Julia stood there, too tense to move, hiding behind the door with her head pressed against it to listen for the men and her heart sounding like it had relocated to somewhere between her ears. One of the men knocked at the door, and when Julia didn't answer, he called out, "Julia Stucco?"
He sounded calm enough from outside the door and even polite, but the phone call was just too random, it sounded too sinister. This won't be goodJulia thought. No matter what was going to happen, she would not be going anywhere with these men. This visit could, after all, be about anything and not just that phone call, just like the phone call could have been about anything and not just the research study. Julia had some idea of the horrors inflicted by the Ministry of Love on thought criminals- she at least knew for sure that they came back from the Ministry of Love drastically subdued and changed in appearance, or else they didn't come back at all. When they didn't come back, their entire identities were erased, and their names forgotten. If you so much as mentioned these people afterwards, you would be in grave trouble.
"Miss Stucco?" A pause.
"Miss Stucco?" Repeated one of the men, with all the politeness gone and knocking loudly at the door, making it jar against Julia's head. She could tell by the violence of the knock that they were going to bash it in if she didn't open it- she would have to be brave and move, lest it be broken in on her head; her hesitation could be wasting her only chance to get away.
With some great effort, she pulled herself away from the door, took up her bag and ran as quietly as she could through her living room, through her tiny kitchen to where it connected to the laundry, and then through the laundry door where it connected to her garage, the location of the only means of escape she could really conceive of. There was a big poster of Big Brother on her kitchen wall above the bench, which was government issued, and it watched her creepily as she rushed past. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU was the caption underneath. On the other wall was the dulled-mirror surface of her enormous living room telescreen. When it was on, it would flash the word INGSOC periodically, but now it just reflected the flash that was Julia as she rushed past, holding her handbag, in her standard-issue tight one piece outfit that was so stretchy and resilient it could probably fit any possible body type.
Julia was very much in shape and she could move quickly, although she never was the most decisive or the most clear minded. Less so in a state of panic, she seemed to loose control of her faculties and fumbled everything. After missing a few times, she clicked the button to open the garage door, which would slide up into the roof, letting her out into the front yard, just as she heard a thump as the men began to break the door in. She caught her helmet and climbed onto her bike, forcing her key into the ignition, just as she heard another thud and a crack as the men almost succeeded in kicking in the door, all the while the garage was opening painfully slowly. With a final thunk, crack and the sound of hurried footsteps and angry words she could make no sense of, Julia knew that the men were in her house.
The motorbike accelerated, Julia ducked her head and drove it straight out under the still perilously low garage door, which could easily have scalped her, had it been just an inch lower, outside and into what she considered a greater chance of safety. Glancing back over her shoulder from the end of the driveway she saw the two men standing in her garage watching her- they hadn't bothered to chase after. They wouldn't catch her anyway.
She left her driveway, she left her street and then she met a main road where she slowed down to merge with the traffic. Even in the short interval as she sped down her own road, she knew that there was probably already recorded footage of her flight. They would get an image of her number plate and her appearance and then the thought police would also be after her for trying to run away. Running away was a thought crime; sometimes it seemed that there was really no escaping them.
The houses down the street all looked the same and almost hypnotic as Julia drove past them: big boxes that were joined together at the sides. They had tinted windows and you never knew who was behind them, watching you. They all had two trees in the front yard and one rose bush for the sake of both simplicity and symmetry, as if upholding these things in neighbourhood gardens would somehow influence the neighbourhood lifestyles to uphold them as well.
Julia's neighbourhood was very new, very modern and sanitized. Towards the border of the outer-party neighbourhood and the prole slums, where areas of old, mostly unused and boarded up housing that sagged with rot and age. The difference was so extreme and so abrupt as to be a bit uncanny.
