Twenty Sixty-Four

Chapter 5

In the low-ceilinged food court, a converted underground parking garage, the lunch queue jerked slowly forward. The drafty area was already very full and deafeningly noisy. The steam of stew billowed out from beyond the scratched perspex screen at the counter, with a sour metallic smell which did not quite overcome the nearby fumes of Trumpot. On the far side of the room there was a small dispenser attached to the wall, where pot could be bought at ten bitdollars a desiccated joint.

'There you are. Caught you ,at last,' announced a voice at Bradley's back.

He turned around. It was his friend Simms, who worked in R & D. Maybe 'friend' was not exactly the right word. Corporate employees were not friends, as everyone needed to compete for promotion. However, there were some Colleagues whose society was tolerable, particularly those who shared an interest in programming. Simms was a neural-engineer, a specialist in Ronspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling version 12 of the Ronspeak Brain Interface. He was a tiny person, smaller than Bradley, with dark hair and large, protuberant eyes. At once evasive and derisive, he tended to search your face inappropriately while speaking to you.

'I wanted to ask you whether you'd got any nylons,' he said. His voice was oddly flat, without intonation. Bradley suspected it was a blend of mild autism and sociopathy.

'Not me! Not a single pair to be had,' Bradley said with guilty haste. 'I've tried all over the place. They don't exist any longer.'

Everyone kept asking for nylons. Official tokens for participation in Sex League activities were worthless. What mattered were trade items like lipstick and women's stockings. Actually, Bradley had two unused pairs he was hoarding up. He dared not try them on but kept them hidden near his diary where at least he could admire their possibilities. There had been a shortage of them for months past. At any given moment there was some necessary article which Corporate shops were unable to supply. Sometimes it was toilet paper, sometimes it was lighters, sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was nylon stockings. You could only get hold of them, if at all, by scrounging furtively on the 'loser' market.

'I've had the same pair for six weeks,' he added, unthinking. Simms arched a surprised eyebrow. 'I...I mean,' Bradley stammered. 'I haven't gotten laid in weeks. Got nothing to trade for it.'

The queue gave another jerk forward. As they halted he turned and faced Simms again. Each of them took a faded plastic tray from a pile at the end of the counter.

'Did you go and see the prisoners fired yesterday?' Simms said.

'I was working,' Bradley said. 'Guess I'll watch it on YouFlix.'

'A very inadequate substitute,' proclaimed Simms.

His mocking eyes roved over Bradley's face. 'I know you,' the eyes seemed to say, 'I see through you. I know very well why you didn't go to see prisoners being shot down.' In an intellectual way, Simms was venomously orthodox. He would talk with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of drone raids on enemy villages, and trials and confessions of truth-criminals, the executions in the cellars of the Department of Human Resources. He actually enjoyed watching the Fax news feed. Talking to him was largely a matter of diverting him from these subjects and entangling him, if possible, in the technicalities of programming and Ronspeak, on which he was singularly obsessed. Bradley turned his head a little aside to avoid the inhuman scrutiny of the large dark eyes.

'It was a good Firing,' Simms said, reminiscing. 'I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them with a bit of a fighting chance. You should have seen the Ronald Youth participants stalking them. So good for their education.'

'C'mon buddy. Move it!' yelled a white-aproned loser with the ladle.

Bradley and Simms pushed their trays beneath the chipped perspex divider. Onto each was dumped the regulation lunch: a paper plate of pinkish-gray stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of artificial cheese, a mug of milkless Freedom Coffee and one Aspartame tablet.