple reason that it was there. He had not touched the recorder but what he read from the notes had incited him to call me.
He explained that it was not by chance that he made the discovery. The real discovery was to find a file storing the addresses of a certain number of high-ranking people in the administration. He was actually at one of these addresses. It was the reason why he supposed that the recorder contained eventually interesting information.
We have the means to decipher immediately any type of recorded material of any galactic age. No use to say that a few minutes later I was at the side of my collaborator. The outdoor of the house was opening directly on a living room. Five skeletons, easily recognizable as two women and three men laid on the floor in the middle of that room. I automatically said, “Excuse me!” My helper looked at me curiously. Then, he said, “Look! They were not sitting when they died.” He presented me with a gun. “Identified by our services as an old .45, American model of World War Two, last Earthly century. Only one bullet is missing. The gun was on the floor, next to the man who held in his hand the hand of a woman. Death did not separate them as you can see. Romantic but pathetic! They could not have died, all of them at once, at the same place, apparently at the same time, except by a common act of suicide. How? Cyanide or else? Only our specialists could determinate how, but I suppose that it is unimportant for our purpose to learn the answer. Interesting, but not essential.”
“I agree with you,” I answered. “Romantically pathetic, and I am sure they were not alone. Love is stronger than death… even in the darkest circumstances. Romeo and Juliet forever! Maybe, the recorder will provide an answer or part of an answer to your question of how?”
The recorder was on a table at a corner of the room. I took it with the strange feeling that I was going to be transported in another time and penetrate to the life of men and women as if I had been part of it. I chased away those sentimentalist feelings to become the cool historian judging history from the top of his desk. I introduced immediately the recorder into my portable deciphering unit. After a few seconds, a voice came out of it, saying, “My name is Mark”… I stopped the machine. Before listening to what Mark had to tell us, I wanted to visit the place to have a better understanding of whatever I was going to hear.
The written notes that were also on the table and the recorder allowed me to put together all the details that I am going to give you. Mark had made a condensed story of what had happened during the time he was working for the government and the last hours of his life. He even taped the last moments of his life by letting the recorder run while those ultimate minutes vanished away.
I – I learned from the recorder that the five were very close friends. I also learned their names. Mark, the owner of the recorder never took any picture of them. I suppose that it was for reasons of security if the recorder ended in the wrong hands. I also learned to recognize their voices. In fact, I spent a considerable amount of time in their company. The five became as familiar to me as if I had lived among them. It was almost embarrassing. I had the feeling of committing an indiscretion. But my thesis first! I will add words here and there to the original text, or I will add my own narrative in such way that, even without projections of pictures, you can follow the development of the events that took place like in a movie. In the basement of Mark’s house, the five were out of reach of the television screens that could permanently see and listen to them. It was Mark’s intention to trick them when he transformed the basement into an unlisted type of living room. Screens were sending images and conversations to a Security terminal where they were instantaneously analyzed. Even away from the screen, the five were paying close attention to the volume of their voices.
K – Your hero is definitively Mark.
I – Well! He is, at least, our best witness. Let him and his friends talk.
“1984 by George Orwell was a masterpiece, but for its title,” Mark said. “Why am I talking about that?”
“We don’t know why you are…but what’s wrong with Orwell’s title?” asked Nathalie
“The date.”
“The date?”
“Yes, the date. It was a brilliant piece of imagination supporting a definite warning at the time it was written, but in 1984 everything was still going for the best in the best of worlds, if I am not mistaking. Nobody listened to the warning. It is only now, sixty or seventy years later, that things are as bad as described in Orwell’s book, even if in a slightly different context.”
“You are an atrocious intellectual, which is a capital sin today,” Nathalie commented. “You never miss an occasion to show us your literary erudition.”
“O.K! OK!” Mark agreed. “I am an atrocious whatever you want, but you read my copy of 1984, as did our friends here.”
“Nobody reads 1984 anymore, but us,” Nathalie said. “You know perfectly well that it has been taken away from every official library, including school libraries, even before the libraries were permanently closed. There was also, supposedly, an old movie of the same title that has mysteriously disappeared from the archives of cinema. In fact, I am saying something stupid! All the archives of cinema have disappeared. They were, in official language, ‘showing dangerous fictions about eras that never existed.’ They could incite dangerous thinking.”
