Year of the Boot

______

O’Brien was lying on something that felt like a camp bed, except that it was higher off the ground and that he was fixed down in some way so that he could not move. Light that seemed stronger than usual was falling on his face. A moustached man was standing at his side, looking down at him intently. At the other side of him stood a man in a white coat, holding a hypodermic syringe.
“Do you remember who I am, Richard?” said the first man.
“Yes.” replied O’Brien.
“What is my name?”
He started to reply, but before he could finish a single word blue stars flashed across his field of vision as the little finger on his right hand was swiftly snapped back and broken. Blinded by pain, he barely noticed that his restraints were being released until he felt a sensation of falling, and his nose connected sickeningly with the floor. He felt the rough sole of a boot press hard against his cheek.
“Remember this feeling, Richard,” said the moustached man “a boot stamping on a human face. This is the future – forever. The sooner you accept the truth of it, the easier your life will become.”
O’Brien’s eyes flickered open to the harsh light in time to see the second man kneeling at his side, brandishing the syringe. Moments later the cold steel tip pierced his arm.
“After all, power is not a means; it is an end. We are that end. We are like this syringe; cold and bright, and if you let us, we’ll put an end to your suffering. Will you let us, Richard?”
O’Brien merely sighed and closed his eyes as the blissful drugs flowed through his veins, numbing the pain that wracked his body. Heavy footsteps approached and two hands gripped his arms. The unseen figures began to drag him away, and moments later he passed out.

He awoke on his back in what he assumed was the same cell he had inhabited for – how long was it now? Time was hard to measure in this place, devoid as it was of darkness or natural light, as was everything else. Every block, every corridor, every cell the same. He might be hundreds of feet in the air or buried deep underground – there was just no way to tell.
He swung his legs off the bench on which he lay and sat upright. He put his face in his hands, and immediately wished he hadn’t as a searing jolt from his right hand served as a reminder of his injury.
He looked around. The room was not as he remembered it, if it was indeed the same room. The bloody handprints on the walls were gone, and the vomit and faecal matter that had stained the floor were no more. For how long had he been out of his cell? Again, there was no way of knowing. The dominating presence of the sixty-four inch telescreen was no different at any rate. These brand new devices had been rolled out at an alarming rate across all of London of late. Dissident whispers had suggested that the party planned for there to be no corner of London that was not under surveillance.
As he sat there he became aware of a dull humming sound. It did not start upper se, as that would insinuate that it had not been there all along, which O’Brien had a feeling that it had. No, instead he had merely become aware of its presence, like the humming of an insect buzzing reaching your ears from the far side of a room. The noise did not appear to come from anywhere, and did not sound like anything that he had ever heard before. Over time it grew in volume, making him feel uneasy, until it began to hurt. He winced and put his hands up to his ears to cover them
“O’Brien!” came a commanding voice from the telescreen. “Uncover your face.”
O’Brien snapped his hands away from his face. Almost instantaneously the noise rose to fever pitch. The blood began to pound in his ears, drumming a heady tattoo against through his skull. Before long he could take it no more, and clamped his hands over his ears once more, ignoring the pain from his little finger as he squeezed as hard as he could.
“139 O’Brien R!” screamed the telescreen, “Uncover your face! No faces covered in the cells!”
But still O’Brien clung onto his head. He felt as if his body could take no more, yet he remained awake – oh how he longed for the sweet embrace of unconsciousness. Over the excruciating din he could just make out the sound of boots hurrying in the corridor outside before the door was thrown and three guards barrelled in brandishing truncheons. He felt the trickle of blood crest his lip and tasted its metallic bouquet before any of them even connected with his nose.

