Thursday 11th June

Janek’s secret observer tells us of his escape….

-[And then he was gone.  He simply disappeared from our database.  One minute he was there, and then he was gone.  Escaped, simply vanished.  Like it or not, he had evaded us.

Of course we looked for him, he was important – or rather his work, his contribution, was.  He never quite understood the nature of his gift, that prescience, that rare ability to detect irregularities that evaded us all.  He was told, as were his few colleagues that it was financial data he was reviewing, and it was true that it was all numbers flowing past on his screen.  But everything is numbers.  That’s what our society is run on; numbers.  Binary in the first instance but automatically now everything is displayed in decimal numbers, nought to nine and all the possibilities that exist between.  What he was actually doing was detecting deceivers, those few crazy individuals who thought that substituting false data would give them a better strata, a different sort of cred, access to restricted lifestyle choices.

What is it about human behaviour?  This personal greed, this ridiculous notion that somehow they can beat the system, that is so hard to extinguish.  Maybe it just needs more edu, more emphasis at crammer.  And it isn’t as if the threat of punishment is missing; the screens are full of ‘rebs’ and ‘malcontents’ we have caught.  It is one of the few lucrative areas for actors these days.  These criminals must be aware that they will be caught, and yet they continue to cheat, by any means they can find.  We must always be vigilant, that is one of the reasons Janek was so valuable to us.

But we would have looked for him anyway.  No society could possibly function properly if units were simply allowed to wander off.   But that is what appears to have happened.   The last time we have any record of him is travelling on tubeline blue.  The last station he was observed at was Holborn.   He was taking his normal route and was changing for red when he simply disappeared.  One minute he was on one cam; then he wasn’t there on the next anymore.

We later discovered how he did it.   But I will let Janek tell this part of his story, as it is quite revealing.]-

part two – a definite transgression….

Diary Entry – 20660227

“I am writing again.  Seems such a long time.  A few short weeks in reality, but in some ways it has all been like a dream.  A long dream I have slipped away into.  One day I may wake up back in my apartment, Cathy in bed beside me and none of this will have happened.  And even if it was a dream – wow, what a dream.  I haven’t been near a micro-power socket in weeks and so had no external power for my secret com-unit.   Anyway, I thought it best not to even switch it on with its pathetic three hours of battery power in case it could be detected; you never know how powerful their scanners have become.

 I think I should record all that has happened in case I am discovered.  Captured, returned – whatever.  Hopefully if you are reading this, then at least the words will have survived; and there may be some hope that the future (my future) will not be quite as bleak as I am imagining it may be.  I escaped.  I left it all behind; my mundane existence, the sterile flat I called home, my wife, our semi-luxury lifestyle, our strata level, all my cred.  I left it all behind, but as you can see I am still alive.  Only more so.

 It all happened by accident really.  And even now I cannot really believe how lucky I was.  Yes, lucky, because although luck, superstition, fate, kismet, call it what you like has become such an unfashionable idea of late, there is no other logical explanation for it.   It happened like this.

 I was becoming more and more paranoid, watching my own shadow, certain that they were watching me, and so I must have given off some aura, some small signs that must have given me away.   And I was spotted.   It was a normal rush-hour evening journey home.   The tube-line train was not quite full and I had a seat.  I was on blue and I don’t know why, some sixth sense maybe, but I felt someone was watching me.  You know, that strange feeling, some sense we developed ages ago, maybe when we were hunter-gatherers, and stalking prey, when we had to be more than aware that in fact we were not prey ourselves.  At first I thought it must be a camera, but a surv-cam had never made me feel this uneasy, and as far as we know they don’t have cams in the actual carriages, the vibrations apparently cause the pictures to be too blurry to be of any use, it simply confuses the face-rec software so they don’t bother.  Besides there are cams on every platform at every stop so you are tracked anyway, and where can you go to between