Excerpts from America 2014
The Revised Constitution of "God's United States"
Chapters 2-4 of America 2014
A Patriotic Citizens Bill of Rights and Responsibilities
(Passed by Congress and Ratified in 2009)
Preamble: We the people of God’s United States, in order to provide for the common defense, in balance with the blessings of liberty and our position as the Freest Country on Earth ™, do ordain the replacement of the Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with law, and ratified as per the original, outdated Constitution of the United States, by two thirds of both Houses of Congress, as well as the Legislatures of three fourths of the fifty states, in the year of our Lord 2009, to hereafter be known as The Patriotic Citizen’s Bill of Rights. The full force of the provisions of these Amendments are effective immediately, and the Judicial Branch of the Government of God’s United States is hereby instructed to interpret any disparity between the original Articles of the Constitution and its original Amendments, and this revised and updated Patriotic Citizen’s Constitution, in favor of the latter.
Amendment I: With the exception of the state-sanctioned religion of Christianity, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of any other religion or prohibit the private, non-subversive exercise of any religion. Nor shall Congress abridge the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances; although the President and his appointed agents may do so, in Time of War, or serious threat of war or terrorism, to protect the Country and its people, as he, in his sole discretion, deems fit in the exercise of his duty as Commander in Chief.
Amendment II: A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state of Patriotic Citizens, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, unless such people are suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists, as determined by the Department of Homeland Security.
Amendment III: No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law, as determined by the President and Commander in Chief, and administered by the Department of Homeland Security.
Amendment IV: Except during Time of War, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. During Time of War, as defined by the President and Commander in Chief, representatives of the Department of Homeland Security may take any and all measures necessary to search the homes, effects, electronic communications or records of suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists, and it shall be a federal crime, as prescribed in federal criminal statute 841 (d) 1, as described in Patriot Act V, to inquire about such searches, or to inform the subjects of such searches, or the public, of any actions taken under this statute by representatives of the Department of Homeland Security.
Amendment V: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in Time of War or public danger. With the exception of suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists; no Patriotic Citizen shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation, unless deemed necessary by the President and Commander in Chief or the Department of Homeland Security.
Amendment VI: In all criminal prosecutions except those involving suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists, Patriotic Citizens accused of crimes shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII: In suits at common law which do not involve the Government of God’s United States, Government officials, Party Members or Party Institutions, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII: Excessive bail shall not be required of any Patriotic Citizen, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted, with the exception of suspected or actual abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists. Should abortionists, illicit drug users, subversives, terrorists, enemy sympathizers or propagandists be found guilty, by any state or federal court, of any criminal offense, then their voting privileges for any public election shall be permanently revoked.
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage such rights to unborn children, from the very moment God Almighty breathes life into their eternal souls. In any and all cases, including rape, incest, and health emergencies, any persons infringing upon the life of the unborn, whether mothers, relatives, health care providers, or their co-conspirators, shall be subject to the full force of state statutes concerning homicide or attempted homicide.
Amendment
X: During
Time of War the President, Vice President, and all other
elected officials who are members of the Nationalist
Party, the only Party found by the American people to be
a Patriotic Citizens Party, are exempted by federal,
state and local term limit legislation, including
Amendment XXII of the outdated Constitution of the
United States, prescribing a two term limit to the
Office of President.
Patriotic Citizens are also entitled to an expanded right of Pharmacological Happiness, and all providers of health insurance must fully cover the cost of providing such Pharmacological Happiness. In the event that the Department of Homeland Security establishes, in it sole discretion, that a citizen is psychologically imbalanced, then representatives of the General of Homeland Security shall have the right, in Time of War, to define Pharmacological Happiness within the context of the needs of God’s United States, and to medicate and/or genetically reform law-breaking criminals as they deem necessary.
Chapter 2
On the elevator to the forty-eighth floor, Winston wondered whether he ought to mention the sniffer drone incident to his boss Neil Swan. As one of the most powerful federal officials in the building, Swan might be able to influence the security protocol.
Then again, Winston thought, security was security, and the deliveryman was asked, in plain English, for his identification. Swan wasn’t likely to sympathize with an immigrant who had managed to get into the country despite his ignorance of the English language. Winston didn’t want Swan to think he was becoming a “whiner.” He didn’t want that to turn up in his Homeland Security file.
Neil Swan hated whiners. Like Federal Communications Commission Chairman Russ Limetoff, Swan enforced a “Top Ten-only” rule about subjects that merited complaints. The rule was that liberals, pinkos, foreigners, special interests, queers, femi-nazis, enviro-nazis, racialists, baby-killers and whiners were fair game—keep your mouth shut about anything else, especially anything to do with government policy or national security.
Winston stepped off the elevator into the large, wood-paneled reception area for the F.C.C. Compliance Department, announced himself to the receptionist, and was asked to take a seat. He was twenty minutes early, and Swan was always at least twenty minutes late. The meeting needed to move quickly to an important approval stage, Winston realized, with no time for whining. He resolved to forget about the drone incident and focus on his own problems.
