Chapters 1-2

Today we begin Part 2, Into the Night. Peter arrives at NewStateHQ, begins the interview process and has a confusing dream.

If you prefer to listen, the audio is here too.

Chapter One Autumn 2034 Peter Harrison

I have seen pictures of NSHQ on NewStateDiscovery, so I recognise it as we approach. As the cars start to slow however, I realise that any familiarity is about to end, for I have no idea what we will be introduced to inside. I suppose I’ve vaguely pictured it whenever I’ve thought about Our Leader Day as she flashes up on my screen, but I only ever pictured her in a nondescript meeting room, sat around a table with – who are they? – advisors and politicians, I suppose.

Standing here now, I am shocked that I’ve not thought about this more. How many people are inside? Who are the people inside? What do they do? It occurs to me now how vast a job it is to keep a whole country running. Even I, who try so hard to hold onto what is becoming lost, have forgotten to ask some fundamentally obvious questions. How is NewState run? Not the things that they show us on NewStateMedia, but, most importantly, what they do not show us: just like my small defiances, in a world where sharing is the only form of currency, secrets have more value than anything. But secrets have become so rare that no one remembers to keep them, and no one realises how valuable and how dangerous they have become.

Secrets will be the weapon of the revolution. Revolution: I surprise myself again.

NewStateHeadQuarters looks exactly as one would expect a twenty-first century political hub to look. It is all steel frame and glass windows. It rises high, but only at the front. The building consists of two skyscrapers, with a ten-story section in between, conjoining the two. Behind, the building stretches back, five stories high, at the width of the entire front section. This is what I know from the bird’s eye shots that I have seen on NewStateDiscovery. All I can see now is the imposing façade. In this autumn midday light, I am almost blinded as the rays of the low climbing sun reflect off the entire front face of the building. It feels fitting to be physically blinded by NewStateHeadQuarters, as I am part of a nation psychologically blinded by the government that works behind its walls.

The cars slow at what appears to be a security barrier. A man dressed like an EEO walks out of the booth and speaks to the driver of the car in front. I see a hand emerge through the driver’s window. The security officer takes something offered by the hand and scans it. There is a nod of approval, the barrier extends up and the EEO gestures for the convoy to move forward. I pay close attention as we pass through the barrier. It is guarded on both sides by a single EEO, stationed in a small two by two, square booth. Either side of each booth, a six-metre-high fence stands tall and imposing. It is made of what look like iron poles, positioned close together as in a prison cell. The iron poles are woven together with wire and topped with coils of barbed wire. It is a well-fortified position. The building is located on the north edge of the city, and the bowl like suburban limits climb up towards it, so that it is visible from afar, and, I consider, so that anyone approaching it is visible from afar also. The only break in the fence that protects the entire perimeter appears to be these two barriers, one to enter and one to exit.

As we pass beyond the barriers and I turn to see them close behind us, I notice the security cameras. They are everywhere, and they face in every direction. Big Brother is Watching You, I think. I laugh silently at the irony of a world in which freedom and independence are monitored and shared at all times. As I laugh to myself, the sort of laugh that delicately treads the line between laughter and uncontrollable tears, a sort of tension leaves my body; but it is not a pleasant catharsis. It is a relaxation accompanied by a faint but certain sense of hopelessness: the regime is not so complacent in their peace that they have not fortified their heart with iron flesh and omniscient eyes. Resistance is futile. This time I do not laugh, even silently.

The cars come to a stop right in front of the centre building that sits between the two skyscrapers. I am surprised at the aesthetic beauty of the entrance. There is a large, raised marble fountain with marble steps circling it, leading up to the water’s edge. The water flows out of a lady’s mouth and splashes onto the statue of a man kneeling at her feet. He holds onto the hilt of his sword which is plunged into the water’s surface in front of him. One of the lady’s arms is extended so that her left-hand rests upon the stooped shoulder of the man, next to his bowed head. The other arm is outstretched, the palm open towards the sky, in a manner of exultation.

‘It is King Arthur, holding Excalibur and receiving the blessing of the Lady of the Lake.’ Our Leader Day is now standing on the top of the steps and addresses our small crowd that has now vacated the vehicles that are driving around the fountain and going back the way we came. ‘It reminds us that however strong we may be, even the mightiest warrior needs protection. The great king is anointed by the lady and, absorbed in the water she provides, he is sheltered from harm. We too are sheltered by the protective power of SSC. Just as the Lady of the Lake cleanses Arthur of his fears and of his past, so too does SSC cleanse us of our troubled past. The fountain reminds us that though we may all be human, we do not have to live with the old human burdens and fears. We are all Arthurs now, protected from the violence and disappointment of our ancestry.’

I listen intently and note the same sense of religiosity that I heard earlier today. I chance a look around me and find that I am in the middle of the crowd so that some faces are visible to me. They all stare wide-eyed in wonder. A silence has settled but it is as if Our Leader Day’s words continue to echo around us, and the echo does not grow fainter or move further away but gets louder and ever closer. The crowd stand, open mouthed, as if they believe they might literally consume her words. But I force them out of my head. I push them in front of me. I blow them away and I will them onto the wind.

Now I am free to listen to the silence. In our world there are no other sounds but the sound of words, but now I drive her words away and I open my ears to the world. The breeze – I can hear the breeze. Either side of the fountain stands a tree. Though they are far smaller, I am reminded of the great oak beneath which Janine and I fell asleep just two nights ago. The breeze rustles through the branches. Though it is early winter, the two trees are still adorned with autumn’s leaves. The light wind moves through the flapping burnt oranges, reds, brilliant bronzes and rich golds, and my eyes open wide in wonder and my mouth parts that I might literally consume the cool morning breeze. I feel it flow down my throat, and into my lungs. It chills me and reminds me of my body. The coldness of the breath is replaced by a protective warmth as my body fights it off.

The contrast is beautiful, and my defiance is invisible, for I look like every other member of the enraptured crowd, only, unlike my fellow onlookers, I am not consuming anything that I will be able to share inside. I am storing up feelings to fill my dreams at night and memories to tell like stories to my fellow runners, to remind them and to sustain them through their long weeks of silence. Silence like a cancer grows and we must do everything we can to cure ourselves of the disease. This silence is my cancer, and this breathing is my cure.

