You know what? I think I'll dump my EDC notes into a Writer' Forum thread over the holidays.
Rebuilding After Big Brother: A 1984 Story
- Thread starter DrDerp
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- 1984 nineteen eighty four
Staff Of Life
Readers note: I apologize if my depiction of how training new cooks at a restaurant works doesn't reflect what actually happens. I've never worked in the kitchen of a restaurant.
The Farmer's Table kitchen, Birmingham
Edmund Cork frantically looked at the cookbook on the table before turning his head to the dish in front of him. The sausages looked well cooked, the mashed potatoes fluffy and buttery, and the peas were nearly spotless. Still, he'd made a good looking Bangers and Mash only to find out he'd undercooked something and ruined the dish.
His supervisor, Jonas, was staring at the dish.
"Looks good enough to me." Edmund started to sweat.
"Only one way to tell." Jonas picked up a fork and knife then cut into one of the sausages. There were one or two pink spots but they were pretty small. He lifted a piece of sausage into his mouth and began chewing.
"Well," Edmund asked. Jonas swallowed and gave the thumbs up.
"I think you got it." Edmund smiled.
"Thanks."
"But that was an easy one," Jonas told his trainee. "You haven't done Beef Wellington yet, have you?" Edmund shook his head.
"Ah. That one's going to be very involved."
"I...I won't let that scare me."
'You don't need to be afraid of a dish, bud. You just need to get used to it."
Edmund was a new hire and was still getting the hang of cooking the dishes on the menu of the "Farmer's Table." It was a pub opened up by former Outer Party members who had some talent at cooking in 2007 and had been doing well over the past seven years. It wasn't just the expression of their mutual interest in cooking, it was a step towards reviving English cuisine. The food of the average Oceanian was very basic. Even the Inner Party didn't have much access to luxurious foods as part of the effort to make sure they didn't get too used to luxury. Any Inner Party member who dined on things like prime beef, pheasant or the like more than a few times a year would have been removed as a potential threat to the discipline of the Inner Party as a whole.
It still stunned Jonas how the kind of food taken for granted by so much of the world was considered high class simply because of how the Party controlled the palate of Oceania's people. Oceanian cuisine, a term that still made him smirk, was incredibly spartan. With the exception of what the Inner Party had access to, food was nothing more than a means of prolonging a worker's energy. It was fuel and trying to make it anything more meant being denounced as a Thought Criminal.
Food nourished not just the body, but the soul. And if British cuisine could be revived, a bit more of Britain's soul would be restored as well.
The Farmer's Table kitchen, Birmingham
Edmund Cork frantically looked at the cookbook on the table before turning his head to the dish in front of him. The sausages looked well cooked, the mashed potatoes fluffy and buttery, and the peas were nearly spotless. Still, he'd made a good looking Bangers and Mash only to find out he'd undercooked something and ruined the dish.
His supervisor, Jonas, was staring at the dish.
"Looks good enough to me." Edmund started to sweat.
"Only one way to tell." Jonas picked up a fork and knife then cut into one of the sausages. There were one or two pink spots but they were pretty small. He lifted a piece of sausage into his mouth and began chewing.
"Well," Edmund asked. Jonas swallowed and gave the thumbs up.
"I think you got it." Edmund smiled.
"Thanks."
"But that was an easy one," Jonas told his trainee. "You haven't done Beef Wellington yet, have you?" Edmund shook his head.
"Ah. That one's going to be very involved."
"I...I won't let that scare me."
'You don't need to be afraid of a dish, bud. You just need to get used to it."
Edmund was a new hire and was still getting the hang of cooking the dishes on the menu of the "Farmer's Table." It was a pub opened up by former Outer Party members who had some talent at cooking in 2007 and had been doing well over the past seven years. It wasn't just the expression of their mutual interest in cooking, it was a step towards reviving English cuisine. The food of the average Oceanian was very basic. Even the Inner Party didn't have much access to luxurious foods as part of the effort to make sure they didn't get too used to luxury. Any Inner Party member who dined on things like prime beef, pheasant or the like more than a few times a year would have been removed as a potential threat to the discipline of the Inner Party as a whole.
