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Class of '84
Stev walked through the prolitarian quarters on his way to work at the Ministry of Truth. A light rain was falling. He wondered at how even the rain was dirty. It hadn't even touched the filthy walls or the street and already it was grimy. This fact depressed him, so hunching down, trying to get more warmth out of his ancient jacket he hurried on his way.
Dodging into narrow side streets hoping to shave minutes off of his commute Stev noticed the world around him. Not for the first time he observed how the proles just left the laundry they had hung out to dry in the rain. 'How odd', he thought. But then again the proles did not worry about such things, there was always time for them. they never had to worry about the thought police about the telescreens constantly watching you about hidden microphones or the cellars of Miniluv. All they worried about was where the next meal was coming from, or weather or not they had razor blades or sauce pans. They did not know what a luxury they had, that they could hang clothes out to dry, have it rain, and have the knowledge that they would be alive when they finally dried out.
He was fast approaching The Ministry, Stev's thoughts turned to the long day he had ahead of him. He was high in the propaganda and publicity department. His main job was synthesizing Big Brother's voice and image so that it looked believably 'real' on the telescreen. Though, he thought with a streak of bitterness crossing his mind, party members and proles alike would see Big Brother in a boiled talking carrot if the Inner Party told them it was Him. Today was going to be a long one, he had to make a fifteen minute speech frame by frame and synthesize the voice just the right way. Big Brother's voice was always supposed firm, yet soothing, protecting. It gave people a sense of feeling safe and at ease, no discontent, it stopped even the most wicked of thought criminals for a short time.
He arrived at his desk almost late (he was five minutes early). He put his tattered coat on the back of his chair to dry and sat down to see if any messages new had come in. There was one he unrolled it glanced at it and controlled an urge to crumple it up and hurl it at the nearest telescreen. "Punctuality is a required virtue of Party members" the message was given to all members who were deemed lazy and or tardy. All the members of the Outer Party were supposed to put in fifteen hours of 'volunteer' overtime a week, this usually meant coming to work an hour early and leaving an hour later than required. Any one who did not fulfill this requirement got one of these messages or something similar fitting the nature of their idleness. Stev calmly picked up the note and let it fall down the memory tube. He then proceeded to work.
Much of the work was tedious, revising images shading in the proper areas. Adding in the proper intonations of His voice, that was tricky; a slip of the hand, and wrong tone for a split second could ruin a whole speech. Repetition of these mistakes could annoy eventually anger an audience, these things had to be controlled. That is, if one didn't want the audience to be angered. Stev controlled the cynical grin that threatened to manifest itself, he began working on the audio part of the tape. A virus, a very rare, very dangerous virus of his own creation. The nature of the bug itself was complex, it ingrained itself deep into the fibre of the video, making it extremely hard to detect by machines. From there it 'ate' away at the bits of tape, eroding the smoothness of Big Brother's voice, making a slight buzz in the background. Though it may not seem like much it took some of the all knowing all powerful effect out of Big Brother's speech. It made him seem human, killable. And this was the purpose Stev was going for, to show the populace that Big Brother was nothing more than a human if that, to encourage them, to show them there was hope, start the process that would lead to a revolt, merely get a reaction out of the numb masses.
With a few clicks of a mouse a few taps of the keys he 'accidentally' and 'unknowingly' let the virus loose on the speech. Clicked the 'done' button and prepared to leave, already it was twenty hundred hours, he'd been there for over eleven hours. He picked up his paper thin jacket and made his way to the lifts. Once outside in the damp September air he carefully threaded his way away from the crowds to the heart of the prolitarian quarters.