Winston’s pulse quickened and he began feeling nauseated. He had never been nervous at meetings with Neil Swan before. But a sense of failure now swept through his belly. Was it a premonition?
Swan had advised Winston never to get emotionally invested in any single issue or project, explaining, “Our Nationalist Party commitment must be to a broader political vision—wars and issues and projects change, vision does not.”
Winston couldn’t have cared less about wars, or issues. But projects…projects were personal. He hoped that he would look back on the day’s meeting as a milestone in his fast-rising career.
It
was up to Swan to provide the final go-ahead for the project that
Winston had been working on for more than two years. It was a remake
of George Orwell’s 1984, set in the Islamic fundamentalist
The 1984 remake would allow Winston to move from writing and producing Homeland Security commercials to his first full-length propaganda film. To him, this was more than high-paying career advancement prior to his thirtieth birthday. 1984 would be the first project in his life that Winston could consider a real labor of love, a project that he was called—perhaps even born—to make.
As a patriotic member of the Nationalist Party, Winston was required to attend church services almost every Sunday, but he did not consider himself a religious person. Still, he believed that it was his unique fate that brought him to update 1984.
Winston
had been born in 1984, to liberal parents who happened to be named
Smith. The naming of their son for the protagonist of Orwell’s novel
started as a political statement against the Reagan administration.
To Winston, however, his name took on a very different meaning on
Although not yet seventeen, Winston had been old enough to conclude that the liberalism which had marked his parents’ views was dead forever. His career in conservative media started immediately, as a victim’s family representative speaking out about the need for preemptive war in Afghanistan and Iraq . During college a few years after his father’s death, Winston became an intern at Foxy News. There he worked for Neil Swan, the powerful producer who was to become his political guardian and advisor. It was Swan who later helped him secure his first draft deferment, based upon the work he was doing for the Nationalist Party and Homeland Security Agency. “This war is important to our country,” Swan had explained, shortly after the United States began its long war of occupation in Pakistan and reinstated the draft. “But so are men like you.”
Winston tried to take his mind off the meeting and relax. He looked over the impressive wood-paneled reception area, and tried to imagine how different the offices that now housed the Federal Communications Commission Compliance Department’s national headquarters must have looked ten years earlier, when they had been the regional offices of the Environmental Protection Agency. Swan had once described the previous décor as “bureaucratic steel cabinet shithole.”
Swan enjoyed telling Winston, during some of their private meetings, about how he and F.C.C. Chairman Russ Limetoff had led the campaign to defund the “enviro-nazis” at the E.P.A. Swan himself had managed the effort to “relegate the enviro-nazis to the dustbin of history,” which succeeded even before the revised Constitution outlawed the Democratic Party in early 2010.
Like many of the most important steps in the Blush Administration’s “Patriotic Restoration,” campaign, the decision to defund the E.P.A . took place in a party committee room. A year after the 2006 midterm elections, during which the Nationalist Party defied all electoral polls and won control of more than two-thirds of the seats in both the House and Senate, all federal budget decisions moved to Nationalist Party meeting rooms and the lucrative “Industry Consultation” sessions that Vice President Dick Croney had popularized. Attendance and all related records became Top Secret for national security, but the conclusions were widely publicized once they became law. By 2008, the E.P.A. had become a victim of the urgent need for more tax cuts, rising payments on the national debt, and funding an ever-expanding War on Terror.
Corporate America had been delighted, Winston recalled, feeling a bit better, and the speaking fees of top federal officials increased exponentially. Vice President Croney, whose income that year was rumored to top one hundred million dollars, was paid five million dollars just to appear at the American Petroleum Association’s annual dinner, setting a world record for speaking fee honorariums.
Even Winston, who had just begun his career making public service ads, had received more than two hundred thousand dollars in “Party Consulting” checks s that year. He wondered how much Neil Swan earned. Russ Limetoff, he knew, was in the centimillion earnings category, and he had heard that Swan was the highest-paid Director in the agency. Of course, Winston realized, salary and bonus would only be a fraction of the speaking and consultation fees that the Party would throw Swan’s way…
“The Director is running about twenty minutes late,” the receptionist said, standing over Winston’s armchair and interrupting his calculations.
He thanked her and became anxious about the meeting again. He reassured himself that there was nothing to worry about. He had played his cards right from the very beginning, seeking Swan’s counsel on the very notion of writing and producing the remake of 1984. Swan could have killed the project with a word. Instead Swan was, as always, supportive of Winston’s aspirations. “Communism may be dead and buried, but what Orwell described is no worse than what they have in the unliberated territories of Iran today,” Swan had said, green lighting the development effort.
