2084 The Reawakening
Entry 7 & 8
In 2084 all is peace and harmony. Dissent is a forgotten relic of the past. But can new ideas and individual thought be permanently suppressed? Should they be?
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[Link to the beginning: Entires 1 & 2]
ENTRY SEVEN
It’s interesting how things change. I’ve reread all of my previous entries. It almost seems like another person wrote them. It’s been less than two years, and I no longer feel emotionally isolated. Rather than feeling confined by the repressive System, I feel invigorated! It is a challenge to find ways around The System, to make the connections that need making, right under the noses of the Thought Police. Certainly, I no longer feel guilty about thinking for myself.
It occurs to me that, given that I don’t know who will read this or when, I should not presume that the reader is aware of the life that I take so for granted. I have some time, as we consider what move to make next, to describe some of the specifics of our life. If it is all familiar to you, you may see no need to read all of this.
It is the year 2084. I started writing this a little over two years ago years ago, in 2081. When I started writing this, I was more timid. I wanted to reveal nothing about myself, for my safety and yours. But I’m feeling a little bolder now. I know what I can get away with, and how to get away with it. It’s never good to be over-confident, but I’ll reveal what seems expedient.
I live in the northeast sector, in Coreopolis. As near as I can tell, this city used to be named Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; or at least Coreopolis is near to where Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania used to be. When the Thought Leaders replaced states with sectors, they also changed the names of the cities, and even moved some of them. They said it was to align with the New World Order, but I have since come to think it was to erase as much history as possible. Few people today see any connection, by name or in any other way, between today’s cities and those of the not very distant past. Borders are not as they were. As a result, there is little collective memory linking today with even the recent past.
And no walls! They had no walls around the cities! Except for some of them. I think about how exposed the cities were to infiltration by extremists and terrorists. How could they live with that continual threat? And, sure enough, terrorists sometimes bombed people, or shot them with guns that could fire repeatedly with just one pull of the trigger. How could they have any peace of mind with that constant threat?
So, today, the Wall protects us. We have complete peace. But I wonder now, what has it cost us? No, the extremists and terrorists can’t get in, but we can’t get out. It’s too dangerous in the Wilderness. At least that’s what they say. But I now know that The System is built around self-perpetuation, not around human needs. Curiosity is banned. No, no law against being curious, but you’d best keep it to yourself. The Manifesto is looking more and more to me like a means to keep us contained, rather than the means to freedom that the Thought Leaders proclaim. And so, I wonder. Why is that Wall there? Is it to keep others out, or to keep us in?
We all are taught in Truth School that we are much better off now, and perhaps we are. But we can’t really know, because we have no way to make comparisons. Coreopolis is only twenty-five years old, and information on Pittsburg is difficult to find. The only reason I know as much as I do about it is because of the old books. Real books. I mentioned earlier, I get most of my books in the District. It’s a different world, not just because of the old antiques, but because the people are different. They seem to think more expansively than in the regular city. It is because of them that I started to wonder about our lives in the regular city. In the regular city things seem so structured, right down to your everyday thoughts. I began to realize that our discussions are not avenues to discovery, but reaffirmations of what we’ve been taught to believe. I might never have noticed, but the more time I’ve spent in the District, the more I’ve seen how open they are to the variableness of ideas. They don’t feel threatened by disagreements. They just have them, and are fine with it.
Since childhood, we have been warned about the District. We are warned about the people, the bad influence. About the crime. Yes, there is crime, but that doesn’t make everyone there a criminal.
Like all good citizens, I stayed away from the District. Then a friend who had a cousin that lived near the District invited me to go there. He said there were things to do that didn’t exist in the regular city. I declined at first, heeding the warnings I’ve received my whole life, but I guess it was just my age or something, and I went with them.
I couldn’t immediately assess the District, because I had no basis by which to assess it. It was an entirely new experience, but the one thing I recognized was that it was not as it had been told to me. Even with the ‘used’ look, it had an attractiveness. Maybe quaintness. I don’t know, but I felt comfortable there. My friends wanted to do the rides at the amusement park, and I went on some with them, but I was more curious about the shops. I talked them into going into some of them. They had no problem with going into the candy store, but I also wanted to check out some of the other places. As a tag along, I was pretty much required to do what they wanted. But I went back on my own. I visited those shops. And it just went from there. I think maybe I know more about history from the District than I do from the history classes I took in school. I know of the people of the time better. History classes look at the past like it’s untouchable, but in the District, I roam among the history. The antiques. The people themselves seem from another time.