“Do you remember when I asked you what my name was?”
He was back on the table. The bright light in his face felt like it was trying to burn holes into his retinas. He hesitated, remembering the repercussions of his attempt to respond last time. The moustached man smiled.
“Do not fear to speak the truth, Richard. What is my name?”
O’Brien went to open his mouth again when he felt the ring finger on his right hand snap, causing him to howl in pain once more.
“But you said…!”
“Wrong!” bellowed the moustached man. “I told you to tell me the truth! How can you expect to tell me my name if you don’t even know it?”
O’Brien didn’t understand. Every man, woman and child in the country knew his name; how could they not?
“Then who are you?” he blurted out in confusion.
“My name is of no concern to you. In truth I may as well not even have a name. When you were young, did call your mother by her given name? Your father? No, family does not need names; only love. I am more like a big brother, to you and to everyone! So I ask you again, little brother – what is my name?”
“Big Brother?” he guessed, wincing.
The moustached man smiled again. There was a warmth to it, beneath that imposing thatch of bristles that O’Brien could not help but take heart from. The thick end of a truncheon impacted into the bridge of his already broken nose, which only compounded the excruciating pain.
“Right first time, little brother. There’s hope for you yet.”

Days – or what he assumed were days – went by, each one mirroring the one before it. Big Brother would ask him questions. Every answer O’Brien gave was met by brutal force. Broken bones, electrocution, beatings; it all merged into one constant, crushing ache, like the paper cut that would not stop bleeding no matter what you did.
“I don’t understand!” cried O’Brien, cradling his stomach. The table had been dispensed with, and he was now curled in a ball on the floor – he was no longer a threat. “I give you the wrong answer and you hurt me. I give you the correct answer and you hurt me. Whatever I say is wrong!”
“Precisely. And that’s what I’m trying to teach you. You know what the correct answer to the question is, but you don’t know why it is the correct answer.”
“Then tell me!” he sobbed. Big Brother paused for a moment, as if considering O’Brien’s worthiness.
“Very well. It is the correct answer because that is what we say the correct answer is. Whatever you think to be fact at any given time is only fact until we decide that it isn’t anymore. From that moment on, it is, has always been, and will always be an untruth. Do you understand that?”
“I…”
This time it was his thumb.
“You do not know whether you understand until I tell you that you understand!”
“You can’t do this!”
“Why not? We have the power to do anything we want. Moreover we have been given that power. Fear is a powerful motivator. It motivated the people of Britain to turn to a demon they didn’t fully understand when the wolves of Europe and Asia were at their door. It motivates the citizens of London to hurry home before ten o’clock every night. It motivates you to tell me what I want you to tell me. They wanted freedom: well, freedom is slavery little brother. And I am more than happy to give it to them.”
O’Brien fell silent. He had no words to express his abject horror at what Big Brother was saying – the worst part was that it was absolutely true.
“You know the war’s been over for a long time?” he continued.
“What?”
“The war. With Europe and Asia. They actually destroyed each other a long time ago. We had very little to do with the whole affair. We merely chose not to inform the general populace.”
He felt like being sick. The war had meant severe food shortages and heavy rationing. Famine, even. ‘The cost of transporting supplies to the north of the country,’ the newsfeeds had said, right before his capture, ‘is not cost effective or beneficial to the ongoing war effort.’ O’Brien felt the muscles in his stomach convulse beneath his left hand and he heaved, falling forward with the effort, but only a pathetic string of saliva dribbled to the floor.
“Why not?” he spat.
“Why do you think? Power. How can you expect to control a large group of people if you have no way to motivate them? It was by taking advantage of the country’s fear of foreign invasion that we gained control. To retain that control we needed to unite the people against a common enemy. If there is no war, where are they to direct their hate?”
“But I have seen the traitors hung in front of me; the spies shot before my very eyes. How could they have been falsified?”
“Why would they have been falsified? Those men and women were indeed killed, and they believed they had committed and confessed to every last one of the accusations held against before they died, even though they were all of them innocent, because I told them that they had.”
“Am I to die, then?”
“Not yet. I have my uses for you.”
“I’ll never help you.”
“You will help me, Richard, and when you do it will be of your own free will. I promise you that.”
The feeling of despair washed over him anew. It raised the hairs on the back of his, sending a visible shiver down his spine. His ears began to ring, not because of some unbidden sound, but from the gargantuan weight of what he was hearing.
“Tell me what you think of me.” said Big Brother after a while.
O’Brien started to cry. He wasn’t even sure if there were sufficient fluids in his tear ducts for actual tears, but he sobbed and sobbed as if he were ten years old again. His head was bowed, but he could feel Big Brother’s stare boring into the top of his skull into his brain.
“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “I don’t know what to think.”
Big Brother smiled again.
“Good dog.”