No movie or TV show got made in God’s United States without the approval of Neil Swan’s Department of Compliance. It oversaw the content of billions of dollars worth of public service announcements, as well as all private newspapers, magazines, web sites, electronic games—even comic books. Thousands of F.C.C. Compliance employees at satellite offices in Los Angeles , Seattle , Miami , and other major cities followed Swan’s directives, as he insured that the nation’s entertainment was sufficiently patriotic and free of subversive material. The Party had a responsibility to the people to protect them in the War on Terror and the media had a responsibility to communicate this, to allow its citizens to understand and provide their government with what F.C.C. Chairman Russ Limetoff called “Patriotically Informed Consent.”
Apart from Russ Limetoff, and the President’s Communications Director Anne Culture, Director of Compliance Neil Swan was the most powerful media figure in God’s United States . Yet he found time to meet Winston once every two weeks, treating him almost like a surrogate son.
Winston noticed that he was sweating, and wiped his brow. He cursed himself for being so nervous, and repeated the words in his mind, like a mantra, “routine meeting, routine meeting.”
It didn’t help. Maybe he had made a mistake hiring Paul Goode, his old college flatmate from the semester Winston had spent in London . Paul was an Orwell scholar, and had been a useful consultant when it came to adapting some of the author’s political views. But Paul was also a news producer for BBC TV, a network notorious for its anti-Americanism. Had someone in Compliance noted that?
Or perhaps the problem was his recent script change, in which he had made the woman loved by the protagonist in his version of 1984 a doctor instead of a party hack. Would Russ think this was too “feministic” a change?
Winston’s thoughts were interrupted by Swan’s assistant. “The Secretary will see you now, Mr. Smith,” she said.
She escorted Winston down the quiet corridor to a well-appointed corner office the size of a large conference room. It provided a sweeping view of Lower Manhattan and the Hudson River , and held nearly every media presentation device in use, all seamlessly integrated into a voice-activated system. The bookshelves were crammed with media awards and Nationalist Party trophies, while the antique wood-paneled wall was covered with framed photos of Neil Swan with hundreds of different celebrities and politicians, including at least a half dozen shots with President Blush.
Swan looked thinner in the photos than in the flesh. Still, at nearly six feet tall and some three hundred fifty pounds, he commanded a powerful presence. Hair growth treatment and coloring displaced nearly all the gray and bald spots in Swan’s round head, and only the rings of fatty wrinkles around his neck revealed that Swan was pushing sixty.
Swan pointed Winston toward an armchair across from his enormous, file-covered desk. His secretary brought Swan a fresh cup of coffee, and, without needing to ask, set a fine crystal tumbler of Winston’s favorite beverage on a coaster in front of him.
“Please close the door, Cynthia,” Swan asked politely.
Winston had not expected the meeting to require a closed door. A wave of worry crashed inside his head. He noticed that his hand was shaking and slipped it into his pocket.
Swan’s eyes darted knowingly from Winston’s hand to his eyes. He greeted Winston politely, smiled for a moment, and then his face tightened for business. “Let me get right to the point, Winston. You have done important work for our country,” his eyes glanced over Winston’s Junior Pioneer badge, representing a two hundred thousand dollar annual pledge to the Nationalist Party, and Winston was pleased that he had worn it. “Russ and I—and the Party—know that you will continue to do great work for the country. But I can’t help you this time.”
Swan tossed Winston’s 1984 script across the table at him. “This is competent work. But I just spoke with Susan Giccanti at the network, and let her know that we have to cancel the project.”
“But…but I made all the recommended changes and…”
“It’s D.B.A., son: Dead Before Arrival. Shred the scripts, and whatever copies of the books that you have. It’s time to move on.”
Winston was devastated. He had worried that there might be a scheduling delay. But this was far worse.
“Neil, please, I know I have no right to this, but could you please…you know?”
Swan flicked a manual switch beneath his desk that froze all recording devices. It was a privilege that only the very highest government and business officials enjoyed.
Swan announced his preamble from memory. “You are not entitled to this information, and any unauthorized disclosure of this decision by the Compliance Department will result in your arrest and indefinite incarceration under Section 52 of the Patriot Act VI. But since this is already declassified and is being announced by Secretary Limetoff on tonight’s news shows, there is nothing to stop me from informing you that the Federal Communications Commission is being renamed the Ministry of Truth. Russ likes the ring to it, especially Minister of Truth, and both the President and Mr. Croney want to market the truth word more vigorously. You know, the Federal Trade Commission has had the FTC acronym forever, so we can’t call ourselves the Federal Truth Commission. Ministry works better than Commission, anyway, don’t you think?”
Swan smiled as he scanned Winston’s face for any hint of disagreement. Winston worked hard not to express the anxiety that was throbbing in his head.
“But what about the book? It’s widely available and in many schools required read…” Winston realized, a moment too late, that he was pushing it.