It still stunned Jonas how the kind of food taken for granted by so much of the world was considered high class simply because of how the Party controlled the palate of Oceania's people. Oceanian cuisine, a term that still made him smirk, was incredibly spartan. With the exception of what the Inner Party had access to, food was nothing more than a means of prolonging a worker's energy. It was fuel and trying to make it anything more meant being denounced as a Thought Criminal.
Food nourished not just the body, but the soul. And if British cuisine could be revived, a bit more of Britain's soul would be restored as well.
Conversations With A Demon
Interrogation Room, United Nations Detention Unit, The Hague
Ellen looked up from her papers as the guards brought in an old man wearing prison garb. The man's face was completely unreadable but she still caught it. That flicker of contempt that she'd seen so many times in so many other interviewees. However, there was something else too. He seemed to be looking right through her even as he was sat at the table across from her. She was nothing to him, this man who responsible for the torture and murder who knew how many people.
In spite of his age, O'Brien radiated danger born not from his psychical strength, but his utter indifference to human life.
"Mister O'Brien, I'm Ellen Zhou. New York Times." She held out her hand, which O'Brien just stared at.
"I'm told you had questions," he said flatly. Ellen silently bristled.
"Yes. We're doing a collection of interviews of former Inner Party members for a special issue. The public finds you and your fellows to be...intriguing."
"Oh?"
"They've heard about what the Party was up to for almost a decade but it's the first time we've gotten the chance to hear straight from you and your colleagues. You're a very tight lipped bunch. Said nothing to the press when the trials were going on."
"Our legal teams advised against saying too much. That and we had no desire to speak to you anyway. We are aware of our reputation and even whilst on trial, we savored it. We must've seemed like such monsters when the trials were being covered."
"That's putting it nicely. What changed with you though? Almost every request for an interview with an Inner Party member was rejected by the member in question even after the sentences were given. We've gotten no firsthand testimony from any of you that wasn't broadcast during the trials."
"I see no difference in what may happen should I accept or decline your request. I need something to break up the monotony too."
"So you're doing this because you're bored?"
"In a matter of speaking, yes."
A guard came in with two cups of coffee and set them down on the table. Ellen turned on her phone's recording function.
"Where do you wish to start?" O'Brien asked.
"A lot of the psychologists who examined Inner Party members said that they believed themselves to have made the perfect dictatorship."
"Obviously we didn't otherwise I wouldn't be here." O'Brien replied.
"Yes, that's true."
"But they are correct. Your psychologists. Mistakes can be the greatest teachers one has and we looked to the mistakes of past regimes to learn what to avoid. And what we found was that the ruling class let themselves grow fat off their wealth. It took Meer years for some, decades and even centuries for others. But it always happened. They separated themselves from those they ruled over and wallowed in hedonism while the masses grew more and more discontented. We were students of history because we couldn't have ruled for so long if we didn't."
O'Brien sneered.
"It shouldn't have taken so long for someone to figure out the common denominator in why such governments fell. The opulent obliviousness the French aristocracy basked was a trap that had caught them years before the first shot of the revolution was fired. It was the same for the Tsars of Russia, the emperors of China, so many. Even the Soviet leadership, with all their talk of rejecting the trappings of royalty, met and lived in a palace. They lost focus. They expected the rest of the populace to live in austerity while they let opulence lower their guard."
"And the Inner Party had no intention of letting that happen to them?"
"Not for a moment. We knew that we would have to live by a similar shortage regime as the rest of the population. It is as I told a prisoner I once interrogated, the stronger the Party becomes the more subtle its power is. Our power is hidden yet all encompassing. We had no reason to distract ourselves with pleasure and we couldn't allow it. We couldn't allow ourselves to become overly indulgent because it would lead to indiscipline. No overly luxurious homes, no gourmet foods, no extravagant liquors, no harems of Proles or Outer Party members."
"But there were those who stuck their snouts a bit too deeply into the trough, weren't there."
"Regrettably. I remember one man I punished a few months before the invasion. He'd have Outer Party women brought off the street and to his home where he'd fuck them day and night. Have them serving as his maids. He was half dead when he left my custody. I was so angry at him, so disappointed."
"I'm guessing the women themselves were inconsequential," Ellen said.
