Rebuilding After Big Brother: A 1984 Story

[DrDerp]

Camden Town, London

Blair Graham watched her son Mark walk off to the park to meet with his friends. He was starting to get to that age where he wanted as little to do with his parents as possible. Though it hurt, she didn't take it personally.

But wasn't what hurt the most.

He thought she was stupid.

Her own son looked at her like she was an idiot. Ever since Mark became old enough to begin understanding the system his mother lived under, ever since he knew what came before the liberation, he looked at her like she was a complete moron. How could she believe all the things she did when she was younger? How could she live so long barely having any life of her own?

How could she believe that war was peace, freedom was slavery, and ignorance was strength?

Mark gave her the most disdainful look whenever she accidentally slipped into Newspeak while talking to him, asking her what in hell she was trying to say before asking if she knew how ridiculous she sounded. More than once, she had to keep herself from breaking into tears until he was out of earshot.

It caused her so much pain to admit that she saw herself much the same way. She was a newly minted Outer Party member when the liberation occurred, working in Miniplenty. She remembered seeing the men in parachutes landing in the street and engaging soldiers in firefights. She remembered the air strikes. She remembered seeing officers of the Thought Police being taken away in handcuffs while medical posts were set up for the prisoners at the Ministry of Love.

Most of all, Blair remembered how she felt once it all became clear, when the truth came out.

None of it was real. Big Brother. Eurasia. Eastasia. The war. All of it. For fifty years, Britain was ruled by a police state unlike any other who kept the populace in line by concocting epic narratives about a struggle between good and evil. Oceania was supposed to be multi-continental superstate participating in massive battles with its enemies across the world, its shores protected by floating fortresses.

But it was just a single island bordering Europe. And while Oceania was frozen in time, so much had passed in the rest of the world. What Blair understood to be the inspiration for Eurasia, the Soviet Union, had fallen. An amazing new method of communication had been in the past few decades. Technology had developed at a breakneck pace. Rockets had gone into space, humanity had set foot on the moon.

The world had passed Oceania by.

She felt like her entire life up to that point was for nothing. Still, she felt so fortunate that her son was born after Oceania collapsed. Mark never heard the Party's slogans, never aspired to join its ranks. Though she could tell he held some contempt for what she used to believe, the idea of turning her over to the authorities was unthinkable to him. He grew up in a much freer world, one that was so much more colorful.

The way Mark looked at her sometimes caused her a great deal of pain. But Blair actually drew a great deal of hope from his attitude.

He wanted to be nothing like who she was when she was young. And she felt that to be a very respectable goal.

 

[DrDerp]

The Fens, East Midlands

Doctor Ibanez slowly strolled through the ward on the way to his workspace. Large human-shaped bags were lying on over fifteen slabs while medical staff in protective gear looked over them. The bags reeked of bog water and mud as well as decaying meat. An orderly, Johannes, came in through the double doors, another body strapped onto a slab that was wheeled inside.

"How many are still in that pit?" Ibanez asked.

"Twenty," Johannes replied. "Biohazard team is tryin' to wrench the rest of em free."

Ibanez gagged. He didn't want to picture what that implied. What was in those bags was already stomach churning to look at. Forcing down his nausea, he unzipped the body bag and found himself looking at a somewhat well preserved cadaver. A male guessing by the facial features. They'd need a tooth or two to find out exactly how old he was. The ragged jumpsuit he wore was a faded blue, identifying the victim as Outer Party.

The Fens were used as an execution ground by the Thought Police operating in Leicester. Their crematoria often broke down and so they drove their victims to the marshes before killing them. So far, every body seemed to have the same injury that gave away the cause of death, a bullet wound in the back of the head. Autopsies revealed that the bullets were fired from a pistol at close range. And just like with the other corpses, the one Ibanez was looking over had a hole in the back of the head.

Finding out exactly who this was would be a much bigger mystery. The records of the Thought Police were thorough but every other record of the people being looked over by the forensic team would've been wiped. Anyone who knew them would've been forbidden to speak of them lest they commit Crimethink. Even if their associates were still alive, finding anyone who could identify the bodies was going to be incredibly difficult.

There were forensics labs all over Britain doing the same gruesome, heart wrenching work. At least in Cambodia, where his favorite professor once worked helping identify victims of the genocide, there were more than just the Khmer Rouge's own execution records to go off of. People still remembered and talked about murdered loved ones. They didn't perform the kind of mental gymnastics that let them forget the fact they ever knew someone snatched by the Thought Police.

Vaporized. That was the word used to describe those who'd been disappeared. There'd be no evidence of them having ever existed if the Ministry of Love was thorough enough. The mere fact that this particular detachment didn't have access to a reliable crematoria was a miracle.

Who knew how many people from London, Birmingham or Leeds would never be identified?

Who knew how high the Party's victim count truly was?

 

[DrDerp]

Staff Housing, UN Britain Mission HQ, London

Tarabai Gulati yawned and stretched, taking one last look out the window before heading for bed. London was brighter at night than it was just five years ago, but it was nothing like the city she grew up in. She saw pictures of what London looked come nightfall when the Party was still in power as well as the first years of the UN mission. It looked almost completely deserted. No restaurants, no stores, no nightlife, nothing. Anyone caught outside by the authorities was shot on sight.