“You read 1984 not so long ago,” Mark answered. “You understand what I mean when I refer to Orwell.”
“Everyone of us here does,” Robert said. “Big Brother exists now and as horrible as in Orwell’s 1984.”
“We can allow ourselves some fantasy, even some snobbery in our conversations,” Mark said. “We have nothing else to lose, not even our lives, I am afraid.”
“Refreshing and comforting!” Robert commented.
“Not really comforting!” Mark replied. “The difference between “1984” and today is that Orwell wrote his book at the end of World War Two as a projection into the future. We are doing the reverse. We are trying to look back at the past to find out why we are, now, in such a desperate situation.
“One of the main differences between Orwell’s 1984 and today that nobody, today, but a few individuals like us, would be crazy enough to risk their lives digging into the past to re-write the story of Winston Smith atrociously tortured by Big Brother until he finally ends up believing that 2+2=5. Orwell invented a word to explain that situation, Doublethink, which means that you can carry consciously in mind, not as contradictory, two contradictory concepts or beliefs. Today’s young people don’t give a damn about 2+2=4 or 2+2=5. Everybody agrees, if asked to say so, that 2+2=5. Who cares? Which proves that torture to make someone believe that 2+2=5 would be useless nowadays.”
“Are you still going on with your project to leave a document on our era and its miseries for the future generations, if they ever exist, or for beings coming from another planet?” asked Robert.
“I certainly do! This is why I keep recording some of our conversations and describe for that record what is going on without mentioning names or other details. I told the recorder this morning that the Government’s Unique Party remaining power is force and brutality to suppress any form of opposition. The Party is used in such way that very few privileged individuals can enjoy the delirium of power and terrestrial pleasures for as long as they will last.”
The ““Supreme”” did not want to be lost in mathematical abstractions, as intelligent as they could be, as a means to break deviant minds. For that purpose, Building 202, a square block without windows built in the middle of a Government Complex, played the role of a good shepherd in charge of bringing back to the Party’s orthodoxy the lambs lost in the swamps of individual freedom or other subversive ideologies.
However, the ““Supreme”” practiced Doublethink, with its complementary Doubletalk, about torture when he declared illegal all forms of torture. In fact, it was of no use to torture the common citizens. The Police had at their disposal other coercive means that did not include direct physical pain. The most usual punishment for ordinary infractions was the privation of the Food Card for a period of time corresponding to the gravity of the infraction. It was for many a redoubtable ordeal if you had no family or friends to share their rations with you. In that case, you were transformed into a street beggar, which was also illegal and could lead you directly back to the Police Station. It was always possible to buy some food in the black market, but the prices were practically out of the financial reach of most people.
Disappearances by death sentences, when they occurred, ended up as officially recorded accidents, supposedly due to some imprudence by the victims, if not simply due to a strike of bad luck, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. If the victim seemed completely dislocated when found on a road, for example, the violence of an encounter with an automobile or a truck was usually declared responsible. “That’s what happens when you cross a road without paying attention,” and the usual question was, “What was that person doing at that time on that road?”
Everybody knew the existence of Building 202, but nobody really knew what was going on there. Rumor had it that horrors were perpetrated in that building but it was not certain that the rumor was true.
The truth about 202 was finally divulged by Mark. He had found himself at the right place at the right time to learn dramatically the truth about 202. He was returning from work exceptionally late, protected by a special pass allowing him to be in the streets after the curfew. The streets were the only parts of town that were brilliantly lit for Police purposes. Mark was walking fast on the sidewalk when he saw at some distance in front of him, surging from between two of the innumerable dead cars parked in the street, a man apparently going to cross the street. “What was he doing at that time on that street?” was Mark’s first thought.
At the same time, he heard a truck coming at high speed from behind. He turned rapidly and saw the lights of the truck, and, in front of him, the man beginning to cross the street. “Watch out!” he screamed. But the man did not seem to hear him and kept crossing, apparently unaware that he was in the path of a military truck. He was hit by the left fender of the truck with some kind of a loud but muted sound. The impact projected him violently back on the left side of the road where he fell and remained immobile. The truck stopped. Mark expected the driver or somebody to come to the rescue. But the truck started to move ahead again and kept going.
