Fear and Loathing in 1984

I was walking down Glasgow Street, two blocks off of Duke, when the pills began to kick in.  “You’re looking a bit light-headed,” said the merchant who was eyeing me, “Don’t worry about that,” I said, “I’ll be fine.  I’m a professional.  Just hurry up with that damned bagel.” The clocks were striking nine, as I recall, and the cold April air was doing nothing to improve my temperament.  My blood’s not thick enough for this part of Oceania, I’ve never been able to wake up properly in this climate.  The pep pills have a tendency of giving me the shakes but they’re the only way to cope with this weather-induced mental clouding.  Not that this mattered to my Editor, of course, and truth be told it didn’t matter much to me, either.  I’m a journalist, goddamnit, and I go wherever the story takes me.  For the past two years that place had been this rotten hole of a city they call London; Party Central and chief city of Airstrip One.

Just then a calamitous roar washed over my ears. “Good god, man,” I yelled at the merchant, “Don’t you know who that is?  That voice playing on your telescreen there?  Who authorized this transmission?”  Of all the things to play, on this date, at this time – what sort of monstrous saboteur was running this show? And how did he know I would hear it?

“If you don’t already know who it is, then I’m not going to say it!” The Prole’s eyes were squinted in confusion, his mouth agape at knowledge which was clearly beyond his ken. “I personally saw that folder incinerated.  What sort of game are you playing here, mister?  Answer me, damnit!”

As my fist slammed down on his cart I saw that I was drawing a crowd.  With a sudden lucidity I realized the music wasn’t what I thought it had been.  It was the same baseline, maybe, but that was permissible.  There’s only so many, after all, so what do you expect?  The machines are programmed to keep remixing it.  So where had this awful memory come from?  It had to be the pills.  One of these days I’m going to get off this rotten drug.

Unfortunately my wild ranting hadn’t gone unnoticed.  A clutch of Peace Officers were shouldering their way through the crowd, machine guns clattering as their polyester uniforms strained against their hominid frames.  I managed to pull myself together.  This situation needed to be handled properly.

“Good to see you boys,” I hid the shaking of my hands by slapping the senior one on the shoulder, “You look like honest, hard working Party faithfuls.  That’s good to see, man, that’s good see.” One of them tried to ask what was going on but I wasn’t about to let him finish. “I just so happen to be in dire need of some law enforcement right now.  Tell me, what is the punishment for Thought Crime?  Come on now, don’t stand there looking at me like I’m some sort of raving lunatic, spit it out!  That’s right, Death – Thought Crime doesn’t just entail Death, it IS Death!  Now listen,” I leaned in and looked suspiciously at the merchant, “we may have a situation on our hands.”

What you have to understand is that these sorts of things aren’t the way they were before the Revolution – though I suppose you don’t really remember that – but the uniformed thugs we have patrolling the streets nowadays are just that – thugs.  They grow them in factories, from what I hear.  They pop them out of plastic vats, shave off all their hair, squeeze them into polyester uniforms, then give them a gun and enough Pavlovian training for a faucet to grow out of their cheek.  You just have to know how to handle them right.  A Party member – even an Outer Party member, such as myself – has nothing to worry about if they’re thinking properly.

The merchant was looking nervous and his wife had started crying when one of the smarter Officers finally managed to squeeze out a question. “Who the hell are you?” or something to that effect. “What me?” I said, pulling out my credentials, “Don’t worry about me.  I’m one of the Friendlies – Ministry of Information – hired geek.  Listen, it looks like you’ve got a lot to take care of right now, so I’ll just get out of your way.  Keep up the good work.” I caught the crying wife by the hand before walking off, “Hey, hey, now.  It’s not so bad is it?  You’re gonna be alright.”

The merchant would be fine.  Or maybe not.  But he was just a Prole, after all, and what’s a man to do in this day and age?  Either way I needed to get going.

***

I was just finishing up the last bits of an article for the evening edition – something about horse racing, though I’m not certain of that – when my Editor stepped into my cubicle.

“Listen, about your Op-ed…”

“Goddamnit man, can’t you see that I’m busy?  I sent it to you already, you filthy jackal.  Four-hundred and eighty-six words of Party gold, but you’re not going to be happy with it until you piss in it, because you think it improves the flavour.” His brows furrowed but there was a glint in his eyes.  He knew perfectly well that if he didn’t like my writing, there were plenty of other places for me to go.  I’d be happy moving back to the desert.  So why the ghoulish grin?

“Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be?  Actually, the writing’s fine,” What was this bastard up to? “I was just worried about the content.  It looked as though a saboteur might have retyped it en route to my office–”

“What the hell are you talking about?  Give it here.” I snatched the paper from his hand and began scanning it, line by line, to see if the office boy had screwed something up.  “I don’t see the problem.  I see journalistic genius.  Put it in the paper and stop hassling me, you fat Samoan.”

“Oh, I would, but I just got one question… since when have we been at war with Eastasia?”

So that was the game, then.  Obviously the situation had changed since this morning. “You filthy animal… I told you my news ticker was broken.  How do you expect me to catch typos like this when I don’t have a steady supply of updates?  Send the boy back in five minutes, and you’ll have your good copy.”

“Not now – it’s time for the two minute hate.  You’d better attend.  You’re loyalty’s not been looking all that good today.”

“No more of that talk, or I’ll put the leaches on you.” As I popped another pill I caught him eyeing the bottle. “Here, you’d better take a couple of for yourself – three even.  After all, anything worth doing is worth doing right, isn’t it?  Let’s go.”

***

It started as it always did.  My Editor and I shuffled into a room that was already humming with nasty vibrations.  I pulled out a cigarette and tried to light it but my hands were shaking too much.  Too many of these pills, I thought, but there was nothing to do about it now.  The room was growing hot.  I could feel the tension rising out of the floor like some sort of vile serpent, dripping with black ooze as it slithered around our feet.

I started to say, “Listen man, I’m not feeling so good…” but my Editor wasn’t listening. “That Emmanuel Goldstein,” he was saying, “He’s a fucking bastard, man.  Motherfucker needs his throat slit, you know what I’m saying?” He was fingering his keychain as if it were some sort of weapon. “He needs to die!  Die, motherfucker, Die!”

He was lost to the rage, I could see that now.  I was beginning to feel the effects myself.  It was like being trapped in a zoo full of angry howler monkeys, all of them high on mescaline, while some evil-minded bureaucrat kept shaking the cage.  I glanced down from the screen for a second to see that I’d somehow crushed my pack of cigarettes without noticing, stale tobacco shreds falling out of my fist.  Good god, I thought, I’ve become one of them – yelling and jabbering as the bad waves of fear and loathing washed over us.  Had we all descended to the levels of dumb beasts?

Jesus – did I say that?  Or just think it?

Two minutes of the typical madness.  Then Big Brother’s face appeared and the room turned into an ocean of calm.  The next thing I knew my Editor was saying to me, “You’re looking a little high strung, man.  Too many of those pills.  They’re bad for the brain.  It’s time for lunch, how about I buy you a beer?”

***

By the end of day I was tired, my mind was stretched out like butter spread across toast, the pills on one side and my bottle of Victory Gin on the other.  I didn’t know where that damned Editor of mine had gone to.  Probably holed up in a public washroom somewhere with the door barricaded.  The last words out of his mouth had been something about a powerful hunger for salmon.

Down below the Proles were having one of their festivals, but I was too tired to really notice.  I’d had to rewrite that article three more times over the afternoon.  That’s politics for you – nothing can happen for months, and a dozen things happen all at once.

The lights below glowed like muzzle flashes, the fireworks were like bombs.  Strange memories this nervous night in London.  How many years had it been?  Thirty?  Thirty-five?  An entire lifetime.

Back then the revolution had been in full swing.  There was anger wherever you looked, fire in every set of eyes.  Nobody could say what was happening, but we all knew there was a purpose to it.  Some sort of energy, the spirit of an entire culture rising up against anarchy.  We had all the answers, knew how to set things right – we were finally fighting on the right side.

And now, thirty years later, we’re finally done.  All that’s left is to rework history, to make it what it needs to be.  Thirty years later, and we’re almost ready to stop that endless turmoil.  We’re all working for Big Brother now, all agents of his agenda – and to some extent, his agenda had become our own.  It’s all so simple.  Obey.  Believe.  No more madness, no more struggles…

The Proles shouldn’t envy me.  They shouldn’t envy any of the Party members.  Most of them have managed to forget the war.  When they look at the sky all they see is the fireworks.  But standing up here on the balcony, I can look east; out to our enemies, where the waves of invasions and revolution happened so long ago.  And on a night like this, with the right sort of eyes, you might even see the place where the wave finally broke.

I finished my bottle and packed up my bag.  Time to walk home, to lose myself in the throng.   Away from the writing desk.  To be safe again – anonymous – just another freak in the freak kingdom.