Chapter 2: The Speakwrite

 

The speed regulator dial had been loose for three months. Arthur had
learned to work around it---a gentle pressure with his thumb while he
spoke, holding the mechanism in place so the transcription rate stayed
steady. It was a small adaptation, the kind of compromise a man makes
with failing equipment when reporting the failure would invite
questions.

But this morning, the dial would not stay.

Arthur pressed his thumb against it and began his first correction of
the day---a routine adjustment to a Times article from 1981. The article
had praised a Comrade Withers, who had since been vaporized. The name
needed to be removed, the article restructured, the history smoothed
over as if Withers had never existed. It was delicate work, the kind of
work Arthur had done thousands of times before.

"Malreported production figures," Arthur spoke into the grille, his
voice flat and efficient. "Oceanic Standard reference 1981-T-4892,
substitute following rectified version..."

The dial slipped. The speakwrite's hum changed pitch---too fast, then
too slow, the transcription rate lurching between extremes. The words
that emerged on the paper were garbled, letters cramped together and
then spread apart, the line of text wandering across the page like a
drunk in the prole sectors.

Arthur stopped speaking. He removed his thumb from the dial and examined
it.

The mechanism beneath had finally given out. He could feel it when he
turned the dial---no resistance, no click of engagement, just loose
metal rotating on a worn spindle. The speakwrite was still functioning,
but without the regulator, its transcription rate was unpredictable. The
machine had become unreliable.

Unreliable equipment should be reported. There were forms for
this---Form 27B, Equipment Malfunction Report, filed in triplicate with
the Technical Maintenance Division. The form would be processed. A
technician would be assigned. The speakwrite would be repaired or
replaced. The system would function as the system was designed to
function.

But Form 27B required an explanation of how the malfunction had
occurred. And explanations invited questions about usage patterns. And
questions about usage patterns could lead to reviews of productivity,
examinations of work habits, inquiries into why a clerk had waited three
months to report a failing regulator.

Three months of adaptation. Three months of working around a problem
instead of reporting it. The Party did not approve of adaptation. The
Party approved of procedure.

Arthur looked at the dial in his hand. It had come off entirely now---a
small metal disc, perhaps two centimeters across, with a worn edge where
his thumb had pressed it thousands of times. The surface was grooved for
grip, but the grooves had been smoothed by years of use. It weighed
almost nothing. It was the kind of thing you might find on the floor and
not bother to pick up.

He should put it back. He should file Form 27B. He should follow
procedure.

Instead, Arthur slipped the dial into his pocket.

The gesture was automatic, unthinking---the same gesture a man might
make when picking up a coin from the street or pocketing a pen that had
rolled off a desk. The dial was in his pocket before he had consciously
decided to put it there. His hand had moved without consulting his mind.

He stared at the speakwrite. The grille waited for his voice. The
machine hummed, ready to transcribe, its rate now fluctuating between
fast and slow with no way to control it. The paper in the output tray
was blank, waiting for words that would become the truth.

Arthur reached into his pocket and touched the dial. The metal was warm
from the machine, warm from his hand. A small thing. A broken thing. A
thing that had no value and no use.

He left it in his pocket and returned to work.

#

Without the regulator, Arthur had to speak more slowly, pausing between
phrases to let the machine catch up. His corrections took longer. His
productivity dropped. By the midmorning break, he had completed only
seven rectifications instead of his usual twelve.

No one noticed. No one said anything. The Records Department hummed
around him---speakwrites clattering in their cubicles, pneumatic tubes
sighing as they carried documents to unknown destinations, the
telescreen reading statistics in its fruity voice. Each clerk in each
cubicle performed the same work in the same way, and if one clerk was
slower than usual, the system absorbed the difference. The system
absorbed everything.

Arthur took his break in the corridor outside the department, standing
by a window that looked out over the city. London sprawled beneath him
in its eternal gray---rooftops patched with corrugated iron, bomb
craters filled with rubble and fireweed, the Ministry of Peace rising
white and massive to the south. A helicopter drifted between the
buildings, too far away to identify, its rotors catching the pale light.
The sky was the color of old newspaper.