‘Now, if you will all follow me, we will enter the building where you will be registered and given your security passes that will enable you to move around NewStateHeadQuarters over the next few days.’

Our Leader Day descends the steps that encircle the statue of the kneeling Arthur and makes her way towards the front entrance to the central building. As we all follow, I decide that it is safe to take a better look around. We are escorted by EEOs who more or less surround us. To my sceptical eye, they are not so much our escort as they are our prison guard, and the two that have flanked Our Leader Day since I first saw her on stage this morning are her bodyguard.

There are about fifteen of us. Some are younger than me and some are older, some male and some female, but all are old enough to have been an adult ten years ago at the beginning of the change. But this still doesn’t explain why we are here: why would a position at NewStateHeadQuarters not simply be filled by a new recruit from NewStateSchoolStream – someone younger who has more investment potential? What is it about us that makes us special?

We suddenly stop. I strain my neck to see what is happening up ahead and see that Our Leader Day has paused in front of the doors and places her hand on a metal pad in front of her. There is a movement of light over the pad and I realise it is scanning her finger prints. She looks into something which flashes with the same blue light. That must be a retinal scanner. So, the fence is immaterial. These doors only open for someone on the system, the sort of identification that cannot be doctored. More tension gives way within me: more hopelessness.

The doors slide open and our procession continues. Inside, the light is bright. It is the same artificial sunlight that we have in our apartments. My eyes adjust quickly and without difficulty: forty-three years living outside have been rendered meaningless after just five years inside. That said, these five years have felt like a lifetime, running so like Groundhog Day that I am convinced the monotony is gradually leading to my complete insanity.

The entrance hall inside NSHQ is huge and reminds me of the sort of foyer that used to exist in the old Oxford buildings – in the mansions and the libraries and the large colleges – or in the modern banks or law firms or political buildings of the early twenty-first century. That is, before they were all turned into homogenous one-bedroom apartments. Unlike the marble outside or the stone and brickwork of the Oxford I remember, this building is beautiful in the style of the 21^st century: minimal, white, and lit with artificial light from every possible surface.

The smooth, white stairs ahead of us appear to be lit from the floor, and the long white desk straight ahead is adorned with white light from above and below. We are escorted through this entrance hall and up the left-hand side of the huge imperial staircase ahead. At the top, Our Leader Day touches another sensor pad and two doors slide open. We walk through and find ourselves in a room that is almost as large as the main foyer below. We are invited to take our seats, which have been laid out in a square in the centre of the room, so that each chair faces outward, and each occupant is sat with his or her back to every other. Around the square of chairs are positioned four desks, which are each populated by two or three people in NewState overalls. I notice that they are not wearing emotivests, just the standard grey jumpsuits that we wear at home. Behind each desk there is a partitioned area, into which I cannot see.

‘Welcome, to NewStateHeadQuarters.’ This time the voice is not the familiar voice of Our Leader Day. In fact, I look around and notice that she no longer appears to be present. The voice is female, and I turn my head to follow the sound, which appears to be coming from every direction. I look up and realise that the voice is being amplified through speakers, for the face that matches it is on a large screen in front and above me. I look around to see that similar screens are positioned on each of the four walls of the large square room.

‘You have been selected because you are the best at what you do and because NewStateInnovateandMaintain are in the process of expansion. A position has arisen that does not require a unique set of skills so much as it requires a unique set of personal characteristics – a unique personality. As such, you have been selected as possible candidates for this position. No further details will be given until the successful candidate is identified. As the main function of the process is to identify traits in your personality, much of the three days will involve candidates working on tasks and projects together, and your performance will be monitored. You do not know what traits we are looking for and should not try to work it out. Your ignorance is important. You should attempt to play no games, but, rather, should simply be yourselves. That is what we require.’

This revelation does not seem to marry up with the choice of candidates selected, because our jobs as data analysts have nothing to do with personality and everything to do with technical skills and IQ, the very opposite of what this lady suggests they are interested in seeing. What is it about us that binds us together?

My frustration at the pretence of our freedom to be, or not to be, here resurfaces. The assumption is that if Our Leader Day says that our presence is necessary for the continuation of SSC, then although all citizens would wish that someone else were carrying this burden, none who truly love our world and want to see it continue and grow could actually object to carrying it.

But this is not the reason that I am here. I am here because the thought of refusal brought with it visions of dark rooms and flashing lights, and though I hate the world in which I am imprisoned, I fear a silent ending. Though my secret defiances are powerful, a secret death would be meaningless, for it changes nothing, and I crave to change everything. Death would release me but would save no one else. For all I know, the silent death of one conscientious objector could be the death of almost all conscientious objectors.

And so I will create for myself a purpose to this captivity. I am here to observe my observers. There are secrets inside these walls, questions I have forgotten to ask, and I will now turn my mind to discovering them.

First, I must uncover the questions.

‘Before the process of observation and selection can begin, you will each be required to register and will be issued with identification documents. Your security pass will provide you with free access to those areas of NewStateHeadQuarters that will be important to your stay here. I am sure that you will want to use much of your free time to live normally, so you will each be issued a portable pad, which you are permitted to use at all times, and your living quarters have been equipped with temporary screens that have been configured to your personal accounts.

‘Now, without any further delay, would the four of you sat at the farthest left seat of each row like to make your way forward so that your registration can begin? The rest of you will be called in turn shortly. Thank you. And enjoy your stay here at NSHQ.’

The face of our guide disappears and is replaced by the three NewState symbols. The first is simply the letters Ssc in descending font size. The second is a picture of Our Leader Day’s welcoming face. The eyes look at you with a sort of terrifying beauty. I am sure that most people just see beauty and power, but I see something terrifying too, and behind it a memory of something so tragic that it almost moves me to tears. The third is a large letter O, with the letter C inside it, and then a lowercase ‘e’ where the tail of the e then snakes up into a small s that sits inside it. These are the three symbols that are imprinted behind every eyelid with NewState citizenship across the state.