“Bastards!” Mark screamed.
His eyes abandoned the truck to look at the wounded man. It was not a man but a woman dressed in the uniform of the guards of the Government Complex. Patched on her right sleeve was a small white rectangle on which was printed in blue, three numbers, 202. No blood was visible, but she was certainly dangerously hurt if not dead. Mark guessed that she was in her forties. She showed a square face with short hair revealed by her missing cap thrown several feet away. She was not very tall but stocky and heavy. Grabbing her under her armpits, Mark started moving her to take her out of the street. She said slowly, “Don’t move me!”
“She is not dead,” he thought. “I cannot leave you in the middle of the road,” he told her. “You will be killed for real by the next truck passing by.” She was moaning but he kept pulling her. When she was completely on the sidewalk, he said, “I am going to call for help.”
“Oh, no, don’t! I am going to die. I am all broken inside. I know I am going to die. Listen to me!” Kneeling at her side, Mark had passed his arm under her head and his face came close to her. “I should have never been on that road all alone,” she murmured. “It is formally forbidden for people of 202 to go alone out of the Complex but I was on a secret mission for two bottles of alcohol, yes… two bottles.” She was talking with difficulty. “Listen to me! I never wanted to believe in anything but I am going to die, right here, I tell you… My mother was always saying that there is a God watching over us and waiting for us when we die, but I never wanted to believe in anything and, in the Party, you are not supposed to believe in God…” She writhed like one in terrible pain. After a few seconds, she went on, “I was a bad seed, a bad girl. I prostituted myself for Food Cards, for a better life than the average citizen, and also by the desire to do bad which has always been in me. I did bad but if God exists waiting for me, I cannot go without telling someone before I meet him. Maybe he will forgive me. Listen, I am a piece of garbage… I worked for the Party. I was one of the operators of 202… I imposed indescribable pain upon men and women I had never seen before… Listen…”
Mark listened for as long as she was able to talk. He could not hear her last words. When her lips stopped moving, he pulled his arm from under her head. Still kneeling on the concrete of the sidewalk, he looked at her. Her face, for as much as he could see it, did not look nice but somewhat rested. He closed her eyes. He was sick inside, incredibly sick of what she had told him. “May God have mercy on you!” he said. “How can such a thing be possible?”
He left her on the sidewalk. The Police would surely pass by and find her. Back home, he could not go to bed. His head was full of horrific images and his ears full of screams that were certainly accompanying the images. It was not difficult to imagine the screams, and he was not able for a long period of time to control his imagination. At one point, kneeling against his bed and hammering his head with his fists, he screamed, “Oh, God! Do you really exist to allow such things?” But, after a moment of silence, lost in his thoughts, he said, “No, God, you are not responsible for that horror! We all are, all of us. We are because of our flabbiness, selfishness, irresponsibility, and that of our parents before us, and their parents before them. We put our society in the hands of blindfolded leaders at the mercy of individuals like the ““Supreme”,” and his father before him. They just had to pick up the pieces of a disintegrating society falling apart.” He repeated several times, “How is it possible? How is it possible that we are in the middle of such a disaster?”
Mark slowly calmed down. He went to his kitchen’s sink to fill up a glass of water. “Look at that! Look at that color! Not even drinkable!”
The rumors about 202 were now substantiated. Mark thought that it was Destiny that had made him the unique person who learned the truth about 202 from direct testimony. He drank the water despite its color while debating in his mind if it were appropriate to spread the truth or not. “Would the people, learning the truth, retreat by fear like crabs in their holes and become more obedient to the ““Supreme”” to avoid any occasion to be deprived of their Food Cards or sent to 202, or would they, on the contrary, revolted by the truth, become active against the ““Supreme””?”