Growing up in Mumbai, she'd found the lack of noise jarring. There were businesses operating now. People were going out, having fun. But there was still so little going on once the sun went down. Tarabai heard about how long it took for the locals to get into the habit of going outside for anything other than work.

As disturbing as it was to see a city where the people had to live such bleak lives for so long, she couldn't help but think how weird it was that India was now one of the world powers. She heard many stories from her grandparents about the days when Britain ruled the subcontinent. She found it so astounding that a little island was able to keep so much territory and so many people under its control for so long.

When Oceania formed in the late 1950s and cut off its links with the rest of the world, there was a gaping hole in the world economy that India went to work filling. The idea of surpassing their former colonial master was one that made its people strive to make India as strong as possible in as many ways as possible. Her grandfather was proud to have worked building the massive interstate highways system that connected every part of the country. Her grandmother took to her job as a schoolteacher with gusto.

India had also established itself as a leader among Britain's former colonies. The British Empire fell apart without London to guide it, and from Southern Africa to Southeast Asia, nation after nation was born. New Delhi served as one of the capitals of the international grouping known just as 'the Commonwealth,' which included Nigeria, Singapore, Malaysia, Uganda, Tanzania, Botswana, and Jamaica.

And now, India was taking part in the efforts to help Britain heal after being in the thrall of the Party for so long. The former colonial subject was now one of the world's major players. The shoe truly was on the other foot.

From what she'd seen of propaganda made by the Ministry of Truth, Oceania liked to sell the idea that it was just as large as the British Empire to its people. One of the propaganda pieces that really got her attention showed Oceania having occupied India's Western seaboard after seizing it from Eurasian forces.

Funny, her mother never mentioned seeing any Oceanian soldiers in Mumbai or posters of Big Brother. So either it never happened or her mom practiced Doublethink.

With a sigh, she tucked herself into bed and got a book that was sitting on her nightstand.

 

[DrDerp]

New British National Library, London

Prum Nhean was just a boy when Pol Pot's mass slaughter began. He remembered little of life in Cambodia back then, his family fleeing into Thailand and then moving to Canada. But his parents and those of his family who survived had no intention to let the horrors they beheld become forgotten. They spoke of a culture being gutted by its own government, of the wise and curious being put to death after being subjected to horrendous agony. Of people of all ages being shot into holes by the dozens as they begged for mercy.

When he thought of evil, it was Pol Pot's face that first came to mind. Now, the faces associated with the word were those of the former Inner Party. Black suited demons in human form.

When the scale of what was done to Britain's culture had started to be revealed, all the stories he had heard rushed back to him. It wasn't just the destruction of Oxford, Cambridge and the great libraries that shook him. It was how the Party sought to erase the memory of any writer, musician, philosopher, or cultural figure that existed before its time. Even the Nazis would have been in awe of what the Party had achieved. Pol Pot would have looked upon its work and felt inferior, like an amateur. Filling the bookshelves with tomes would only do so much.

Which was why when UNESCO was screaming for archivists, teachers, and librarians to help oversee the creation of new knowledge centers, Prum sent his credentials in library science as soon as possible. His family understood what he intended to do and made no attempts to dissuade him. His father gave a sad smile when he told them all at the dinner table.

"We know what it is like when a nation must reclaim its memory, its soul," his father said mournfully. "The task will be a great one, but I know that you will not let it cow you."

Prum contacted his family back in Toronto whenever he could, either through a phone call or by mail. It took a month for them to respond once he sent a letter describing the cultural damage he witnessed firsthand, with his mother stating that they needed the time to find words capable of describing their horror.

"We feared a great deal," she wrote. "But we were stunned by what you told us. Forgive us for taking so long to get back to you. It exceeded everything we thought possible."

The rest of the letter wasn't as dour, but along with it came a small carving of Buddha meditating. Prum kept it on his desk. It attracted the attention of quite a few of those who visited the library, who asked who the 'kneeling man' was.

Just the fact that he was being asked this question gave him the strength to keep working.

 

[DrDerp]

Kensington, London

Francine Oxton used to be the star of her Anti-Sex League cell. She was the loudest to denounce non-proc as a cancer upon the nation. Sex was supposed to be the means by which the population was regenerated and enlarged, nothing more. She even looked forward to the idea of artsem becoming the sole means of reproduction. There was something pure about it to her. She wouldn't know specifically who impregnated her, and she didn't want to know. Francine believed that it was better that way. It would be as thought Party itself sired her children, and there'd be no need to involve herself with someone who may turn out to be a Thought Criminal. Her faith in the Party wouldn't waver an ounce.

Ignorance was strength, she believed.

Oh how she would laugh at her younger self if she could. She was sixteen when NATO defeated Oceania and the UN took over. As the deluge of propaganda stopped and she could actually gather her thoughts, she understood just what kind of life the Party did to her and so many other girls. It channeled the urges they all had once they began to transition to womanhood toward leader worship, supplication at the alter of authority.

Francine remembered throwing up when she had the revelation. The Party didn't just demand her obedience, it demanded her lust. The other girls in her cell came to the same conclusion. As they grew into their twenties, they began to speak to each other of what they'd been through. They had the strength to speak of how the Party took advantage of them, how it demanded every ounce of their passion while giving back nothing.

Then, a year ago, they had an idea of how to best profane the ideals they once wholeheartedly believed while also making money.

The brothel Francine worked at was a mockery of everything she and her former cell members once held dear and they wouldn't have it any other way. On the wall beside the desk where she worked two days a week as a receptionist was the establishment's creed.

