Chapters 1-2

Today we begin Part 3, The Rising Sun. Peter confronts Miss Mary Hain and has some important decisions to make.

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

Chapter One Winter 2035 Peter Harrison

‘Peter,’ she says, nothing out of the ordinary. ‘I did not expect to find you here so early. I’d just popped back for some papers.’ Though it pains me, I proceed with caution.

‘Oh, I left my copy of Lord of the Flies here. I was just looking for it, and I found this.’ I pick up the copy of Brave New World. ‘I remembered loving it, so I was just glancing through when your bookmark fell out.’ I let the sentence hang between us. I know I should not have read her private message, but there is something about it that has unsettled my former self who I am starting to realise has been drifting away.

‘I see. Well, it is an interesting book, though I must say it is not one of my favourites. Too convoluted. Our Leader Day lent it to me a few months ago. She likes it very much.’ She is not mentioning the note. Is it genuinely of no consequence? Is it so unimportant that she cannot even remember what it says – just an old scrap used to mark a page? Perhaps, but I cannot shake the feeling the word ‘ascension’ has provoked in me, and I cannot shake the distaste I felt when my colleagues told me about automation and NewStateFriends. No, I have to press the point. I have to ask. But I mustn’t throw caution to the wind. What they don’t know hurts them most.

‘Oh,’ I continue as naturally as I can. ‘I don’t remember the particulars of the book, but I remember that whenever it was that I read it that I loved it. Funny that, how you can remember a feeling but not what caused it. And…’ I hesitate. ‘Well, sorry, but I couldn’t help but read the note on your bookmark. I wasn’t thinking. But, is it from Our Leader Day?’

‘Oh that,’ she dismisses. ‘Yes, just musings from a meeting. We really do discuss all sorts of things at meetings. You know, I think we could abolish nine meetings in every ten and the only thing that would go missing are all the bad ideas we create trying to fill up the time before the meeting is supposed to end!’

‘So, what was this idea about? I mean,’ and I push it here, ‘ascension and rotation, they’re things that Our Leader Day discussed at the NewStateAnnualAddress.’

‘Well. Let me see.’ She reaches out for the note. ‘Oh this. I must admit I couldn’t quite remember what it said – we really do take all sorts of notes at meeting. Well, yes, this was just a note about the wording of the AnnualAddress. The end of rotation is, of course, a primary goal to enable the people to be fully immersed in their happiness and emancipated from the restrictions of their old lives.’

‘But there are important things that are part of rotation. Surely they’ll never be abolished.’

‘Well, I suppose abolished is the wrong word. It will be abolished for the people but that doesn’t mean it won’t still exist. We are here after all. It is a case of making their lives better, whilst finding ways to solve rotation without simply transferring its burden on to us. The goal is always to find mutually beneficial solutions to our problems. Harmony. Harmony is at the heart of everything Our Leader Day is striving for.’ And there it is. Explained. She smiles and moves towards me, and for a moment all worry dissipates. I had been concerned over nothing. And yet. The fog has not yet quite settled again before something inside me speaks up. Born without the body. What does that mean? She has not told me what that means. And how will they abolish rotation? Why is not enough. The ends do not always justify the means. In fact, I realise, she has told me nothing. I am amazed that I nearly did not notice. I ask more, and my agitation becomes noticeable as I speak.

‘What are automation and NewStateFriends? I heard them discussed today but didn’t know what they meant.’

‘Ah, well, that is genius, Peter. Pure genius. Automation and NewStateFriends are the final tools that make sure that everyone feels validated in NewState and that no-one suffers loneliness and depression. Automation ensures that all posts receive enough likes to prevent that horrible sinking feeling when no one responds, and NewSateFriends makes sure that everyone is able to talk. It is one of NewState’s most selfless pursuits.’ She speaks without even a hint of irony, calmly, passively, like she believes the party line she is reciting. What am I remembering? Propaganda. Slogans. Posters. Lies.

‘But what about truth? Is a friend really a friend if they’re not real?’

‘But, Peter, they are real. The people here who add likes and who talk to the lonely really want to make the people happier.’

‘No!’ I can’t hide my agitation any longer. ‘No, I don’t believe that. Come on, Mary. You don’t believe that either. The truth. The truth is what is important.’

