Revolt

by Vernon Coleman

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ said the man, when he caught up with them. He was carrying a clipboard in his right hand and with his left hand he fiddled with his collar which seemed to be too tight. He had a small orange button fixed to the bottom of his left earlobe to show that although he was in uniform he was a contract employee, a ‘trusty’ and not a fully-registered EUDCE functionary. He looked at what was obviously a body, lying on the trolley and underneath the sheet, and then looked away as though it made him nervous.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ asked Tom, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

  ‘I didn’t fill in your security clearance form,’ said the security guard. He had bald patches and a tic near his left eye. They were symptoms Tom had seen many times among sprouts. They were, he knew, side effects associated with the drug treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Over 50% of both sprout and suspect populations had been officially diagnosed as suffering from ADHD. Among some populations within the United States of Europe, the figure was as high as 90%. A similar number had been diagnosed as autistic with the result that a large percentage of the population had been officially diagnosed as suffering from both. Children who had not been diagnosed as having one of these diseases were officially labelled ‘nonpsychohyperresponsive’ and regarded as inferior. Only sprouts and trustys received regular drug treatment.

  The guard waved the clipboard around behind him. ‘At the entrance. When you came into the hospital.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I was on a comfort break,’ he explained. ‘Bit of prostate trouble, they say.’ Trustys, like suspects, weren’t entitled to comprehensive medical care. The guard would have to live with his prostate symptoms. If they became too troublesome, and interfered with his ability to do his job, he would be ‘retired’ without compensation or a pension.

  ‘Ah,’ nodded Tom, understanding.

  ‘One of the receptionists told me,’ explained the guard. ‘Said she’d seen someone come in.’

  ‘What do you need to know?’ asked Tom.

  The guard lifted his clipboard and removed a stub of pencil from his breast pocket.

  ‘Still not used to these,’ he said, holding up the pencil.

  ‘You still miss the hand-held computer things?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ nodded the man. ‘And heaven knows what happens to these.’ He tapped the form with the pencil stub. ‘I hand them in at the end of my shift and someone files them away.’

  ‘Difficult times,’ agreed Tom.

  The guard sighed. ‘Better get it over with then,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me what’s on the trolley, please?’

  ‘A body.’

  ‘Human or other?’

  ‘Oh, human.’

  ‘EUDCE employee or suspect?’

  ‘EUDCE employee.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Male.’

  ‘Live or deceased?’

  ‘Deceased.’

  ‘Cause of death, if known?’

  ‘Hit on the head several times with a frying pan.’

  Tom, Dorothy and the guard all turned.

  ‘We hit him on the head several times with a frying pan,’ repeated Tom’s aunt. She stared at them all, unblinkingly.

  ‘Aha,’ said the security guard. A small smile broke across his chubby features. ‘A joke,’ he said, flatly, letting it be known that he understood. Jokes weren’t common.

  ‘A joke,’ agreed Tom.

  The guard nodded. ‘Shall I put ‘unknown’?’

  ‘That would be fine,’ agreed Tom quickly. ‘My aunt has an old fashioned sense of humour.’

  The guard wrote on his pad and then leant inches closer to Tom. ‘Not always appreciated these days,’ he murmured. ‘Humour,’ he explained, in case there was any doubt. He pulled at his shirt collar again. ‘If you don’t mind my mentioning it.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Tom murmured back, nodding to show that he understood and agreed. ‘My aunt is rather old,’ he added as a sort of explanation. He could feel the sweat pouring down his back and his forehead. A drop of sweat fell off an eyebrow, landed on his cheek and ran down his face. He hoped the dim lighting would help ensure that the guard didn’t see how nervous he was.

  ‘Your relationships to the deceased?’ The guard asked; he looked at the three of them. ‘Relatives? Friends? Colleagues?’

  ‘Colleagues,’ said Tom.

  The guard, who wanted to get back up the corridor so that he was nearer to the toilets, ticked the appropriate box on the form. ‘That seems to be it, thank you very much, sir,’ he said. He nodded to each of them in turn and started to walk away, back up the corridor towards the accident and emergency department. Tom had taken his place behind the trolley, ready to start pushing again, and the guard had travelled about five paces up the corridor, when the cat miaowed.