It is not my turn to be registered first, so I sit and watch the process going on in front of me, though there is little to see as the candidate is quickly ushered through the partitioning curtain and out of sight. I decide to try to strike up a conversation with the candidate sitting next to me. I look around first and notice that no one else is talking.

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘My name is Peter.’ I decide not to say anything else yet. I want to gauge my audience before I determine how best to continue.

‘Oh.’ She seems shocked. ‘Hello. I’m. Erm. Sorry. I’m Fiona. I’d forgotten for a moment. I’m not Fiona usually.’

‘I don’t see why you think you should be now either. Not really.’ The man sitting next to her has turned to join in. ‘After all, when are we ever not who we are inside anymore. There is no other us I suppose.’ He does not say this aggressively or pedantically. Rather, he speaks with curiosity, as if he wants someone to prove him wrong. I respond,

‘Then who are we when we dream, and who are we when we wake up and before we log in?’

‘Well, it depends what we are dreaming about,’ the man continues. He is perhaps five or ten years older than I am. He is slightly portly in a good sort of way and has a brown but greying beard. ‘If we are dreaming about our experiences, then we are who we are on the inside. Indeed, anyone without memories of time before the change cannot be anyone else, for they have no other sort of experience to draw upon, and no other self to reference.’

‘Do you dream of anything other than inside living?’ It is the woman who asks this. She is asking me. She speaks timidly, as if the question itself has shocked her, but I feel a sense of safety in the conversation, for the man at the end appears to be inquisitive and logical, and the woman next to me, though timid, has asked a question that is almost as suggestive as its answer could be.

‘I don’t very often,’ the man jumps in. ‘Can’t seem to keep hold of anything else. Though, I don’t mind so much now. I used to, but I suppose it makes sense to dream in the same sort of way as one lives. Dreams are our unconscious minds telling us how we feel and what we think, and what use have our unconscious minds to think or feel things in a way that we are no longer able to in our conscious lives?’ He says this without the ardent certainty that was so evident in the people I spoke to earlier today, and I note his choice of words, ‘we are no longer able to do so’, rather than ‘we no longer desire to do so’ which is what the bearded men would have said this morning, or the lady I met on my way to the NSAA would have said. Nonetheless, he accepts the facts of the matter and he seems content enough in what he says, though his choice of words suggests a hint of a sigh, even if his tone does not.

‘What about you?’ says the lady to my right. No, her name is Fiona – says, Fiona to my right.

I do not know how to answer. I cannot admit that I tell myself stories before I go to sleep in the hope that they will turn into lucid dreams and I will wake with a clear memory of them, can I?

‘I do dream of the outside sometimes, yes. Though, it is not the same as it was. I am my inside self in my dreams, and the landscape I navigate is all available inside. It is the landscape of the NewStateMediaMoments I consume and the NewStateReality I experience. My dreams are, therefore, an extension of my inside living, not a remembrance of the old world. I suppose this is the same for everyone, isn’t it?’ I try to make it sound as though I believe I am normal. I am in NewStateHeadquarters after all, and I realise that I do not yet know what it is they think we all have in common. For all I know, we have all been psychologically profiled to become spies. I wouldn’t want to tell the whole truth to a NewStateSpy would I? Fiona answers her own question now,

‘Well, I think there is another level of dream-reality too. One can dream of oneself in their horseshoe curve, consuming and awaiting new content. The content itself will be of the variety you would expect, but it is not you in the content, it is you consuming the content and sharing the content. People used to dream of going on dates in restaurants; now people dream of going on dates in virtual restaurants from the safety of their horseshoe curve. They do not enter the body of their avatar but control it from their omniscient point of view.’ I notice that she has not, in fact, answered her own question but has framed her contribution in the third person. She has revealed nothing but an acute understanding of what NewState would expect, or want, her to say. Is she speaking strategically too?

In the brief silence that follows her – Fiona’s – contribution, I notice a low rumble of sound and realise that the other seven candidates who are not being registered have now started talking to one another along their rows, as we are on ours.

‘I know we have been asked not to talk about it, but I am curious about the job that we are being considered for.’ The man next to Fiona has changed the topic of conversation and I wonder if he has also done so tactfully.

‘Would you welcome a more full-time job here?’ Fiona asks both of us.

‘Well, that may just depend upon the job,’ replies the man.

‘I’m sorry, what is your name?’ I interrupt.

‘Oh, well, I suppose it is William, isn’t it!’

‘Well, it’s good to meet you William. So, would you be comfortable spending so much time outside?’

‘That’s just the point, Peter.’ It feels good to hear my name out loud. ‘Some work, like the work that we do, isn’t like being fully outside. What we are dealing in is, in fact, inside living. And, I suppose I can’t think of a job that doesn’t have data analysis and content proposals at its heart. What else is there now? It would make no sense to train forty-year-old men and women in highly skilled scientific and technological areas, would it?’

‘Forty?’ Interrupts Fiona with genuine indignation.

‘Oh, well, sorry, I was looking at Peter when I said that. Of course, you are younger than we are.’

‘You took eight years off of me. DailyMotion and NewStateFood must be doing something right.’ We each smile at this. Is there a touch of irony in their smiles too?

‘So,’ William continues his thought as if no segue had occurred. ‘The position we’re being considered for must be linked heavily to the inside. Perhaps they’re after someone who knows what it is like to be inside properly, like the average citizen. We would fit that bill, and we place in the top thirtieth percentile, or, at least, we did. Intelligent and experienced, I guess.’

‘And we are all old enough – sorry Fiona, but we were – to have been adults well before the change. Could there be something in that?’ I ask, with an air of just passing the time.

‘Well, yes, there could be something in that. But, of course, all other new recruits are inducted when they graduate SchoolStream, so there is no one else who has a full and adult experience of inside living, like the average citizen, and is also deemed intelligent enough to work here, so, perhaps, it is merely necessary coincidence that we knew a life before SSC. Besides, we’ve only been fully inside a little over five years. Most adults were adults before the change too. I know’ - he registers the surprise on my face - ‘easy to forget how short a time it’s actually been isn’t it!’

