This is the 14th 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 13 chapters here.
Forgive the nihilistic tone of this article, wrote Theo, but I write this from the post democratic dystopia of East Anglia’s National Harmony Re-Education Centre, a surreal, gargantuan encampment of grey and mottled green outhouses spread out as far as one can see on concrete stilts over former fen land.
He paused, searching for a metaphor to suitably encapsulate the disappointment of rows of flawless, bungalowed units springing up from what had once been rich, fertile, untamed peatland. Poisoned… underbelly… birthing… artificial. Or something. Tired and overwrought, he deleted the line.
I’m currently sitting outside my bungalow. Bungalow 592. From what I can see it looks pretty much like the hundreds, or maybe thousands, of other bungalows stretching out in whatever direction one looks: some concrete, some linoleum, a few metres of decking made of something purporting to be wood, a patch of fake grass.
If I blur my eyes and avoid focusing on the high Perspex wall surrounding my otherwise almost homely little villa, I can almost trick myself into thinking I’m in a retirement village, or second rate holiday camp. In fact, it rather resembles the Legoland village I stayed in a few years ago with my kids.
He took a breath; wincing at the memory. What he’d do to be back there, now. Thoughts spiralled quickly in here.
In the bungalow behind me, an oversized screen – I’m unable to turn it off – plays something that passes, these days, for news. The Minister for Defence is explaining to an implausibly enthusiastic presenter why military training of over-10s is the “next natural step”. Next step to what, she doesn’t say.
On the coffee table in the room behind me, newspapers are laid out, as in an upmarket dentists waiting room. When the pages aren’t overflowing with photographs of shiny, happy soldiers, they brim with details of this month’s Updates. Efficiency and socialisation, the unimpeachable canons by which we lead our lives.
On the table next to me lies a glossy flier for East Anglia’s first ‘Zeeta School’.
“Zeeta – Your Children are Our Future. We Trust You WILL make the Right Choice for your family.”
He wondered what Ella would make of that.
It’s my tenth day here.
The fact that ceiling cameras and overhead censors track my movements is not much different from outside. But here, contraband items, suspicious behaviours and illicit conversations meet with immediate reprisals. The day before yesterday a gentleman called Byron was caught eating a smuggled banana. Shepherded away by one of the National Harmony Assistants, I’ve not seen him since. If that sounds shocking, I ask you this: is that not simply the next step in their model of the inevitable utopian dream, the natural progression they aspire to, and aspire for us to accede to?
And accede, we do.
My presence here, you will understand, is voluntary. I wasn’t dragged or kidnapped, nor rounded up by violent Army guards. The letter informing me that I was otherwise due to be sentenced presented me with two simple options:
“You must now notify us that you wish to elect to either:
— OPTION A: attend an offender retraining scheme at an accredited National Harmony Re-education camp; OR
— OPTION B: you do not wish to attend an offender retraining scheme but instead wish to accept the conditional offer of a fixed custodial sentence.
In the event that you select Option B, we reserve the right to apply further de-citizenry penalties.”
You see: a choice.
My wife and children know I’m here.They came to wave me off, in fact.We made a joke of it – Papa going to boarding school – so much so that the kids thought it was funny. Life can be beautiful when you most need it to be.
He paused and looked hard at that line. Proscribed Cultural Reference? Possibly. He deleted it.
Days here follow a similar pattern.
We are ‘politely requested’ to set our alarms for 7:30am in readiness for the delivery of breakfast, a meal which – like all the meals here, is perfectly edible – no, that’s unfair – more than edible, almost pleasant, but in a way that’s hard to discern and describe, that somehow isn’t quite food. Everything is too soft, too sweet, too bright.
Breakfast is followed by the morning ‘therapy’ session, three straight hours headphoned and plugged into the giant TV console in the room with my own AI-generated ‘personal National Harmony Coach’. Then lunch, a short break, and an afternoon ‘community lesson’, again delivered direct to ’the comfort of one’s villa’, though this time with other ‘Guests’ visible on screen. In this way we are trained to be fully efficient and sociable members of the community, as “concerned with the collective harmony of your wider environment as you are with the needs of yourself and your immediate kin”.
No one has been unpleasant, there has been no violence, no blows, no beatings, none of the hard labour, public humiliation or worse, outright torture, one might have seen in movies or read of in history books.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the National Harmony officer had said, the very first day on showing Theo and the group of guests arriving at the same time around – a group comprising an unreadable, quiet attractive lady, he didn’t get her name; Byron – later of banana fame; and an older lady called Jacqueline “but you can call me Jacky” who had turned up in sharp kitten heels and Sunday best.
“You should have nothing to worry about,” the officer had said, explaining this was the UK, after all, not some lawless Third World country, and it’s genuinely for your own benefit, you see, and that in fact the aim is for you to not only learn but even to enjoy your time here.
“Well, none are so hopelessly enslaved as think themselves free,” Jacqueline-call-me-Jacky had mumbled back, raising an eyebrow. The National Harmony officer gave her a hard stare and tapped something into his device.
The tour had continued – past the food labs, then round to the gym, lounge and common room. At least there will be some chance to meet others, compare notes, he’d thought, naïvely, that first afternoon. It wasn’t until a few days later that he’d realised that each room operated according to a strict, ‘one in, one out’ policy, the one certainty of the ’communal spaces’ being one could never commune.
But, then, of course, it had to be like that, didn’t it, he thought. He’d read Arendt.
Isolation was a hallmark of totalitaria —
The screen first froze, and then as he watched, the word deleted itself. Damn it. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the latest linguistic software updates: inconvenient words, past political forms, language incongruous with the relentless march of the mandated utopian ideal deleting from the page. To withstand future challenge there could be no record other than perfect uniformity of behaviour and thought, no evidence trail leaving future generations a hint of anything other than the irreproachable, the unanimous, the agreed.
Theo’s mind flitted almost involuntarily back to the first evening of his arrival in the centre when a lady in a sharp red trouser suit (an incongruous detail, he knew, but one could only assume that some subvert in the system had managed to weave a subtle reference to a newly erased cultural text) had come round to take their laptops for the night. Ostensibly “checking for viruses, you see, no you don’t need to agree but if you don’t I’m afraid you’ll no longer be eligible for the National Harmony Re-education Programme”.
It was impossible to know what spyware they’d installed, he thought, wondering how long one could leave words on a page before thoughts became actions became offences. Thoughts too heretical to save, let alone to be seen.
I could fight, I could resist, but to what point? Certain incarceration. Ex-communication. Repercussions for my family, my kids. I’m told I will get out of here in 11 more days; three weeks in total to cleanse my seditious soul.
And I have to get back to my family. That is the thing that matters above all else – the only thing that matters.
So, just like I have for each of the last nine days, I shall delete this article. Which, my reader that wasn’t, brings me neatly back to my point.
Nihilism.
He paused, looked at what he had written, hit SELECT ALL, DELETE, and closed the laptop.
Look out for chapter 15 next week.
Molly Kingsley is a founder of children’s rights campaign group UsForThem.
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