Passion is Strength, Prudishness is Stupid, Pleasure is Life.

Francine grinned broadly when a crowd of guys not much older than her walked through the door.

"Hello gentlemen, and welcome to Miniluv. You looking to be bad boys?"

An olive skinned man returned her smile.

"Oh, we intend to." He looked at the brothel's three 'principles.'

"Words of wisdom if I've ever seen any."

Her grin became more sultry.

"Doubleplusgood. The girls will start you off with a bit of 'Ingsuc' as part of our monthly deal. And just remember." She gestured to a big picture of a young woman with aviator glasses, a black hat with a purple feather in it and a stern expression.

"Big Bitch is watching you."

Authors note: I regret nothing.

 

[DrDerp]

Cleveland, Ohio

Murphy Barrows undid the top of the pill bottle and shook it until two of the turquoise capsules fell into his hand. He then grabbed a frosty glass of orange juice and let the taste mask the texture of the pills.

Murphy wasn't the first soldier in his family. He was the first POW though. His father came close to having that unfortunate honor during the Hong Kong Intervention. He'd been separated from his squad while pursuing a group of Red Guard that were reported harassing locals in a village, with the search extending into the nighttime. One of the girls in the group ambushed him from behind some bushes and rammed him in the stomach with a rifle butt. She was about to smack him in the face with it when one of his squad members put a burst from an M16 into her torso. His father was helped to his feet as the girl bled out.

Murphy's father told him about how the girl looked at him throughout the whole ordeal as well as how the other Red Guards he encountered behaved. She seemed almost gleeful to have caught him. "She was like a six year old that just caught a butterfly in a jar," Murphy was told. "Like she wanted to show me off to her friends. The twinkle in her eyes told me all I needed to know about what she was thinking. She had some bad shit in store for me. She was about fifteen or something if I had to guess." His father served in Hong Kong for two years and had plenty of encounters with Mao's young zealots. His experiences made it difficult for him to notice that the woman who'd become Murphy's mother had fallen for him. She knew of what he went through during the Intervention, what he did, but she wanted him regardless. His father had been undergoing counseling since Murphy was just a boy. "I've put kids in the ground Murph. You never really put it behind you."

The Oceanian militia members that held Murphy prisoner for a week reminded him a lot of the Red Guards his father had told him about. He was a paratrooper taking part in the Midlands Push who got blown off course and landed near a small town where the militia members took him prisoner. He had to give them credit where credit was due. He thought he'd camouflaged his hiding place well enough. But he didn't know that he'd wandered right into the middle of their patrol path. He ran into the whole squad all at once and he was out on his ass within seconds.

His captors were gleefully sadistic fucks. They had gotten the drop on a 'capitalist invader' and they were going to get as much fun out of their power over him as they could. The beatings were just the start. They'd scream Party slogans at him till his ears rang, slap him when he looked like he was about to fall asleep and only gave him small amounts of water what he was certain they'd pissed in at least once. They tried getting him to talk, trying to find out where the rest of his paratrooper unit was, what the next phase of the offensive would be, who was in charge.

It frequently crossed Murphy's mind that they might get it into their heads to torture him to death. Their commander, a boy who seemed on the cusp of manhood, seemed to think that would be a fun idea. The redhead whipped him in the back with electrical cables during his last day in captivity. Murphy was barely conscious when the rescue team broke into the house he was being kept in, forcing the militia squad to surrender. He was carted off by medics and had fully regained consciousness in a hospital bed at a medical center in London. He was sent stateside after being deemed fit for travel

Murphy was only a POW for a week, but Oceania left its mark on him. The scars, the nightmares, the need for antidepressants. He nearly developed an infection from the cuts they inflicted on him. Talking about his experiences with his therapist and the weekly VA meetings did a lot of good for him though. He didn't know what became of the band that'd captured him and he frankly didn't care to find out.

He had enough of those sadists for one lifetime.

 

[DrDerp]

Whitechapel, London

Soichiro Kitamura was as off-put as he was fascinated. In the ten minutes since the psychologist had gone out for a walk, he'd found no less than three shoddily constructed bars and two brothels. There was also a an ad-hoc casino operating from a two story building he presumed to be an old warehouse.

While the former Kyoto dweller found his surroundings repugnant on a certain level, he was mentally jotting down every detail.

What he was seeing wouldn't just be of use to his UN employers, it would provide much material for the paper he intended to publish once he returned to Japan.

Part of the reason he volunteered to help the UN rebuild Great Britain was because of his own theories on how people act in when forces of rectitude are suddenly removed. He had been just a pre-teen when he saw the Berlin Wall come down, how the people acted when fear of the Stasi had evaporated.

He was still a freshman at Waseda when the Ingsoc regime fell to NATO. He voraciously sought after every scrap of information regarding how the populace reacted to the fall of the government. Soichiro wrote his doctoral dissertation on the lingering psychological damage the British population would be experiencing in the near future. His now fiancé Hanabi found his choice of topic morbid, and that was compared to what she'd previously seen him studying. All it took was one look at his research notes for her to demand that he go see a baseball match at the Tokyo Dome with her.

"You need to think of something other than this."

He contacted Hanabi frequently. taking care to leave out the details that she found too grim. Soichiro wasn't bothered though. There were plenty who wanted to hear about what he was seeing.

