by Mike Bursell
Chapter 7 – Some of you – most of you – are dross
A week or so later, the recruiters came. Those of us who were a little early into school saw them setting up some sort of booth in the main hall. We normally didn't have assembly on Tuesdays, but today, after the register had been taken, we were all ushered into the hall. They had moved the chairs where the staff normally sat, and teachers were standing to the side, looking rather disgruntled. We all sat down in our usual places, and waited for them to begin.
The first thing that struck me about the recruiters was just how smug they looked. They were all in crisp, clean, newly-ironed Enforcer uniforms, with smiles plastered across their faces. They look, it occurred to me, like people who know something we don't: or at least think that they do. The booth behind them was made up in black, with red highlights: the Enforcer colours. For those who knew their history - and by this point, I was doing some serious research into this sort of issue - the typeface and designs used were eerily similar to what you would have seen in 1930s and 1940s Germany: Nazis would have felt entirely at home here. I shivered.
We knew why they were there: to recruit Youth Enforcers. Y.E.s (or Y.T.s - "Youth Traitors" as everybody called them) were young people – of school age or older - who had agreed to work for the Government, reporting to the Enforcers, and betraying people who criticised anything that the Government did. Rumour had it that every school had at least one pupil who was an undercover Y.E., but I wasn't convinced: it seemed to me that they must be pretty difficult to recruit even to work in the open, let alone undercover. Most young people, I told myself, really wouldn't do it. It was probably propaganda craftily put about by the Government to keep us all under control. But maybe this was how they were trying to grow their numbers. And maybe I'm wrong. Be careful, Lena, be careful.
Ms Martin, our headmistress, moved from the side of the hall to the centre, right in front of the recruiters. They didn't look very happy about it, but she didn't look like she cared what they thought. In fact, she definitely looked like she would have preferred that they weren't there at all. "Quiet, please," she called, and everyone became silent within a couple of seconds. The recruiters actually looked a little impressed.
This, it occurred to me, must be something they can't understand. Discipline without fear: people do what Ms Martin asks them to do because they respect her, and not because they fear her. I snapped out of my thoughts as Ms Martin started talking.
"The Government," Ms Martin began, "requires that we 'invite'" (you could almost hear the inverted commas - there was no way she had invited them willingly) "these representatives of the Enforcers to address you. I will now hand over to them. You should listen carefully to what they have to say."
The Enforcers seemed somewhat confused by this introduction. On one hand, Ms Martin didn't seem to be particularly welcoming, but on the other hand, she had told us to listen carefully to them. I wondered what type of welcome they got in most schools. I suspected that they were used to more fear, and less of what Ms Martin and the teaching staff were showing them: “indifference” seemed to be the word. She didn't, however, I suddenly realised, tell us that we should agree with them – just that we should pay close attention. I sat back in my chair and decided to listen quietly as Ms Martin moved back to her place at the side of the room.
One of the Enforcers – a woman with longish blonde hair pulled back in a severe pony-tail – stepped forward and waited for the murmuring in the hall to die down. That took noticeably longer than it had for Ms Martin. "I'm very pleased to be here, in front of our nation's future," she started. A number of people the rows in front and behind me humphed in amusement. She waited again for the sounds of amusement to diminish, maintaining an air of superiority and disdain. "You are - at least some of you are - the stuff of which this country will be forged. But some of you - most of you - are dross. Worthless. You will make nothing of yourselves, you will always be worthless, and nobody will care who you are, or what you will do. You are not the children I care about. You – they – are not the children that this Government, or this great nation, are interested in. We are interested in those who will succeed. And we are interested in those who will try to stop them succeeding."
Way to build people’s self-confidence, I thought. But resentment as well. Interesting.
In what was clearly well-practised move, she took a step back as her male colleague took a pace forward. He began to speak in a high-pitched nasal whine. "There are some youths" (he managed to sneer slightly as he said it) "who are not entirely aligned with our Government's great plans for this country. I hope that there are none in this hall." He looked beadily around in an obviously rehearsed way: this man would never make a penny as a professional actor. "Such Youthist sentiments will not be countenanced by this Government..." He glared at Ms Martin, who seemed uninterested even in meeting his gaze, and stifled a small yawn, "... and I hope that your school takes a similar view. They will fail. We will ensure that they fail: and the fact that they try to stand against our Government means that they can do nothing else but fail. They are germs that this nation will destroy; ants that this nation will crush; the weeds that will be crushed under the wheels of Britain's progress."