He’s right, I think. And yet, if you time travelled an adult from less than a decade ago to the present day, they wouldn’t recognise the world. They might not quite believe how much has so fundamentally changed in so short a space of time.

William is making me think. I am enjoying this conversation but still I am aware that I should not enjoy it too much. I suddenly think of all those security cameras watching the approach to the building and it occurs to me now that our ignorance of how NewState really works within these walls makes us all vulnerable.

‘Next.’ I look up and a woman is ushering me towards the registration point. I turn my head and smile at Fiona and William. I stand up and make my way towards the woman not wearing an emotivest. She smiles but that is all. I do not know who she is. I do not know what she is thinking. And I do not know what she will do to me. My palms feel sticky and I have to wipe my brow as I make my way forward.

When I reach the desk, the woman asks me to sign next to my name on a sheet of paper. I do so and am then ushered through the curtain. What I see on the other side reminds me of a hospital ward, but instead of metallic trollies, beds on wheels and doctors’ implements, everything is more of the same white-lit smoothness. A man in grey overalls asks me to take a seat and rest my chin on a soft white pad in front of me. I am reminded of going to the opticians.

‘Please look straight ahead. You won’t feel any pain, but a sequence of bright lights will flash. They will cause you to blink. That is natural but try to keep your eyes open as much as you can.’

Light rooms and flashing lights, I think, with a sort of curious smile.

The experience isn’t entirely unfamiliar. As part of NewStateMotion, our apartments are also equipped with a retinal scanner. We have to use it once a month. I assume it is designed to check the health of our eyes, just as our bike machines monitor our weight, blood pressure, heart rate and the rest of it. There is also a body scanner mounted on one wall of my apartment. It looks much like a mirror, and I am required to stand in front of it once a month for five minutes whilst it scans my body and determines my health. Much is made of this medical monitoring on NewStateDiscovery. We are regularly reminded of how healthy we are and how new technology, such as the BodyScanners are the best form of illness detection in the history of mankind.

Next, I am asked to place my hand on a tablet that scans my fingerprint. I then stand in front of a camera, which flashes yet more light at me. Once this is over, the man tells me to take a seat, whilst they finish my registration. I follow his instruction and sit on a smooth white chair. I wonder why the workers here do not wear emotivests. I feel a wave of envy start to surface inside me: to live without the constant need to update my status every hour, on the hour, would be a simple negligence that would bring with it insurmountable pleasure. I sometimes feel that my body has been tied up in knots for the past ten years: always anxious, always worried that I am not fitting the norm.

It’s hard to believe there was a time when I would pride myself for not following the herd. My greatest moments of elation were always when a new idea occurred to me, or when I felt something in a way I had not felt it before, like when I first met Janine sat at the café on the street. I had a decision to make: to talk or not to talk. Inside there would be no question but to talk, because inside there is nothing to lose. Even if things went catastrophically wrong inside I could simply change my name and start again. I would have to drop to the bottom of the rankings and would lose all of my likes and followers, but that would be part of the appeal: to work my way up again. Life is now a game, and our avatars are but vehicles behind which we hide. But for those people who become their avatars or have only ever really been their avatars, for those people who have switched off entirely from even the memory or longing for the outside world, they have severed all links to their true self.

Wherever it’s hidden, perhaps there is no point in the true self switching on again if it will awaken only to find that it is imprisoned within four walls in which it cannot flourish, only long and pine and be compressed back into nothingness.

Again, I think about how SSC is like a drug. Once we saturated ourselves with technology, we lost our belief that anything else could quench the insatiable thirst that it created. Rather than weaning ourselves off of it, we overdosed on it, believing that more and more and more would cure the incurable itch. And now our medicine has made us forget the hole that needs to be filled. Life is emptiness and emptiness is life.

And so I long to not to update my status on the hour, every hour, for this just prologues the life of my false self and compresses the life of my true self. But then, I have not updated my status on the hour, every hour. I have not updated it since I left my apartment this morning. I suddenly feel the knots in my body twist tighter as I turn to my wrist to update my emotivest. #NSHQWOW and smiley face.

I am pulled out of my reverie.

‘Peter, if you would like to come forward. This is your security pass.’ The man hands me a laminated card on a lanyard. I take it and marvel at it. I do not recognise myself and it feels good to be reminded. ‘You are to wear this at all times, so that you may be identified as you walk around the building. Your retinal scan and palm scan will permit you access to rooms and corridors for which you have clearance. If the scanner beeps red, then try it one more time but do not attempt to scan yourself a third time, for it will prompt a security alarm. So, you are all checked in. If you would like to return to your seat in the main room, once everyone has been registered you will be escorted on. Thank you, and good day.’

I return to my seat and resume my conversation with William. It is Fiona’s turn to register next.

Once everyone has been registered we are escorted to another room. This one is set up like a small cinema, with rows of chairs in front of a large screen. Unlike the cinemas I remember, however, this one is all white. Even when the lights dim, the natural shine of the white walls vibrates through the darkness. The woman who appeared on the screen in the waiting room now stands in front of us and speaks.

‘Welcome, all of you. I am Miss Mary Hain and I will be your main port of contact for the duration of your stay here. I will be conducting you through the process. Now that your registration is complete, the interview process can begin. But, as you heard earlier, you should not treat it like an interview. Simply be yourselves. Do not second guess or seek to understand but follow the instructions you are given as best you can. Some of you will stay only until this evening, and some of you longer. Now, perhaps we should begin in the fashion that all things should begin, by reminding ourselves of how fortunate we are to live in a world of peace and overwhelming happiness.’

Miss Mary Hain wears standard overalls, however hers are white, not grey, and so she almost blends into the walls of the room. When the lights dim she seems to radiate a little in the darkness. I cannot help but stare at her, not because she is beautiful, although she is beautiful, but because she reminds me of someone. She must be in her early thirties and so would have already been an adult as things were changing. There is something alluring about her. It is in the eyes. Her eyes are captivating. They are not vacant, but strong and piercing. They speak of intelligence and confidence. She must only be a few years younger than Our Leader Day, who is barely thirty-eight.