‘No, Peter. Safety. Safety is what has always been important. And that is what the human race failed to see for the duration of its entire history until technology presented the solution that NewState has now implemented and continues to refine with such success. Our system is an unprecedented, utilitarian success, the like of which has never been seen before. Peter, the world is a beautiful place.’

Words, words, just words. My mind is awakening bit by bit. Find questions. Ask them. Find the answers. If something isn’t working, you can’t just fix it by knocking it down and starting again. It wouldn’t work. The solution has to be born out of the problem. Anxiety, loneliness, isolation, these things cannot be solved with fake likes and fake friends. It is the very assumption that we must all be popular (the true commodity of SSC) that is the problem, and all we have now is a system that perpetuates and maximises it.

‘NO!’ I shout. ‘NO, I can’t believe that Mary. I can’t.’

‘But, Peter,’ she shows no alarm at my anger, but talks calmly. ‘We protect the people who want protecting. The people have finally been allowed to embrace their true desires, and they are safe to do so. The people were already embracing the core principles and practices of SSC as the world changed. That is the very reason the world changed: to give the people what they wanted, what they needed. Peter, we protect, I know you see that. I know it is hard to relinquish your prejudices and your anger. You were trapped for so long in a world you neither understood nor wanted to understand. But now you are safe to be free and happy too. Have you not been happy, Peter, here with your work, with your books, with me?’

No, I think. I have derived a fact from a wish.

‘Molly coddling, Mary. That is just molly coddling. You’re protecting people from the possibility of real experience. How can they hope to know themselves and what they think about the world, about love, truth, beauty, pain, terror, conflict – how can they know what they think of things they are denied the opportunity ever to experience?’ I remember something Jonathan said to me the first day he took me to the rec room, and I repeat it now: my crowning fury.

‘No one is born with an appreciation of opera, Mary. No one.’

‘Peter, what are you talking about?’ She holds her arms open as if in exasperation and welcome at the same time. But I won’t be taken in, not this time, not again. Arghhh, why have I been so blinded by the frills of my enemy. Has the warmth of another human body – a young, intelligent, pretty human body – been enough to cripple my reason?

God!

But I must control my anger. I think of dark rooms and flashing lights. It pains me to think of these things in front of Mary, but I have to. I have to remain on guard. My battlements have been down for too long and I must now exercise extreme caution. I cannot afford to let the fog descend upon me again. If my greatest enemy is my greatest friend, how can I trust anything? I end the silence with pacifying resignation.

‘Mary,’ I calm down. ‘Mary, I’m sorry. I just need some time to think. Like you say, I’ve had a lot to take in. Just, just give me some time. I’ll go back to my room. I’ll read and cycle and think.’ I take her hand, and the warmth is still enough to make me smile.

‘Peter.’ She squeezes my hand. She is very close now. ‘Don’t let your confusion cloud your thinking. Remember, Peter, remember what you have here, what you are building here. Remember all of the possibilities ahead of you.’ She stares earnestly into my eyes and squeezes my hand again. Then she releases. I smile at her, because I have to and because I want to.

‘I’ll see you later, Mary. OK?’ And I leave, not knowing if I will ever return.

When I have returned to my room, I go straight to the bathroom sink and splash my face with ice cold water. I work the water into the crevices and lines of my skin, and then run my wet hands through my hair. I fill up the basin and place my hands on either side, leaning over the water, watching my faint reflection ripple and blur. And then I submerge my head beneath the surface of the cold water. I hold my breath and feel the blood rushing to my brain. And when I can hold it no longer, I pull my head up. Water flings back behind me and rushes over the sides of the basin, slopping onto the floor. I wipe the water from my eyes and run my soaking hair back over my head. I look into the mirror. I see myself staring back at me, but the sight disturbs me for I know that it is not one but two people I see.

First, I see a man who has spent the last few months accepting the bounty of the world that has fallen at his feet, a world that fills so many gaps that the other Peter had suffered for so long. This man has found rigour in his work and pleasure in his relations. This man has spent time with Mary Hain, and not because he had to: he is no spy.