  Tom, Dorothy and Tom’s aunt froze. The guard turned.

  ‘Was that a cat? Did I hear a cat?’ demanded the guard. Suddenly, he didn’t seem quite so polite. Suddenly, there was an edge in his voice. This, Tom and Dorothy sensed, was serious.

  ‘It’s my aunt’s cat,’ said Tom softly. He didn’t think he could take much more tension. He feared that if he lost any more sweat they might all drown.

  ‘In the bag?’ asked the guard,

  ‘In the bag,’ agreed Tom. Gently, he took the bag from his aunt’s hands and opened it. The cat, now settled at the bottom of the bag, looked up at them anxiously.

  ‘Cats aren’t allowed in the hospital,’ said the guard firmly. ‘No cats.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Tom. ‘My aunt doesn’t like to leave it by itself. She worries.’

  ‘There’s been a lot of catnapping in our area,’ said Dorothy.

  ‘I’ve heard they make good eating,’ said the guard. ‘Bit like chicken.’

  ‘I believe so,’ said Tom.

  ‘I have to ask you to remove the cat from the hospital,’ said the guard.

  ‘I’ll take aunt outside,’ said Dorothy softly. ‘With the cat,’ she added.

  The guard nodded his approval.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Tom. He smiled nervously at the guard. The guard nodded; it was a sharp, rather abrupt nod.

  Escorted by the guard, Dorothy, Tom’s aunt and the cat headed back towards the hospital entrance. Tom, now alone, pushed the trolley back to the corridor leading down to the scanner, parked it and then walked back out of the hospital.

  ‘I think we got away with it,’ said Dorothy as they made their way back home.

  ‘I think we did,’ agreed Tom. He was riding the bicycle very slowly in the gutter. Dorothy and his aunt were walking along the pavement beside him.

  ‘The man was very nice,’ said Tom’s aunt. ‘He didn’t seem to mind that we’d killed that chap with our frying pan.’

  Tom and Dorothy looked at each other. ‘No,’ said Tom. ‘That was nice of him.’

  Chapter 15

  Tom really didn’t mean to kill the man from the Telescreen licensing people but he was, he discovered, surprisingly calm about it afterwards. He was so calm that when someone banged on the front door a few moments later he broke the habit of a lifetime and opened it. He was still holding the frying pan, as though he had been interrupted in some culinary activity when he had heard the knock.

  ‘I’m from Telescreen licensing,’ said a grey-faced man at the door, holding up a piece of plastic with his photograph on it. He smelt of luxury. Aftershave, talcum powder, hair gel and a freshly laundered shirt.

  Tom stared at him.

  ‘My colleague should be here,’ explained the caller. ‘I had some difficulty parking the van.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Tom. He stood aside to allow the caller room to enter and then closed the door. Then he raised the frying pan and brought it crashing down onto the back of the sprout’s head.

  Then he woke up.

  When Dorothy woke she found that she was alone in bed. She got up, put on a slightly frayed Paisley dressing gown, and went downstairs. Tom w
as in the kitchen sipping a mug of tea.

  ‘Have you been up long?’

  Tom looked at the clock. ‘Twenty, twenty five, minutes.’ He pointed at his tea. ‘Do you want a cup?’

  Dorothy nodded. Tom made her one.

  ‘I can’t believe what we did yesterday,’ said Tom when they were both sitting down. He spoke quietly as though nervous that someone might hear him.

  ‘Do you think we got away with it?’

  Tom nodded. ‘I think so.’ He sipped at his tea. ‘I killed someone,’ he said, as much to himself as to Dorothy. ‘I would never have thought myself capable. I killed two people. He stopped and thought for a moment. ‘Actually, I’m not sure I did kill either of them. My aunt seemed much better with the frying pan than I was.’ He stared pensively at a stain on the table. ‘She was very good at it,’ he said. ‘Ruthless. Utterly ruthless.’ He shuddered involuntarily. It wasn’t easy to reconcile the gentle, rather jolly aunt he thought he knew with the frying-pan wielding madwoman he had watched battering a man’s head so efficiently. ‘So I don’t really know whether I killed one, two or none.’