At just twenty-two she joined the party Liberate. The party already existed. They were relatively new and marketed themselves as a party of the future – a party of people who understood the changing world and were committed to using technology to solve the ever-increasing threat of global warming. I remember hearing reports at the time that Our Leader Day joined Liberate along with a group she had formed whilst at Cambridge University. It was not long after she joined Liberate that it really started to spread like wildfire and captivated the nation within just a few years, and by twenty-five, she was the face of a credible political opposition. The party were now dedicated to wholly renewable energy sources, and the advancement of technology to render the working week as close to non-existent as possible.

Only in her mid-twenties, she was not yet the leader of the party. At that time, she deputised to a man called Brigham. It was Brigham who was elected as Prime Minister, but soon after he stepped down and she took his place; she was barely twenty-six. Within five years, the major infrastructure required for SSC was in place and by the time she was thirty-three, it was fully established, and we were all living inside. It was within these first five years of office that the concept of SSC was officially introduced, but by the time Our Leader Day was in power and we had moved to renewable energy, the world was on the brink of a kind of self-inflicted SSC anyway - culture had been evolving in this direction since the internet was born; NewState just stepped in to make it economically feasible.

All that said, I wonder if it was the unemployment and depression brought on my automated technology that made people so accepting of SSC: what other hope was there for the unemployed? Did technology take away the work and then rewrite the narrative to make people believe that worklessness had been the goal, not the devastating consequence.

The video that has started playing is one I have seen before. Or, at least, I have seen something similar. It goes through the origins of the party. Currently a timeline of NewState’s rise to power is being displayed and narrated.

● 2019 Leader Day joins Liberate

● 2023 Prime Minister Brigham of Liberate is elected with Our Leader Day as his deputy

● 2024 Prime Minister Brigham resigns, Our Leader Day replaces him, and the party changes its name to NewState. The concept of SSC is introduced, and slowly more and more people are able to give up work and adopt their new lives

● 2029 The country relies 100% on renewable energy and the infrastructure for SSC is fully operational.

● 2034 Today, SSC celebrates five years of peace and happiness

And so it has been fifteen years since everything accelerated, ten years since we started retreating inside, and five years since life as we knew it ended.

I am not watching the video and I am not listening to it. I am looking at Miss Mary Hain and I realise that Janine will have no idea what is happening to me and I have no way of communicating it to her. Not that she’ll notice I’m missing. We do not communicate inside and so weeks, and often months, go by without us hearing from each other. I sometimes wonder whether it is right for us to stay together, but then I remember that we both abhor the idea of forming a relationship with someone on the inside, and without our few stolen moments I do not think I would have the strength to resist. We were so in love before the change, but it is so hard now to properly hold onto that love – that feeling of being in love.

I long to touch Janine now. To feel her. To smell her. To hold her and be held by her. This life we lead is so cold. Looking at Miss Mary Hain, I miss human contact so much that I crave to walk over to her and hug her, to feel the warmth of another human being pressed against my skin, to share something, to unite in one space, separate from everything around us, separated from things, and people, and actions and doing, doing, doing.

I feel a sort of guilt in my lust and try to think of Janine. I close my eyes but cannot hold on to anything outside of this room. I open them again and notice Miss Mary Hain looking straight at me. Our eyes meet for one piercing moment, and then she bows her head and scribbles something into the notepad she is holding. What was in that look? And what has she written down? I realise I have let my guard down and must make up for my mistakes. I change my status to begin making amends. Who knows how much I have given away without even realising it. We are being observed and I must not merit observation.

The film ends, and the lights come on again, bright and white, and Miss Mary Hain melts into the background.

Chapter Two Autumn 2034 Peter Harrison

We have been given a task to complete in groups of three. I am working with the man called William and someone else who has not shared her name. We have been given the roles of producers of a new reality show for NewStateMedia. We have to pitch our idea for the show in thirty minutes time. The parameters of the brief are that our show must include both male and female characters and must involve the use of technology. The show can be set in either the outside or the inside world.

‘We should set it in the inside world,’ says the nameless lady. ‘Television serials attract people because they allow the audience to be jealous voyeurs of other people's lives. So, the fiction must be better than reality, and the show must be set inside, because no one is envious of people outside anymore. That is why there are no people living outside anymore.’

‘But you must remember,’ says William courteously. ‘NewState still make many serials that are set in a version of the old world and they seem to work. In fact, AddictedToGossip is the highest rated serial on NewStateMedia. I reported as such just three days ago. And it’s not because everyone is craving to live in the world they are watching.’ That is interesting: I reported the same thing three days ago.

‘No,’ I say. ‘It is not where the serial is set, but what it is about, that is important. AddictedToGossip is a version inside living. The characters on the show are obsessed with popularity, in the same way that the main goal of inside living is to climb the rankings and become more and more popular. We must be adept at socialising if we are to rise, so whatever show we propose must be about socialising and popularity. That is life, so our serial must be a hyperbolic version of that.’

‘Right you are, Peter,’ says William. ‘And if NewStateReality is going to advance as announced, then living inside will, in many ways, mimic how we lived outside anyway.’

‘Maybe,’ says the woman in our team. ‘But that is not the main purpose of our lives. Our main purpose is, as it has always been, to live and to socialise and to connect with others. SSC simply provides a safe world in which to do these things. Celebrity is the by-product, not the goal. And NewStateReality will enable us to live like we did, without the anxiety of a be all and end all culture because there is always the option to re-avatar.’

We continue to share ideas back and forth until our thirty minutes are up and we are asked to pitch our final idea to the other groups and to Miss Mary Hain, who has now been joined by three other people in white overalls, one woman and two men. The woman is older than she is, nearer to my age, whilst one of the men looks to be somewhere in his thirties and the other somewhere near my age also. As each group feeds back, they all type their notes on the portable pads that they each carry.

I do not know what the test was for. I tried to offer ideas that matched the results of my research and create a show that NewState would believe in. Are we being interviewed for a position in media production?

We are taken to eat lunch in a huge cafeteria, with an impossibly high ceiling. Where one would expect to see skylights, one sees a sheet of artificial radiance. I consider the irony that this fake sunlight is being powered by solar energy. It’s like always making tea with a used tea-bag. I find myself understanding why primitive cultures worshipped the sun. Is that why NewState create their own?