When dawn appeared timidly on the top of his window, he had made his decision. He would tell. They would tell. He would transform their little group of friends into a group of resistance whose weapon would be the truth. Because of their exceptional situations, Mark at the Ministry of Information, Nathalie at the Ministry of Propaganda, George at the Ministry of Resources, and Robert at the Ministry of Subsistence, they would be able to gather all national and international information and write very small pieces of news that would be spread to the general public. Joyce, as a head nurse in the only hospital still open in town, was the person of the group who, not only had the most contacts with the public but, because of her permanent movements in the hospital, was less susceptible to be under continual surveillance. She would be in charge, if she accepted, to take the word out. The unique means of diffusion, as there was no other, would be the word of mouth, a more powerful weapon than any media. The price for using that weapon would eventually be to end up in 202. Mark had considered seriously the risk they were taking but had decided to go on. He had also decided that they should carry a capsule of cyanide in case of arrest to escape in death rather than ending up in 202. He would manage to find those capsules
The truth started to spread. It traveled on sidewalks, crossed at crosswalks, crisscrossed public squares, went up and down buildings, and from multiple mouths ended in multiple ears. 202 became the building of no hope for those who, declared guilty, entered that door to Hell under the guidance of the Police.
Who entered 202 had to pass through two stages. The first stage was the period of total sexual degradation realized by men and women expert perverts. The aim of the sojourn in that stage was to extirpate the last remnants of any form of human dignity from the subjected individual and transform him or her into a consenting animal that would have to execute anything that would be required.
The following stage was under the direction of chemical, mechanical, electrical, or electronic experts trained at breaking definitively any will that could eventually subsist in the mind of prisoners after Stage One. If any slight manifestation of resistance was still found in them, they were addressed directly to the ““Supreme””. The ““Supreme”” himself took care of these special cases. He thus demonstrated to the special units working for him his constant determination to preserve the Party from deviations. Dangerous individuals, qualified “terrorists,” saboteurs of the public morale by their words if not by their actions, could in no way be rendered impenitent to public life.
“We now know that these are no imaginary inventions,” Mark had recorded as he spoke to them. “That woman did not invent such details at the very moment of her death. This is the reason why I am going to give each of you a small capsule of cyanide. How I got them, don’t ask. In case of capture, we will avoid the danger of giving away names under torture. No one of us can affirm that he or she will resist torture. I think that none of us could resist the modern technology of torture. 202 exists to satisfy the pure sadism, there should be a stronger word, the pure sadism of the ‘“Supreme”’. I don’t want to look again like an atrocious intellectual but this is the Rome of Caligula or Nero, with the difference that the end of Rome was not the end of the world, while we are at the end of the world. Crack the capsule under your teeth and death is instantaneous.”
Mark gave each of his friends a very small glass capsule. “Put it where you can reach it in seconds without having to search for it, and carry it permanently on you. All of us are working for the ‘“Supreme”’ in the Government Complex at a relatively high level. Because of our position, we are certainly subjected to more scrutiny than common people.”
As by a natural reflex, the four got up from their seats and joined Mark who was standing in the middle of them. They all put hands upon hands.
“O.K” Mark said. “We swear that we kill ourselves before falling in the power of the Police or Security people. I swear!”
“I swear!” the others repeated one after the other.
There was one minute of silence. George broke it. “Enough philosophy for today!” he said. “What’s the plan?”
“Nothing specific,” Mark answered. “Keep on spreading the truth. You know that it is all we can do for now.”
Mark emerged as the real leader of the group. It is sometimes difficult to define exactly what makes leaders, as leaders can be of many types, from the spiritual to the political or the warmonger. But Mark had the something that makes a leader, and he had a secret tool at his service, the trunk. Only the group knew it. Only Mark and Nathalie had access to it.
Nobody was reading books, with the exception of some old intellectuals, survivors of an extinct species, who had hidden a few of them at the risk of being denounced.
There were two main reasons for that situation. The first was that books had totally disappeared from all public libraries by force of law and from Internet when Internet had disappeared by force of law. Even private and personal libraries had vanished by fear of being denounced and punished for political incorrectness. Reading books had been declared pernicious because of all the lies they contained, especially about history, art, and religion. In fact, the past history of humanity had been totally eradicated from education. Students had to learn that history began with the 21st century. Before, it was explained, were barbarous times unworthy and unhealthy to be looked at. The new century marked the beginning of a new area that was nowhere mentioned other than the “Happy Society, Century One.”
The second reason, if it were needed, was that there was no more paper to print books. Paper was one of those commodities that had vanished from daily life when rags, wood pulps, and other materials usually necessary for its manufacture became extinct and when specialists in the manufacture of paper had also become extinct. Those still in existence were on a very low level of production. In any case, the production was reserved for official use only.
