2012 Winston Smith

For the past couple of days the power supply has been down most of the time. Little by little the old system is breaking down, either because of a lack of spare parts, or because of a lack of qualified people to do the maintenance. The mobile phone system only works if you know someone who can hack into it. The prepaid system of vouchers stopped months ago. I had a contract and my connection still works, but only with certain numbers. Lucky enough one of those is Maya's. Most people use their phones to access the internet, which still works. Twitter got taken over by Sector 666 in England, and it is the most popular message service. It is against the law to take photographs on the street, so most people just upload pictures of birthday parties, pets and plants. There are no new cameras in the few shops still open, so an old digital one is a valued rarity on the black market. Nearly all social contact is based on trivia. Everyone is too scared to be seen to step out of line. The Underground system is being sealed off station by station, so the outcasts who live down there are doomed. They are considered to be a source of disease by the Ministry of Health, and there are probably plans to exterminate them. England always had an underclass that lived outside the system, never showing up on the ID Register. Soon there will be fewer and fewer options left for those who wish to hide. Yesterday my ID was checked six times on the way to, and coming back from, my mother. Recently I've noticed that my mind often just goes blank, and it is getting harder every day to keep trying to remember how things used to be. Sometimes I even doubt if it was ever any different. Maybe my past was just a dream. Isis says that we should meet up and start to practice storytelling, so that we don't forget. Many cultures had an oral tradition before they developed writing. Isis thinks that we should revive the habit. Maya suggested that we all sing together, and create our own mantras. As more and more technology breaks down we shall have to learn to organize ourselves. Osiris is developing a new code that we can use to keep some things alive. It will be a kind of modern day Emerald Tablet, that will contain the essence of our world view in a symbolic language that is a hybrid of words and images that would look quite harmless to an outsider. Perhaps it will take the form of a children's story, a 2012 Alice in Wonderland.