He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. - George Orwell, 1984

The tour continued. Julia came to understand that the underground laboratory looped back on itself in a circle, reconnecting again with the second room she had entered.

There were six rooms in total- the sterilized entrance, the morgue-room, connected to an offshoot of a room that was still more sterilized, in which the experiments were performed, a study filled with computers and with a telescreen on the wall, a walk-through storage room and finally a room that gave no pretense of being anything but a dungeon. In this room, the man announced, "And this is where you will be staying while you help us with our studies, until you're done, when you will of course be staying with our other test subjects."

There was cold slate on the floor and the walls were like exposed rubble. Along the walls hung cuffs and chains and crouched on the floor were two people, stripped to their underwear and chained by their wrists. Julia gave an involuntary sign of surprise when one of them looked up at her and she remembered her as one of her former colleagues.

Julia was taken from the room, her tour continued in a mundane fashion. Some implements and technology was explained and demonstrated to her. Photos of techniques were shown, seemingly picked out for their cruelty.

It was getting late; she was eventually taken back to the dungeon, chained up and left there.

Her eyes went from one captive to another, she didn't know the second one and he stared blankly back at her.

"Julia," Said her work colleague, "Don't you recognize me?"

"Of course I do." It was a woman by the name of Ashley.

"I sent you a message, did you get it? Did it help at all?"

"The text message? So that was you then. Yes, it did help."

"I stole a mobile phone from one of the researchers. I brought it back here when they were gone and we called the authorities, I called my family, no one ever came. I gave them details about where we are. I may as well have given them a map!

"They were telling me that they were coming to find you. That woman left me to make the phone call, and that's when I sent you the message. I'm so glad it made a difference, I was worried that I hadn't done enough."

"They're in cohorts with the thought police, no one would have the authority to break us out." Said Julia, "I would have ended up here no matter what you could have done for me."

The woman paused, and then continued, "A man did come in here a one point, but he said nothing the whole time, he wrote on a clipboard and searched all the rooms. Shortly afterwards that telescreen in the computer room was installed. I think he might have been an inspector."

They talked together for some time after that. Ashley told how, much like Julia, she had received a phone call, but unlike Julia, she had entered the black van compliantly. The man's story too was practically identical to Ashley's.

Julia talked about the weird things that happened to her and the inevitability with which she ended up in the laboratory. Mercifully, Ashley did not speak of the test subjects, and what was done to them. Julia would find out soon enough.

The researchers came back the next morning. From the dungeon room, Julia had been awakened by the sound of the door closing, and people talking.

The man in the lab coat entered the room, along with another researcher who Julia had never seen before. "A fine morning, Julia. A pity you can't see it." Said the man. He unchained her, leaving Ashley and the other man where they were. He beckoned her to follow him, and they went into the study/computer room. "We will go through what we've been doing so far and get you up to date."

He showed her a few papers, he flicked through a slide show of information, explaining various topics.

As he neared his conclusion, he seemed to be working himself up into a state of profound excitement. He began making lofty statements: "We're changing the world for the better. Eliminating illness, defeating death and mother nature." And he ended with the observation: "We must function on logic and fact in these times, within these chambers if we want to have an effect on anything. Outside, Big Brother can force us to believe that 2+2=5, but down here it is always 4. 2+2, without exception, will equal 4."

He was disturbed from continuing the thought by the sound of an alarm going off. "Oh my lord." He said, he was looking at Julia with terror.

"What happened?" She said, but the man was silent.

There was a lag between the initial warning and the impact, but it seemed to Julia to happen immediately. There was a bang. The door of the laboratory burst inwards. It was the thought police who broke in.

They were all dressed in black, about five of them.

"It was nothing!" Said the man. "It was an exaggeration. I was making a point." He had his hands up in supplication at the five guns pointed at him.

One of the police approached and hit him squarely across the face with a baton. The man fell to the floor. "If this facility questions the authority of Big Brother it must be shut down!" He said, as his comrades approached to pick the man up to his feet. "Big Brother has eyes everywhere, even in research. Big Brother is logic. Big Brother is reason. 2+2=5."

The man was dragged from the facility.

"You will all be freed. You may go about your business. We allowed this enterprise at first, because it seemed to be of more good than harm. It has questioned the regime, it will now come to an end. This never happened. Speak of it and there will be consequences."

A stream of more thought police entered the room as this man left. They set about destroying everything, freeing people and repeating the orders.

Such is the power of Big Brother, he can erase a traumatic event with only a single command. And what else could Julia do? The test subjects were freed, Ashley was freed and they collectively left the chamber to go back to their lives, some maimed permanently by the study.