A very brief fictional musing on alternatives versions of Orwell’s 1984. One where, for example, technology allows the iron fist to have several layers of velvet glove.
Thursday May 4th 2124
I clattered out of the dining hall to find my bicycle had already rolled in from Central. It was to be an exciting day for me, I had to attend a training course in another city, a course all about explaining things to large numbers of people. My ambition at the time was to be a Friendly Explainer you see.
We set off as a trainee group and soon found ourselves cycling through agricultural areas. Very pleasant cycling it was too, in spite of the aroma and the flies. Every now and then I spotted patches in the cycle track showing it was a full-sized road before Reconstruction. This kind of thing was important for me to remember because as an Explainer I would have to explain such things.
The city we were cycling to is called Wotanole. I didn’t know it and thought at the time what an unusual name it is. Friendly Historians have done their research on the name of course, and as a Trainee Explainer I had already learned that their explanation goes like this –
Before Reconstruction many people who lived in the city or just worked there, had an old official name for it, but apparently when talking to their friends they often referred to it as Wotanole. Therefore Best Friend decreed that Wotanole should be the official name after Reconstruction.
After about forty kilometres we stopped at a Friendly Station for bicycle recharging and some food which was very welcome after a long ride. The food came in a bowl as it usually does, but at the time it still felt strange eating away from what was my Friendly Locality.
I ate the food of course, but after we resumed our journey and the terrain became more hilly, I thought in future I’d unfriend that food if I could. Fortunately for me my friendly implant chased that thought away before it could do any lasting damage.
When we arrived at Wotanole we heard from one of the Best Friend information channels that a technical problem would require our friendly implants to be updated. Of course this still happens quite regularly, but even in those days I sometimes wished I could unfriend those updates.
I clattered out of the dining hall to find my bicycle had already rolled in from Central. It was to be an exciting day for me, I had to attend a training course in another city, a course all about explaining things to large numbers of people. My ambition at the time was to be a Friendly Explainer you see.
We set off as a trainee group and soon found ourselves cycling through agricultural areas. Very pleasant cycling it was too, in spite of the aroma and the flies. Every now and then I spotted patches in the cycle track showing it was a full-sized road before Reconstruction. This kind of thing was important for me to remember because as an Explainer I would have to explain such things.
The city we were cycling to is called Wotanole. I didn’t know it and thought at the time what an unusual name it is. Friendly Historians have done their research on the name of course, and as a Trainee Explainer I had already learned that their explanation goes like this –
Before Reconstruction many people who lived in the city or just worked there, had an old official name for it, but apparently when talking to their friends they often referred to it as Wotanole. Therefore Best Friend decreed that Wotanole should be the official name after Reconstruction.
After about forty kilometres we stopped at a Friendly Station for bicycle recharging and some food which was very welcome after a long ride. The food came in a bowl as it usually does, but at the time it still felt strange eating away from what was my Friendly Locality.
I ate the food of course, but after we resumed our journey and the terrain became more hilly, I thought in future I’d unfriend that food if I could. Fortunately for me my friendly implant chased that thought away before it could do any lasting damage.
When we arrived at Wotanole we heard from one of the Best Friend information channels that a technical problem would require our friendly implants to be updated. Of course this still happens quite regularly, but even in those days I sometimes wished I could unfriend those updates.
2 comments:
Those friendly implants. First they will appear in the news, then in the adverts, then in the official letters from the government, and then they will (apparently) disappear altogether.
Sam - good point, a primary implant function will be that they are not recognised for what they are.
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