This is the 12th 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 11 chapters here.
Theo re-read the letter again, not believing the words leaping out at him.
The children of those found guilty of extremism offences can be placed in State custody and/or may be sent to juvenile corrective education facilities.
JUVENILE
FACILITIES
CUSTODY
The letters glared out at him, dancing in front of his eyeballs, threatening an unspeakable – unthinkable – deprivation that threatened to crush his very being.
At first he told himself it must be a mistake.
Surely it couldn’t have been meant for him. Not his kids?! Not about this?!
A grasping, overwhelming feeling consumed him. As if he was somehow out of his body, looking at himself from above, unable to think straight.
He reached for his laptop and, googling his article in desperation, reminded himself of what he’d written. What had he said that had so offended them? He needed to ground himself. To focus. To breathe.
Potholes?! Potholes?!
Skimmed the key facts: Pothole crisis – an epidemic that’s become endemic; £30 billion to meet the cost of fixing the country’s potholes…
Given what he might have said – what he thought – the article wasn’t even particularly strong. It was just fact, unarguable truth —
“Theo Oberman,” a voice from some recess in his mind, said. “Truth?! What relevance does TRUTH have to anything?”
Well yes, that was a point. When had the Department for Information Control ever cared about truth?
Still, though, the potholes were as undeniable a feature of their current existence as the Earth being round or the sky being blue; though they’d deny those, too, if they no longer fitted their warped ideology.
“But, Sir,” Theo felt himself pleading with the imagined voice, and reflexively wondering if Ella would chastise him for assuming it was a ‘Sir’ – “not all fascists are men, darling, think of Jacinda Arden”.
But… your Honour, the potholes are there for all to see! You can’t seriously be telling us to deny the evidence of our —
“DON’T YOU DARE QUOTE ORWELL,” the voice boomed.
I’m not quoting —
“You’re close to quoting.”
Well, okay, perhaps we was flirting with quoting. He wondered what would happen if he were simply to ignore the letter. Might it just go away?
“I’m not going anywhere,” confirmed the voice, definitively.
Words jumped out at him again —
CHILDREN
STATE
CORRECTIVE
Bile rising, nauseous, he stood up abruptly and threw the letter down. In a swearing outburst of the kind usually reserved to Ella, he exclaimed,
Damn you, damn you, damn you MOTHERFUCKERS.
He could somehow comprehend them doing just about anything to him but if they came near the kids he’d carve their fucking hearts out with a spoon. He’d gut their insides, he’d twist and burn their entrails. He’d hang them from —
He paused, wondering whether the mere act of thinking such thoughts risked compounding an already dire situation by layering on further extremism offences.
But thoughts were still private. He looked at Jefferson, looming over at Theo from the sideboard. Weren’t they?
Even when Jefferson had still been ‘Alexa’, he’d always hated the damned thing. “Alexa play us this; Alexa tell me this; Alexa how far is it to the moon and Alexa, why is Mum working all the time?” A Trojan robot, Theo called it, spying on the kids and secreting away all manner of family intelligence to spew out and use against them at some unspecified, later date. But since Alexa had become Jefferson and Jefferson had received his AI enhancements and especially after whichever Implementation it was which mandated “a Jefferson in every home”, he detested it with a vitriolic passion. The constant invasion of privacy, the perennial intrusion. It was more Orwellian than Orwell.
“DON’T YOU DARE BRING ORWELL UP AGAIN!” the same voice said.
Sighing audibly, he ordered himself to calm down. Think, Theo, think!
What was his plan? Because if anything was clear, it was that he needed a plan. Was this thing appeal-able? Might a call to the Department be worthwhile, perhaps via Ella or one of her contacts – Arthur perhaps, he’d worked in the civil service, hadn’t he – explaining it was all some big mistake, inviting them to come and take a look at the potholes, he could show them the ones down Brethans Road, they were particularly craterous – so they could see them for themselves – no whiff of misinformation here.
Even as he thought it, though, his heart sank realising his naïvety. The Department for Information Control had no interest in truth, in accuracy, in fairness. The aim, the only aim, was to bury history under a sludge of propaganda, deceit and spin so thick it could never be unpicked. Anyone that stood against that was merely a fly, a blip in the ointment of the machine, to be swatted and squished before it had the possibility of being spotted.
No, there would be no bargaining.
Slumping back into his chair, the full unmitigated horror began to percolate. If they came for his kids there would be no tomorrow, no yesterday, no meaning. His very existence would be erased, nullified; his purpose eradicated. It would shatter Ella, and destroy them.
He could not let that happen.
Recognising the immediate danger the kids were in, newly adrenalised, he formulated his thoughts.
The only thing for it was to leave, or at least to try to. Of that he was certain. There was no more time for procrastinating, no time for telling themselves things might get better. He’d start the research tonight – all the entry requirements for countries not requiring Efficiency Passes.
And what was he going to do about Ella…
She’d only popped to Robert’s; she’d be back soon.
He was going to have to tell her, wasn’t he? She deserved to know everything. No sugar coating. What if the kids were just rounded up one day, no warning?
“Hi darling, I’m home! Is the kettle on? House seems quiet! Where are the kids?”
“The kids?”
“Yes, you know, the kids….”
“Oh yes, them. I didn’t want to worry you but they’re just taking a short vacation in a state correctional…”
No. She was unlikely to take that well.
But, urgh, telling her involved a whole new kind of pain. She’d be bound to get upset, then angry and seditious. She’d want to fight it and within days they’d be poking a stick in a great big hornet’s nest.
Tucking the letter away – no point in her seeing it before he’d thought it through – he wondered if there wasn’t a compromise. Perhaps he could tell her enough to ensure that he was telling her, well, basically the truth, but not quite enough for her to become uncontrollably angry or upset. He might mention the gist of things but perhaps leave out anything about the kids, at least for now. The letter had only said “can be” – it didn’t mean they would be taken away and surely for potholes there would be a degree of leniency? It wasn’t as if he’d attacked the Efficiency Programme, or done anything so daft as to suggest, for example, that all the cases of kidney failure might have anything to do with the synthetics in the efficient food chain that they were so relentlessly puffing.
He looked again at Jefferson. Better stop thinking these thoughts.
But yes, telling Ella the full story seemed premature. What good did two of them carrying this stress, do? Plus, if he told her but they didn’t tell the kids, then what? That was unlikely to pass Libby’s ideal of radical candour…
He switched his laptop on. Might as well make a start on that research.
He opened his emails. Staring back at him, one from the Head of pastoral at the kids’ school.
Oh dear, that was never good, even less so on top of this.
Dear Mr and Mrs Oberman,
I hope that you are having a good day.
No, and why did he have a feeling it was about to get much worse…..
He read on.
Your daughter, Poppy, has not been in school this morning. We appear not to have received an email from you notifying us of any sickness or other planned absence.
Please respond to this email and confirm that she is at home with you and the reason for her absence.
The school office will amend the register once you have updated me.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Mr Paterson (Head of Pastoral)
Look out for chapter 13 next week.
Molly Kingsley is a founder of children’s rights campaign group UsForThem.
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The reopening of schools combined with the new restrictions for attendance, is only going to make the situation worse.