Back in time, around the beginning of the century, the arts had already been eliminated from school curricula supposedly by lack of budget, and history by lack of enthusiasm for the subject. The only produced “pieces of graphic art” authorized by the ““Supreme”” were propaganda posters describing the beauties of the regime, printed on the few remaining rams of poster size paper jealously guarded in the government warehouses. The only produced pieces of music were official pieces to open, close, or emphasize declarations in ceremonies and other official occasions. They were broadcasted on television. They were executed in front of supposed enthusiastic audiences, which were added to the music by studio editing.
Nathalie was working for the Ministry of Propaganda, precisely in the History Section. Mark was in charge, among a few other tasks, of illustrating for the screen the subjects that were presented to him, mostly linear graphs rather than fairy drawings.
They met one day in the canteen of the Ministry, one of the rare places where food was still relatively edible, on the condition of not questioning the composition of the stew. It was always stew. Day after day stew, but when you were working in the Complex, you were supposed to come and have lunch at the canteen. “They” could verify your attendance by the presentation of your special Canteen Card when paying.
They met in front of the stew. Mark let her pass in front of him. When she turned her head to murmur, “Thank you,” they looked briefly at each other.
She had dark and penetrating eyes. Her dark hair was tied in a knot on top of her head but he could imagine it flowing on her shoulders when untied. There are things that are unexplainable. It was between them – according to the expression – love at first sight. But love at first sight was eventually dangerous when expressed in a canteen under permanent scrutiny by Security.
She was dressed in the Party outfit for women working in the Complex, dark blue skirt and blouse, almost as pleasant as a prison guard’s uniform. Mark had the same in the man’s version, and he was really looking like a prison guard. Security guards had the same uniform but of a different color. They were dark green.
Mark saw that she was wearing, on her left arm as required, the large armlet with the green four-leaf clover. On top of the clover were printed three yellow letters, HSP, which stood for Happy Society Party. They acknowledged that they were both officially members of the Party. They would have never obtained their types of jobs if they had not.
“I hope she believes in the Party as much as I believe in it myself,” Mark thought.
Being a member of the Party did not dispense one from scrutiny by Security, maybe even the reverse. If Security was visible in its dark green Ministry guards, it was invisible under the working clothes of members of one of those innumerable contractor companies working for the Ministry of Security. Because of the amplitude of the security system and the disappearance of a large part of the young male population, the government had not enough recruits for its own units. It was obliged to outsource many fractions of its activities to private corporations. In reality, those corporations were all part of the same corporation, but under different names. Working for Security was one of the few available jobs in town, but many of the remaining young people did not want to put on the guard’s uniform or they despised plain-clothes spying.
After presenting her card to pay, Nathalie went directly to a table where two chairs were unoccupied. Despite his first reflex motivated by his desire to talk to her, Mark judged it prudent not to go to her table. Three tables away, he found a table where he could sit. He was lucky. When he sat, he was looking straight at her table. What happened, Mark did not know. Their eyes got locked for a fraction of second. Everyone with some decent reasoning knows that time does not exist, and that a fraction of second could equal eternity. For Mark, it equaled eternity.
He was also lucky in the fact that the Ministry needed his services for several days. On his last day, he dared finally to go and sit at her table. She was alone at the table. “Do you allow me?” he asked in such way that several people could hear him. It was always useful to have an alibi.
“Please,” she answered graciously. While keeping eating, she said softly, not to be heard by the next table but with a contained smile, “What took you so long?”
“You know,” Mark answered.
“I know,” she said, softly again. “They are everywhere. Let’s talk banalities.”
Their first conversation ended on absolute banalities.
“Are you coming here for lunch tomorrow?” Mark asked when they got up to leave the table.
“Certainly,” she said.
She knew and Mark knew. The way he had cautiously finally acted to sit at her table was enough for her perceptive mind to prove his attitude toward the Party. She had taken the risk of saying, “They are everywhere.” It was more than enough to demonstrate her animosity against the Party. They both knew that they were on the same side. She dared not and he dared not imagine that they could have been on two different sides of the fence. She or he could have been a Party’s informer.