It makes me wonder why we live like we do in the regular city. Not the buildings or streets or such, but why we are so stifled. Is it what we want, or has it been forced upon us? Both? It’s a strange incongruity, the District and the regular city. The Thought Police are ever present in the regular city, but hardly at all in the District. The Thought Police have the same authority there that they have here, but infractions that bring severe penalties in the regular city, go unenforced in the District. I’ve come to see that people in the District just won’t tolerate it, so it doesn’t happen. I’ve thought about the conspiracy that Ted and I manufactured, that started this all. The witch trial, as I’ve come to call it, concerning the woman that with little prompting was ‘discovered’ to be a subversive. She even confessed, convinced that if we all said she had committed a crime, then it must be so. What if I tried to do that here in the District? What if my compatriots and I dropped a hint that there was a subversive among them who must be investigated ‘before it’s too late’? “Too late for what?”, I hear people of the District saying in my imagination. They don’t care. Conspire to your heart’s content. They don’t care!
They don’t care that I buy the books. After all, they’re the ones selling them. They don’t need to know why I buy them, and some are only too willing to discuss history, and current events, for that matter. The conversations are unguarded. No need to concern yourself with saying a wrong word, expressing a wrong thought. If they are offended at anything, they will say so, and that’s the end of it. No need for Thought Police, no need for Prosecutors. How can this exist so close to a place where people are arrested and prosecuted and coerced into supplication? I think I get it, now. Because the most secure prisons, the ones most difficult to escape, are in our minds. Freedom could be physically across the street, but some people will never get there. Apparently, they don’t want to.
Why don’t I live in the District? I think about it. I keep thinking about it. But getting the permit would be nearly impossible. Yes, I am free in my mind, but I do not have the liberty to do as I please. I would have to resign as a Prosecutor, and even with my desire for freedom, that makes me stop and think. I would have to give up all my previous training and start over, learning new skillsets and approaches. Not easy, but it’s looking more desirable all the time. I don’t know, maybe someday I will try.
Thinking is tough, and some people feel threatened by the uncertainty. After all, thinking is a manifestation of uncertainty. With our Thought Leaders disseminating our thoughts to us, we need never suffer any anxiety concerning gathering information and finding truth. The Thought Leaders do all of that for us. But in these old books there are all kinds of opinions about all sorts of things, and I am left to try to sort out the truth from it for myself. Yes, it made me very uncomfortable at first, but I’ve come to relish the chance to immerse myself in issues. It helps me to better understand myself and my own way of thinking. Hell! It has developed my ability to think at all, something you will never learn to do from following the Thought Leaders.
Apparently, for instance, people used to argue about climate change. Some said it was caused by man while others said it was a natural occurrence. I’ve found a number of books about it. The strange thing is, whatever book you read, it makes some amount of sense. I’ve read, and I’ve thought, and I can’t say that I see where either point of view is entirely right or wrong. It seems evident that there has always been natural climate change, but that man has had some effect on it. And, why not? What’s funny is that the books tend to just take one side and argue as if the other side couldn’t possibly be true. Near as I can tell, both sides are true. But what leaves me scratching my head is that some of the authors claimed that life on earth would be destroyed in the future. Yet, here we are today, living in what was their future, and we’re all still here, and all doing OK. Yes, there’s still the same floods and storms that there have always been. But we’re better than ever at predicting them and protecting ourselves from them. I really don’t get what all the fuss was about in the first place.
And what really seems strange is that these points of view seem to be related to political parties. Political parties are from the time before the New World Order and the Thought Leaders. Back then the idea was that citizens, plain citizens, would be responsible for deciding who the leaders were, and would also tell the leaders what they wanted them to do. But, near as I can tell, the political parties developed enough power that the citizens were pretty much left out. The political parties largely elected their own people, and created their own issues, rather than seek input from the citizens. I’m not sure how I feel about this. We all have been taught that the average citizen isn’t smart enough to know what’s best. So, how could they reliably choose the best leader? We now have votes of affirmation rather than selection. The Selection Committee selects the officers, and we affirm. No muss, no fuss. It does seem best to have the Selection Committee make those choices. Still, the more I read, and the more I think, I can see that the Selection Committee doesn’t always pick the best leaders. And, anyway, who selects the Selection Committee? Now, that’s an interesting question that I would like to have answered!
But Riley doesn’t think that way, doesn’t question. Riley has absolute trust in the Thought Leaders, just as they have been trained to do. Just like everyone has been trained to do. I haven’t been taught differently, but somehow, I’ve ended up seeing things differently. It makes our relationship difficult. We can’t discuss this directly because they might report me, and that would really blow my cover, and all that I am doing now.