And then I see another man. This is the man to whom the lines and grey hairs belong. This is the man who has deep bags of sleeplessness under his eyes, eyes that have known the beauty of the past and the evil of the screen. This is the man who remembers another woman and her parting words: Do whatever it is you are asked to do well, even if you hate yourself for doing it – even if doing it makes them more powerful. Do it all with a clear conscience knowing that you’re going to have to help them in order to break them. And yet this is the man who has recently relinquished so much to the other, not to bring about the breaking of anything, but simply to ease his own suffering.

But the eyes belong to the older man, and he is now looking at his reflection with clarity: the happy man is not real. He is only a temporary façade that tried to dig deeper. This is what they do, I think. Their sincerity is their greatest weapon. They have tempted me with gold and frankincense and myrrh, and I have allowed myself to be dazzled, not because I believed in the power of the messiah, but because I wanted to believe that I could be happy, be happy and not have to fight for my happiness.

I have abandoned my task for too long. I will not shelter under my enemy’s protection any longer. No. I must not. I cannot.

I feel something cold pressing against my chest and realise that my sunrise pendant is still there. The wetness of my top has made it cool. I pull it out and look at it in the mirror: my small defiance. I think of the hole in my curtains in my old home and remember the senseless pain of days on end forcibly spent in front of the screen, absorbed in a world that I not only hated for its mundanity, but for its systematic degradation of the human mind. No one is born with an innate appreciation of opera!!!

‘Arggghhhhh.’ I say it aloud. I have been so stupid. I walk back into my room.

Now that I have returned to my former self, I do not know what to do.

I begin to pace up and down my room thinking. I think of everything that has happened to me over the last four months in reverse, hoping to understand the process and to re-learn what I knew and held dear. When I reach as far back as my interview I begin to encounter the same contradiction that has made my mind so difficult to make up, for behind my closed eyes I picture the glorious beauty of NSSolarFarmOne, shimmering in the low rising sun. And I remember the strange conversation with Miss Mary Hain that was unobserved by anyone but me. She confessed to me her childhood, her passions and her love of the past. I think that somewhere inside my mind my subconscious began to formulate its own wishful narrative out of this strange meeting. I began to believe that we were alike, that I was being chosen by NewState for one reason, but by Miss Mary Hain for another, and my imagination ran away with ideas of sedition, undercover spies and a secret revolution.

And then there was the fact that she was pretty, intelligent, interesting and real.

But as I track back further, I also remember the anxiety, the fear and then the hatred. I remember the rumours of dark rooms and flashing lights. I remember the way my fists burned at the NewStateAnnualAddress. I remember the woman I met as I walked there. And I remember the years and years of alienating misery, with only the smallest of irregular and infrequent joys: a night spent running. And then I return again to my fellow runners, to Eleanor, to Henry, to James, and finally to Janine.

Janine. A runner. A woman. My wife. The old emotions return to me – the love, joy, longing, and the hate, fear and bitterness. My fists burn and I long for a small defiance, something to properly reactivate my mind. I search for an idea of something to do and my attention falls upon the biggest object in my room that has become so obsolete I have stopped even noticing it: my horseshoe screen.

As I sit down, boot up and log on, my mind slows down. All is not lost. Even if I am not close enough, I am closer now than ever before, and perhaps if my feelings for Mary Hain had not been real, I would not have got so close.

No, I must remain calm. I must remember what Janine and I spoke about at the library. I have to be one of them to learn anything of use, for it is only from inside the problem that a solution can be found, and I must find a solution.

The screens whirr into action and I am greeted with the three familiar symbols of NewState: Ssc, an image of Our Leader Day’s welcoming face, and the OECS logo. The status box appears. I hit space bar and return, and the blank box shifts to the corner of each screen. Ordinarily I would be concerned about arousing suspicion, but I work for NewState. No one is watching me. They can’t be. They do not even expect me to log in – that’s the whole point.

I open up six windows: a chat room, a NewState video hosting webpage, a UGCP video page, a UGCP blog page, a real-world simulation page, and an online gaming site. I will send a message to my fellow runners. I will have to think carefully about what to send and how to send it, for though I may not be monitored here, they might be. At least, I must assume that they will be. Whatever Miss Mary Hain has said about giving the people what they want and never knowingly trapping someone inside, there is always collateral damage.

