Walking through the filthy sections of London was refreshing. Stev rarely used the tubes, they were too heavily monitored, so these constitutionals were almost daily exercises. All around him were signs of life, stray cats everywhere, small gardens on rooftops, and people living and thriving. Well thriving was too powerful a word, living and remaining human describes it more aptly. For they were always short of food, of paper, of many important commodities, and were as a rule educated as little as possible without breeding discontent. However the proles did not need to be overly cautious around the telescreens, they could go days without even thinking about the Party. The Party was not even very concerned about them, they only paid attention enough to eliminate the intelligent and possibly dangerous ones. Other than routine exterminations they left the proles alone. In the proles was left the last shred of humanity in the world, it was driven from Party members, and in Eurasia and Eastasia similar things were happening or had already happened. They were the only Homo Sapiens that remained who were left with pure emotion. They could still love, they could feel sadness, they could at least feel.
In walking through these slums one could actually see a mother's true affection in the way she treated her children. Could see young lovers in their short-lived beauty, sharing affections. It would not be long, perhaps by spring, until the man would start the hard labor that would callus him till the day he died, and the woman would swell with pregnancy which would widen her and take with it her wild rose beauty. It would be less than ten years he thought before both were hardened by physical labor and in less than twenty they would be grandparents. But now walking those grimy streets one could look and see humans, not the unfeeling automatons that he worked with every day.
He made his way toward the heart of these tenements, there were over twenty ways to get to his destination, and he knew them all by heart. After an hour of narrow streets, twists and turns, going into and out of broken down buildings he finally entered the building that would eventually take him to his `home'. Truly too complicated to explain he ducked into a long corridor and after countless twists and turns he finally entered the tunnel that would take him underground to his temporary lair.
The 'lair' so to speak was not only his, it was his and it was the group he dwelled with's. It was everyone's and it was no one's. The interior was cluttered, computers and wires were everywhere, one had to watch their footing constantly. In some of the back rooms there were cots that could be taken out and set up whenever one needed sleep. The ceilings and floors were mostly metal, but for warmth's sake (and for the sake of having somewhere to hide or something to pull down to create confusion should the thought police find them) tattered old blankets and rugs had been hung about for insulation. Though most of the place was harsh looking and cold, there were a few rooms filled with books. Not the new ones that were sought out destroyed and rewritten every few years, these were books that had existed before the revolution. In three high ceilinged rooms from floor to ceiling were shelves upon shelves of books, on the floors of these rooms were dilapidated old chairs and ancient lamps, which gave these sanctuaries a nostalgic look. In these rooms were some of the oldest remaining books in the country, possibly the world. The six entrances to their temporary residence were heavily monitored, though by the dwellers of this underground as opposed to by the party, so that escape could be made before the thought police get there.
Stev walked in and dropped his battered briefcase by his computer. He rubbed his eyes and sat down, absentmindedly felt the scar that ran diagonally down the left half of his nose and sat down. He began typing, breaking codes, solving matrices, doing any and all he could to find other possible weaknesses in the Party's defense and/or mind controlling structure. That one little virus had been obtained only after about 120 hours of mind bending work looking at all available data and probing into the Party's data mainframe. The fallacies the Party constantly weaved were iron clad, backed by constantly rewritten records, finding a flaw was hard to find, and holding on to it was nearly impossible and very, very dangerous. He rubbed his eyes again, looked around his makeshift table, found the bottle and swallowed and anti-fatigue pill dry, and resumed his typing.
He hadn't eaten yet today, nor would he. Food was always scarce in the city, their little underground was no different. Stev always ate sparingly, there were whole families that traveled around with them, the kids looked god awful. No worse than the adults, but they were just children, skin and bones. Stev usually ate about half of his rations and gave the rest to whomever needed them. He could sometimes eat in the canteen of the ministry after all, and they could not, but usually he tried to 'save' his money.
Saving is quite possibly the wrong choice of wording here. Stev really only kept a fraction of his wages the rest he laundered through various pubs and gambling rings. The reason the Party did not question his living in the depths of the proletarian slums was that they assumed him to be an alcoholic and full of other unmentionable vices. In reality he would go into a pub, and order drink after drink, which was in reality water. The bartender (another member of the underground) would in turn send him shot after shot of water, and pocket the money, or launder it through other pubs, card games, or whatever. He had successfully managed to outmaneuver Big Brother through manipulation of their own monitoring techniques, for now at least. Through passing the money from hand to hand it eventually came to rest in their vaults. Everyone who worked only kept about twenty dollars of the several hundred they earned per month, but they had access to the vaults whenever the necessity arrived.
After a time a somber, stoic-looking girl about Stev's age (he figured he was about 18) walked into the room.
"Hey K'rin" Stev said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
She smiled bleakly "Hi. Did you do it?" She leaned against the door frame.
"Yeah, we'll see if it went through unnoticed on Thursday. It'd should work though, I spent eleven hours installing it, and they really wont be expect something this suddel." He kept on typing.
"Stev?"
"What? I'm trying to work." Still not looking up from his monitor.
"Have you eaten yet today?"
"Yeah, I ate a little while ago."
She got down level to him, and studied his profile. "No you haven't. You cant starve yourself like this. You're running twenty-five hour stretches with no sleep, you have to eat something, these damn pills are not enough. Here" she took her dinner bar out of her satchel and put them down in front of him. "eat. At any rate Phred wants to see you."
Stev starring at the health bar looked up. "I didn't get any message."
"Yeah his cat's sick*, he told me to come and find you, he needs to talk with you before the night is through. Well I must take my leave of you now. Good-bye" With that K'rin walked out of the room. Stev watched her disappear into the murky darkness of the corridor before he resumed his typing.
* I really must explain the whole cat thing. In the world/time that is 1984, messages must be sent, however people can be caught and the information can be extracted from them, pigeons were shot down as a rule of thumb, and telephones were an obvious "don't". Hence the only really `safe' way to send messages was through cats. Strays populated the streets of most (if not all) cities and towns, so it was only a matter of time before someone thought to catch and breed (now it was bioengineer) them for intelligence, stamina (and with the help of science and technology) and empathy. Everyone in this little organization had one cat, which they trained from birth and formed some sort of bond with (allergies were something people had to deal with) Messages could be tied to one of their hind legs, and the cats could be told where to go, and one could rest assured that the cat would probably get there. But after all is said and done the cats never lasted long, (the average life span was about 5 years) the job was just too dangerous, plus the proles were encouraged to kill these `pests', and stray dogs (often starving) roamed the streets too. Members were encouraged not to get to close the their `pets', and as a rule of thumb they never wrote down and locations that were not public places. Most messages merely read "need to speak with you" and one could recognize whose cat it was and go to speak with whomever needed them. These felines really made good allies.
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