Swan shook his head, annoyed, and switched the recording device back on. “As you and every informed Patriotic Citizen in or out of the entertainment industry should know, this Office will make no comments on books or other printed work that may or may not be subversive. Remember that Section 52 of Patriot Act VI mandates that the act of directing follow-up questions about censored, possibly censored, or uncensored work to officials of the Federal Communications Commission Department of Compliance is a crime punishable by an indeterminate prison sentence.”
“I…I understand fully, Mr. Swan.”
Swan relaxed his face, switched the recording devices off again, and returned to his sympathetic demeanor. “Call me Neil, son.”
“I’m terribly sorry about all this, Neil, but I had hoped…”
“No need to apologize, Winston. Compliance is compliance, and in Time of War, it sometimes happens unexpectedly.” Swan glanced at his watch. “So…have you considered taking some of that vacation time you’ve been accumulating while working like a true GOB-ber for your country and Party?”
“Uhh—I hadn’t considered it. I guess a vacation could be nice.”
“I recommend Las Vegas. A good patriotic town. Been there lately?”
“Not in a few years.”
“What’s not in Las Vegas? Paris, only cleaner, and without the back-stabbing French. Canals like Venice, with no thieves, and Italian food that’s better—and cheaper. You want outdoors? There’s a new simulated climb of Mount Everest, complete with sherpas and even grimy guesthouses, at the Palace Hotel. And I don’t need me to tell you about the Happiness Cocktails—or the girls!”
Winston forced a smile. “Thank you for the suggestion, Neil.”
“I’ve already spoken with your supervisor and had it approved. We’ll be doing a bit of housework for the agency renaming anyway, and you just delivered a great commercial, so it’s a good time to take three entire restful and maybe even sinful weeks!”
Swan winked and smiled. He stood up, escorted Winston to the door, and gave him a strong, smothering bear hug. “Don’t worry, son, you’ll make a film one day. Chalk this one up to experience. Meanwhile, enjoy Las Vegas —live a little!”
Chapter 3
Winston’s
legs felt numb as he headed back to the
He was already wet with sweat by the time he climbed down into the dirty subway platform. The air in the station was as stifling as a sauna. It was ninety-seven degrees outside and twenty degrees warmer on the platform. The sultry heat was unusual for a morning in March, even for 2014, which had already broken the heat records set the year before. The New York subway system was no closer to air conditioning its platforms than it had been fifteen years before, when Winston was a teenager using the same station to get to high school. President George Blush had recently advised that “Global warming has certain advantages,” but one hundred twenty-degree subway platforms, Winston thought, was not one of them.
His briefcase felt heavy. He set it on the ground, and wished there was a bench to sit on, like there had been when he was young. Thoughts pounded in his head. Was the project really doomed? He telephoned Susan Giccanti, his company’s head of TV films, to try to arrange an emergency meeting. Muting the video input so that nobody would see how distraught he looked, he spoke with Danielle, Susan’s assistant, who told him that Susan was booked all day. Winston pleaded for a short sit-down. Danielle promised to get back to him.
A nearby video billboard mounted on a steel pillar provided a welcome distraction from his anxiety. An ad for Foxy News, Winston’s former employer, appeared. It was mostly a war newsreel of “sexy kills,” with footage of missiles hitting targets, helicopter attacks, tanks advancing on enemy positions in desert countries, and Predator drones firing on guerillas in the jungles of Indonesia . “Duty takes our boys to fight. Foxy lets you go with them!” the voice track proudly announced, over the din of explosions and war machines.
A couple of street-smart teen boys, one wearing a tee shirt from nearby Stuyvesant High School—Winston’s alma mater—shuffled up next to him to watch the action on the video screen. The war video morphed into generals at a press briefing, then President Blush himself, being interviewed by Bob O’Manley, his Secretary of State, on the popular talk show that O’Manley still hosted. “The Patriotic Citizen’s source for all news,” the voice track continued. “Radio, Broadcast and Interactive TV. News when you want it. Balanced. Patriotic. Fair. Foxy: The Only Name in TV News™.”
“Oh, right, they’re the only name in news and they’re balanced and fair,” one of the boys said to his friend, sticking out a studded tongue in disgust. “Fair means we get to die and they make sure no dead or wounded bodies ever appear on TV.”
“What a pit of shit,” the other kid said, looking at Winston, suspicious yet defiant. “Course they’re the only name in news—they fucken shut down everyone else. They can take their draft and shove it!”
Before Winston could challenge them, the kids ran down the platform and hopped onto a local train. Winston was too upset by his own problems to try to report them and besides, if Homeland Security wanted them, they could track them down through their surveillance footage. He was surprised that they knew about Foxy’s “no dead or wounded” policy, and realized that their parents must have been violating the Home Discussion provisions of the Patriot Act VI by teaching their kids about it.
Although he was more than a little impressed by their defiance, Winston doubted that the boys would be so brave when they got to be a few years older, when resisting the draft would mean ten years in a prison labor camp or a lifetime of self-imposed exile in a dangerous, unmonitored urban ghetto.