And I do not believe the collateral damage is all ‘saved’ as I have been. If that were true, then what about my memory of being escorted home by an EEO. Oh no, my mind has begun to clear and there are too many inconsistencies in what I have learned to take undue risks with the lives of my friends or to assume, as I had begun to, that for all its flaws the state is on an admirable path towards utopia. I am sure of that. I think of the dream I woke up to in which the world was burning and I begin to understand what my sub-conscious had been trying to tell me, and the words from my dreams return to me:

‘Night is worn,

And the morn

Rises from the slumberous mass.’

The masses sleep: no one is born with an innate appreciation of the opera.

And then the words of the runners return, the old folk song that knew so much before it had even really begun:

"Fools," said I, "You do not know –

Silence like a cancer grows.’

These words continue my revival, and more faculties of my mind awaken. I stare at the screens, absently scrolling around, thinking of what message to send and how to send it, when I notice something written underneath a UGC video that has been posted to me. The comment stands out to me because it looks like a random comment lodged between tens and tens of others. It was the last video posted to me. I was scrolling out of habit, for this is one of the ways we used to communicate: post a link in a particular place and embed a random comment.

There is something unusual about this post however. It is not so well encrypted as usual and it does not appear to be a message to all of us, but rather seems to be directly intended for me. It is from James, or BrianFox, as he is known inside. I never asked him why. As I read and re-read the message my heart rate gradually quickens:

- Wow. Cool video. It meets just like we did last time. I’m putting it on the 30^th day of my list. Just in case, old boy!

My fellow runners have planned a run!

The message fills every inch of my newly awakened mind. Thoughts of Henry, James, Eleanor and Janine travel along the passageways of grey cells, at every junction igniting memories of moonlit nights, stolen kisses, smiling faces.

I am suddenly desperate for more information: have they met already since I’ve been in here? How many times? Where? When? Why? I begin to scour each site in turn, planning to go back all the way to when I left. It takes me thirty minutes to search one site as far back as a month and I get lucky and find something. It is from a month ago and it looks like they must have arranged a run then too. The message was not posted to me, so I would not have ordinarily seen it even if I were still living inside. And in any case, we had agreed that messages shouldn’t be sent on to me. We agreed that I would be the first one to make contact when it was safe to do so.

But James has broken the rule - Just in case I can make it, or want to make it, or need to make it, I don’t know. But either way he has given me an excuse to go - a reason to defy.

I know where they will be and when they will be there.

And I am done with NewState.

The other man has awoken in the looking glass and shattered the visage of his false reflection. I will not stay. The possibility of seeing them so soon is too much to ignore.

But as this excitement fills me from the bottom up, it is met halfway in equal measure by shame and guilt flowing from the top down. The emotions collide in the middle and push together until my stomach weighs as heavy as lead. I have spent months in ignorant happiness. Whilst I have sidestepped all danger in the bosom of the enemy, my friends have been in real danger and I have spared them so little thought that I almost even gave them away, imagining a time when I would try to bring them here.

And I have been sleeping with another woman.

I stand up, switch off the screens and kick my chair towards them. My mission has changed. I can stay here no longer. I have received the message just in time, for tomorrow is the thirtieth. Tomorrow, they will be meeting at the city library (like we did last time). And I will be there. Just in case… well, the case is this: my cover will not last. How can it? I am too disgusted with myself to maintain it. And then, at the same time, if I am honest, even now I do not trust myself not to be sucked back out of it.

I am done with NewState.

I am leaving.

And I will not return, unless it is to tear the building down.

I remain in my room for the rest of the day, except to deliver a message to Mary’s room. Though it pains me to deceive her, and it pains me to know that I am preparing to leave her, I know that I must. The possibility of seeing Janine again has confirmed that she will always be the priority, whatever betrayal I may have perpetrated in my confusion. I write in the letter that I am sorry for becoming angry, that new information still brings up old feelings that are hard to shake, but that I do not want her to think that I do not strive to understand. I say I will see her in two evening’s time as planned and that I am looking forward to it. But tomorrow evening I will already be gone.

I spend the night thinking over how I will leave. In truth, the idea of leaving has not occurred to me since I arrived, and I am now reminded of the tall fences and guard stations that I entered through when I got here.