"Indeed. He acquired too much a taste for pleasure. Men like him were a contagion, Miss Zhou. He could've gotten other Inner Party members into the habit. He could have been the cause for a lapse in discipline. The Inner Party was to be Oceania's brain and this man was the equivalent of syphilis. He wouldn't have caused harm immediately but left untreated..."
"He could've caused brain damage."
"Exactly. He needed to be 'treated' immediately, lest he infect other Inner Party members."
"Are you saying you never 'played around' with the women working for you?"
"I could not risk it becoming a habit. You see, Miss Zhou, by holding ourselves to such standards we made sure we never dropped our guard, never neglected our duties. We were stronger than any who came before us because we were willing to live under such conditions, subject ourselves to deprivation of the pleasures so many believe are the right of the powerful. We looked to history and knew what such idle hedonism would bring us."
"And did this view grow stronger when the Soviets fell?"
"How could it not? The Soviet leadership simply wallowed in the power their positions gave them but were utterly blind to the fact that their dominion was rotting away a little more every day. They had made the same mistakes as their predecessors did, growing fat off the bounty of their empire while paying no attention to what was eating away at its foundation. They have no one to blame but themselves for their collapse." O'Brien grew terse.
"It shouldn't have taken a nuclear disaster for them to wake up to what was happening. Our equipment detected the radiation given off by the Chernobyl explosion. We heard of what had happened and considered what may happen should a worst case scenario become reality." The former Inner Party member grit his teeth.
"Their ignorance would have been the death of the entire continent."
"I guess you could say that in this case, ignorance wasn't strength?"
"Yes. Yes, you could."
Ellen looked up from her papers as the guards brought in an old man wearing prison garb. The man's face was completely unreadable but she still caught it. That flicker of contempt that she'd seen so many times in so many other interviewees. However, there was something else too. He seemed to be looking right through her even as he was sat at the table across from her. She was nothing to him, this man who responsible for the torture and murder who knew how many people.
In spite of his age, O'Brien radiated danger born not from his psychical strength, but his utter indifference to human life.
"Mister O'Brien, I'm Ellen Zhou. New York Times." She held out her hand, which O'Brien just stared at.
"I'm told you had questions," he said flatly. Ellen silently bristled.
"Yes. We're doing a collection of interviews of former Inner Party members for a special issue. The public finds you and your fellows to be...intriguing."
"Oh?"
"They've heard about what the Party was up to for almost a decade but it's the first time we've gotten the chance to hear straight from you and your colleagues. You're a very tight lipped bunch. Said nothing to the press when the trials were going on."
"Our legal teams advised against saying too much. That and we had no desire to speak to you anyway. We are aware of our reputation and even whilst on trial, we savored it. We must've seemed like such monsters when the trials were being covered."
"That's putting it nicely. What changed with you though? Almost every request for an interview with an Inner Party member was rejected by the member in question even after the sentences were given. We've gotten no firsthand testimony from any of you that wasn't broadcast during the trials."
"I see no difference in what may happen should I accept or decline your request. I need something to break up the monotony too."
"So you're doing this because you're bored?"
"In a matter of speaking, yes."
A guard came in with two cups of coffee and set them down on the table. Ellen turned on her phone's recording function.
"Where do you wish to start?" O'Brien asked.
"A lot of the psychologists who examined Inner Party members said that they believed themselves to have made the perfect dictatorship."
"Obviously we didn't otherwise I wouldn't be here." O'Brien replied.
"Yes, that's true."
"But they are correct. Your psychologists. Mistakes can be the greatest teachers one has and we looked to the mistakes of past regimes to learn what to avoid. And what we found was that the ruling class let themselves grow fat off their wealth. It took Meer years for some, decades and even centuries for others. But it always happened. They separated themselves from those they ruled over and wallowed in hedonism while the masses grew more and more discontented. We were students of history because we couldn't have ruled for so long if we didn't."
O'Brien sneered.
"It shouldn't have taken so long for someone to figure out the common denominator in why such governments fell. The opulent obliviousness the French aristocracy basked was a trap that had caught them years before the first shot of the revolution was fired. It was the same for the Tsars of Russia, the emperors of China, so many. Even the Soviet leadership, with all their talk of rejecting the trappings of royalty, met and lived in a palace. They lost focus. They expected the rest of the populace to live in austerity while they let opulence lower their guard."
