Gregory Syme paced thoughtfully up and down the length of he and his son's diminutive flat. He felt sick inside over what he was about to put his son through. He'd been such a fool. Harold had already lost his mother. The boy sat on the other side of the room, while the tall black haired man he'd so resemble later in life paced in front of their busted Telescreen. Rocket bombs... other artillery had almost destroyed their district entirely and they were very lucky.

But somehow Gregory knew his time was running thin. "Harold?"

The boy looked up at him with great sad brown eyes. "Yes Poppa?" he asked softly. Gregory wondered vaguely what was he was holding. He realized it was a scrap of some grey cloth and he was picking it apart. Probably from his mother's clothes, he thought in a moment of pointless sentimentality. The man crouched beside the boy and touched his shoulder.

"You know Poppa loves you very much, right?"

Harold nodded.

"I love you too," he said simply as if that was that.

Gregory smiled at the six year old, but the look faded. "But I want you to go somewhere else for now all right?"

"Where?"

Because Poppa's not going to be around anymore... because we're all going to Hell in a hand basket... I don't want you go away... Stop wringing that damned piece of cloth... I hate you little boy for making me be so cruel.

None of those sounded very promising.

"Because it's for the best," he told him simply. He clapped once lightly in thought, clucking his tongue and withdrawing the warmth from the boy. "Go now...to my friends the Smiths. You remember them right?"

"They have that mean little boy.."

Gregory forced a laugh and ruffled his hair. "No... he's not mean at all, you'll like him after a while."

"Are going to come?"

"I may... I definitely may..." What an oxymoron.

"All right... it's a long run right?"

"Not so much. Go on.." Gregory shuffled the boy out the door quickly, feeling his breath tighten and watching his offspring go out into their dirty grey and brown world. He trusted the boy would remember. The boy remembered everything after all.

"Familiar twitch is it Harold old boy?" the whimisical Oceanian spoke to no one but the wall he'd been flicking chess pieces at for the past few minutes. "Like an electrocuted cat..." His voice trailed off into the silence. Harold's home was strangely dark, but that was what a winter dusk on Air Strip One brought. He stretched. "Just like a shot dog is more like it."

There had been a change in the air since he was a boy. Winston had never really been his friend. But he had known the man to some extent, and known that he liked to pick out those from underneath his hooded sleepless brows, that he personally thought were going to go. Harold had known since meeting him that he thought him to be one.

Harold had always worked not in loyalty but in ambition. He wanted to be recognized... he even had a fantasy of an intellectual turn over. Such thought crime he'd committed with scarce a care.

He was a disgrace to the uptight men in grey. But then again that was quite a paradox. A man in grey was not to be uptight. He was a service mutt to the men in black, he didn't need to be uptight.

BB would provide.

No more faking it.

"Evil men nowadays do things like win chess tournaments."

That thought amused him highly.

He hit the screen with one of those blasted chess pieces and thought on his father a bit more. He thought on how afraid the man had been, that stuck with him. He doubted a shot straight to his head would even hurt, all his senses would be cut off before it could register. Or else that was what his logic dictated.

Harold fancied he could hear footsteps out in the hallway. He hadn't drank since this peculiar feeling had started and it had entirely decreased his lofty attitude — it was actually difficult to get lost in a thought. It was a tingling in his groin almost, something he hadn't felt since Genevieve diminished any sort of want he could have. It was something more than arousal though... he couldn't quite put a finger on it.

When the board was cleared it seemed his time was up. With a sort of amused air, Harold Syme looked over to his door, which was having its hinges conveniently removed so the burly gentlemen behind it could get through.

Most of it he didn't pay much attention to. Blah blah Thought Crime blah blah... New World Order...You're a Fool... You're the Dead...

"Oh I was only joking..."

Perverted madness.

Syme liked it.

He, though he would never assail the ranks of Oceania, was comfortable with the fact since he was going to die, it didn't matter anyway. It was almost a relief not to have to get up and go to work anymore, there would be no more striving to succeed. And he wouldn't have to do those ridiculous jumping jack excercises and touching his toes and the like. Obnoxious bitch on the Telescreen wouldn't reprimand b him /b anymore. It was those fat disgusting sods and people like Smith who would invariably suffer.

With his school boy smugness, he felt he was getting an easy ride with half the stress.

It was in a word,

Relief.