I think again about the religiosity of so much of what I have heard today and the tension within me begins to twist itself back into knots. I had not realised that I had relaxed, but the task we completed, though deplorable, was also the most intellectually stimulated I have felt in years: within these parameters, what would be the most productive solution? Even now, the memory of those thirty minutes fills me with pride.

But pride comes before a fall.

I must stay on my guard. I cannot afford to be caught out by whatever game our hosts are playing.

Looking around, I notice again that no one is wearing emotivests. Why do these people at the heart of SSC, and these people who actually see people in the flesh every day, not adhere to the same rules that we are told make NewState work so well?

In this thought I realise I have found my first question. Why are these workers treated differently? I am unable to make notes other than mental ones, so I hold this question in my mind’s eye long enough to be confident that I will not forget it. The Ancient Greek philosophers believed that the written word would be the end of intelligent civilization: if one could write something down, there was no longer any reason to remember it. I do not believe they were right, but I do feel that my mind is less capable than it once was. I struggle to concentrate for long periods of time and I find myself feeling increasingly impatient: when we consume so much, so often, and in such short bursts, of course our capacity to remember fades. And once memory has faded, what is left of the past?

I find that I enjoy my lunch. We are still fed the same sort of meal packs that we are prescribed at home, but I am able to talk to my fellow candidates, with whom it seems I share something in common. I cannot quite place what this commonality is, but there is something in the eyes, in the same way that I noticed something in Miss Mary Hain’s eyes. It was stronger in her, but I can still see it in the eyes of the people around me. It is hard to know what to talk about – we are being observed – so I decide to ask one of the candidates from another group about their proposal. He is a man somewhere in his mid-forties.

‘Do you think a show like the one you proposed would have worked before the change?’ I ask. They proposed an inside living show, where we follow the perspective of someone living in their horseshoe screen. We are always aware that they are watching content played out on their screen and we follow their interactions with other users, and a tangled web of unknown and complicated interrelations arise.

‘I think it would have done yes, because what drove us before the change still drives us now: surveillance and attention. Everyone wants attention; it is the primary source of achievement and fulfilment. And everyone wants to observe the lives of others. They aspire to be like some and are relieved not to be like others.’

‘Pity and fear,’ I mutter under my breath, half thinking, half pining.

‘Yes, that’s it. Catharsis: entertainment that achieves a social good.’

‘Entertainment but not art?’

‘Hmmmm, now that is a question, isn’t it? Art imitates life, I suppose. So, perhaps art, yes.’

‘But are the art forms in NewState varied enough to reflect the nuances human existence?’ Perhaps this is too candid, for NewState only offers one variance of human existence. I add,

‘I wonder if there is some nuance that we missed in our pitches that would have been uniquely entertaining for our audiences.’

‘Perhaps.’ We continue, but my guard is up again. I update my status and continue with more caution.

I sit in my temporary room, inside my temporary horseshoe, feeling an extreme sense of how temporary everything in my life is. I have developed a way of making all illicit thoughts temporary too, whilst also working hard to keep them in my long-term memory. It involves a sort of meditation. Rather than keeping all of my thoughts buried within my mind, I close my eyes and picture them floating around me, as if my head is the sun and all of my thoughts are the planets of the solar system, orbiting the source of their existence. If the sun fails, then the planets lose direction, and float off into the endless ether of black space. But so long as I keep my head, maintain my awareness of the metanarrative, I can keep my thoughts securely out there, orbiting me. Storing and observing my thoughts and memories in this way unclutters my frustrated mind and allows me moments of regenerative peace, amidst the otherwise constant chaos of my angry mind. This is how I hold on to the past, but do not give myself away in my present.

However, now, sat in my temporary room, inside my temporary horseshoe, I am overcome with an intense fear that holding my thoughts at this distance is dangerous. They seem vulnerable and fragile. As this temporary world of white lit rooms and psychological testing fills my consciousness, I fear I will forget about them, this sun will change colour, fail, and the past will float away, lost, with no gravitational pull to guide it home.

It is eight o’clock and we have all been dismissed from our day of testing. After lunch we undertook our second task. This time we were all observed alone. I was sat in a small, clinically white and clinically bright room, on a clinically smooth chair. Opposite me, sat a man in clinically white overalls. For fifteen minutes he asked me questions, which I was told to answer as quickly and as instinctively as possible. If I hesitated too long, he would move on, saving the unanswered question to surprise me later. The test ran too quickly for me to evaluate what I was being asked. The few questions I remember were broad and varied: what is your favourite NewStateMediaMoment? What is your next ranking goal? How did you feel when you saw Our Leader Day on the podium today? Do you remember your childhood?

Once this section was over, I was then subjected to a further fifteen minutes of word association, with just as much rapidity. Red, Blue, Apple, SSC, Love, Friends, Fun, Our Leader Day, Hope, Fear, Purple, Sun, Car, House, Room, Bike. I must have responded to hundreds of words in those fifteen minutes, and dread to think what I revealed. Were the apparently innocuous words like ‘apple’ and ‘blue’ only used to lull me into a false sense of security, so that the more telling words such as ‘SSC’ and ‘Love’ were responded to without hesitation?

After this test we were all led into a large room, like the one we were registered in this morning. The room was laid out with fifteen study tables, each with a single chair pushed under it. It reminded me of an exam hall, except that the tables were immaculately white and smooth; there was no chiselled graffiti or red penned witticism left by students who had long graduated and grown up.

We were asked to sit down and were each issued with a pad of paper and pen. I was stunned to notice, not only that we had been given pads of paper in the first place, but that they were just like the old composition books people used to use, with black covers and a mottled header with the words ‘Composition Book’ written there - the kind I used to issue to my students.

I picked it up and, when I was sure Miss Mary Hain was not looking, I smelt it as quietly but as deeply as I could. With this old familiarity came a flood of memories that flashed before my mind’s eye so quickly I felt like I was back in the word association interview. I remembered home, school, Oxford, and Bath. Ah, Bath, that is what this city used to be called. I have not thought about the old names for a long time.