They would learn the hard way, Winston thought, as he himself had, that the idealism of the rebel dies fast in the real world. Unless their parents were big Party donors, or unless they became an indispensable member of the Party, they’d be singing a different tune when the draft board police buses arrived at the end of their high school graduation ceremony.
TK Winston was older than that when the draft was reinstated at the end of 2006, and well into graduate school. Coming just after the biological terrorist attacks of “Dirty Friday” and the subsequent stock market crash, America responded by bringing War on Terror to Iran, Syria, and Pakistan. At the time, Winston had supported President Blush’s decision to “stay the course,” and militarily confront an Islamic fundamentalist government in Pakistan. With an occupation going badly in Iraq, the move on Pakistan, Iran and Syria required hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.
Winston agreed with the need for a draft, but he told himself that he had more important skills to contribute to his country. He had worked his way up in the Young Nationalist league while at Columbia Journalism School. That, plus his internship at Foxy News, had brought relationships that helped him avoid the annual draft lotteries that were quickly implemented to replace tens of thousands of military casualties every year.
Foxy News had perhaps saved Winston’s life, and it had been a great career builder for both him and his boss Neil Swan. Like many officials doing public service in the Blush Administration, Swan was allowed to keep his industry job at Foxy, while serving in Russ Limetoff’s aggressive Federal Communications Commission. In 2009, Patriot Act VI and the new Patriotic Citizen’s Constitution gave the F.C.C. the authority to assess which TV and radio networks were “sufficiently patriotic to deserve the privilege of using the public airwaves or public Internet.” They found only Foxy, and its recently acquired Clear Channel Communications radio empire, to be worthy of retaining their broadcast licenses. Every other source of video, radio and Internet news in God’s United States was shut down. It was then that Foxy had cleverly evolved its logo to “Foxy: The Only Name in News™.”
Some had openly protested. Public demonstrations, in the revised Constitution’s new Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, brought ten-year mandatory sentences at privatized prison labor camps in Time of War. The officers and employees of organizations like the ACLU, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Drug Policy Alliance and Planned Parenthood, groups that Homeland Security General Bashcrost determined had sympathized with terrorists, challenged patriotism, or “impeded government functions,” were treated with similar severity. Millions of members of these organizations were visited by Homeland Security troopers, F.B.I. agents, or local police. Those who were not sent to jail for failing on-the-spot drug tests for marijuana traces from their hair samples were given the choice of signing denunciations of the work of the organization they had belonged to, or facing ten year mandatory sentences. A surprising number of Americans had refused to sign the statements, and the population of the prison labor camps grew by millions.
Winston and his department worked overtime for months to explain, through public service ads, the necessity of the strict new media and speech legislation. “Empowering patriotism,” Neil Swan had called the campaign trumpeting the changes. Some old-timers, like Winston’s mother, objected privately, and left the country. Winston parroted the Party line during their last meeting, arguing that Americans needed to stop dwelling of their own petty differences and start thinking of how they might help secure the greater good now that the War on Terror had changed everything.
Winston’s thoughts returned to the present and he found himself gazing at a video billboard waiting for one of his ads to rotate through. His work, he reminded himself, helped reach that greater good, even if the short Homeland Security commercials he created were not as prestigious as directing full length movies.
One of his recent ads began with the flag waving in the breeze and small letters expanding across the screen to read, “God’s United States: The Freest Country on Earth.”
The narration played over images of children checking books out of a library, then a woman reading a newspaper in a comfortable home. “In America, everyone is free to read or watch whatever he or she chooses. Patriotic Citizens, of course, restrict their media and Internet usage to materials that do not promote subversive, treasonous, or terrorist ideas and actions.” The video showed a bearded, Jewish-looking man with glasses and an enormous glowing “S” hanging over his chest reading a computer monitor that read “Restricted Access” in large letters. “Our society,” the narration continued, “is so tolerant that some people—those who register as Subversives-- are even free to read unpatriotic and foreign materials! But be vigilant—because even freedom has its limitations. Remember, Subversives are never allowed to distribute information to Patriotic Citizens, and accepting such materials is a federal crime!” The video concluded with the bearded man on a deserted street corner handing a woman a pamphlet titled, Why the World Hates America . A moment after the woman accepted the pamphlet, a squad of Homeland Security troopers appeared out of nowhere and roughly arrested both of them.
Winston wondered whether the arrest scene was too tough. He thought of the stench of the dying Chinese deliveryman. A sudden fit of nausea twisted in his stomach and erupted in a fit of coughing. He just managed to make it to the edge of the platform and vomited onto the tracks.
He worried as he spit out the bitter aftertaste of his breakfast and wiped his mouth. Was he participating in what his mother, before he blocked her calls, had characterized as the government’s “deliberate desensitization” to violence against its own citizens? Or was he just getting soft?
