The Blurt of Richard Davies

April 7th.

It didn't take them long! The local and regional Connie apparatchiks sneaked their congratulatory mails through our filters, wishing me well for the future, and looking forward to our maintaining our high standard of 'casting: In other words, we'll be watching you. The lairy buggers even offered the services of a Media Liaison Assistant at no cost to ourselves if we could find some space within our organisation for one; just to make life easier for everyone concerned... Of course I politely acknowledged their best wishes while declining their kind offer; the sooner we get Maggie up and running the better! Bippin, who has been busy helping to create her, claims she will be an utter bitch to crack. I hope so; anything that makes the lives of the Connies more difficult is fine by me.
I wonder though, for how much longer these supporters of the Consensus government will remain merely an irritation? Theirs is an authoritarianism that eschews mass public rallies, intimidating parades and worship of one leader. They do however swear allegiance to a new ideology bereft of old traditions and wear their uniforms in public, as well as displaying their symbol wherever they can with obvious pride. Yet their party remains a cloistered enigma; its organisation and gatherings hidden from public view.
Instead we live under a far more subtle, intimate form of a dictatorship. One which like its supporters is becoming more deeply insinuated into the fabric of public life through their community work and infiltration of public organisations. Connies have an ardent determination, bordering on the messianic, that theirs is the only way forward. There's no point in trying to argue with them; they're constantly training to deflect your arguments like those pesky religious doorknockers who used to call at the most inconvenient times; the ones you don't get any more. In fact I can't remember seeing those earnest, sombre suited young men since before the Crises. I wonder what happened to them? Perhaps they realised they were up against some unbeatable competition? Or like many others they thought it prudent to leave the Fed while they were still able to.
The Connies are starting to become more than an annoyance: They are determined, insistent, relentless; allowing nothing to interfere with their goal of moulding the Fed and it's people to conform to their way of thinking. In theory you can still express your opinions more or less freely; as long as you don't fall foul of the continually shifting bounds of the law, or influence others to question the prevailing orthodoxy or act against it. Provided you don't publicly demonstrate your opinions, or risk actually changing things against the Consensus' vision of the common good... Yes, the freedom of speech and expression that we once took for granted still notionally exixts, but as what is deemed acceptable is ever more narrowly defined I wonder for how long we will be able to express dissent in a meaningful way?
There is something more that I find unsettling about them. Whenever I see Connies; either in the flesh or on 'cast I get the feeling that there is so much more to them than meets the eye: That they have barely started on their process of social transformation, and they are becoming increasingly impatient with anyone they see as delaying or obstructing their mission. I wonder for how much longer they will be able to contain their zeal, and what will happen when they feel impelled to increase the pace of change and carry their ideology and sense of ownership still further into our lives?
I find their whole ethos - what I can understand of it - and their modus operandi creepy. No, sinister. And what makes it worse is knowing you are the object of their obsession; they want to change your life for the better, as defined solely by them, no matter what your wishes are.
It's not a personal thing; they want to intervene in everyones' lives. They regard personal affairs as both public and political. A few years ago they would have been told to do one; but such has our world been turned upside down, so great has the shock to our collective senses been since then; that what would have once seemed incredible or unacceptable is now so routine as to be unremarkable, things having changed so far so quickly. Not only have people become grudgingly accustomed to these previously unreasonable impositions upon their lives; some of them have become so conditioned as to actually welcome them.

April 14th.