After their third and final meal in the canteen of the Complex, Mark’s commission was completed and he was out of legal reasons to come back there until the next commission. Before they got up, she leaned toward him and said in a very low voice, “I love you.” He answered in the same low voice, “Here is my address.” He managed to put in her hand a small piece of paper. “Tomorrow at noon. It’s a day off.”
She came the next day to Mark’s house at noon. They talked about nothing for a decent period time in front of the television. Then he said, “Let’s go make some tea in the kitchen. I still have some, not much but enough for two.” The television screen could not see them in the kitchen. Nor could it see them going down to the basement through the small door in the kitchen. They fell in each other arms. Without asking questions about each other, they made love on the sofa.
Nathalie intended to find out what was going to be the attitude of the party towards their situation. The silent rule was that employees at her level should not have relations with other people working at the same level, or assimilated like Mark. The rule was enounced as security precaution to avoid any indiscretion by inadvertence. Nathalie wanted to believe that her coming to Mark’s house was not illegal but she recognized that their position was made delicate by the fact that both worked only four or five steps under the ““Supreme””. Thus, it was realistic to suppose that they were going to be under strict scrutiny.
Nathalie came to Mark’s house irregularly on purpose. She even came disguised as a man to fool the street’s cameras. One month later, the telephone on her desk at the Ministry rang. She pushed the button to listen. A male voice came out, neither harsh nor sweet, something in the middle but with an intonation that was leaving no doubt on the level of the speaker. Nathalie froze.
“I am number three,” the voice said. “Good morning, Nathalie.”
Nathalie’s heart jumped on her chest when she heard “three.” She tried to control her voice to answer, “Yes, number three. Good morning.”
“Well, Nathalie, I have learned… We know that you go once in a while to Mark’s house. You also know that we do not encourage emotional or sentimental attractions among people working for us at your level in the Government Complex.”
“But, sir…”
“Do not interrupt me, please. If it is only a question of sex, you do not ignore that we have at your disposal our special houses where you can enjoy anything you wish, by males or females of your choice, with no strings attached and provided to you free. I can have a card put on your desk, any time. Of course, we cannot suppress totally old-fashioned sentimentality or some human desires. Cases as yours, as regrettable as they can be in many ways, especially among our high-ranking collaborators, can only be salvaged by using them to show our admirable understanding of human pathology.
“However, I must remind you that you are more than ever, with our project ‘New History,’ under your oath of silence concerning your work. Any break with anyone, you follow me, anyone, and be sure that we would learn of it, would have the most regrettable consequences for you. You are an exceptional member of the Party and your work is remarkable. I should add that it would be absolutely regrettable for the Party to lose you. It all depends on you and your behavior in the coming weeks or months.”
After a silence whose length was scrupulously calculated, the voice added, “I certainly would be, personally, very sorry if you had to go through rehabilitation in building 202. We all love you here. Be careful!”
There was a click. Nathalie remained seated, immobile, for more than one minute, her back as cold as ice, her forehead as hot as a raging furnace.
The threat was precise. It meant that every minute of her life, every one of her moves had already been and would be under permanent scrutiny. When she got up, her face was not expressing anxiety or fear but restrained anger. She could be watched from she did not know where. She said nothing, aware that any of her words were susceptible to be picked up by invisible microphones. She composed her face and went through the papers in front of her as if nothing had happened.
The five were always happy to get together. One or the other was always bringing a few bags of something called tea or coffee. It was not for the liquid itself, which never had any flavor, but for the principle of bringing something and the pleasure of sharing. And the conversations, if always muted in their tones of voices, were always animated, even when running on nothing. Nathalie and George were usually the most talkative, George with news he grabbed from the outside world, Nathalie with her stories about the past or the present set in an historical perspective.
“The ‘“Supreme”’ has asked my department,” Nathalie announced, “to come out with a brochure for schools entitled ‘New History.’ It will explain why, and how, he found himself obliged to take the helm of the country according to the wish of his father, the General-President. ‘Simple, direct, and devoid of possible objections’ was his order. It’s pathetic! The ‘“Supreme”’ acts exactly as if the educational system was functioning properly. He also seems to ignore that we have already re-written history several times.”