Thursday 12th February

This is the next bit of the first entry in the journal from 2066, exhumed here for your benefit

“I am recording this diary, this ‘journal’ to use an old-fashioned word, on a fifty year old lap- top I found a few years back in a junk market, having reconditioned the thing so that it now works on micro-power.  It used to run on old standard power input before they had these super-power-conductors in everything.  I have also successfully disconnected its internal uplink chips so that as far as I know this isn’t capable of being detected and read by the hypercoms.   They use them now to check everything on every screen or personal com unit in existence.  They listen in to every com we make; recording, assessing, categorising and filing them, and they never miss (or forget) anything at all.

Well, I will soon find out if I was successful, won’t I?  They not only listen to every com made all over the world but watch every move we make.  Every dart of the eyes, every enlargement of our pupils, every time we involuntarily nod at a screen is recorded.  Fuck knows why?  Because they can, I suppose.  But how the hell do they sort out anything remotely subversive from the trillions of crap coms going on every second everywhere?  Though we all know (or suspect) that they do.  And, as you too will know, if you ever get to read this, I do know just how dangerous this enterprise is.  If I ever get caught, if this antique but quite cute old laptop with its old-fashioned keyboard and silly little nipple mouse ever gets found even, let alone cracked and read, I will really be for it.  I will certainly be moved down a few strata and may even get clagged.  Who knows?

But I won’t let that happen.  I am ready for the fuckers.  I have a stash of euthen-tabs hidden in a secret place (I have never told anyone where, not even Cathy), and will have no hesitation in taking them and ending it all.  It might be a few years early I admit, but really, who cares?   I mean, why do we all cling to this shit-blanket of a life anyway?  It isn’t as if any of us has anything like free will; you go along with the system, questioning nothing, smiling at the good morning screens just like all the other idiots – or you get down-strata-ed.  Simple as that.  My kids will understand.  Or at least I hope they will, even though they may be chopped down a level or two as some sort of punishment, they are both doing really well and are higher than they might ever have expected to be by now anyway.  And knowing the little fuckers as well as I think I do they will have no hesitation at all in disowning me; disconnecting themselves from me entirely, treating me as the aberration of a father I surely must be and finally un-remembering everything about me.

Forgetting is the easiest thing to do in this life; it’s the one thing we are still really good at.  Because of course it is actually quite dangerous to remember people who you left behind when your strata level was upped.  So, each time you un-associate yourself, move on, ever upwards and leave everyone you knew behind.   You don’t even think about them anymore.   Far better to walk away, smile and stop remembering them.  And whatever you do don’t threaten your strata level, kids!!!

My kids?  Truth is I hardly know them anymore.  Am I guilty of un-remembering them too?  Or have we just drifted apart, moving in different circles, different strata, nothing but a biological connection left?  I cannot imagine, and actually wouldn’t want them to attempt to, defend me in any way.   If I thought I was harming anyone else I wouldn’t be doing this.   If I go down for it, I want to go alone.

I have also taken the most essential precaution of all.  Keeping schtum – not talking to anyone, ever, about any of this.  No-one, absolutely no-one, knows about this ‘journal’, this laptop, my dirty little secret.  I haven’t told a soul.  The mistake most people, most who rebel anyway, make is to think they can be a part of some wide-scale movement, and they try to change things by talking about it, getting together with other like-minded deluded fools.  And they always get caught that way, cos’ some bollocks-head blabs to someone else.  No, this is not an attempt to change anything.  I’m not so stupid as to think that might be remotely possible.  I just want to make a statement I suppose.  Some way of letting people, anyone – but mostly myself – know how I feel.

It is obvious that they listen to everything you say, and can stop you before you even realise yourself that you are thinking of becoming a reb.  Before the idea has even formed in your mind, if you give any hint at all they will stop you.  So tell no-one anything; make no coms and you can’t be heard.  Wasn’t there something about three monkeys; see no screens, hear no audio and don’t com about it if you do – and no harm will come your way.  Or something like that, I saw it on some screen a while back, can’t remember when.   I thought it was funny, those little cartoon monkeys with their hairy paws over their eyes and ears and mouth.  I didn’t realise that was us, that we were all of us the three monkeys, at the time.