A police patrol helicopter was looming over the main road like an extra loud dragon fly, but they were common enough; they would have nothing to do with Julia. As she drove along, Julia calmed down somewhat and the worry impinged on her that she might have just self-destructively overreacted. Was it paranoid to run away from her home like this, from a simple research study? But these men had broken in her door, why do something so drastic if they didn't mean her harm? Not to mention that strange warning text that she'd gotten. And should she find somewhere safe and call the authorities after all, to tell them that an organization of crazy people were out to get her?
Where could she go anyway? She did not want to get her family or friends in trouble for harboring her.
Julia's flat had been somewhere near the coast-line, with the beach a few blocks away from her house. She decided to head further into the Eurasian mainland, maybe out into the countryside where she could hide away from surveillance, or into one of the large cities where she could blend in. The cities were where the Ministries were, and they all frightened Julia a bit, despite the fact that she'd technically worked for the Ministry of Truth in research. She thought she would head to the city anyway. She would take it a day at a time and then see what happened. She didn't even consider where she might stay at nighttime.
Julia followed the main road, until it joined to a motorway that was headed south in the direction she wanted to go. She could follow it along for miles, and this she did, as it passed through firstly the outer party suburbia, then the prole slums, the industrial area, back through the slums and on and on.
But as the day wore on, Julia realized her fuel gauge was running low and she was getting hungry and restless. She would have to stop at a petrol station and get some food as well. The thought, while unavoidable, struck her with fear, since the thought police could be anywhere, and she could be risking identification.
She was deep in a neighbourhood of prole slums now. The industrial area was merged with them and the whole thing just smelt like pollution. Julia pulled into a particularly run-down station of the kind that was paradoxically run by proles for members of the outer and inner parties, since a prole who could drive was rare and a prole who owned a car was rarer still, and yet the station was so run down, she couldn't imagine that they got much service from outer or inner party members.
Incredibly nervous, she got off her bike and went to fill it up. Inside the petrol station were some shabby looking groceries that were probably never replaced and an annoyed looking middle-aged prole woman behind the checkout. At least Julia assumed she was middle aged, but who could really tell with proles? Bad diets, stressful lives, too many children, pollution and possibly drinking aged them early.
Julia didn't have to worry about how much it would cost her to buy fuel here, although it lingered in her mind for a moment. She wasn't used to thinking about it like she was now. It was funny and a bit sad to think that money didn't really mean anything to people like her, but to others like this woman it was essential for even the meanest subsistence.
Julia, like all outer and inner party members, was given a modest allowance, weekly groceries, and a place to live, in return for performing the expected duties of someone of her category, ability and education, and here she was, still at a healthy and youthful thirty-one, and this prole woman could easily be the same age. Granted, there were some basic bonuses for good work and behaviour- Julia's allowance had been drastically cut and her food rations were basically all staples as a result of her unemployment. Generally though, money only mattered to the proles, and also the Ministry of Plenty and big businesses, when they were dealing with foreign affairs, which all seemed vague and confusing to Julia.
Julia took a packet of corn chips and found herself stopping at a self of cosmetics, which was certainly strange to be found in a gas station.
They had a small collection of hair dyes. Julia considered her own hair which was distinctively fair, and then took one of the darker colours, smiling at her own cleverness. Probably it was her bike that was the most distinctive thing about her, but to Julia, in the throes and bewilderment of what seemed to her like such an intense and dangerous situation, it seemed the perfect disguise to dye her hair, to throw off whatever parties of evil madmen were after her. At the checkout, out of nerves, she could barely look the prole woman in the eye. The woman didn't seem to notice or care too much. Understandably she would have been happy just to get a customer.
"Would you like a magazine with that, my dear? We 'ave sweets 'alf price n all." Said the prole woman with a kind smile that was missing a few teeth.
Julia bought the sweets to appease the woman, who put it through the checkout, swiped Julia's card and then gave Julia a noticeable look out of the corner of her eye. Had something come up on the screen? Flustered, Julia bought a magazine as well.
The sun was beginning to set, making the petrol station with its rust, litter and broken signs take on more of a threatening aspect. Across the road, there were a small group of young proles staring at Julia and her bike. She ignored them and set off again just as it started to rain.