The old steel wheels of an “A” express train gave out a deafening screech as it pulled into the station. Winston boarded and sat in the center of a long bench in the near-empty subway car, within view of a large video billboard, and thought carefully about Swan’s canceling of his project. Like most business decisions, he told himself, it probably had nothing to do with him and everything to do with circumstances beyond his control—the renaming of the agency.
The video billboard loudly began a public service ad that his friend Slim had been bragging about in the company dining hall earlier in the week. Slim’s job, Winston recalled, as he put on his best poker face for the surveillance cameras behind the billboard, was to explain how the Party’s economic policies worked for all Americans, despite record high unemployment, with three-quarters of the population uninsured, Medicare bankrupt, and half the federal budget going to pay interest on an expanding federal debt.
The
narrator in the ad was a handsome
Winston
wondered why the government bothered running such ads, when Congress
would vote unanimously, as they always did, for the Party’s tax cut.
Even though opposition politics in
Winston nodded compliantly at the ad and made sure his face registered no disapproval. He was less able to control his mind. It flashed back in time to his excitement the first time he was old enough to vote, in the 2004 presidential race. He had campaigned for President George O. Blush in that hotly-contested race, becoming what Russ Limetoff, on his widely syndicated conservative radio show, called “a loyal GOB-ber willing to stand up for its leader in Time of War.” Winston thought nostalgically of that year’s robust debate, the vigorous campaigning. But despite his support of the Administration, he was disappointed with the tactics it used to secure its lock on power after its 2004 reelection victory.
The power consolidation soon began right after the devastating Black Friday terrorist attack in October, 2006. A post-emergency Supreme Court ruling established the government’s unrestricted right to “selectively search” specific types of citizens, in Time of War. That was immediately followed by the strictest rewriting of federal drug laws in history. A few moderate Nationalist Senators explained to a concerned public that the increased federal penalties for marijuana use would rarely be used, but that it would be a necessary tool in the government’s terrorist-fighting arsenal.
Homeland Security General Bashcrost saw it differently. On Election Day, 2006, as Americans were heading to the polls for the federal mid-term election, the General launched Operation Clean Sweep. In African-American, Hispanic, and liberal-leaning neighborhoods across the country, people arriving at their polling places were taken aside for instantaneous hair tests. With the backing of the military and national guard, the largest police action in American history resulted in the arrest and automatic conviction of millions of would-be voters whose hair tested positive for marijuana residue from the past three months. The new mandatory sentence was ten years in privatized prison labor camps, with a felony conviction that prevented the violators from ever voting again.
With millions of Democratic Party-leaning voters out of the picture, the Nationalists swept the midterm elections of 2006. The following year, the complex passage of a constitutional amendment eliminating presidential term limits “in Time of War” began, allowing President George O. Blush to run for a third term. The President’s landslide reelection in 2008 brought with it an overwhelming Nationalist majority in Congress, and “subversive” opposition parties were soon outlawed.
Perhaps, Winston wondered, thinking of his mother’s critique, the political pendulum had swung too far to the right. Was dissension really so harmful?
Winston shifted on the subway bench and stretched his neck. He was uncomfortable with his own cynicism and was beginning to feel like a defeatist “whiner.” He realized that he was reacting emotionally to Swan’s decision to kill the 1984 project. He reminded himself that he still had a high-paying, prestigious job, a beautiful penthouse, a sexy girlfriend. He didn’t want to wallow in self-pity. He would try to get Neil Swan to reconsider, perhaps rename the Ministry of Truth in his movie something clever, like the Ministry of Islamic Truth. If the appeal failed, Winston promised himself, he would get over it quickly, and get on with his life.
Chapter 4
The ear-splitting screech of the subway pulling into the 14th Street station interrupted Winston’s thoughts. He looked at the billboard across from him, and noticed that one of his long public service ads was beginning.
The commercial showed a Caucasian man, middle-aged and bearded, an anarchist type with a video camera hidden in his eyeglasses, surveying a crowded train station and its security gate. The next image was the man reviewing the video of the train station from a bomb-making den filled with Arab terrorists. “Subversive?” the soundtrack asked ominously. “Patriotic Citizens have a legal and moral obligation to be vigilant. Help us help you by protecting God’s United States from those who would terrorize and enslave us. Call 811.” The numbers flashed huge across the screen, then the image shifted to a businesswoman in the subway station dialing 811 on her digital phone. A second later, a squad of enormous Homeland Security troopers were pictured arresting the suspicious man, forcing him into a full-body incarceration suit, then wheeling him away, while the soundtrack sternly advised, “Homeland Security will be there in moments. Better safe and free than sorry.”
Winston had created that trademark, and had Party lawyers register it, like all the patriotic slogans, for the Nationalist Party. The federal government got public service airtime for free, but it paid a royalty to the Party every time one of their slogans was used. Although less than 1% of the royalties trickled down from the top Party brass to a creator at Winston’s level, the ads were in continuous rotation all over the country. Winston hoped to collect “Party Consulting Fees” from his slogans for the rest of his life.
