This is the 13th 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 12 chapters here.
The commotion from upstairs had been continuous – and crescendoing – for a good 20 minutes, layering aggravation onto an already aggravated day. Theo reminded himself that, for now, he should just be grateful that Poppy was back, and safe, not locked away in some ‘juvenile corrective facility’. He shuddered involuntarily.
Gently, he pushed the door ajar with his toe, to better hear the two belligerent voices – Ella’s and Poppy’s – reverberating down from the landing.
“Poppy, I’m not having another fight with you about this!”
“But Mum. It’s not FAIR! You have one!”
“Yes, but one of us HAD to get one or we wouldn’t have been able to eat! Do you want us to not buy food, is that what you want?”
“No, but everyone else has one.”
“And I hate it, Poppy. It scratches and itches and tracks every sodding move. Do you know what it feels like when it buzzes? It HURTS. It properly hurts! They don’t tell you that when you get it.”
“I don’t care, Mum. All my friends have one!”
“Well, good for all your friends but you’re NOT ‘all your friends’!”
”None of them have dropped down dead!”
“I’m not saying you’re going to drop down dead, but there are all kinds of side effects. Half of them they won’t even know about yet.”
“Mum, don’t be so exaggerative!”
“I’m not sure that’s a word, popsicle. Anyway, they’re probably about to make the updates mandatory. Do you know how fucking scary that is?”
“Mum! You don’t need to swear!”
“I do need to swear, Poppy. It’s that bad! You’d have NO control over what you’re putting in your body, is that really what you want?!”
“It’s MY body. MY decision!!”
“That’s exactly the point I’m trying to make.”
“Well I don’t care what you say!” Poppy’s voice had by now risen so far that she was pretty much screaming at Ella. “Because in four months I’ll be 13 and then there’s nothing you can do to stop me. So you might as well just say yes NOW!”
“I’m not going to say yes, now, Poppy.”
“WHY NOT MUM?!”
“I will never say yes, don’t you get it, Poppy? Not now, not in four months, not in four years. I know in the end I won’t be able to stop you but I have to be able to say if I think you’re making a terrible mistake. I’m your parent. I have to be able to say it without you exploding at me!”
There was a heavy thud, the unmistakable sound of something being thrown in rage. Theo glanced over at the playroom door. His mind briefly turned to Libby and Ted, sequestered away, eyes no doubt glued to the TV. They would be out of ear-shot – hopefully.
“But Mum,” Poppy continued, less shrill but apparently unabated, “You never do anything for me!”
“I am literally doing this for you; I know it doesn’t feel like it but I’m trying to protect you.”
“You call this protecting me?! This isn’t protecting me, it’s smothering me and suffocating me and literally ruining my life!!! I don’t think you get it; we would have WON, Mum, if I’d had a BIM, we’d have WON.”
Poppy’s heavy foot thuds stormed into her room, the door slammed, then a wail.
Closing the door a little, Theo walked back over to his spreadsheet. How concerned should he be that the crosses on his screen far outweighed ticks, that the number of countries not implementing some form of efficiency control was dwindling.
The email from school had solidified in his mind how badly they needed a plan B. Hearing that your kid hasn’t shown up for school could be any parent’s nightmare. But, against the backdrop of the drama with the Department for Information Control, the school’s email had propelled him into a purgatorial afternoon of blind panic in which he felt sure his heart was straining to escape from his chest. Barely able to breathe, palms sweatily clutching trouser legs, wondering if his eldest daughter had been snatched away without them knowing, now languishing in some awful grey camp surrounded by high walls and barbed wire.
When, after what seemed like the longest and most excruciating three hours he’d ever lived, he’d heard the muffled creaking of the back door, followed by the clumsy tread of a growing adolescent not wanting to be heard attempting to tip-toe up stairs, and had immediately recognised the elephantine clambering to be that of his eldest, he’d been filled with such immeasurable relief that he’d buried his head in his hands and quivered, over and over and over again, “thank you, thank you, thank you, thank YOOOOUUUUU”, not pausing for breath to contemplate who ‘you’ might have been.
Poppy, unaware of the agony she’d caused the father who would die a thousand deaths for her, had, trembling and with querulous tears of anger in her eyes, eventually confessed that yes she’d bunked off school and yes she knew that was VERY naughty. But no, she did not care and yes that was just the way it was going to be from now on if they didn’t surrender and let her have a BIM. She’d stomped upstairs, Ella barrelling after her.
For the first time since the argument had started, the house was almost silent. The sound of Ella’s footsteps retreating along the landing and down the stairs edged nearer. Theo poked his head round the kitchen door, aiming to strike a note of solidarity, vaguely aware that even by his standards he’d been particularly non-communicative today. He glimpsed her before she saw him. She looked exhausted, desolate and drained.
They were losing Poppy, they both felt it.
“What are we going to do? Rollerblading is – was – her life. If we take that away from her, what’ll be left? She’d be a shell.”
“Come on, come sit down,” Theo said. He wished he could have offered her a glass of wine – a soothing glass of Rioja would hit the spot þ but they were down to their last four bottles. Needed to save that for a better time.
“Let me make you a cup of tea.”
“I just don’t get it, Theo,” Ella continued. “How can they be letting these kids decide for themselves. Thirteen!!! She’s not even allowed to watch Bridget Jones! Thirteen wouldn’t be old enough even if there was proper information out there about bloody BIMs. How’s a child meant to wade through the propaganda and the government bullshit when most adults haven’t managed it?! I tried telling her about all the cases I’m seeing but she doesn’t understand how serious it is.”
Poor Ella, thought Theo. She was so committed to fighting all the time. But what if there was no way left to fight? Lose your children, or let them risk their lives. It was an impossible choice, a choice that no parent should have been faced with. But there it was.
He toyed briefly with the idea of showing her the spreadsheet, but seeing how shattered she looked and knowing there were only three remotely viable countries (and that one of them was Greenland), he opted instead for reassurance.
“It will be okay, somehow,” he said, all the while his heart sinking as he thought about the newspapers which had been bought off and the TV stations which had been infiltrated, the cameras and sensors seemingly tracking every human movement and him now facing incarceration. How would it get better with the power of The Complex consolidating like a turbo-charged cancer, and a new set of efficiency updates planned almost weekly?
Yes, he realised, bracing himself; however we do it, we’ll have to get out before they crush the life out of us.
Look out for chapter 14 next week.
Molly Kingsley is a founder of children’s rights campaign group UsForThem.
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