Down the side streets now, there wasn't anywhere that she would have liked to stay, like motels or something, to get in out of the rain.
She drove past an old, decrepit building that used to be some kind of business she guessed, because it didn't look like the usual prole houses, since it was made of brick rather than just a pile of sheet metal screwed together to make a shelter, which was generally the abode of the average prole. She stopped there and thought for a moment.
Truthfully that was probably an exaggeration on Julia's part; the prole houses weren't quite as bad as that. But they were bordering onto it- otherwise there would have been half a dozen proles currently living in this building, with its empty door frames, smashed in windows, and no square yard of roofing that didn't contain a hole of varying severity.
Oddly, Julia thought maybe she should stay here. Maybe just until the rain stopped. It was an unexpected place for her to stay, it was sheltered.
The noise from the bike made Julia nervous that someone might hear, so she got off and wheeled it behind the building, to an overgrown parking lot that probably hadn't been used in something like a decade. The bike seemed like some kind of companion now and the only one Julia had when she needed it the most. She parked it and caught herself wanting to pat it like a dog, or confide in it, it seemed to look up at her with big, melting, eye-like head lights. What was wrong with her?
Julia went inside the miserable building, where the holes in the roof made for puddles on the floor from the rain, and found herself a dry spot where she sat to eat her corn chips. The puddles were inky black in the dim light, like pools of oil, but Julia was feeling calm. Well, she thought, at least it's not raining very much.
It began to bucket down. There was a heavy clatter on the aged tin roof, and the drips coming down from the holes became a trickle, becoming a constant stream of water and the puddles were dramatically growing. It was getting dark frightfully quickly.
Well, maybe I should dye my hair, Julia thought. After all, she couldn't be bothered looking for any taps in the building in the dark. They probably wouldn't work anyway.
She mixed together the dye from the packet and covered her hair with it. It wasn't too hard, even without a mirror. Julia's hair was so fair that it was very fine and thin and it didn't take much before it was all covered, although she was sure that she was covering her face as much as her hair and it was a miracle that she didn't get it in her eyes. She ate some more while the dye developed, then she then leaned over and rinsed her hair with a stream of water from the roof. The water was dirty with rust, and it felt awful, but it got the job done. Once finished, she sat back down, picked more food out of her bag and leaned back against the wall, thoughtfully, dwelling on old memories of her work that had been brought back by that weird phone call.
The sound of cars going by broke her out of her comfortable- despite the circumstances- reverie, and into a kind of frantic, trembling panic. Where was she after all, choosing to be in a place like this rather than at home, after telling those men to use someone else for their study, or calling the authorities like she'd threatened or like a sensible person would have done.
What was this? This was madness! This was paranoia! Surely a government couldn't treat her like this. Julia was never a nervous person, she was cool tempered, if a bit dithery. She was ambitious and logical. She once heard people at her old work call her icy and rude, but she didn't care. She'd never gone into a spin like this before and she wasn't the sort of stupid person who would. Trying to stay overnight in a derelict building made her feel horrified, a symptom of a kind of breakdown? From isolation? From losing her job? But that had still happened some time ago…
She couldn't believe it- she'd practically died her hair in a puddle! She was crazy! She was exhausted with herself. She would go back home and pretend that this never happened, treat it like some kind of transient anomaly. At least no one knew but her.
She got shakily to her feet, as the panic wore off, and felt her way along the wall, back towards the way she got in. As she headed towards the exit, she thought, well, it's better to be insane and to think that you're insane, than to be insane and think that you're sane, and it's better to be insane, than to be on the run from a potentially murderous organisation, destined for the ministry of love and never to be seen again.
The sun was well and truly set when she left the building, and there, outside, parked across from her motorbike, was a familiar black van.
Three people were standing there in the gloom- two men and one woman.
The woman spoke in a voice just as forebodingly familiar as the van: "Ms Stucco, you'll come with us now, please."
And Julia was glad for a moment that she wasn't nearly as crazy as she thought she was.