"And the Inner Party had no intention of letting that happen to them?"
"Not for a moment. We knew that we would have to live by a similar shortage regime as the rest of the population. It is as I told a prisoner I once interrogated, the stronger the Party becomes the more subtle its power is. Our power is hidden yet all encompassing. We had no reason to distract ourselves with pleasure and we couldn't allow it. We couldn't allow ourselves to become overly indulgent because it would lead to indiscipline. No overly luxurious homes, no gourmet foods, no extravagant liquors, no harems of Proles or Outer Party members."
"But there were those who stuck their snouts a bit too deeply into the trough, weren't there."
"Regrettably. I remember one man I punished a few months before the invasion. He'd have Outer Party women brought off the street and to his home where he'd fuck them day and night. Have them serving as his maids. He was half dead when he left my custody. I was so angry at him, so disappointed."
"I'm guessing the women themselves were inconsequential," Ellen said.
"Indeed. He acquired too much a taste for pleasure. Men like him were a contagion, Miss Zhou. He could've gotten other Inner Party members into the habit. He could have been the cause for a lapse in discipline. The Inner Party was to be Oceania's brain and this man was the equivalent of syphilis. He wouldn't have caused harm immediately but left untreated..."
"He could've caused brain damage."
"Exactly. He needed to be 'treated' immediately, lest he infect other Inner Party members."
"Are you saying you never 'played around' with the women working for you?"
"I could not risk it becoming a habit. You see, Miss Zhou, by holding ourselves to such standards we made sure we never dropped our guard, never neglected our duties. We were stronger than any who came before us because we were willing to live under such conditions, subject ourselves to deprivation of the pleasures so many believe are the right of the powerful. We looked to history and knew what such idle hedonism would bring us."
"And did this view grow stronger when the Soviets fell?"
"How could it not? The Soviet leadership simply wallowed in the power their positions gave them but were utterly blind to the fact that their dominion was rotting away a little more every day. They had made the same mistakes as their predecessors did, growing fat off the bounty of their empire while paying no attention to what was eating away at its foundation. They have no one to blame but themselves for their collapse." O'Brien grew terse.
"It shouldn't have taken a nuclear disaster for them to wake up to what was happening. Our equipment detected the radiation given off by the Chernobyl explosion. We heard of what had happened and considered what may happen should a worst case scenario become reality." The former Inner Party member grit his teeth.
"Their ignorance would have been the death of the entire continent."
"I guess you could say that in this case, ignorance wasn't strength?"
"Yes. Yes, you could."
So did any members of the thought police or the oceanian military escape the invasion? Do any of them work abroad as military or intelligence advisers?
Have any organized criminal groups tried to expand into the former Oceania?
Have any organized criminal groups tried to expand into the former Oceania?
That’s a great comparison you made, as the Inner Party’s destruction of Anglo culture is similar to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge’s destruction of Cambodia. No joking.
I think there was also another one called Images of 1984, by Will Ritson, on this site.
I guess that is true. Also, one question, what year is this set? Immediately after the events of 1984 (Maybe the late 1980s?), or even the present day.
No, not sure which chapter, but in the books Winston visited Kent, which is 63 km away from his home of London, with his wife and his hiking group of fellow Party members. He also took a train to the countryside to meet his lover Julia. I think why other British cities such as Birmingham are never mentioned is maybe because they were nuked, like Colchester in the book, and due to Oceania’s incredible inefficiency and strict control of info, they were never rebuilt and never mentioned again.
And to state the most obvious, London, or even England is too small an area for it to become such a isolated totalitarian state totally cut off from the world and it’s people having next to zero knowledge of the outside world. And also, the book provides evidence showing us that Oceania controls much more than just London. But I think Oceania could function like it does in Orwell’s book controlling only Great Britain.
Kinda agree with you. But such a ruthlessly efficient and isolated dictatorship like this version of Orwell’s Oceania would cause so much damage that it would take much longer to rebuild, and normal politics you see in like Western Europe, North America, or Australasia may take decades to even function.
But not too low. Maybe 10 million able bodied adults at the least for a Oceania style regime. Also, I think Oceania will probably give a damn about plenty, so it can maintain their shitty regime.