The telescreen in O’Brien’s cell flickered once and came on. He looked up, bemused. At first there was just static, but after a few moments a moving image came into view. He recognised it as Trafalgar Square – yes, the remains of Nelson’s Column were just visible in the centre of the picture, obscured as they were by a throng of people. The crowd was facing the enormous telescreen that hung from the front of the building that used to be the National Gallery. A lean, ten-foot Jewish face was blazoned across it. He had neat white hair and a goatee. It was an intelligent face, but one that was contorted into rage. O’Brien recognised it as Emmanuel Goldstein, second in command of the party, beneath – beneath Big Brother himself.
He could hear faint chanting, which grew louder as someone turned up the volume on his telescreen. They were cheering and crying as Goldstein delivered his speech, which rang clear above the assembled voices.
“…these vile swine continue to attack helpless civilians. This week alone half a million in the Midlands have succumbed to their relentless crusade.”
Goldstein’s face was replaced by images of foreign planes, falling bombs and explosions. A never-ending column of soldiers in battle fatigues marched across the screen as Goldstein’s voice continued, unabated.
“…depraved leaders of Eurasia...”
‘Wait, that wasn’t right, was it?’ thought O’Brien. ‘Europe and Asia have always been separate continents. They fought each other in the war, were they now one? No, more of Big Brother’s lies’ he consoled himself. Goldstein was still going, calling for the country to unite behind their leader. There was no mention of winning the war – only hatred of the enemy and loyalty to the party.
Another new word cropped up: ‘Eastasia’. O’Brien was startled again at its mention. The people were buying it. Everyone believed it. Was he really remembering it correctly? It had been so long since he had tasted fresh air that he’d forgotten what it felt like on his skin. If he couldn’t even remember that, how could he be sure he remembered something as physically disconnected from him as the war? Was Big Brother right – did true power really mean the ability to make everyone believe whatever you wanted them to believe?
O’Brien looked away. He saw that the cell door was open, and Big Brother was standing there.
“Do you see? We tell them anything we like, and they believe it, so unified in their hatred are they. As far as they are concerned, Eurasia and Eastasia have always existed, and we have always been at war with them.”
O’Brien did not respond immediately. He sat there, looking at the floor, then opened his mouth.
“Why?”
“Why not? Power is intoxicating; either you have it or you don’t. Wouldn’t you rather control the pieces than be one of them, being made to dance at somebody else’s will? Of course you would. You will never have that luxury, but then again you never had it in the first place, so you will not miss it. The party is power. I am the party. I am power.”
O’Brien felt a faint breeze from the direction of the open door brush his cheek. The sensation caused a single tear to roll down it. Big Brother breathed deeply and got up.
“On your feet little brother. I’m taking you somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere you’ve never been before. We call it Room 101. You have learned. You understand. Now it is time for you to accept.”
“I am ready.”

O’Brien strode purposefully along one of the many completely indistinguishable corridors of the Ministry of Love, a sturdy jack-booted guard at his side. Today was going to be an interesting day, he could tell. They rounded the corner and approached the second cell on the right. O’Brien opened the door and went in. The man inside started to his feet.
“They’ve got you too!” he cried, recognising O’Brien.
“They got me a long time ago,” O’Brien replied. He stepped aside to allow the broad-chested guard access to the room, who entered with a gleeful grin on his face, clutching his long black truncheon tightly.
“You knew this, Winston, don’t deceive yourself. You did know it – you have always known it.”
Winston appeared to consider this for a second, before the guard was upon him. The truncheon fell on his elbow, causing him to writhe around in pain on the floor feebly, as O’Brien once had in the very same position. The guard laughed mercilessly as Winston clutched at his arm. He considered for a moment how very much like him this man was – there was more than just a little of O’Brien in the dishevelled shape rolling on the floor in front of him. Yes, he would enjoy the time he was going to spend with Winston Smith.