The Blurt of Richard Davies

Chapter Nine

July the 13th.

This morning I received an innocuous SMS from an anonymous number. Yes, you can still send such an archaic thing as a text message! It wasn't the content of the text which was significant, but the fact of its sending. So prompted I checked one of my little used but still highly illegal dark net accounts and found a blurt from Neil Moore, someone who I've known professionally and as a friend for more years than I care to remember.

He works for the Portsmouth Record, a hub which evolved from a former large-circulation local newspaper. Somehow the Record has survived, much adapted, until now. Much of the credit for that can be given to Neil and the incisive style of journalism he inspires there. Sadly it's becoming more of a rarity these days.

He wants to meet me for a meal and a chat. It'll be worth it to see him and find out what's going on. I ping him an acceptance and agree to meet at one of our usual rendezvous. I lock my folder of smart cards along with my scroll in my draw (you never can be too careful, it would be just your luck to get tagged by a random beam sweep, and it's rumoured the latest generation of scanners can overwhelm the protection of a screened wallet) and walk to a covert working lunch.

This poor old city has suffered more than its far share of hard knocks over the years. From the Luftwaffe blitz, to the botched redevelopments of the 60s and 70s, then the failed shopping centres of the 1980s and 90s, Pompey has endured it all. Now the city centre is being remade in the name of progress once more; this time to cram yet more people into the limited space available: A forest of termite towers are planned to reach upwards to accommodate an ever growing population of rootless itinerants. Their construction seems, like everything else in the Fed, to progress in fits and starts before grinding to a halt once more.

What I see going up bears only a passing resemblance at present to the idealistic artist's impression of the finished towers displayed on the hoardings: The buildings have a predominantly south-facing aspect to make the most of the available solar energy, and a ubiquitous aerogenerator is built into the topmost floors. The overall effect is more insipid than the overbearing brutalism of traditional command economy mass housing.

At the moment the large tower crane on site is aiding some workers unfurling a large banner along the side of the first tower to stretch haltingly upward; RISING ABOVE ADVERSITY! it reads. Apparently reaching the halfway point of its construction is itself a reason to celebrate.

Some fortunate people may well be rising above adversity, but the majority of us are still well and truly stuck in it. For only the select new model citizens will be considered fit to live in one of the new hutches while the Connie leadership will claim the higher, more spacious and private apartments for themselves as a well deserved reward for their unceasing efforts in charting our course towards their promised land. The hypocritical fucktards!

I'm relieved my housing needs are taken care of for the moment. When Karen and I separated we were fortunate to do so at the right time to sell at the top of that particular bubble, so having the liquidity to buy as the prices plunged once more. This was at the same time the Consensus were running live economic experiments with policies gyrating from near-communism to laissez-faire turbo capitalism and back before settling on a schizophrenic combination of the worst aspects of both models.

Eventually I managed to get a commonhold micro flat in Waterlooville. Existing in a legal limbo somewhere in the muddled space between social housing and privately owned, it may not be perfect but it's far better then some of the traps I might have fallen into. At least as a part owner my tenancy is secured - at least until the Connies decide to go on another slash and burn session through the laws of property rights - and I don't have any conditionality requirements written into my agreement. That reason alone was probably why commonhold part-ownership was short-lived, but the existing contracts, mine included, remain inviolate for the time being. The costs may be steep, but it's worth it.