The topic of his research paper was the return of vice to Britain after the Party fell. He'd heard about how violent crime became common in the first few months after NATO took control. With the surveillance infrastructure down, people were getting even with suspected informants for the Thought Police or even those they suspected to be members of the Thought Police.

But what truly interested him was the return of other less than savory trades.

Gambling, drugs, weapons sales, sex work. Parts of many of Britain's urban areas reminded him of stories he heard of Hong Kong's wilder days, of the favelas in Brazil. International criminal groups seized on the opportunities the Party's fall created as well as domestic ones.

It was Soichiro's theory that these conditions came as a result of the unparalleled amount of control the Party had. Oceania's people had been under unprecedentedly tight control from a central authority for decades. The Party demanded the sort of moral rectitude that religious fundamentalists would have only dreamed of. Nothing was supposed to be a sort of joy other than the Party. And once that guarantor of extreme moral purity was gone, people began exploring long suppressed base desires. Indulgence in food, drink, narcotics and sex could now be exercised without the fear of such severe punishment. It made a lot of problems for the UN authorities but provided him a lot of research material into how human beings function without the presence of such overpowering forces of rectitude.

Was it simply rebellion? Was it an effort to catch up on passed opportunities?

Soichiro didn't know, but he intended to find out.

He was, however, absolutely certain Hanabi wouldn't want to read a single page of his paper.

 

[DrDerp]

Le Havre, France

Nadia used to be scared of the place her mother came from. Oceania was a place bereft of joy, where hidden eyes watched you every second of every day. The face of Big Brother haunted her nightmares growing up. But as she and her siblings got older and they got more used to a UN controlled Britain, their curiosity grew with each passing year. Now, they waited for their parents to come down the breakfast table where a pamphlet was laid down. It was advertising guided tours around London. Her older brothers, Cyril and Max as well as her younger sister Jeanette were all standing her the table.

Nadia and rest of the children in her family were half British on the mother Ada's side. She and three other Outer Party members fled across the Channel in a boat in 1995 out of sheer desperation, landing on the outskirts of Le Havre after two days at sea. After nervously approaching the locals for help, they were given housing while being questioned by French intelligence about what they'd escaped. The revelation that there was no war hit all everyone in her mother's group hard.

Ada took to learning French with gusto, eventually landing herself a job with the port authority. She met her future husband Mathias during a Bastille Day celebration, marrying him two years later and creating quite the respectable brood.

Their mother looked at the pamphlet before passing it to Mathias.

"Are you suggesting we take a vacation there?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Lots of people are going," said Max. "Our family's got history there. It's a part of us."

"It doesn't have to be," Ada replied. "If you want to go with your father, that's fine. But I won't be going."

"Mom..." Jeanette said somberly.

"There is nothing for me in Britain. The others and I fled because we wanted to go somewhere else. Anywhere else. In France I found a better life. It is here that I found your father, it is here that I had a family the Party couldn't touch, and it is here I shall rest. This is the place I truly started to live."

"And it's here that you've found such a fulfilling sex life." said Cyril. His siblings looked at him, shocked. Ada raised an eyebrow. Mathias put a hand on a hand on his wife's shoulder and kissed her cheek. Ada giggled.

"You should be happy your mother is so lively. It's the reason you even stand here."

"I know," Cyril said. "I heard you and mom while you were in the middle of making Jeanette."

His little sister smacked him on the back of the head. Ada blushed.

"I do admit, we could've been quieter."

 

[DrDerp]

Readers note: I apologize if my depiction of how training new cooks at a restaurant works doesn't reflect what actually happens. I've never worked in the kitchen of a restaurant.

The Farmer's Table kitchen, Birmingham

Edmund Cork frantically looked at the cookbook on the table before turning his head to the dish in front of him. The sausages looked well cooked, the mashed potatoes fluffy and buttery, and the peas were nearly spotless. Still, he'd made a good looking Bangers and Mash only to find out he'd undercooked something and ruined the dish.

His supervisor, Jonas, was staring at the dish.

"Looks good enough to me." Edmund started to sweat.

"Only one way to tell." Jonas picked up a fork and knife then cut into one of the sausages. There were one or two pink spots but they were pretty small. He lifted a piece of sausage into his mouth and began chewing.

"Well," Edmund asked. Jonas swallowed and gave the thumbs up.

"I think you got it." Edmund smiled.

"Thanks."

"But that was an easy one," Jonas told his trainee. "You haven't done Beef Wellington yet, have you?" Edmund shook his head.

"Ah. That one's going to be very involved."

"I...I won't let that scare me."

'You don't need to be afraid of a dish, bud. You just need to get used to it."

Edmund was a new hire and was still getting the hang of cooking the dishes on the menu of the "Farmer's Table." It was a pub opened up by former Outer Party members who had some talent at cooking in 2007 and had been doing well over the past seven years. It wasn't just the expression of their mutual interest in cooking, it was a step towards reviving English cuisine. The food of the average Oceanian was very basic. Even the Inner Party didn't have much access to luxurious foods as part of the effort to make sure they didn't get too used to luxury. Any Inner Party member who dined on things like prime beef, pheasant or the like more than a few times a year would have been removed as a potential threat to the discipline of the Inner Party as a whole.

It still stunned Jonas how the kind of food taken for granted by so much of the world was considered high class simply because of how the Party controlled the palate of Oceania's people. Oceanian cuisine, a term that still made him smirk, was incredibly spartan. With the exception of what the Inner Party had access to, food was nothing more than a means of prolonging a worker's energy. It was fuel and trying to make it anything more meant being denounced as a Thought Criminal.