The corridor was empty. Most clerks took their breaks in the canteen,
where the telescreen's programs provided approved entertainment and the
coffee substitute was at least warm. Arthur preferred the corridor. The
telescreen here showed only the standard display---Big Brother's face,
the slogans, the time---and its volume was lower. The hum was still
there, the perpetual background noise of surveillance, but it was
quieter here. A man could almost think in the corridor.

The dial pressed against his thigh through the thin fabric of his
overalls.

He should not have taken it. The dial was Ministry property, part of a
Ministry machine, subject to Ministry regulations regarding equipment
and maintenance. Removing it was not theft---the dial was broken,
useless, worth nothing---but it was irregular. And irregularity was
noticed. Irregularity was filed. Irregularity was remembered.

But no one had seen him take it. The dial had simply come off in his
hand, and his hand had simply put it in his pocket, and now it was
there, a small secret pressing against his leg.

Arthur looked down at London. Somewhere in those streets, the Thought
Police were watching. Somewhere in those buildings, informants were
listening. The city was a machine for surveillance, every telescreen an
eye, every neighbor a potential witness. And yet there were gaps.
Moments when no one was watching. Spaces too small to matter, too
insignificant to monitor.

The dial was in one of those spaces. Hidden in plain sight.

The break ended. Arthur returned to his speakwrite and continued his
corrections. The machine's irregular rhythm forced him to adapt his
speech patterns, pausing in new places, emphasizing different syllables.
His voice sounded strange to his own ears---the voice of a man speaking
around an obstacle.

By the end of the day, he had completed nineteen rectifications. Three
fewer than his quota.

He filed his daily report with the numbers exactly as they were. There
was a space on the form for explanations of reduced productivity, but
Arthur left it blank. Explanations invited questions. Questions invited
attention. Attention was the last thing he wanted.

He walked home through streets that smelled of coal smoke and wet stone,
the dial in his pocket tapping against his leg with each step.

#

That evening, Arthur sat in his single chair and held the dial up to the
light.

The telescreen murmured behind him---a program about the capture of
Eurasian spies in the Midlands, their confessions extracted and
broadcast for the education of all. The spies had been planning
sabotage. The spies had been working for Goldstein. The spies would be
dealt with appropriately. Arthur kept his face toward the screen, his
expression neutral, but his hands were in his lap, and in his hands was
the dial.

It was ordinary. A simple mechanical component, mass-produced in some
factory in the industrial zones, installed in speakwrites across the
Ministry. Thousands of them, tens of thousands, all identical, all
performing the same function in the same way.

But this one was his.

The thought should not have mattered. The Party did not recognize
personal property---everything belonged to the collective, held in trust
for the good of all. A man's overalls were assigned by the Party. A
man's flat was assigned by the Party. A man's labor, his time, his
thoughts---all belonged to the Party, to be used as the Party saw fit.

The dial was different. The dial was broken, discarded, worthless. The
Party had no use for it. The Party would not miss it. The dial existed
in a space the Party did not occupy---the space of things too small to
matter, too insignificant to control.

Arthur turned it over in his hands. The worn grooves. The smooth edge.
The weight of it, almost nothing, barely there.

He had owned things before. As a child---but he could not remember
childhood clearly, only fragments, images that might have been real or
might have been dreams. There had been something, once. A toy, perhaps,
or a book with colored pictures. Something that had been his alone,
before the Party had taught him that nothing was his alone, that
ownership was a symptom of the old world, the world of capitalism and
exploitation and slavery.

The dial was not ownership. The dial was just a thing in his pocket, a
broken piece of metal that would be thrown away if anyone found it.

But it felt like ownership. It felt like something that was his.

The telescreen's program ended. The news began---victories on the
Malabar Front, production increases in the textile factories, the
successful completion of another phase of the Ninth Three-Year Plan.
Arthur watched with the appropriate attention, his face properly
engaged, his posture correct.

The dial went back into his pocket. He had put it there without
thinking, the gesture already becoming automatic.

#

(Cont.)