This stuff may sound a bit pathetic and clichéd, but this was really rubbish that the Government was spouting by this point, on posters, on the radio, on the Net. They even had people going around in cars with loudspeakers from time to time. They must have created a Department of Unconvincing Metaphors, I decided, and mentally filed that away as an idea for a “humiliating attack” in the future.
The third Enforcer - another woman, this one with a sharp nose and short, greying hair - took the place of the second one as he moved back to the little booth. "We are looking for a select few of you who are willing to step forward..." she took a step forward and I rolled my eyes at how obvious the choreography of this all was, "... and take the future of this country in their hand. A select few who will take responsibility for their peers. A select few who have what it takes to join our ranks and become Young Enforcers, working in this community. In this town. In this school. A select few who will inform this Government of those exposing us: those who foster Youthist sentiments."
There was an intake of breath around the hall - including from me. This was bad, in all sorts of different ways. Bad for me and Mo, of course, because the more focus on the school, the more danger there was for us. But also bad for the school. A classic approach from any authoritarian government to try to control a society is to get people to inform on each other and turn them against one another. I wondered how many people were going to be interested, and, of those who put themselves forwards, which ones the Enforcers would take.
The Enforcer looked around the hall, which had gone silent after the initial reaction. "Good," he announced. "Good - you are thinking whether you are one of life's failures. Or one of life's germs. Or … one of life's leaders!" He paused again. "If you think you might be one of life's leaders - this country's future - then come and talk to us. We will be here all day."
With that, he nodded to someone at the back of the hall, and the introduction to the National Anthem came over the speakers. I looked around carefully, trying to gauge the feeling in the hall. I was pleased to see that people looked unimpressed by what they'd heard, and uninterested in reacting to the music. What had been a proud anthem, celebrated at sporting occasions and major events, had become to many of us another symbol of oppression by the Government. Being British didn't seem to something to be quite as proud of any more, if society was going to go down the path they wanted. Then, however, the Enforcer at the front of the hall started to glare at Ms Martin and the rest of the teachers, and they shuffled their way to a standing position as the three Enforcers started to sing lustily. People looked over at the teachers, who ushered us to our feet and everybody made a show of singing along.
The rest of the day was odd. I, for one – and I don't think I was alone – spent it wondering
where people were going when they left the class to go to the toilet, or disappeared from the dining hall during lunch. For once, Mo sat down with me. It didn't seem particularly odd today – people weren't sitting with their normal sets of friends, but in bizarre groups of people who didn't seem to have much in common. It was almost as if they didn't want to be with their friends in case they turned out not to be such friends after all.
“You OK?” asked Mo.
I half-jumped, buried as I had been in my own thoughts. “Um, yeah, I guess.”
“Planning to go and apply?” he asked, a slight smile on his lips.
“I really don't think so. Unless you are?” I queried.
“Well...,” he seemed to think about it, “It’s really not for me. Though I suppose it would be a good cover.”
“But, on the other hand, they'd expect you to spy on your family, inform on your classmates, and betray your friends.”
“Not so bad, then?” he parried.
“Yeah, right.”
“Anyway,” he said, as I got up from the table, loading my tray up with my dirty plate and cutlery, “I don't really have any of those.”
“What?”
“Friends,” he answered, a little sadly.
I paused, halfway through turning to go. “Well, you've got me.”
He looked surprised, and then his face lit up with a shy smile. “Good,” he said, and I headed away from the table.
Every time someone got up in class that day, or wandered away during one of the breaks, I could see people catching each other's eye, wondering whether the person who had headed off had gone to visit the Enforcers. The main door to the hall was closed, so you couldn't see in, but there were enough other entrances that it wouldn't be hard for someone to pop in quickly and at least give their name to the recruiters. I didn't expect that the Enforcers would be going through the full recruitment process today: I suspected that there were all sorts of background checks and investigations that they were going to do before they made any definite decisions about who to take into their organisation.
By the end of the day, some groups seemed to have re-formed, assuring each other that they had no interest in being Enforcers, but there were more dribs and drabs of people leaving in ones and twos than normal that afternoon, with glances – some fearful, some suspicious – being cast around. The Enforcers had a marked car in the school car park – parked, of course, in a disabled place – and I was interested to see the number of parents who looked concerned when they saw it sitting in front of the school office. A number of them tried to stay out of sight of the school office, and I wondered what they had to hide. I could see relief dawning on lots of faces as their sons and daughters explained what had been going on.