Another day; another war scare. It's understandable given our recent history proving they are crazy enough to Drop It; but just when we're getting almost insouciant about the thought of war there's another attack of the jitters fueled by another maritime incident. Of course, living near the Portsmouth naval base as we do, we wonder if we could be the ones who would suffer the Alban wrath; but most of the analysts still think that if the latest spat ever escalated that far it'd be London that would be Target One for a squadron of elderly Typhoons tearing south at low level on a one-way mission armed with the former Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea's most notorious export.
We know that the Albans have working nukes thanks to their detonation of a Hiroshima sized warhead - delivered by a sea-skimming cruise missile which was concealed in a launcher disguised as a container and fired from the deck of a DPRK cargo ship - over the North Sea not far from the Sizewell nuclear power stations. Fortunately there was little damage apart from a few scorched and broken blades on the wind farm below, as well as some minor EMP problems, but the implied threat was obvious.
Despite the claim that it was a 'demonstration' shot, there are many who still believe that Sizewell, or even London itself was the intended target and it was only due to a malfunction in the missile's guidance system we escaped a greater disaster. The Albans threatened to explode further warheads with even more disastrous consequences, but by then with His Majesty's Dissolution decree in force, the creation of the Transitional Council, and the recalling of the special forces, it was clear Scotland - as it was then known - had won it's independence by some outsourced nuclear blackmail; regardless of whatever the rest of the union, or the forty-eight percent who voted against independence in the Second Referendum, thought.
We're still adjusting to living with a new, unpredictable, and sometimes belligerent nuclear-armed next-door neighbour; as are they. But with the fearsome power of the Bomb comes responsibility. We can but hope the new Sino-Russian axis can bring their influence to bear, as they did in the Gulf. Even the EU and the US - though both greatly reduced in stature - have offered their good offices to help soothe the current spat to a prickly but workable relationship.
We need only look at the Gulf, Israel, or reunified Korea for a sobering reminder of our fate if the leaders get it wrong. There are practical reasons for realpolitik optimism as well. In our interconnected world there are multinational interests in keeping the hydrocarbons flowing, and our nations are still too conjoined to allow our legacy infrastructure to be disrupted by war. The international community may have shafted us by recognising the fait accompli and tacitly supporting the renegotiation of the energy treaties; but at least our allotted trickle of oil and hydroelectricity still gets through. The poor old British Lion; emaciated, mangey, impotent and toothless, just has to adapt to the changed circumstances.
This latest scare isn't making our lives any easier though. No doubt there'll be yet more reams of reporting 'guidelines' from the OMS, and we'll need to rebalance our output to reflect our audiences' concerns away from the parochial to the international. We'll be taking from the national streams rather than contributing our own content to theirs; that'll cost us ViewCred as few people outside the area actually give a monkey's about the problems the gardeners of the Moneyfields allotments are having in stopping the latest outbreak of veg theft, or their opinions on the current war scare. Besides, vox-pops on sensitive issues such as these are discouraged. It's a good thing most of our local and regional packages aren't too time-sensitive; we can always run them later.
Fortunately whoever was at fault it was only an exchange of warning shots this time. There was no damage, and more importantly no injuries on board the trawler. In 48 hours the diplomatic protests will have been filed and dismissed, the gunboats will hopefully have stood to, and we can return to a sullen stand-off again. But the price of fish, already unaffordable, will rise still further as we realise that what was left of our North Sea fisheries are now swimming beneath the keels of the truculent Alban navy.

April 27th.

It's approaching the end of the month again; quota time. Across the city, the region, and the wider Fed, everyone is making sure their accounts are in order; whether they are actually so or not. To that end you can bet every little jumped-up jobsworth in a hi-viz jacket will be out to ensure they have duly detected their tally of offences; whether those misdemeanours are real or imagined. This isn't a good time to be driving any sort of vehicle, to ride a bike, or be walking alone: Better to take your chances with the rest of the herd on public transport for a couple of days in the hope the dayglo turds decide to pick on anyone else in the crowd but you.
You'd think by now they'd be aware target driven policing does more harm than good, and only gets peoples' backs up. It just seems to be such an utter waste of everyones' time, effort, and resources; especially since the same officious tossers responsible for this bureaucracy in a moment of serendipitous incompetence arranged the partial expiry of TransCred just at the right time to enable most people to evade the worst of it by using their soon to expire allowances on public transport. Was that mere coincidence? Or did an empathic spirit trying to subvert the system from within contrive it that way?
Someone usually gets done for some minor infraction, but the chances are as long as you are streetwise and lucky, or know enough of the law and your dwindling body of rights to make them veer away and pick an easier looking target it won't be you. If it is, you just have to put it down as an unfortunate case of chance taxation.

April 29th.

