2+2=5 Jesus was a Tibetan lama

The Year Zero will start with a celebration of freedom on Trafalgar Square, which is to be renamed Freedom Square. The National Gallery has been converted into a computer games palace, where any member of the public can use the games terminals. My latest edition of Grail Warcraft is about how the Temple Knights developed a secret code to protect the truth from the evil church. The storyline is a bit thin, but there is plenty of action and loud music. The players have different timeline options, but somehow they all end up back at the Year Zero celebrations, from where they are free to build on a piece of virtual land, and help make a better future. It is pure kitsch, but these days any promise of something better is welcome. Sensational trivia always works best in the media. Over lunch Isis told us that she had reliable information that many of the rare books from the British Library, and some of the most valuable paintings that used to be in the National Gallery, were being flown to America in exchange for hightech equipment needed in Sector 666. The Chairman has a strange love hate relationship with America. We need their technology, but he tries to keep England as isolated as possible. So only top security military flights are allowed in and out of Heathrow. Nobody knows whether Obama will be elected again, as there is a foreign news blackout. The stories that are put out are all made up by people like me. For example today there was a story about how Jesus was really a Tibetan lama who brought the feudal system to Europe. The Chairman tries to keep everything sweet with China, so the Dalai Lama is always portrayed as a bad guy in the media. As far as Isis can tell us, the Chinese still run lots of factories with cheap labor. Most of the computer equipment used for the games comes from China, and we barter what little oil we have left in exchange for it. That's one reason why the buses and lorries all run on ethanol. Coal mining has been revived in some parts of the country, and a coal fire is the latest luxury that only Alphas can afford. Biotechnology is the one area where we are probably still ahead of the rest of the world, and it will be our strongest trade card when the North Sea oil runs out, or perhaps even earlier if we run out of the expertese we need to extract it. Cloning and genetically modified food production are the future. In a perverse twist of semantic logic, the Chairman calls it permaculture. The resistance believes this is the most disturbing aspect of Party policy, as the resulting destruction of biodiversity does not bode well for the future. In London today 2+2=5.