I think through all sorts of plans and become distracted, imagining all manner of epic and unlikely escapades.

In the end I settle upon the best plan I can think of. I finally get some sleep around three, thinking that whatever happens, tomorrow will be a long night.

Chapter Two Winter 2035 Peter Harrison

I spend most of the next day as usual. I wake up. I run. I work. I eat. I go to the recreation room for an hour or so. Nothing out of the ordinary. No one could suspect a thing. But, at four fifteen pm I leave my room carrying a duvet cover rolled up under my arm. I have purposefully spilled orange juice all over it. If I am stopped, or if anyone raises a quizzical eye, I can simply say that I am taking it directly to laundry because it is my spare and it was stained when I retrieved it from my cupboard, and I want to make sure I get a clean one for tonight. If I explain myself with enough haste and frustration, exasperated that it was not clean when I took it from the cupboard, I think my impatience will explain my behaviour.

As luck would have it, I do not encounter anyone on my travels. In truth, I did not expect to. I have selected a time when very few roam the hallways in this part of the building: for some it is the time between recreation and dinner, time that most, like myself, use to fulfil our daily exercise requirement. Others, who work longer hours, will still be at work doing whatever it is they do, wherever it is they do it. This is why I have, on occasion, had the recreation room all to myself, and have relished the peace of sitting in an armchair, book in hand, living a world apart, with no-one to distract me.

And it is to the recreation room that I am now heading. It is the closest communal area to my room, and it is the one that I am most sure will be empty.

When I arrive, I pause at the door and listen closely, my ear pressed against the cool, white, glowing surface. Hearing nothing for thirty seconds or so, I resolve to make my entrance. I open the door ajar slowly and peer my head through the opening, not showing the load still stowed under my arm. If anyone is in there, I can simply say that I was looking for someone particular: oh, I thought we had agreed to meet… table tennis re-match… very important… must have got the time wrong… sorry to interrupt… see you later. But, again, my path is hazard free and I enter, closing the door behind me.

Once inside, I speed up, for however quiet the halls and empty the room I have no guarantee that it will remain so, and I do not have a look out.

I move across the room and hastily stow my duvet into a closet at the back. The small cupboard appears to be unused. There is a bucket, a mop, and a feather duster, but a thick layer of dust suggests that it has rested undisturbed for quite some time.

I return to the room, looking around quickly for signs of anything that will impede my escape, but the room remains still, like a snapshot of the past. I move to the row of windows at the back of the room. The windows are another reason that I like this room. Everywhere else is lit by artificial light. The illusion is convincing, until you enter a room that reminds you of true sunlight. Even in the early evening winter dark, there is something inexplicably different about the way the darkness enters the room through the glass window panes. I peer through my chosen window but cannot see very much because of the glare of the light reflecting back. Unsatisfied I turn and cross the room back to the door and switch off the lights, plummeting the room into darkness. I have to wait at the door for my eyes to adjust. When they do, I make my way carefully back to my window.

I have chosen this window because I have seen it open before. It was perhaps only once, but I distinctly remember it because I had just felt a rush of a cool breeze on my back as I lent down to take a shot on the pool table, when no sooner had I thought how refreshing it was to feel the outside air, than somebody called out. ‘Oh, close that window will you. Why on Earth is it open anyway?’ And then it was closed, and I forgot how to miss the air again.

There are other rooms with windows, but I have no idea whether they are alarmed or not. My hope is that, seeing that I know this one to have been open before, that it is not. It is my best shot. If an alarm sounds I will have to make a quick decision: try my luck or bluff my way back to my room. I determine that fear will not dictate my decision.

The window opens from the bottom up. I secure my fingers underneath it, ready to pull. It is stiff and does not want to shift. I begin to strain and think I feel it start to give when I hear a noise behind me. Instinctively I drop to the floor. I hear the door open and the lights flick on.

I try to breathe as shallowly as possible, though my heart is racing in my chest.

I hear the shuffle of feet, and then a small click. The lights go off and the door closes. I breathe a huge sigh of relief. The possibility of being discovered has made me realise just how scared I am of the task ahead. But I am determined, and I move quickly.