And from Bath, I remembered the Romans, and from the Romans I remembered honour and duty and love and… the list went on. In the few instants it took for these memories to flood in, I felt myself well up with emotion. It began as a warm nostalgia, before turning into a peaceful melancholy, but quickly, once I remembered where I was, and once I noticed Miss Mary Hain begin to turn around to address us, the feeling became an unbearable longing, then an overwhelming sadness. As I straightened myself up, carefully put the book back down and wiped the rapidly changing emotions from my face, adopting the blank passivity of the NewState citizen in public, then, looking into the face of the slightly radiating Miss Mary Hain, my emotions, yet again today, turned to quiet rage. My fists, now under the table and in my lap, clenched. At this moment, as she had done earlier today in the cinema room, Miss Mary Hain caught my eyes, and seemed to lock in for just a fraction longer than seemed normal. Before she addressed the group, she turned her attention to her portable screen and typed something down.

Our task was simple, though entirely unexpected. We were asked to think of our two most vivid memories from before the time of SSC – one good and one bad – and to spend the next hour writing about them in the books that had been provided. Miss Mary Hain told us to be honest, detailed and interesting, whilst trying not to think about it too much. ‘Think of it as a stream of consciousness,’ she said. The mere suggestion of writing something down by hand filled me with excitement, and reminded me of the old days, of writing journals and ideas for the solitary audience of one. But these journals would not be private. The task was designed to test something. This was a game, and the parameters were simple: the players must remain in the dark and be observed at all times.

After my initial excitement, I felt concern. What could I write about that did not contravene the values of SSC? I thought hard firstly about what I would write if I were writing for myself alone. My happiest memories: meeting Janine, marrying Janine, my childhood playing in the park with my friends, my father reading me bedtime stories about knights in shining armour and adventures in lands far far away, studying for my PHD in Oxford, getting my first job, moving in with Janine, lazy Sunday afternoons with my wife. Could I write about any of these things without looking suspicious? What was this task designed to reveal? What personality traits are they looking for?

In the end, for my happiest memory I decided to write about the time I first met Janine, with Van Gogh under my arm, my near-death experience and the serendipity of love at first sight. After all, first meetings and social relationships are promoted by SSC, even if the context has changed. For my worst memory, I decided to write about death.

The process was cathartic, and I became lost in my writing. I wrote about things that happened and how they made me feel. I used my words to create images in my head – images that I could hold on to and cherish because setting these memories into words gave them new life and a longevity that mere grey cells alone could not.

Even reliving the sadness of my worst memory was beautiful. I stopped writing when Miss Mary Hain asked us to stop, but I continued to remember long after I had finished putting pen to paper.

My hand had begun to ache after just five minutes, with a writer’s cramp that once I would not have felt even after hours of writing. I savoured the pain, for it will help me to remember the images I created.

Once testing was over, we ate our evening meal in the same high-ceilinged room in which we had eaten lunch. More prescription food: high nutrition, but nothing new. After we had eaten, Miss Mary Hain addressed our table in the otherwise empty cafeteria – all other diners had since finished their food and no doubt had quickly returned to their private rooms to lock in and ‘live’. With this thought, I found my curiosity piqued again. What are these workers like? Do they find their obligatory work tiresome, and obsessively count down the minutes until they can clock off and clock back on inside? Or do they savour the work that keeps them from the prison cells the rest of us are so tightly trapped in?

I had found my next question: do the workers at NewStateHeadquarters enjoy their work? It would surely be a great defiance if they did.

Miss Mary Hain had our attention immediately – I must confess that I had watched her approach consciously and precisely.

‘Good evening candidates. After today’s afternoon of testing, five of you will be leaving the interview process. The same will happen tomorrow evening, before the final candidate is selected at the end of the third day. Those of you who are leaving will no doubt be happy to be returning to your homes and your normal lives. You will have the opportunity to leave at once. Though some of you are being asked to leave, it would not be fair to say that any of you have performed better or worse than anyone else, for, as explained when you arrived, our objective here is not to assess your abilities, but to analyse your personalities to find someone who most closely fits that which we are looking for. Your failure to continue further in this process should, therefore, be met with indifference and not disappointment.’

Miss Mary Hain then proceeded to reveal the five names of those of us who were leaving. I was half surprised to find that as I listened to our instructor read off the list of names, I was sat on the edge of my seat, and when she finished, having not uttered my name, I felt myself relax. Whatever she says about indifference and failure, I am definitely competing, for it is my job to learn everything I can about NewState.

And then, perhaps more than this, if I am honest, not so deep down, the idea of working in this building increasingly appeals to me. However much I know I am supposed to hate everything this place stands for, I cannot help but be tempted by it. After all, if resistance is futile, what harm is there in making the best of this eternally bad situation?

I know the answer to this question. I think of my fellow runners, and Janine and the sunrise pendant that even now presses its cold metallic flat against the flesh of my chest. I am here to beat the system, not become another cog in the machine. I admit, however, sitting in my temporary horseshoe, in my temporary room, a world apart from my fellow runners and Janine, and so densely surrounded by the NewState mechanism, that our cause feels more impossible than ever before.

I decide to run our mantra through my mind. We are dedicated to whisper louder and louder and make more noise. We are dedicated to whisper louder and louder and make more noise. I repeat the phrase, allowing it to fill up my mind in every way, until in resounds, and all other thoughts are pushed aside. As I get used to the repeated rhythms, they become the constant background to the thoughts I now allow to form. I observe images in front of me, orbiting the gently pulsating sun at their center.

By the time I deem it sensible to shut down my screens, I fall asleep still reciting the mantra, so that its words drift into my sleep and I dream of running and jumping and laughing and breathing in huge, long, cold gasps.

I dream.

I am out running on a cold wintery night. The landscape around me is both eternally black and reassuringly illumined by the celestial blaze in the heavens above. The moon is shielded by thick wisps of dark grey cloud, and, as there is little wind to fill the air, the thick clouds move too slowly to allow the moon, which is full behind its cloak of cloud, to share its pearly white light. But the rest of the sky is clear, so though I can barely see my hands in front of me, when I look up I can see the black sky sprinkled with millions of tiny bright lights.

