Author's Note: I'm back! Expect intermittent updates on this story, as I continue to flesh out the world of 1984 and explore a plotline of conspiracy and intrigue.

January 21, 1991:

Mueller looks out the window at the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro. They are a lawless land, almost entirely devoid of Party members and telescreens. Oceania's control of South America is limited indeed. There are people in the Amazon who have never heard of Big Brother, there are centuries-old ethnic tensions which the Party will never stamp out, and there are armed militants who, hiding in the jungles and mountains, actively defy Ingsoc. If his plane crashed in a remote enough area, he would be strung up from the nearest tree.

Of course, it is all as the Party wills. Oceania allows its most backwards inhabitants to entertain fantasies of rebellion, because if it so chooses it can stamp them out at any moment. These rebels are permitted to survive—just like the Christian insurgents in the North American heartland, who still fly a curious flag adorned with stars and stripes—so that the Party may always have another enemy to crush.

The aircraft is now at the level of the tallest hills. Landing is moments away. Around Mueller, the well-furnished interior of the fuselage is empty and quiet—there are no passengers besides him and his servant, Julian, who sits quietly at a table by the forward bulkhead.

Mueller puts away the stack of papers he has been reading. They're trivial, just reports containing entirely fictitious figures of ammunition usage, but they've kept him occupied during the flight. For the last several hours his plane has undertaken an odyssey through Latin America; first from New York to Havana, then from Havana to Caracas, then through two military airfields on the Brazilian coast. While his Harvey-Williams 300 is the fastest passenger jet available, its range limits it to short hops from place to place. Only the transatlantic jets can manage better.

He never did see much of his intermediate stops; in fact, he never left the plane. Now, however, he will spend most of a day resting in Rio, while local Party officials secure another aircraft to take him to Africa and the Mesopotamian Front. He has also arranged for his ally Smith to send him news from back home. Before leaving, he set many things in motion, and he eagerly awaits word as to their success.

He looks out the window again. Proles are like specks in the crowded streets of the favelas, and their miserable shanty towns rise far into the hills. A handful of groundcars move below, alongside a larger number of trucks and buses—private vehicles are a rarity, reserved solely for Inner Party members, but the Party rank and file still need to be transported.

The plane touches down. A loud rumble tramsits up through pneumatic struts in the landing gear, and the deceleration pulls Mueller forward. A pencil he left unsecured on the table before him rolls off the edge, clattering softly on the carpet, while his briefcase tumbles from the wall it had been leaning against. This is a rougher landing than usual—the runway must be maintained poorly, if at all.

Finally the rumbling quiets down, and the plane taxis off to the side, joining a handful of idle jets and propeller aircraft already there. Mueller sees a row of run-down buildings that pass for the airstrip's offices, terminal, and hangars. Beyond, Outer Party apartment blocks crowd together around too-narrow streets. They are even dingier than the tenements in New York. They hardly have a clear window between them, and fingers of grime trail from the roofs like black sediment on a beach. Such a miserable world is this, that the Party has constructed—all so that man might be tamed, lorded over, starved and beaten into submission. Mueller leans closer to the window and allows himself a moment of pride.

"We've arrived, sir," says the copilot, emerging from a hatch at the front of the cabin. Mueller sees through the open door into the cockpit, where the captain fusses with the dials and switches of a machine that was current technology forty years ago, and still is. "I've been told a car is here to pick you up."

"Very good, comrade." Mueller stands from his seat and makes for the exit, carrying his briefcase by his side. Julian follows with the rest of his luggage. It's useful, having a servant.

They wait a few minutes by the door, while the plane maneuvers into its final position and ground crew roll out a staircase. Finally the copilot swings open the hatch, allowing in a column of warm equatorial sunlight—as well as the reek of petrol fumes. Mueller coughs.

"Welcome to Rio de Janeiro, Comrade Mueller!" shouts a young woman at the bottom of the stairs. She's short, tan, black-haired, with an Inner Party jumpsuit. The uniform is constant everywhere one goes. "Alondra Dias, at your service. Hail Insgoc!"

Mueller has heard of Dias—he arranged for her to host him—but this is the first time he's matched a face to the name.

"Hail Ingsoc, Comrade Dias!" Mueller shouts back. He steps out of the plane. Beneath his feet, the staircase shifts a few centimeters, and he has to grip a handrail to steady himself. Reaching the bottom, he continues, "It was a long flight. I'm glad to be here."