Food nourished not just the body, but the soul. And if British cuisine could be revived, a bit more of Britain's soul would be restored as well.

 

[DrDerp]

Interrogation Room, United Nations Detention Unit, The Hague

Ellen looked up from her papers as the guards brought in an old man wearing prison garb. The man's face was completely unreadable but she still caught it. That flicker of contempt that she'd seen so many times in so many other interviewees. However, there was something else too. He seemed to be looking right through her even as he was sat at the table across from her. She was nothing to him, this man who responsible for the torture and murder who knew how many people.

In spite of his age, O'Brien radiated danger born not from his psychical strength, but his utter indifference to human life.

"Mister O'Brien, I'm Ellen Zhou. New York Times." She held out her hand, which O'Brien just stared at.

"I'm told you had questions," he said flatly. Ellen silently bristled.

"Yes. We're doing a collection of interviews of former Inner Party members for a special issue. The public finds you and your fellows to be...intriguing."

"Oh?"

"They've heard about what the Party was up to for almost a decade but it's the first time we've gotten the chance to hear straight from you and your colleagues. You're a very tight lipped bunch. Said nothing to the press when the trials were going on."

"Our legal teams advised against saying too much. That and we had no desire to speak to you anyway. We are aware of our reputation and even whilst on trial, we savored it. We must've seemed like such monsters when the trials were being covered."

"That's putting it nicely. What changed with you though? Almost every request for an interview with an Inner Party member was rejected by the member in question even after the sentences were given. We've gotten no firsthand testimony from any of you that wasn't broadcast during the trials."

"I see no difference in what may happen should I accept or decline your request. I need something to break up the monotony too."

"So you're doing this because you're bored?"

"In a matter of speaking, yes."

A guard came in with two cups of coffee and set them down on the table. Ellen turned on her phone's recording function.

"Where do you wish to start?" O'Brien asked.

"A lot of the psychologists who examined Inner Party members said that they believed themselves to have made the perfect dictatorship."

"Obviously we didn't otherwise I wouldn't be here." O'Brien replied.

"Yes, that's true."

"But they are correct. Your psychologists. Mistakes can be the greatest teachers one has and we looked to the mistakes of past regimes to learn what to avoid. And what we found was that the ruling class let themselves grow fat off their wealth. It took Meer years for some, decades and even centuries for others. But it always happened. They separated themselves from those they ruled over and wallowed in hedonism while the masses grew more and more discontented. We were students of history because we couldn't have ruled for so long if we didn't."

O'Brien sneered.

"It shouldn't have taken so long for someone to figure out the common denominator in why such governments fell. The opulent obliviousness the French aristocracy basked was a trap that had caught them years before the first shot of the revolution was fired. It was the same for the Tsars of Russia, the emperors of China, so many. Even the Soviet leadership, with all their talk of rejecting the trappings of royalty, met and lived in a palace. They lost focus. They expected the rest of the populace to live in austerity while they let opulence lower their guard."

"And the Inner Party had no intention of letting that happen to them?"

"Not for a moment. We knew that we would have to live by a similar shortage regime as the rest of the population. It is as I told a prisoner I once interrogated, the stronger the Party becomes the more subtle its power is. Our power is hidden yet all encompassing. We had no reason to distract ourselves with pleasure and we couldn't allow it. We couldn't allow ourselves to become overly indulgent because it would lead to indiscipline. No overly luxurious homes, no gourmet foods, no extravagant liquors, no harems of Proles or Outer Party members."

"But there were those who stuck their snouts a bit too deeply into the trough, weren't there."

"Regrettably. I remember one man I punished a few months before the invasion. He'd have Outer Party women brought off the street and to his home where he'd fuck them day and night. Have them serving as his maids. He was half dead when he left my custody. I was so angry at him, so disappointed."

"I'm guessing the women themselves were inconsequential," Ellen said.

"Indeed. He acquired too much a taste for pleasure. Men like him were a contagion, Miss Zhou. He could've gotten other Inner Party members into the habit. He could have been the cause for a lapse in discipline. The Inner Party was to be Oceania's brain and this man was the equivalent of syphilis. He wouldn't have caused harm immediately but left untreated..."

"He could've caused brain damage."

"Exactly. He needed to be 'treated' immediately, lest he infect other Inner Party members."

"Are you saying you never 'played around' with the women working for you?"

"I could not risk it becoming a habit. You see, Miss Zhou, by holding ourselves to such standards we made sure we never dropped our guard, never neglected our duties. We were stronger than any who came before us because we were willing to live under such conditions, subject ourselves to deprivation of the pleasures so many believe are the right of the powerful. We looked to history and knew what such idle hedonism would bring us."

"And did this view grow stronger when the Soviets fell?"

"How could it not? The Soviet leadership simply wallowed in the power their positions gave them but were utterly blind to the fact that their dominion was rotting away a little more every day. They had made the same mistakes as their predecessors did, growing fat off the bounty of their empire while paying no attention to what was eating away at its foundation. They have no one to blame but themselves for their collapse." O'Brien grew terse.

"It shouldn't have taken a nuclear disaster for them to wake up to what was happening. Our equipment detected the radiation given off by the Chernobyl explosion. We heard of what had happened and considered what may happen should a worst case scenario become reality." The former Inner Party member grit his teeth.