I return to the window and pull with all my might. The window creaks and then finally gives way and shoots up. A rush of icy air gushes in. It feels good, but it also makes me aware of how badly I am dressed for this excursion: we are not prescribed a winter coat. Pausing just a moment to ensure that I have not triggered an alarm, I bend down and peer out of the window, leaning from my waist. There is perhaps thirty metres between the building and the outer fence. I am on the second floor, so I know that the drop is going to be hard, but I am grateful that there appears to be nothing but grass to land on.

Thinking quickly again now, I return to the cupboard and retrieve my duvet and take it back to the window. I lean out again and feel my legs weaken at the height. I think about taking the duvet out of the cover and using the sheet to lower me down, but I do not want to leave any obvious trace. An open window may go unnoticed, but a duvet cover hanging from it will not.

No, I must jump.

Next, I take a deep breath and begin to climb out of the window. I sit on the ledge letting my legs out first. I am about to pull the duvet up to drop it out of the window when I catch myself.

What am I doing?

I pause. I slow my breathing and focus on my chest, on it’s rising and falling. I straighten my back and breathe in. Deeply. Hold. Breathe out. Fully. Chest out. Chest in. Breathe in. Deeply. Hold. Breathe out. Fully.

I slow my mind and push my thoughts out in front of me, so I can observe them as they orbit around me.

Why am I leaving?

I have been so caught up in my disillusion that I have not stopped to consider my actions. Now, as I do, I begin to question my motives. What will I gain from leaving? The image of the abbey walls slides into view and I clench my fists.

If I leave, I lose every advantage I have gained. Whether I was embedding myself with purpose or cowardly allowing myself to be drawn in is now immaterial. I am in. One argument with Mary is not enough to change that. I need only meet her in two days’ time, tell her I have thought about what I have learned, and there is nothing to prevent me from allowing her to convince me.

Maybe I should stay. If I leave, there is no coming back. And where would I go? To see my runners for an hour or two and then what?

What is there to gain from leaving? Except maybe my death.

Now that I have reawoken, is it not better to stay - to start what I came here to do? Delve deeper. Ask questions. Wait. I am still young enough after all. Is it not better to wait even a decade, whatever torture it may be, if in waiting there is yet some glimmer of hope that something could be done to change this world?

In my meditation, I become aware that I am sat on a window ledge and time is ticking on.

I open my eyes and look out on the night. I see the fence just thirty metres away, marking the boundary between this prison and that freedom. But what freedom would I really find out there? Freedom in the mind - that is the only freedom we have to cling on to. What we keep from them is our greatest weapon.

I take a final deep breath of the cool winter air and turn around, lifting my legs over the ledge, planting my feet on the floor of the rec room and shutting the window behind me.

I must return to my room.

As I take that final breath of physical freedom, a new thought occurs to me. A new defiance: I will write. And not just in my head. I will find paper and pen, or I will steal a tablet and I will write my record. I will write down everything I have ever thought that defies the world in which I live. I will document my story from birth to this day, and through every other day that I have yet to live.

I will record the world.

And if I die, and upon my death this world remains unchanged, then my final words will be those that have echoed so recently throughout my dreams:

‘O Earth O Earth return!

Arise from out the dewy grass;

Night is worn,

And the morn

Rises from the slumberous mass.

Turn away no more:

Why wilt thou turn away

The starry floor

The watry shore

Is giv’n thee till the break of day.’

Mine will be a testimony for those who come after me.

I cannot run, for if I do my life loses all meaning.

It is what they don’t know that hurts them most, so I will make manifest my innermost thoughts, and give life to what they do not know. If they do not die with me, then they live on, and where those thoughts live they may grow.

I return to my room, with new ideas branching in all directions, and from each new branch another one sprouts, until my plans are a complex network of defiance.

I cannot be sure of Mary. I think back to that first stolen conversation, and the narrative it awoke in me. I must set aside that story. It is too dangerous to think she may one day be on my side. Instead I must live another assumed life. I must live as though she is the worst of all enemies, and I must keep that enemy close.

My understanding has changed. My plan has changed. My goal has changed.

I will now work towards the heart of this insidious regime.

My desires for the outside and those who still hide in it must wait.

I must stay.

And Mary must lead me to the heart of everything. She must lead me to Our Leader Day.