When Mo called me later that day, I was already wondering if there was any way we could find out who had made the trip to the hall to see the Enforcers. I hoped that maybe Mo could hack their database and work it out from there.
“No need,” he said, when I asked him. “Although, it is a thought. Need to look into that. I suppose if I ...”
I could tell that he was about to head into one of his long-winded technical forays which would lose me within seconds. And, of course, I wasn't interested. “Stop,” I commanded him.
“But I...” he protested.
“No. I want to know what you meant by 'no need'.”
I could almost hear him rewinding his conversation back to the relevant bit. “Oh, that. I just meant that we know who went into the hall today.”
“To speak to the Enforcers?”
“To speak to the Enforcers.”
“We do? How?” I tried again.
“I used the web cam. Obviously,” he explained, as if it were obvious.
“What web cam?” I responded, beginning to get a little miffed.
“The one in the A/V studio,” he replied, a little defensively. I'd noticed that he did get a little like that with me on occasion, and wondered whether he still found me a little scary from time to time.
“I know there's a camera at the back of the hall for recording assemblies and plays and stuff, but surely that needs someone there to run it?”
“No, not that one,” he said. “I suppose you could control that one, but it needs pointing in the right direction and everything. That wasn't the one I meant, anyway. There's another one, that's always pointing at the stage, just to let whoever's recording check what's going on, whatever the main camera's picking up. And for syncing the different shots, I think, but I'm not quite sure how they do that. I should ask one of the crew: I think Dave from our year is involved in...”
“Do shut up. Please. I don't care!” He shut up immediately, and I felt a little ashamed of myself for raising my voice at him.
“I'm sorry,” he said, and didn't say anything more, as if awaiting my permission to carry on.
I felt like I'd kicked a puppy. “I'm sorry, M...” I stopped myself. “I'm sorry, Floyd. I just want to know who went to see the Enforcers. Look, OK, tell me how you did it. It might be important.” It wouldn't be, but I needed to give him a chance to feel better about himself.
“OK, all right.” He still sounded a little hurt, but his tone brightened up quickly as he started explain how immediately after Assembly had started, he'd scooted off into the AV room and turned the system on, setting the web cam to record. “I don't have sound – I didn't have time to work out how to do that – but I do have a pretty good set of recordings of who went in.”
“Wasn't there a risk that the Enforcers would notice?”
“I don't think so,” he replied. “Most web cams have an LED on them to let you know when they're recording, but I was involved in a show last term, and one of the AV club pointed out that this one had tape over it, to stop people getting distracted by it. And I had a couple of excuses ready to go in case anyone asked me why I needed to be in the AV to pick up the results.”
I was impressed, despite myself. Again. “Sooo... Who went in to see them?”
“Seventeen people,” Mo replied. “At least two from every year group.”
“I don't know if that's high or low,” I mused.
“Well, I was rather hoping that nobody would go, but that was rather a stretch. I suppose that from a school of what, a thousand or so people, seventeen isn't too bad,” was Mo's response.
“So, who are they?” I asked him.
Most of the names weren't a surprise: they were bullies and people – boys and girls – who thought they were hard or somehow not given enough respect by other people. I was pleased to note that nobody from any of my classes was in the list. I might not have that many really close friends, but I'd have been upset – and disappointed – if any of those I did count as friends – Elodie or Erin, for instance – had gone to the Enforcers. I didn't recognise all of the names, though. “Anybody you know?” I asked Mo.
“A couple of them. Alison Street is in my geography class. Not a nice piece of work. And she cheats in tests.”
“Who else?”
“One of the boys. I know him from chess club. Ryan Tunley: he's the year above us, I think. I really can't think why he'd be going along. Doesn't really seem like the type, to be honest.”
“So, what do we do with the names?” I asked.
“Publish them, obviously,” replied Mo, pretty much immediately.
I thought for a moment. “Why?”
“Well, because anybody who wants to join the Enforcers is a traitor. They deserve to grassed up: it's what they want to do to everybody else. Why else would they want to be a Y.T.?” He was quite aggressive about this: much more than so than he usually was, and I wondered why.