  ‘You didn’t have any choice.’

  ‘I know. But it seems strange. Part of me feels that I should feel guilty. But I’m not sure whether I do.’ He sipped at his tea. ‘In fact I’m pretty sure I don’t.’ He paused and thought. ‘I don’t.’ He took another sip. ‘And so I’m not sure whether I should feel guilty about not feeling guilty.’

  ‘It doesn’t count,’ said Dorothy. ‘They were sprouts.’

  ‘I know it’s wrong to kill people. But what else could I have done? You can’t argue with sprouts. You can’t discuss anything with them. You can’t reason with them. They’d have arrested the three of us and handed us over to the Americans.’

  ‘It’s like a war,’ said Dorothy. ‘We have to defend ourselves. They were bad people working for bad people.’

  ‘But we shouldn’t take the law into our own hands. Should we? Or should we?’

  ‘Why not? It’s our law. Just because they’ve stolen control of the law doesn’t make it their law. In a democracy the voters elect the legislature which makes the rules. The executive runs things according to the rules. And the judiciary decides if the rules have been broken. But everything has gone wrong. You wouldn’t have got a fair trial because the same people now make the rules, run things and then decide whether the rules have been broken.’

  Chapter 16

  For a week they tried to forget. They constantly expected to hear on the Telescreen that the police were investigating the murder of two sprouts. Every night, Tom woke up at 3.30 a.m. and lay there waiting for Europol sprouts to burst through the front door.

  But nothing happened.

  No one seemed to have noticed. Or maybe no one cared.

  Chapter 17

  They had not, of course, been the first to stand up against the sprouts; though they were, perhaps, the first to do so quite so effectively.

  There had, over the months, been many attempts at rebellion.

  A group calling itself The English Liberation Front had made bombs out of pesticides, fertiliser, torch batteries and alarm clocks. They had not been very good at it (none of their bombs had actually gone off) and their efforts had died away for lack of supplies.

  Another group, known to its members, but sadly no one else, as Freeing England had made a bomb and used the transmitter and receiver from a radio controlled aeroplane to detonate it. But although their bomb worked as well as could be expected they were hindered by the fact that they could only find enough explosive to make a very small bang. The breaking of a single ground floor window at a Regional Parliament building in the West Country was not regarded by EUDCE as a serious threat to the security of the State.

  A third group, consisting entirely of computer specialists used their knowledge to attempt to disrupt EUDCE by feeding viruses into the organisation’s computer network. Sadly for the rebels their attempt resulted in less disruption than one of the six times a day power cuts that had become accepted as part of everyday life. The group had still been arguing about the name it would use when it had disbanded.

  A group of anti-fascist rebels, known as The Blue Brigade, had made a serious attempt to overthrow the sprouts by burning all demands for money that came from official sources. Demands from all licensing authorities were burnt on huge bonfires by crowds of cheering citizens.

  ‘Without our money they are powerless!’ claimed the leader of the rebels, who wrote a pamphlet in which he argued that the UK had been destroyed by a potent, toxic, ever-expanding tangle of goldplated EUDCE rules and regulations. ‘They can’t take thousands of us to court – it will block the system!’

  Sadly, this well-meant scheme of civil disobedience didn’t work.

  The police were instructed to pick up all the ringleaders who had burnt their bills. And they were instructed to pick up others at random. All those arrested were charged with offences under the Financial Support of Terrorism Act. They were fined heavily and sent to Africa to serve life sentences weeding parsnips. The sad result was a rapid rush to pay outstanding bills.

  All further attempts to generate opposition were stifled by legislation outlawing the dissemination of information about EUDCE policies and spending policies. The publication of facts and statistics (defined as ‘politically inconvenient verities’) was made illegal under wide-ranging anti-terrorism legislation introduced by EUDCE under the European Securities Act.