I am reassured by the stars: though many no longer exist, they live on as their light travels ever closer to us, millions and millions of miles away in time and space. They live on like great figures of the past whose legacies perpetuate through the protracted line of generations long after their bodies are gone, cast away to wind and earth and air and sea.

I become aware that I am not alone, though I cannot see or hear anyone about me. The air is still, the light dark, and yet I know that someone is near. My eyes begin to adjust, my pupils expand, and I realise that I am on a high rise of land that looks out over a great valley. Though I cannot make out the vastness below, the landscape ebbs and flows through varying shades of blackness, revealing the contours of the expanse before me. I dare not walk far forward, lest I fall down some uneven incline, or drop off some sheer precipice. If I were to fall now, my light would not stretch on like so many stars above me; it would simply cease, put out with a thud – a sound that would not travel far in this windless night.

I decide to gingerly move one step forward, and as my heel levers to toe I feel the gradient tip ever so slightly down. Another step and the angle drops infinitesimally further. I take another step, and another, then another after that. I increase my pace and begin to breathe more heavily. The night-wet grassy surface of the earth dips ever farther and farther down, until it is all I can do not to run as gravity does its work. I embrace the descent, the speed, the ever increasing frequency of my breathing. Sometimes I take huge, elongated intakes of breath, and then sometimes rapid shallow gasps, but all the while I am getting faster and faster, accelerating down, down, ever farther down.

Presently the speed begins to get the better of me. My concern about the unknown severity of the descent returns and I try to pull back and slow my pace, but gravity has taken over and I fall, not from some obstruction on the ground in front of me but because my head has overtaken my body. I tumble forwards fast and hard. Gradually I feel the increased surface area of my now somersaulting body slow me down, and then the decline eases off and reverses. I roll up slightly, propelled by the velocity of the fall, and then back down, then up but slightly less far, then down, up, down, slower and slower, less and less far, and then I stop.

I feel the dull ache of bruises forming and I am dizzy as I raise my head from the ground. Though it hurts I am, as ever, glad for the pain. I test my legs before I commit the weight of my body upon them in full.

As my reorientation completes, my pupils expand, my head stills and my heart rate begins to slow, I take stock of my new surroundings. Though I cannot see far, the black shadow of the hill above is dense and I can see that I have fallen a significant distance from the summit. I am not, however, as far down as the valley floor, which still runs off twice as far again. I have rolled up onto a flat grassy area, where the earth levels out with a few small mounds rising and falling before the descent continues to plummet towards the valley bed.

Behind me, there is an area of vegetation: small bushes and brambles tangled between a small grove of trees. As I turn to look at it, I feel a strong inclination to move towards the grove. I feel the same presence that I felt above, but now it is stronger and I am certain that I am not alone. I find it strange that I do not feel afraid, but rather in the darkness I feel a strange sense of familiarity and warmth, and my movement towards the small copse of trees feels in some way like I am supposed to be going there; it is as if I am returning home, though this is a place to which I have never been, and I do not know what I will find there.

I move slowly towards my destination, all the while seeing more and more as my eyes adjust to the darkness around me. As I get closer, my sense of anticipation increases, and I am overcome with a longing to be there already, a feeling deep within my stomach that exudes both an intense nervousness and an intense desire.

I am almost at the edge of the small tree line now and I am overwhelmed with a deep physical desire, though I do not consciously know what this desire is for; it is as if something inside me knows where I am headed, as if my body is guiding my mind to a familiar destination, but my mind can only remember to trust my body’s trajectory, not remember why it should trust it.

And now I am here, and I continue on, into the small wood. There is a rough sort of path that I follow, although I brush past overhanging branches, and brambles scratch at my arms. Suddenly I stop short. Someone is standing with their back turned before me. It appears to be the shape of a woman and at the sight of her the desire that has been growing within me builds towards an inevitable crescendo, pounding towards a climax of sound that will release all the tension and suspense of the long, anticipatory wait.

I move closer to the figure until I am but an arms-length from reaching out and touching her. Here I stop and wait, and she begins to slowly turn. As she turns I notice that she is dressed all in white. The whiteness of her overalls faintly illuminates against the darkness of our surroundings, and as my eyes absorb this illumination my mind catches up with my body and clarity begins to dawn on me. I know whose face it is that I am about to see. I know what is going to happen. And I know that I will not be able to stop myself.

The figure before me to whom I am uncontrollably compelled is Miss Mary Hain.

She faces me now, with an indecipherable look: some knowing look that speaks of understanding – a collected confidence, but also a tempting and alluring request, a palpable desire, a longing to match that of my own. I feel as though we are both radiating now, as if our desire is rapidly beating inside of us, desperate to break free. Our embrace is inevitable, and I can think of nothing; all I can do is feel. Our surroundings drop away as we each take one step closer towards the other and I reach out my hand to gently pull her lips towards mine. I move my hand so that it brushes inside of her falling golden hair, brushes the side of her neck and then softly pulls her to me.

Once our lips meet, everything explodes into an ecstasy of colour. My whole body trembles, my heart pounds and our lips are filled with each other’s warmth. This warmth touches the lips, seeps through the surface of the skin and moves through our bodies, until every part of us is filled with heat – hers with mine and mine with hers.

As we undress each other, every touch to the surface of the skin sends the same ripples of warmth through us. We are constantly refilled. We drink deeply and are refilled again. Our hands meet, our cheeks press, our legs wrap, and our hearts beat. I move my hands over her soft back, pressing through her densely knotted muscles, releasing the tension of our long separation. She grips my back and presses the points of her fingers up and down me. Our bodies entwine in a radiating pulse of oneness. I can think of nothing but the explosive force and power of deep, physical love. We are now part of the crescendo, a sensory climax that continues to beat on and on and on; it is a cacophony of intense, climactic symphony, and when the cymbals sound their final crash, the waves and ripples resound and resonate long after the two halves of the percussive instrument have made their full and explosive contact.

Now, Miss Mary Hain’s naked body still entwined with mine, I sleep within a dream.