"Their ignorance would have been the death of the entire continent."

"I guess you could say that in this case, ignorance wasn't strength?"

"Yes. Yes, you could."

 

[DrDerp]

Nanjing, Republic of China

Professor Fu Xinyi took a quick detour from her route home to visit a spot she frequently visited. Near the tomb of Sun Yat-Sen on Purple Mountain was a monument to the victims of the Cultural Revolution who came from Nanjing. It resembled a giant scroll carved from black stone with the names those killed by the Red Guards during the course of Mao's final major social campaign.

Before the CCP caved in on itself. Before the Kuomintang returned. The names of two of her uncles were on this monument. She didn't know if she was fortunate or not, but she'd spoken to one of the men responsible for their deaths. A broken man, one hollowed out by shame. He was far from the last she'd spoken too.

She'd spoken to former Red Guards and their children, providing her research to the UN administration in London. There were many disturbing similarities to the Year Zero campaigns Mao undertook and the attempt to erase history in Oceania. The past was to be consigned to the flames, those who dared to entertain the notion of a Britain before the Party were to be killed. To imagine Oceania before the Party was to imagine it without the Party.

Just as to be nostalgic for a China before Mao was to think of one without him. That very line of thinking was something many of her interviewees committed murder in order to stamp out. There was no new China without the Communist Party, and they'd destroy any who dared suggest otherwise. It was these scars that Professor Xinyi was hoping to help heal, bit by bit.

In helping Britain heal, China hoped to heal itself. What they'd been through was too similar for her to think that nothing she learned could be applied to helping restore British culture.

 

[DrDerp]

Interrogation Room, United Nations Detention Unit, The Hague

Ellen drummed her fingers on the table but looked up when her newest interviewee was brought in. This man was in his fifties, balding and with spectacles over his green eyes. He wore the same prison jumpsuit as O'Brien but his appearance wasn't the only difference from the older man. He seemed a bit more resigned than his former Inner Party comrade. O'Brien, despite his seeming emotionlessness, appeared entirely in control of his outward appearance. He let her know nothing he didn't want her to.

This man's body language was much more unconsciously expressive.

"Patrick Danforth," she said.

"Yes," he replied dryly. He took a set opposite her and took a drink of water from the cup in front of him.

"Crisp," he said. "Bit of a biting chill, actually."

"I thought the Inner Party resigned themselves to having blander lives than other ruling classes," Ellen replied. "That's what O'Brien tells me." Patrick gave a smile that looked like the corners of his mouth were being pulled apart by fish hooks.

"We allowed ourselves some extravagance. Not much though."

"So I've heard."

"I assume this part of the conversation won't appear in the released version of the interview."

"Not unless you want it to."

"Do what you like. It makes no difference."

"Thank you. Now, I'm hoping you'd help me understand how the Inner Party viewed the proles." Patrick raised an eyebrow.

"A simple question. What does a farmer think of the oxen that plow his fields?"

"A tool," Ellen replied.

"Precisely. A means of attaining what one desires. A means of producing what one consumes."

"And when they can't work anymore you consume them?"

"In a metaphorical sense only, I promise you. An Inner Party member who partook in cannibalism would have been removed immediately."

"So the Proles were just animals to you?"

"Yes. We looked at them the same way a farmer looks at their chickens or pigs. We were only concerned with them producing enough to ensure our own needs were provided for."

"They're branching out into new things now," Ellen said. "Have been since the liberation." Patrick grew terse.

"You didn't do it."

"Didn't what?"

"You didn't liberate the Proles, we did."

Ellen put her head in her right hand.

"Care to explain?" Patrick sighed.

"You disappoint me. You understand how we saw them but you fail to understand the damage you inflicted. The Proles were content while we were in power. Do you know why?"

"Humor me."

We expected nothing of them one wouldn't expect of a farm animal. So long as quotas were met, we were happy to live simple, docile lives. They worked, they relaxed, they bred. That was all we expected of them and they were content. There was no need to burden their feeble minds with complicated ideas or notions that weren't immediately relevant to their everyday lives. We handled those matters so they wouldn't have to worry themselves with anything beyond their basic needs. We made them an Eden and were content to let them live in it."

Patrick gave her a humorless smile.

"And NATO was the snake that tempted Adam and Eve with the apple. By removing us, you removed the walls that kept unwanted complications out of their lives. You cursed them with ambition, discontent. They couldn't be satisfied anymore with what we allowed them. You believe us to be cruel but you set their paradise ablaze. Before the 'liberation' they want for nothing. Now they look to the rest of the world and become so horrendously demanding."

"They were given the choice to determine their own future, how their lived their lives." Patrick put his face in his hands.

"You still fail to understand."

"What am I missing?" He grit hs teeth.

"That what you see as a blessing was in fact a curse!" he said irritably. "They had the bliss only those who were certain of how their lives would unfold could ever experience! We freed them from uncertainty, from fear that their choices could lead to a negative outcome! We gave them a life where they felt secure in the knowledge that every day, every week, every year would be exactly like the last! They had nothing to fear!" He was panting but soon collected himself.

"But you robbed them of their bliss. No matter what happens now, you've let uncertainty back into their lives."

"I take it you regret nothing about how you treated them?"

"Of course. In fact, I feel somewhat fortunate."

"And why is that?"

"I don't have to clean up the mess the 'liberation' made."