I can only make the occasional oblique reference to the idea of individual thought processing. It makes the relationship difficult for me, for us. Riley is happy with the way things are, believes things that I doubt, and we can’t even discuss them, sort them out. And that just makes me question still more. It seems to me that if the Thought Leader’s thoughts are so unassailably correct, then they should let us assail them. Then their Thoughts could be truly tested, and proven to be true. Or not. And I’m beginning to think that the Thought Leaders are not sure about their own Thoughts. That they don’t want them tested, because they might not hold up.
That’s what books have done to me. They’ve forced me to think. I don’t just get information and ideas from them, they are like a catalyst, and I end up thinking my own thoughts, getting my own ideas. It’s confusing, but it’s also invigorating. It’s like being at the top of a mountain and being able to see for long distances in all directions, while others are down in the valley, seeing only a little, and thinking it’s the entire world.
Here's something that really concerns me; I’m beginning to see that our Thought Leaders themselves live in that valley. They don’t see all, and so their Thoughts are not expansive, but actually quite limited. I know it sounds conceited, but I think my own thoughts are better, more informed, than theirs. I don’t say that lightly, and I shouldn’t say it at all. If I could explain my way out of anything else I’ve said before, I could not explain my way out of presuming to be a better thinker than the Thought Leaders. No, I should not have written those words, but there they are. There they will stay. I can no longer self-inhibit for the sake of comfort and security. As I write these words, it makes me wonder if I can continue on with Riley. We are too different, now. Riley has not changed. I have.
ENTRY EIGHT
I look back, now, at what has been over two years’ worth of entries, and it seems sometimes like I’m reading about someone else. Yes, I know I wrote all that, but the beginnings of it seem so different than now. I started writing this as a way to sort out my thoughts. I don’t think I could simply imagine my way to where I am now. Writing helps me sort things out and get them to make sense. And I think I want others to see this. It was always my intention that others would, someday. I’m nearly bursting at the seams to tell others my thoughts, to help them sort things out also, in whatever way they choose. I really believe, one day, that will be possible. And I hope to make it sooner than later.
At first, I just needed to vent, to express myself. But a vague idea has become at least a possible reality. There are many others like me. We have found ways to communicate. If you spend some time working things out, sometimes solutions can be found right in front of you. Like cursive, for instance. Even the best AI can’t read cursive. I suppose they could if they were programmed to, but the programmers have never bothered. The programmers can’t read cursive themselves and would not know where to begin to train AI to read it. Yes, of course they could find an expert, and train AI. It’s just that they don’t. They can’t be bothered. This airtight technological society is proving to not be so airtight, and that is encouraging.
Anyway, cursive is an excellent way for us believers to communicate between ourselves. We can’t overdo it. If cursive started showing up everywhere, then the Thought Police would get suspicious. But a slip of paper mixed in with other things, here and there, arouses no suspicion. We even use old paper, and we have found ways to make it look aged. If a Thought Police sees it among other things, and we always keep our messages mixed in among other papers, they will never have reason to suspect. And there is near zero chance that a Thought Police would be able to read cursive. Or even want to.
All I’m getting at is that there are more and more of us, and we are able to communicate to a degree. But this is cause for concern. The more of us that there are, the more possibility of being discovered; the more possibility of being infiltrated. I learned a trick from one of my books. It was about the Underground Railroad. It wasn’t a real railroad; it was a loose knit organization to help escaped slaves in the South of the Old USA to escape to New Canada. They don’t teach this very much anymore, but it was well known in earlier times. Anyway, the people involved did not know very many other people. Escaped slaves were taken from ‘stop’ to ‘stop’ by separate individuals who only knew very few of the other stops. That way, even if one was caught, they could reveal very little information about the entire organization. So, I’ve tried to keep it like that in our organization. Our organization doesn’t even have an exact name. That makes it more difficult to track. There are several terms that we use to refer to ourselves, and we continually shift to other terms. Even a Crawler, if it came across anything, would find little connection. And I needn’t mention any of those names here.
But those slaves escaped to someplace. I feel that, like the slaves of two and a half centuries ago, we need a place to escape to. There is the District. But there is an invisible line that separates us from the district. We can cross as visitors, but it is difficult, if not imposible, to move there. If many applied to move there, it would raise flags. I know that, if it came to it, there would be another wall built, separating us from the District.
I guess there are real prisons after all, not just the ones in our minds. And we are in one. I must consider what’s on the other side of that Wall. Could we live there? Is it dangerous? Would the danger be worth it? Most of all, how do we get past the Wall?