A vagrant entered the car with the loud clanging of coins. The man, not much older than Winston, was covered in rags, with a layer of black soot embedded in his skin. He smelled like a garbage Dumpster, and wore an enormous pulsing red “S” pendant around his neck.
“Please help the homeless and destitute,” the man begged, surprisingly well spoken, as he shook the few coins in his cup. “I was branded a Subversive and fired from my job for buying a banned book three years ago. Been looking for work ever since. Ran out of savings, no medical benefits, lost our apartment, wife is sick. Two little kids, and none of us eligible for health services or welfare cause of this S. We’re sleepin’ out on streets of the Bed-Stuy ghetto, please, we have nowhere to turn…”
Winston cursed himself for paying attention to the man, and quickly turned back around. He worried about the cameras behind the video billboard. Everyone knew that it was illegal to panhandle and jeopardize security in the subway. Winston had heard of Homeland Security agents going undercover as lawbreakers to flush out non-vigilant citizens. He was a Patriotic Citizen, a Party member. His connections would eventually get him released from any such sweep, but his complacency in the face of lawbreaking would go on his record. It might even affect his career.
Winston fingered his phone. All he needed to do was hold it up, hit record, and dial 811. He would just be doing his duty.
But the consequences for the man would be severe. A prison labor camp. A starving family left behind. Winston’s finger froze. He worked hard to keep his eyes fixed on a video billboard, wishing that he hadn’t turned to look at the beggar. He might argue that he was focusing on his work, that he needed to watch the next commercial for a report on viewer response.
It was a
simple billboard, a quick text-only message that ended with a
close-up of the President. It had come straight from
Winston nodded his head in silent agreement, listening intently to the beggar, who had stopped just a few feet past him and was repeating his plea for assistance. Winston lifted his phone out of its holder with a sweaty hand.
Winston turned back around, ready to report the offender. He noticed that a stocky man in a sleeveless tee shirt across the aisle was already holding his phone high to record and transmit the offense. He nodded his encouragement for the surveillance cameras, but felt relieved as he put his own phone back.
An older woman with a flowery scarf, seated just a few feet from where Winston was standing, dropped a handful of coins into the man’s cup, defiant of the recordings that were taking place. The man reporting the crime glared at her.
The
security call worked quickly and efficiently. As the train pulled
slowly into the
Winston stared intently at the video billboards, listening to the cries of pain and the sound of the man’s body being dragged onto the platform. He watched from the corner of his eye as the troopers lifted the vagrant into a waiting incarceration suit. The frantic pleas for help became louder and shriller for an instant, then were muffled into silence as a huge hood was zipped shut over his face.
As the train pulled out, Winston noticed that the older woman with the colorful scarf was looking angrily at the man who had reported the beggar. The woman was about sixty-five, and a small wooden cross hung from her neck. She reminded Winston of his mother.
“What—what are you staring at? the stocky man in the tee shirt demanded. “You should be thanking me. A terrorist could use that bum routine to spread chemical weapons, and we’d never know it!”
“Have you no sense of decency?” the woman responded, her voice surprisingly strong, speaking not just to the man but to everyone on the train.
She seemed fearless. Winston remembered, with a sense of shame, how he had criticized his mother , before blocking her calls and e-mails from her refuge in Costa Rica. He had been determined not to let his career be tainted by contact with her. “You disguise your weakness as empathy,” he had said, borrowing a slogan from Russ Limetoff’s radio show. “And your ignorance of the real world masquerades as religious compassion while killers roam free!”
The
train slowed as it arrived at the
Winston smiled approvingly for the surveillance cameras, then left the train.
He rode an escalator to the security lobby of the VALUED Entertainment building, a massive, modern skyscraper that had originally been built to house the headquarters of AOL Time Warner. VALUED was the result of the mergers of conglomerates once called Viacom, AOL Time Warner, Liberty, Universal, E Entertainment, and Disney. The company produced all of the country’s entertainment content, and had shut down all its news networks in compliance with Homeland Security orders. As long as it submitted all material to the F.C.C. Compliance Department for prior approval, VALUED Entertainment’s monopoly on the market guaranteed an impressive profit margin.
Winston filed through the building’s security checkpoints thinking about what the man had shouted, about the beggar, about his movie project, and about freedom. The 1984 remake was a potentially profitable and patriotic project that slammed only America’s enemies. Winston’s company, VALUED Entertainment, had approved and budgeted the project internally. They had even scheduled its sale on Interactive Pay Per View before the end of the year, where, the company’s bean-counters had estimated, 1984 could net the company a profit of more than twenty million dollars. So why weren’t they free to make it?
Winston immediately decided against framing his argument to Susan Giccantithis way. It was too contrarian, and he did not want the powerful Executive Vice President in charge of VALUED’s TV films thinking he was a Subversive sympathizer. No, he thought, as the elevator sped him quickly upward, he would need a much better argument than that to sway Susan—provided he managed to see her.