"Excellent. I have a car to take you to the local Department of Peace." She points to a concrete building in the distance. Where the likes of New York and London have Ministries, lesser cities have to make do with Departments. "We've been busy these last few weeks. Wars at home, and of course we do our part sending troops to the African Front."

"How goes the situation with the Amazonian rebels?"

The car sits on the tarmac nearby, a new make of an old model, with a silver grille, black hood, and rounded top. They walk towards it. Despite the filth of this world, it has somehow managed to stay relatively polished.

"The rebels are under control, as usual. We recently seized a cache of weapons near Cuiabá. And we think one of their top leaders was killed in an air strike last week."

"Very encouraging news, Comrade Dias."

She smiles. Mueller knows she is only feeding him a skewed vision of the war, one that makes Paxdep Rio de Janeiro look better in the eyes of Minipax New York. She hasn't mentioned the terrorists attacks that have taken place, the thousands of Oceanian soldiers and civilians killed, the Inner Party members assassinated by gunmen in broad daylight. He's heard rumors.

"It is indeed. We'll have the war won within months, and then we'll be able to concentrate our efforts properly on the Eurasian and Eastasian enemies."

Does she believe that? Yes and no, surely. Doublethink is a mighty mindset.

There is a chauffeur in the front seat of the car; Julian puts Mueller's luggage in the trunk, then takes the passenger seat, while Dias and Mueller sit in the back. The vehicle lurches forward, its engine purring. They swerve off the tarmac, past the beaten-down terminal, then past a faded poster hanging on the chain-link perimeter fence: "Big Brother está te observando!"

Big Brother is watching you.

These days, Portuguese, Spanish, and English remain the only official languages existing in Oceania, each with its own version of Newspeak. Every other language, from Quebecois French to Yucatan Mayan, is remembered only by scatterings of proles, all but the oldest of whom are illiterate.

As the car picks up speed, Dias turns towards Mueller and hands him a manila envelope. It is stamped with the logo of Ingsoc. "I was ordered to give you this."

Mueller takes the envelope, notes that it is not sealed. "Who all knows of its contents?"

"I've read it. So have the people who decoded it."

"You weren't supposed to."

"I thought I had the clearance—"

"Thinking you have clearance isn't good enough, Comrade Dias, not with matters this important. You and the others will never speak of this."

"Understood, Comrade Mueller."

Mueller nods at the chauffeur. "Your driver. Is he reliable?"

"Very. How about your servant?"

"Loyal to the death. We can discuss this, then—once I've read it."

He opens the envelope, extracts a stack of telegrams. The text on them is small and closely packed:

Operation re Harris and Calloway doubleplus success. Both targets arrested 05:00 1/21/91. Trial waiting. Confessions getted, signed, minimal processing in miniluv. Harris, Calloway admit to sabotage, thoughtcrime, murder. No reaction antetime from Harris faction. Situation calmful antetime.

It continues like that for a while. Mueller is rather tired of Newspeak, and is, heretically, more than a little glad that its introduction has been delayed by years. He remembers a prediction from 1980 claiming that people would speak Newspeak eighty percent of the time by the year 1990; looking back through the records, that prediction has been pushed out to 2008, which of course was always the year.

"My top ally in New York, Wade Smith, compiled this," Mueller says to Dias, after he's finished reading. By now the groundcar is passing through an Outer Party neighborhood, so many tall apartment blocks with small windows. A troop of Spies, fifteen children and a young woman garbed in khaki, marches by on the sidewalk. "There is... a factional struggle going on there. Smith, myself, and others follow one version of the Party line, my colleague Harris and her associates another. Mere days ago Harris tried to have me sidelined by sending me on this errand to the Mesopotamian Front, and the Minister of Peace, Calloway, abetted her. They have now been exposed as thought criminals."

The evidence was manufactured, hastily at that. There wasn't time for anything better. Calloway was arrested for writing in a notebook—faked—and Harris for using narcotics—planted. The accusations will balloon in the trials, as they always do, until the treacherous Calloway-Harris Anti-Ingsoc Center stands charged with sabotaging the Baltimore aluminum mills, and bombing primary schools, and even plotting to assassinate Big Brother himself.

"Why are you still heading to the Mesopotamian Front, if you've just won the battle at home?"

He hasn't won the battle at home. If he goes back to New York, he's a dead man, for Calloway and Harris have many allies. But there's no need to tell Dias that.

"Because the situation at home is secure—my faction is victorious. I am free to inspect the Mesopotamian Front at my leisure."

Or rather, he aims to race there before the Calloway-Harris Anti-Ingsoc Center can get to him. Already, he has had an Army captain purge the Offingsoc of the battalion he plans to visit—the man was a documented puppet of Calloway and would have swiftly arrested him.

