2034 – The Unheeded warning.
20th November 2034
Such oppression, such cruelty all for what they call entertainment. Prying, nosing absolute control. Once you agreed to enter the show there was no escape. You were under their power, until evicted, but who would evict one of the poor? The poor were the source of the entertainment, the slaves. Cameras were everywhere – unsleeping eyes. Big Brother was watching, always watching.
Oh, what I would do to turn back the clock, change my decision. I would never have gone on that show, not if my life depended on it. I was a fool, a weak fool. I let greed take over, the human weakness. I sold my innocence for the chance to get rich.
Big Brother, oh that terrible show, opened my eyes to the world and its shortcomings. It opened my eyes to human corruption.
* * * * *
Here I pause in my narrative as I recall those dreadful days. I recall my terror, my absolute terror that I would be caught for some crime and punished. They were always making new crimes up every instant. The punishments made the show. The malevolent audiences laughed at the pain of others. They did not care that it was unjust. To them we were no longer people. We were pawns, we did what Big Brother ordered, whatever that
may be.
Out of my vibrant memories of horror arises one happy, sanguine face. Hope. She was a young girl of kind nature, younger than I was by donkey years. So young in fact that she still maintained the firm faith in the good and just hearts of men. She was of short, round stature but something about her, some determined part of her character made her seem taller. She was different, she wanted to make changes for the better. She would let nothing stand in her way. That is why she had to be extinguished, her flame snubbed from existence.
By that time Big Brother house had been divided into the rich and the poor. I was not exactly financially superfluous; hence, I was poor. Hope was too. As the poor, we had to get up when we were told, at all obscene hours of the night. We had to eat what and when we were told and do various odd jobs ranging from cleaning and cooking to performing dangerous stunts for the enjoyment of viewers. If we objected, we were punished. Punishments included whipping, eating poison, eating a bag of chillies and other things of such calibre. It did not matter that outside the house there were laws forbidding such things. If it was entertaining, if it generated large profits it was all alright. The government would turn the blind eye.
A particular day stands out in my memory. I remember it as though it was yesterday. Hope's eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed with rage, her countenance vehement. The rich had just administered Big Brother's orders. We were to clean the toilet where a man, named Kelly, had just made an awful mess.
Kelly was a red faced man, primitive with shoulders slumped. He had a tendency to drink and had been vomiting in the toilet all night, as a consequence of this habit. He also had a tendency to violence. I believe in his private life, pre-Big Brother, he had beaten his poor wife.
This was not by a long shot one of the worst of jobs we were given there. However, Hope, being sensitive to injustice, had borne it for months and now her bubble burst.
"Indeed! I tell you I won't do it. I won't!" she had cried as she shook her fist at Kelly, "You clean up your mess yourself you lazy bastard! You clean it yourself!"
Silence met this performance, dead silence. The eye of the storm. She was in for it. I thought I could imagine the families at home, sitting in their lounge chairs, gripping the arms with anticipation and excitement.
It was Kelly who broke the silence. He struck the first blow. Then the rest of the rich, a group of approximately nine or ten pounced upon her. They struck and struck again. I was temporarily forgotten.
I remember screaming incessantly, unable to think, unable to act. All I could do was watch my only true friend as she was beaten to a pulp. The one hope for humankind, the only pure heart left in the world, extinguished, her bright flame snubbed by the power hungry. The poor girl, she was so innocent, so young, unable to contemplate the magnitude of human corruption, the evil within which had taken over.
Bitterly I poise my pen, formulating the words to set to paper. Then I write:
How Orwell would writhe in his grave if he knew what his unheeded warning had started.