  And, as those who had known freedom, and understood what it was and what it meant, grew older and grew weary, so the number of people prepared to stand up and fight diminished. The young, who had grown up in a regimented, regulated world, knew nothing else and their expectations were low. Nothing about their world seemed wrong to them. The simplest truths and ideas are the most difficult to understand, the easiest to ignore and the hardest to do anything about.

  Those among the young who were branded as suspects and destined to be nothing more than second-class citizens, did not stand up to protest; they defended and supported those who controlled the rules and regulations because that was what they had been brought up to do. They had been enslaved by their own obedience, by fear and by an understanding that this was the way it was and this was the way it was meant to be.

  The bureaucrats were getting stronger every day.

  Chapter 18

  And then Tom and Dorothy had visitors: Gladwys Tranter and her boyfriend, Dalby Barrington.

  Gladwys and Dalby both wanted to marry but EUDCE didn’t approve of marriage. EUDCE’s Greek born Commissioner for Social Relationships had decided that formalising relationships increased independent thinking and diminished the power of the Superstate and he had, therefore, introduced legislation barring marriage between heterosexuals, although not between homosexuals.

  Gladwys Tranter was a small, dark-haired, dark-complexioned woman. Tiny, slim, alert, she was always busy, always rushing, always doing something, constantly moving; if she’d been a small animal she would have been a hamster. Or, perhaps, a sparrow. In her mid 40’s, though she looked younger, she had brown hair and a boyish figure. She wore her hair short (easier to keep clean, she explained) and always wore skirts, together with blouses or jumpers. The skirts always came down to her ankles. She never wore trousers. She was a huge fan of Jane Austen and secretly read her six novels continuously; never reading anything else. She read them in sequence, as they’d been written, and when she finished the last one she immediately started to re-read the first one. She could, in the olden days, have won prizes for her specialist knowledge of this once famous, English author. As a girl she’d studied art and after graduating had worked for a while as a set designer. In her own time she’d begun to make a name for herself as a portrait artist; that had always been her first love. But then, after the final collapse of the British Parliament and the peak oil problems exacerbated by the British energy crisis of 2016, the company had gone bankrupt and the galleries where she had exhi
bited had all closed down. She’d tried to get work at the BBC but they weren’t making drama productions any more and all their staff had to be EUDCE approved. Gladwys couldn’t get EUDCE approval because she’d once been filmed by the police at an animal rights rally in Trafalgar Square. She’d thought she might be able to concentrate on her painting but no one had money to spend on art. Even the rich were turning their money into gold or silver and burying what they didn’t need to spend to survive. She now eked out a small living growing a few vegetables on one of the allotments where Tom worked as a guard. Her hands, once delicate and pale and sensitive, the hands of an artist, were now brown and gnarled and covered in calluses; they were the hands of an artisan. She and Dalby had one child, a daughter, who’d had nothing whatsoever to do with them since she had married a sprout. At first this had caused Dalby and Gladwys great sadness. But now it was no longer of consequence. Their lives were too full for them to worry about this, or for them even to be aware of it.

  Dalby, with whom she had lived for twenty three years, was short and liked to describe himself as solidly built, a phrase which he much preferred to oft-used alternatives such as ‘chubby’ and ‘rotund’. The truth was that he was one of the few plump looking people on the planet who wasn’t actually fat. He didn’t eat all that much (no suspects ever did) but he had the sort of shape that meant that even if he’d been starving he would have looked pleasantly well-fed. He still had all his hair, which was white and curly, and he wore it so that if he’d ever worn a jacket it would have hung over his collar. Before his hair had gone white it had been reddish in colour and he still had a number of freckles to remind him of his original schooldays nickname of ‘Ginger’. No one had called him that for years.

  He had always been a mild-mannered man. He had been a quiet, gentle, inoffensive, inconspicuous child and he had grown up to be a quiet, gentle, inoffensive, inconspicuous man. Twenty years earlier Dalby had been a model citizen; the sort of elector of whom politicians approved. He questioned nothing. He had been the sort of person who, if he had accidentally dropped a sweet wrapper, would have gone back to pick it up and chased it around in the wind to make sure he managed to collect it. (In truth, on one occasion he had narrowly escaped being run over after chasing a breeze-blown toffee wrapper into oncoming traffic.)