 

[DrDerp]

This chapter's gonna be a lot more comedic than the last few.

Meeting Room 9, UN Britain Mission HQ, London

Tina Langford adjusted her tie one more time before the had the recording equipment set up for the podcast.

"Hello, I'm Kate Henshaw and joining us for the Morning Brew Podcast is Tina Langford, press czar for the UN Britain Mission."

"You don't need to be that formal."

"Sorry, bit of humor. So, first things first. We're told that there are plans for Britain to have a largely green power grid."

"Yes. We're getting nearly three thousand wind turbines a month and we're setting them up largely in inland areas but they're also going to be used in coastal regions too. We're working to integrate wind and solar power into a new national grid."

"Several environmental groups have still found contaminants in rivers and streams though, just not at the levels they used to be."

"The Lakes region in particular was a really big mess, a lot of industrial runoff going into the water supply. We've dealt with the worst of the waterborne illnesses that were huge problems in the beginning, and we have the people who put in the purification systems to thank for that but the amount of lead in the major lakes is still very troubling."

"Can you explain?"

"We are still finding water from lakes and rivers carrying high amounts of industrial chemicals in smaller channels that are hard to find. Sometimes we'll find a stagnant pool of water that's got very high amounts of effluent from paper mills for example."

"Thank you, we'll get back to that in a bit. Now, there's a certain question that I know you and your staff are familiar with..." Tina sighed.

"For the last time, Pornosec will not be a part of the provisional British government," she said firmly. "There were no such plans, there are no such plans, and there will be no such plans."

"Oh, I'm aware of that, but people in some other countries are hoping to create their own equivalent of Pornosec."

"I...excuse me?

"One such petition in the United States has reached over five hundred thousand signatures, another in Canada nearly three hundred thousand."

"What?" Tina ask flatly.

"The Hungarian parliament is weighing in on legislation regarding the creation of a government owned adult entertainment company this fall. In India this hasn't gotten to the point where it's being considered by lawmakers but it seems to be gaining traction."

"And how many people in India want their own version of Pornosec?"

"Five million last time the signature count was updated." Tina let out a long sigh.

"All these people want there to be government run porn outlets?"

"Well, there are those who argue that from a free market perspective, there's nothing inherently wrong with government participation in the adult entertainment industry."

There was a brief pause.

"Would you like for us to return to the environmental questions?"

"Please."

 

[DrDerp]

Author's note: I'm not Irish, I just saw this as a possible outcome of the Party taking power.

When the Party rose to power and isolated its territory from the rest of the world, the power dynamic in Europe and across the world had shifted. There was now a second threat to the NATO aligned countries of Western Europe. France, the Netherlands and Denmark were all within range of military assault by Oceanian forces if the Cold War went hot. The prospect of attack from two directions was a chilling likely one to NATO's commanders. The French, Dutch, and Danes all enacted mandatory military service policies.

The effects in the wider world were just as startling. The sun had set on an empire that spanned a quarter of the globe when the century began. Colonies were cut off from London's directives and independence movements seized their chance. Some took over peacefully, others by force. America, the USSR, and the world's newest rising power, India, became heavily involved in regions that were once ruled by the British crown. One such instance was the pro-Soviet coup in Tehran which led to Iran becoming part of the Warsaw Pact.

One particular result of the Party's takeover was Ireland becoming a NATO member in 1959. The Emerald Isle received multiple waves of refugees fleeing Oceania after the Ingsoc regime manifested, integrating them into Irish society. Talks began with Dublin and Washington about military cooperation in the mid 1950s and the idea of joining NATO was openly discussed. The Irish met all requirements for membership in the alliance and became the last member to join it in the 1950s.

Ireland instituted a 'national service' policy not long after and integrated its command structure into the NATO umbrella. This didn't meet much resistance from the Irish public given the threat posed by Oceania. Its military underwent a complete overhaul, with its aircraft, tanks, and ships all being updated. Training was streamlined, and a special forces command based off the SAS and Green Berets was created. Patrols in the Irish Sea were constant, escorting Oceanian refugees whenever possible and keeping a lookout for any signs of hostile military activity.

In the meantime, Ireland benefitted from integrating the thousands of highly educated Britons fleeing Big Brother. Doctors, engineers, architects and professors were all given jobs as soon as possible. The standard of living underwent a significant and sustained rise throughout the decades. All the while, the threat posed by Oceania was never far from people's minds. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a single question was on the minds of the Irish public.

"When?"

In 2004, when that question finally got an answer, Ireland played a major part in the fall of the Ingsoc government. Special forces units sabotaged communications relays. Irish aircraft pulverized tank columns and ammo dumps. And its soldiers took town after town, with the capture of Liverpool being celebrated by the burning of the Party flag by members of the Twenty Fourth Infantry Battalion.

 

[DrDerp]

One of the most dramatic results of the Party's takeover was how the former most prized possession of the British Empire came to possess such a powerful presence on the world stage. India had not even been independent for a decade when Oceania came into being and the effects on international politics became quickly apparent. Prime Minister Nehru made one of the most famous speeches of the twentieth century mere weeks after the Party took power. "The crown has been shattered," he told the Indian public from his office in New Delhi. "Where the jewels land and if they crack, no one can say." India did not recognize the Ingsoc regime as the legitimate British government, maintaining close ties to the government in exile in Ottawa. Any British citizen within the country was granted the right to stay indefinitely if they chose. Though relations with South Africa gradually chilled, Australia and New Zealand remained firm partners.

