The author acknowledges the invaluable pre-publication copy-editing performed by Chris Bellamy.

Day 3 — Sunday 27th June 2060

It’s 22:00 and I am still stunned by the appearance of that boy at the window. His face had vanished as quickly as it appeared, leaving only my reflection staring back at me. Who was he? How did he get out there? Why wasn’t he wearing an orange suit? Why did he run and hide? I haven’t been able to get anywhere near getting answers to those questions. I intended to ask Old George, but I never got the chance today. The bad news just kept on coming and my head is still spinning, trying to analyse the complexity of the world as it was. How did people ever cope? I can only conclude that eventually they couldn’t.

After breakfast, I left the cafe and walked a short way along the corridor to the library. I met Old George at the door. “It’s good to see that you’re on time again, Billy,” he commented.

“Yes,” I responded. “I am very keen to hear more from you, and I’ve got some news for you too.”

“What about?” he asked as we walked into the library. I didn’t reply until we got to George’s corner. I didn’t want us to be overheard.

“Peter Evans,” I said as we sat down.

“Who’s he?”

“The guy who used to live in the apartment next to mine. He’s disappeared.”

“Oh, him,” George said. “I didn’t know his name. Has he been found?”

“No,” I said and told him about my meeting with Philip Seaton, and what he had told me.

“So,” George surmised, “as long as you can trust what Seaton said, at least we now know that it wasn’t the Government that disappeared Evans.”

“Has that kind of thing happened before?” I asked.

“Certainly. More than once, in fact.”

“Did you ever find out why?”

“No. Not that I ever heard.”

I let that sink in. It seems that people did go missing, but normally it is the Government that takes them. This time it appeared that the authorities hadn’t been responsible. Apart from wanting to know what had happened to Peter, I now wanted to know why the Government had disappeared people in the past.

I asked my first question. “Yesterday you mentioned something that I had never heard of before. ‘Social Media’. What was that?”

“Now there’s a long, sad story,” Old George replied. “By the time Social Media was coming to an end, we were all calling it ‘Unsocial Media.’, because of the trouble it caused, both for the people who used it and for the Government who came to view it as a threat to their authority.”

There followed a long, rather disjointed explanation, which I paraphrase as follows.

He started by talking about the Internet, with which I was already familiar, as we all had access from our tablets. We could email anybody in any of the Blocks and we got all our news and Government edicts from the network. There were nongovernment websites, but not many as webmasters had to get official permission before setting one up. All sites were monitored and were closed down if they broke the rules.

George went on to mention web sites on the Internet that allowed computer users to communicate with each other directly. These were what was known as ‘social media’. Users could post messages about themselves or stuff that was happening in the world and others could freely comment. This allowed people with specific interests to find others of similar leanings. This was good, but it also allowed users to express opinions on more controversial subjects, particularly politics. As users weren’t meeting face-to-face some of them were encouraged to express their views more robustly than they would have done in person. Many became personally offensive to those who didn’t share their views.

With the advent of the smart mobile phone in the early years of this century, with its ability to access the Internet, the number of Internet users, and hence the number of social media sites and users grew quickly. This was all mostly unregulated and it wasn’t long before some users got traumatised by online bullies. Criminals used the sites to plan their offences, some of them violent. This went on for some time, but the Government only started to enact robust regulations when the dissidents — those who didn't agree with their policies — started to use the service to express views that the State wished to silence. This led, in 2028, to the Government banning social media entirely within the UK. Websites that posted anti-Government opinions were also banned. Was this the crackdown on free-speech that I’d seen mentioned briefly in the archive? Could I extrapolate from this that we in the Blocks would also be silenced if we spoke inconvenient opinions? Could this have anything to do with Peter Evan’s disappearance?

“That may seem heavy-handed,” Old George said at the end of his explanation, “but it wasn’t the worst authoritarian action by the Government. Yesterday I mentioned a couple of wars. In one of them a defenceless, oppressed people of a foreign country were being massacred by one of their neighbours. Western countries, including the UK, aided the oppressor by providing arms and intelligence. This appalled a great number of UK citizens and a small number of them took direct action. They broke into depots used by the arms manufacturers and attempted to destroy weapons due to be sent to the war zone. They were arrested, charged with and found guilty of, criminal damage, but they were sentenced as if they were terrorists. This happened because their organisation had been proscribed as terrorists by the Government. In the following weeks lots of protestors took to the streets to express support for the proscribed organisation, and, because they did so they were arrested as terrorists themselves. Many of these people were old and infirm, including several in wheelchairs. My dad jokingly referred to those arrested as Hell’s Grannies, though I never understood the reference.”

“That is unbelievable!” I exclaimed, now hot under the collar. “Of what terrorist actions did the Government accuse both those they had jailed and those supporting them?”

“None that I ever heard of. This was one of the major reasons why my father, as I mentioned yesterday, said that he was glad he wouldn’t live much longer. He also said that his own father, my grandfather, who had fought in a war in the middle of the 20th century to defeat a tyrannous regime threatening Europe, would feel that the sacrifices of his generation had been completely wasted now that the UK itself had become a tyranny.”

At this point I was speechless. I had known things had been bad, but this bad? George continued. “Now then young fellow. As I hinted yesterday, you need to be careful. Watch who you speak to and what you say to them. Don’t trust anybody, especially that man Seaton. That tyrannous Government back then is still around. It has never been voted out. In fact, there has not been an election since. Those of us in the Blocks just live subject to the whim of the Government and in return they ‘protect’ us. What we don’t know about, we can’t protest about. We have no say in anything. I have always wondered how those outside are doing. Do they have a government? Do they really have the freedom they sought? I know I told you yesterday that I didn’t care and just wanted to be left alone. That was true at first, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve changed. I worry more about others now. That is why I am talking to you. I must have mellowed, though I never thought that would happen.”

“I want to find out about the outside,” I said.

“That may be impossible,” Old George opined sagely.

Our conversation ended abruptly as two men in overalls came in and ushered us away from our corner, saying that they had to test the electrics. As we left the library, Old George whispered, “We can’t meet in here again. Those so-called electricians are too much of a coincidence, but I have an idea. My solitary research has had a practical result. Are you familiar with crosswords?”

“Yes,” I replied, though I didn’t know much about them. I wondered what he had in mind. Presumably a way of communicating secretly.

I went back to my flat, annoyed at the break in the conversation. I had wanted to tell Old George about the boy at the window and get his comments. When I reached my flat I switched on my tablet. I now had no plans for the rest of the day. I thought I might have a look at some crosswords. Maybe I would get some idea of what Old George had in mind.

The archive contained many things to keep us amused and crossword solving was one of them. I discovered that there was a cryptic crossword every day and a competition crossword at the weekend. All those submitting correct solutions were listed the following week alongside the solution. The competition, to be top of the all-time list of those with the most correct solutions to their credit, was fierce.

I looked back through the archive. One of the regular setters, particularly of the competition puzzles, was a certain George Warmsley.

Continued here