This is the ninth chapter of a novel being published in serial form in the Daily Sceptic. It’s a dystopian satire about the emergence of a social credit system in the UK in the near future. Read the first eight chapters here.
“It was a bit much for you to call Penny a fascist last night, babe,” said Theo.
“Hmmm, but it’s true, isn’t it? She forces her crooked ideology on all of us and she’s too ignorant to even realise she’s ignorant. Her self-righteousness is inversely correlated to the degree of knowledge she actually has.”
“Yes, but a fascist? Was that really necessary? She’s my sister, after all.”
It was early morning, the day after the rollerblading competition. They were lying in bed, still reeling from the day before. The kids were asleep and the house felt still.
There had been a time – a recent time – when Theo and his big sister, Penny, had been close. Growing up together on a farm in deepest Suffolk, their father had died when they were kids, killed in a farm accident that shaped the family. Theo and Penny had been thick as two little thieves, looking out for each other, squabbling, sometimes, but more often showering each other with sibling solidarity.
The Efficiency Programme had put an end to that. He and Penny held diametrically opposed views: Theo – and Ella – dissidents in a land of conformers; Penny, not so much as apologising for, but adopting, embracing and wholeheartedly egging on the new paradigm, buying into every implant and update for herself and for her kids, struggling to hide the anxiousness stoked by the fact that Theo and his family quite clearly had no intention of doing the same and positively incredulous when it became obvious that Theo was holding out even on getting a Biometer.
“But everyone has a BIM, Theo,” she’d had said, her voice peevish and straining with concern on his behalf.
“Well, I don’t,” he’d replied, firmly.
“But you won’t be able to go to the shops!”
“Well, it’s not that disastrous. Ella will have one. I never had a smartphone either and got by just fine.”
She’d stared at him, wide-eyed and sceptical and just “not understanding what possible issue there could be with a BIM, Theo. If you don’t have a BIM you won’t be able to get any of the Updates. I think you’re being very silly”.
He’d found it tiresome, but save for Ella and the kids, Penny was the most important person in Theo’s life and until yesterday they’d managed to reach a truce, of sorts, glazing over the fault-lines and instinctively understanding that a discrete but absolute silence on the issue was necessary to maintain filial relations.
Last night, the peace had been shattered.
In the melee of the crowd at the competition, as Ella was making a scene Theo had tried to catch Penny’s eye, hoping for at least some small hint of sisterly support or, failing that, sympathy for her distraught niece. He’d been cruelly disappointed, her gaze remaining steadfastly down throughout, swerving eye contact, as if she didn’t know them.
It had stung, bitterly, but what was the point in confrontation? They’d skirted enough conversations about it for him to know Penny was never going to understand their stance, let alone agree. But back at home that evening Ella, unable to let the ignominy of the day go and with Poppy locked in her room, inconsolable, had prodded and provoked:
“Why didn’t you help us?”
“You could have intervened”; and
“Was it really necessary to nod agreeably with the security lady?!”
Urgh. Spirited, strong, strident Ella. Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut, just sometimes.
Penny had tried to maintain her frustrated silence, but eventually, feeling under attack from Ella and cowed into a corner, retaliated in kind —
“Well, if you must know I do think it’s kind of selfish. I really don’t see what the issue is. It’s for the benefit of all of them, after all.”
Theo, exposed to Ella’s radioactive fury long enough to understand where things were likely headed, had tried to divert her, but before he could pull Ella away, Penny was off again:
“The disruptive kids in Gracie’s class are those without implants. The evidence is clear.”
And that had done it.
Ella, nearly choking on her glass of wine:
“Are you kidding me Penny? How could you be so ignorant? You only think it’s clear because you’re reading what they pay the newspapers to publish. It’s a pack of lies, Pen. A pack of lies.”
“I simply don’t believe that, Ella. It’s not some big conspiracy. They’re just trying to help us.”
“Help us?! Are you fucking kidding me? They’re killing us, Penny. Killing us! Can’t you see the harm it’s doing?!”
“Oh Ella, don’t be so ridiculous.”
“I’m not the one being ridiculous Penny. Do you know how many kids have irreversible blindness? Do you know how many strokes there were last year?”
“I really can’t see that, Ella. Please calm down. I understand why you and Theo might think you don’t need to go along with it but you’re making Poppy an outlier. Think of what your selfishness has cost her.”
And that was the point at which Ella had irredeemably lost it, the word ‘fascism’ had been used (more than once) and the evening – and quite possibly his relationship with his sister – was lost.
“I do get that I was quite strong,” Ella conceded, sitting up in bed, bracing herself for the serious chat she knew was coming.
“But you totally let her take the moral high ground. And it made me look like the unreasonable one”.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intention,” replied Theo, putting his arm round her. “I just don’t think there’s any point arguing with her. We’re never going to see eye to eye.”
“Well I get that, but Poppy’s so fond of her – it’s always been Aunt Penny this and Aunty Pen that. I don’t know how we’re going to undo what she said.”
“I’ll chat to —
“And she even tried it on with Libby; did you hear her going on about how ‘Gracie is now actually graceful for the first time since getting hers and she’s only a year older than you, Libby’. How can you be ok with that?!”
“I don’t think we need to worry about Libby, Ella. She’ll be like Sophie Scholl, scrawling ‘freedom’ on the walls of the Gestapo building before they break her.”
“That’s an awful comparison, babe.”
“I’m sorry, it is. I’ve been thinking about what you said last night, though. And that you’re probably right. I think we need to start thinking about other options. This country is not feeling like a good place to raise children anymore.”
Getting out of bed he pulled back the curtains and looked out into the garden, a crisp white frost carpeting the lawn, and the weight of even having to think about leaving bearing down on him.
Ella, going to stand with him, touched his hand –
“I hate the thought, too,” she said. “This is our home.”
“I know,” he said, thinking about the house that they’d taken one look at all those years ago before making the snap decision to move up from London and then pouring so much love and energy into, making it their family nest, their children’s lives.
“I spent six months re-roofing this place,” said Theo. “A part of my soul lives in that roof!”
The horrible wrongness of uprooting the kids and leaving the only country they’d ever called home was almost too much to bear; plus, how could they even afford it, the lawyers fees and moving costs and the overbearing burden of having to start all over again.
No sooner had he thought it, though, he was hit by the immediate reflex. Grandson of a grandmother who had escaped Germany in the late 1930s, like so many of her peers persecuted by a regime whose stentorian execution of its murderous ideology in no way diminished its sense of the righteousness of its actions, he wondered what his ancestors – the ones who had not been so ‘lucky’ – might have made of his indecision.
An angry ring of the doorbell saved him from further thinking.
What the hell, he thought. It wasn’t even 8am, who on earth could that be?
Putting his dressing gown on he crept downstairs and opened the door.
A man was standing on the doorstep. He handed him an envelope.
On it, there was an official stamp.
DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION CONTROL
Theo Oberman
24 Steepleton Lane
Little Twentford
He froze. This wasn’t good.
But before he could open it, the kitchen door creaked open. Poppy. Her eyes red and bleary. She took one look at him and her 12 year-old face crumpled. She scuttled over to him and buried her head under his arm. “Oh Dada”, she said. “What are we going to do?”
Hiding the envelope behind him he shuffled back, reaching for the drawer of the sideboard behind. He dropped the envelop in and closed the drawer, making a mental note to open it only on Monday once Penny and her kids had left. The last thing they needed this weekend was more drama.
He stroked his daughter’s hair.
“I don’t know darling. I don’t know.”
Look out for chapter 10 next week.
Molly Kingsley is a founder of children’s rights campaign group UsForThem.
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