The least she could do, Winston thought, is give me a fair hearing. After all, the group that produced Homeland Security public service ads—the division Winston ran—brought in more government revenue than any other commercial production division. In addition to an annual salary exceeding one million dollars, Winston’s excellent relationship with Neil Swan allowed him to occasionally lobby the government’s powerful head of Compliance about other large VALUED projects, including a few from Susan Giccanti’s division. The time had come, Winston thought, to ask Susan to return the favor and provide corporate support for something important to him.
Swan was not beyond reconsidering decisions, Winston would argue. It had happened before, when Swan had ordered Winston to change an ad, and the change didn’t work out. Winston showed the revised ad with Swan’s changes, along with the version he preferred. Swan had agreed that Winston was right, reversed his decision, and even praised Winston’s original version.
Winston filed past cubicles of workers and signaled for his assistant to bring him a cup of coffee. He entered his spacious office. Floor to ceiling windows offered a breathtaking view of Central Park sixty-five stories below. Sipping his dark roast, Winston ordered his computer system to move the video monitor to conference position, and told it to dial Susan Giccanti’s assistant.
Danielle looked annoyed. “Face time today will be impossible.”
“Five minutes,” Winston replied, with a friendly smile, trying his best to charm her. “I’ll be in and out in five minutes.”
“She’s booked solid. Best she might do today is a two minute call, and that’s still a big might.”
“C’mon Danielle, you can do better than that…”
Susan’s assistant shook her head. “Will you be there for a call within the next hour or not? That’s the only time she might have free.”
Winston nodded and hung up. His head throbbed. A video call would not be optimal. He would be asking Susan to expend a lot of personal capital on his behalf. He considered whether he should just park himself outside her office and catch her between meetings, but decided that would make him appear too desperate.
Winston sprawled across his office couch, stretched out, and barked an order to his office computer, “Organizer, move the screen to the south wall and play messages.”
Winston’s
magnetized flat video screen moved across the wall into a position
where he could watch it from the couch. The image of his girlfriend
Lilly, just waking up, appeared on the screen, wearing a
maroon-colored silk slip and nothing else. She was a striking
Chinese-American dancer with a slight, sensual figure. She pouted
seductively at the telephone camera, “I’m sorry I woke up so late,
Winny. I wanted to shower together, but I was sooooo tired.” She
yawned. “I woke up wondering how you and the big 1984 meetings were going. I just know this is going to be your greatest
project ever! My dance company has rehearsal most of the afternoon,
but I’ll be home by
The message only upset Winston more. He had never felt like such a failure. He didn’t care what the office surveillance camera showed—he had a right to be disappointed. Too depressed to move, he lay on the couch for an hour, staring at the ceiling. Finally, he sat down at his desk and told his computer to search for travel packages to Las Vegas .
The attractions all seemed tedious and contrived. All he really wanted to do, he thought, was make his film. He pulled a paper notepad out of his desk and jotted down some talking points for his conversation with Susan, not wanting to leave a record of them on his organizer tablet.
Danielle buzzed him. “Susan’s picking up. She has two minutes.”
Winston tried to ignore the pain in the back of his head as he told his computer to move his video screen higher on the wall for the call.
Susan appeared, looking harried. She was not much older than Winston, a thirty-something careerist with enormous power and a salary to match. She wore a stylish pants suit with a jacket tight enough to reveal her thin, muscular form. She was well-toned, well-tanned, well-coiffed, well-manicured, and not so well-mannered, but that came with the territory.
“Whassup?” she demanded.
“I know that Neil Swan called you. Would you consider an appeal?”
“Winston, what planet have you been on? When Neil Swan himself says D.B.A., it means D.B.A. This is not the sort of decision you can appeal.”
“You’ve got juice around here, Susan. Couldn’t you take it upstairs to corporate? This means a lot to—”
Susan made no attempt to disguise her impatience. “Waste of time, and I don’t have any to waste. Danielle,” she yelled out her door, while pulling Winston’s script off a shelf and plopping it on her desk like a blunt weapon. “Get this shredded by the time I get back from my next meeting. Delete all associated files and communications.”
Susan returned her attention to Winston. He swore he could detect a smug look on her face, like she had just won something. The bitch. His head throbbed even more. “Listen, Winston, take a vacation, come back refreshed. I hear Las Vegas has a new Mount Everest location.”
“What do you want me to do with…”
“Hell-lo. What did I just do? Shred the scripts, shred the books, delete all references. Then have a ni-ice vacation. Gotta go!”
Susan disappeared from the screen.
Winston felt beaten down. It was over. He dropped all the drafts of his script and copies of the book into his super-shredder and left the office, his head feeling like a pulsing sack of lead between his shoulders.
All Winston could think of was heading home and going to bed. He grabbed his organizer, and made a quick check of his e-mail. His department head had sent a v-mail confirming that his three week vacation had been approved. Attached was a coupon offering special Las Vegas discounts to VALUED Entertainment executives.