That was a couple of days ago, but just when you thought it was safe to get back in the saddle they're at it again. Perhaps the great bureaucratic hive mind is starting to evolve some spontaneity? That would be a bad sign because as long as they are predictable the lower rungs on the ladder of the extended police 'family' are relatively harmless. The City Police can't be bothered with cycling matters; it's the Community Police busybodies who delight in making cyclists' lives a misery; because they can, and they have an incentive to do so.
I'm alerted to this latest development by a blurt from CycloSolidarity; a cycle commuter dark net community, warning of a couple of ComPig checkpoints, though I am puzzled about their timing; I thought the Community Police; aka Compies, ComPigs, Comps, Pols or Goons would've realised that they'd missed their cut off date. Perhaps they feel that they have to make an early start on next months' quota. Or they've just postponed their deadline.
Even the Compies have enough nouce to realise they're being dicked, so they soon give up on the fixed stops at the few points of entry to Portsea Island and go mobile; that's when the fun begins. A public-spirited frazzler sets to work remotely sabotaging their saucer drone and forces it to land, then comes the call for a mass ride-through.
I've always had a bit of a rebellious streak. Dad says I got it from Mum - God rest her - who spent some time living an 'alternative' lifestyle before she met Dad and settled down. Wherever it came from, I can't resist an opportunity to tweak the noses of the Pols. So I saddle up, flick in, and follow the blurts set on audio to the approximate rendezvous area. You need to have confidence in your blurters, but these have a good rep, so I'm reasonably sure that it isn't a set-up.
The best laid Goon runs don't look out of the ordinary to those not in the know; few would recognise them for what they are until they begin, and as yet the surveillance grid isn't smart enough to recognise the signs, especially when it is being frazzled. To a casual observer, or your average Comp checkpoint, nothing appears amiss. Then, guided by the supposedly uncrackable anonymous microblurt voice in your ear and a bit of local knowledge you set the trap; drawing together into a critical mass too large for Them to cope with before riding through.
Suddenly I hear "ALL RIDERS! STICKY WICKET! STARBURST! STARBURST!" Shit! Something has gone wrong; the Goons have either got some motorised support, or some of them have been tagged as half-decent riders. Maybe they've cracked the feed or targeted the blurters? Whatever the cause, it's time to scatter far, fast and wide.
I consider riding away from the main routes, locking the bike somewhere out of the way, and catching a bus to the city centre, but that's risking it. I decide I've a better chance of keeping my bike mine by staying on it and continuing to ride in just as anyone else would do. Those who want to can have an online debrief later, but whatever the outcome and the lessons learned those blurters have taken a big hit to their reputation; I hope no-one got caught as a result of their failed run.
My earpiece is full of advice to take it easy and lie low if possible, to make your return journeys at different times using different routes, or to park your ride, merge with the crowd on public transport this evening, and pick up your bike tomorrow. Above all else, whatever you do, don't look plugged in! They'll always use the wearing of earphones as evidence of Cycling Without Due Care and Attention, one of their favourite catch-alls... Bugger! It had the makings of a good run.
I wouldn't put it past the ComPigs to go on a parking patrol in an act of spite, ticketing anything they can find; tax, insurance, or annual inspection tag violations, or they'll be giving cycling licences and helmet fitting extra scrutiny when they pull their random stops. If all else fails there are always the old ways and means, such as insufficient rear tyre tread, or lack of all the required area of reflective clothing or day running lights for bike and rider. Which reminds me; I'll need to buy a new tyre soon. Hopefully there'll be some really new ones available, rather than me having to put up with one of those shoddy remakes again.
Doing my best to be inconspicuous I slow down and blend in. It takes a while for my thudding heart and flushed face to return to normal. I make it into Media House without further problems, park the bike, and set my very illegal dark tag that I keep handy for just such an eventuality to transmit a proxy registration if queried by a long range RFID scanner for a while, just in case one of the little fuckers decides to try a random beam sweep. Yes I'm old enough to know better, but I really despise those cunts who would impose themselves so harshly on their fellow citizens; even their next door neighbours or co-workers, just so they can earn some extra privilege points. I hope that they skulk back to their ordinary assignments empty-handed and realising they're just going to have to live as the rest of us have to with only the standard ration of life's little luxuries. Or they'll have to do as we do and buy some top-up cred to make up any shortfall.