Friday 15 th January

-[And that, sadly in a way, is the last diary entry that poor Janek ever made.  Well on his antique laptop anyway.  He did try to escape but was of course unsuccessful.  We have to thank Mr. Skinner, (though of course that is not his name, we have changed it to protect him) for alerting us to the fact that Janek had overpowered him and at knifepoint had made him open a back window.   He escaped but not for long.  It only took us a few minutes to locate him, dressed in ridiculously short trousers and a tight sweater, huddled in a garden a few houses away.  He didn’t put up any resistance, and in a matter of minutes was identified and in the back of a Polis auto was driven straight to our very own, small but comfortable, detention centre here behind Oxford Circus.  In the olden days this building was the headquarters of the BBC before it merged with Sky.  Of course they are now part of Disnews and there is no need for a London Office.  The place is quite surprising; it seems much larger on the inside than the building would indicate, and it has several floors of basement where the recording used to be done.   I am about to record another for posterity and Janek himself is the star of this little production.  He is waiting for me downstairs, though we haven’t formally been introduced.  I have read and been quite amazed by his little journal; it only took seconds to by-pass his rudimentary passwords and gain access to his one file.  His diary is the sad little record of his one-way excursion, his flight from useful member of society to pathetic prisoner.  And all of it in less than six months.  Amazing.

I am looking forward to our conversation, and have added an abbreviated transcript as the next part of our continuing story of one of the major events, at least for my department, in 2066.  (A full transcript can be obtained for download once security has cleared anyone requiring further study)  Janek should have known that he stood no real chance of surviving without us.  He was never really cut out to be a rebel at all.  This was all some sort of mid-life crisis he was suffering; though he had put us to quite some trouble in retrieving him, so this could not be overlooked as merely some minor misdemeanour.

It was my responsibility to assess the threat he might pose, and to establish if there were any chance of his rehabilitation or if he was a lost cause, and would have to be completely de-strata-ed.   Incidentally one of Janek’s biggest fears was of being ‘clagged’.  This was a common misconception, we had actually dispensed with such barbarity many years ago, (except for non-persons of course) but if the mythical existence and fear of ‘clagging’ remained in societies’ consciousness that was no bad thing (in fact as you know it is simply a recording and restraining device, nothing more, but somehow it has gained notoriety and now that there are no more prisons it has become the middle classes biggest fear).  As I explained before; the threat of the stick has a habit of making the carrot that much more enticing.]-