"May I ask, comrade, what the dispute was about?"

Mueller smiles. What was the cause of the feud between him and Harris? It started with something very small, very technical, albeit with much broader implications.

"It concerns certain heresies relating to the Ingsoc value of crimestop, and how to properly inculcate it into the troops on the Equatorial Front. I maintain—rightly—that crimestop takes priority over blackwhite in the field. Blackwhite, while valuable, can be troublesome in a military context, as denying objective reality while in the face of enemy fire is… well, it's dangerous. Eurasian bullets do not always obey the Party's commands. It is more important, therefore, for the soldier to practice crimestop, and self-censor dangerous ideas before they lead to thoughtcrime."

Dias nods. "I see."

"Big Brother would take my side, if he knew about it. But such matters rarely reach him."

The actual location of Big Brother is a mystery, and he may not be alive at all, though that won't stop Oceania from celebrating his seventy-ninth birthday in April. Minitrue New York will arrange parades and jet overflights for days leading up to the event.

"Well," Dias speaks up, "judging by the papers I read, you have the situation under control. I trust I will suffer no reprisals for assisting you."

"Of course not, comrade."

Dias may well be vaporized for this, and she is naive to believe otherwise, but that's not Mueller's problem.

There is a lull in the conversation. Their car rolls past a telescreen, on the side of the street, its grainy footage scarcely discernible behind a sheet of grime. Mueller catches a glimpse of a Floating Fortress engaging Eurasian or Eastasian aircraft, somewhere tropical. He is reminded of a distant summer afternoon, sometime around 1975, when his troop of the Ingsoc Youth—the more elite equivalent to the Spies—went to see a Floating Fortress under construction in Portsmouth, Airstrip One. It was terribly exciting at the time, and for many years afterwards it remained the farthest he had ever ventured from his home in Chicago; he still remembers how the sloped armor and rows upon rows of gun and missile turrets gleamed in the sunlight, almost as majestically as they did on the posters. It's sixteen years later and the Portsmouth dockyards still produce Fortresses of the same specifications. Nothing ever really changes, technologically, though of course there is the constant promise of some new breakthrough that will turn the tide decisively in Oceania's favor.

"What do you think you will do when the war is over, Comrade Dias?" he asks.

"Pardon?" Dias raises an eyebrow. Now that Mueller has the chance to scrutinize her more closely, he notices two things—first, that she has scars on her skin, probably caused by childhood smallpox, and second, that she is even younger than he thought. Twenty-two at the most. Like him, part of a generation born into the world of the Party.

"We both have many decades ahead of us—we may yet live to see the inevitable triumph over the forces of Eurasia and Eastasia. What then?"

"Then we shall all turn our efforts fully towards the realization of human creativity." Any confusion has vanished from her face. "With peace achieved, there will be nothing to stop the Party from eradicating want, and creating a future where all people can live together in harmony under its benevolent leadership."

They both know that peace is a lie. The end of the war is a mirage, a figment of hope, held out in front of the masses like a carrot on a stick. Yet the Party does reference the final victory in its speeches and papers and films, and the Party is always right. Always. The Party says they will win, and so they will win; the Party says, more secretly, that the entire war is designed to be an endless drain of resources and human potential, and so the war cannot be won. These two ideas have coexisted in Mueller's mind since before he can remember. They must coexist in Dias' mind, too.

But unlike Dias he was present for the grim briefing in New York. News of an unprecedented Eurasian retreat, and tanks burning near Brussels. These things point to another outcome entirely…

"That will be the day," he says. "When our troops march into Moscow and Peking, and the banner of Ingsoc replaces the vile, foreign ideologies that reign there. BB will be proud."

"BB will be proud."

They enter an Inner Party zone near the Department of Peace. Armed guards at a checkpoint demand papers, which Dias' driver readily provides, and they wave the car past the wire-topped fence, onto freshly paved asphalt. Beyond lie bland but well-kept apartment blocks.

As they rumble down the street, Mueller looks back and sees a bloody scrap of cloth on the barbed wire. Not far away is more blood, on the sidewalk, with no corpse in sight—smear marks suggest that it was dragged away. He imagines the scene as it must have been: a mad scramble over the fence, at night; a solitary gunshot; a man collapsing to the ground like a sack of flour. Was he a robber? Resistance, perhaps? There will be no records of the incident. The Party has doubtless forgotten about it, as it eventually forgets about everything.

The car turns a corner and passes out of sight, but Mueller remembers-for now.