Two issues became the crux of Indian foreign policy, independence from either ideological camp of the Cold War and creating ties with the new nations created from the dissolution of the British Empire. Its infrastructure projects were overseen by experts trained in both the US and Soviet Union. Creating a situation where India was not a junior partner in dealings with either country was seen as paramount in order to ensure that neither gained undue influence over New Delhi and undermined its credibility to non-aligned countries. This resulted in Indian diplomats being seen as slippery by both Washington and Moscow. The Peoples Republic of China was considered to be the greatest threat to India's security despite its rocky relationship with Pakistan. When tensions with Beijing rose, the Indian military began creating mountainside bunkers and supply dumps in the parts of the Himalayas where it was feasible. India also contributed forces during the Hong Kong Intervention as well as the UN efforts within China after the Communist Party fell.

India became a supporter of newly independent countries that formed after the British Empire collapsed. Kenya, Singapore, Uganda and Nigeria all became close partners. Its relationship with Israel was an awkward one until the 1970s. Yugoslavia became a close ally of New Delhi, with strong credibility among those who wished to avoid becoming tangled in the sphere of influence of either superpower. Multiple Yugoslav companies did business in India and even had branch offices in the country.

In the aftermath of Oceania's creation, India underwent a massive campaign to modernize its infrastructure and society. Close attention was paid to Interstate highway system in the US when plans were drawn up for a similar system in India. A national power grid was constructed too, an undertaking that received a great deal of press attention and became a passion project of multiple Prime Ministers. The infrastructure campaign was a mimic of the projects undertaken by the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. Education was overhauled as well, with literacy courses being held in public squares, on radio and on television. Healthcare reform contributed to the gradual decline of diseases like typhoid and polio. Sex ed was a difficult topic but the curriculum focused on avoidance of STDs and avoiding unwanted pregnancies. Despite still simmering religious tensions, members of the country's numerous religious communities were all heavily involved with the modernization efforts.

By far India's greatest foreign policy achievement was the creation of the Commonwealth, a political entity representing the interests of Britain's former colonies. The result of nearly fifty years of groundwork, the Commonwealth was founded in the early 1990s in a ceremony in New Delhi attended by the leaders of its initial member nations. Its leading body is the Commonwealth Council, which meets in a new location every two years.

 

[DrDerp]

Bristol

If romance was simple, it wouldn't be fulfilling. That was what Simone's mother told her after she heard how her parents met. While they disliked each other at first then became friends, it was how they helped each other grow as people that made them fall in love. Simone's mother helped her dad overcome most of the trauma he experienced in Hong Kong and he helped her finally kick her abusive parents to the curb. Their love was built on how they strengthened each other.

Simone sometimes wondered if she was helping her girlfriend become stronger as a person or actually make her problems worse.

Dating an British woman was an interesting experience for Simone. She was helping with the restoration of infrastructure in the city and met Janet after a public briefing on their progress. This was two years ago, and the two became friends after a while. Janet took a keen interest in the rebuilding efforts and showered Simone with questions during meetups at a coffee shop. She was stunned to find out that Janet was a lesbian like her, but was still trying to understand what that meant. Janet was sixteen when NATO carried out its offensive and it was only after many meetings with a psychiatrist that she realized she harbored romantic feelings toward members of her Anti-Sex League cell.

A large part of why Janet was so confused about this aspect of herself was because she tried forcing herself to be ignorant of her feelings through Doublethink. She understood that her feelings constituted Thoughtcrime and the penalty for being found out was a grave one. Even after the fall of the Ingsoc regime, she felt torn between her ingrained denial of her feelings and her desire to further understand them. The internet helped answer many of her questions but it was still a tremendous effort getting to the point where she could accept the fact she was attracted to women and wanted to spend her life with one.

It made Simone wonder how long it would take before the British LGBTQ community was able to openly embrace their identity. The dissonance created by the need to evade the Thought Police was bound to create some very jumbled up feelings among those who knew on some level that they didn't conform to certain Party expectations.

That was only one of two problems though. Simone knew she loved Janet as a person. But there was still that question which gnawed away at her from time to time.

How much did Janet love her as a person and how much did she love her as a perceived superior? Janet grew up in a society where love and submission had the same meaning. The only acceptable love was for the Party, Big Brother, and one's superiors. And it was a no brainer as to who wore the pants in the relationship. That wouldn't be too concerning if it wasn't for the fact that Janet appeared to see carrying out Simone's instructions as a form of intimate activity, be it washing the dishes in their apartment or being sent on errands. Janet's green eyes seemed to shimmer when Simone gave her a directive to follow. She rarely initiated intimate activity herself and seemed to relish being in a subordinate position to Simone.

Simone was still trying to figure out how much of Janet's affection was the result of Simone being her girlfriend and how much of it was the result of her being Janet's perceived superior. Did some part of Janet see Simone as a stand in for the Party, a figure of authority to defer to and enjoy it? Simone wanted a lover, not a servant girl.

All things considered though, she didn't mind the image of Janet in a maid outfit bringing her breakfast in bed with a smile on her face, asking if 'her ladyship wanted anything else'. In fact, Simone was quite confident she'd rock that look.

 

[DrDerp]

Will be updating this week re: Julia. Other projects and my new job have been taking a lot of my mental energy.