1985

CHAPTER I: STIRRINGS

I remembered seeing his face in the newspaper. Something stirred in me when I saw it. Not dissent, no. That was something I could not comprehend. Not then. But something was there. Disgust, perhaps. Or pity. Some revolting emotion that rose like bile and quickly sank back down into my gut where it settled for the next hour. By the time the clock struck 13, I had forgotten the source of my discomfort and moved to the telescreen, which was announcing the current standing of the war against Eurasia. Rations had been increased (praise Big Brother!) and Eurasian casualties were mounting. Victory was clearly imminent.

I turned off the TV that day feeling satisfied. But in my dreams— for rebellion always starts in the subconscious, buried deep below the rote societal rituals and self-imposed boundaries— I heard his name spoken aloud, from the mustached lips of the poster that hung over my bed. Big Brother.

Winston Smith.

When I awoke the next morning, I had forgotten.

There were, after all, larger concerns. Most notably, my job in the Ministry of Truth. A name change here, a date change there. So-and-so is no longer in the favor of the party, and of course we are at war with Eastasia, not Eurasia. What a foolish mistake to make.

There was always, of course, a lingering doubt. I could’ve sworn, just last night…

But such concerns passed quickly. My job of censorship and revision was no more complex or morally wrong than adding a period to a run-on sentence or adding a capital letter to a name. I was an editor. Such things were necessary.

At the end of the day, I’d dump the out-of-date papers into the Memory Holes and go home.

I always slept soundly.

That was the advantage afforded to me by conformity. I did not need to dwell on the moral quandary of changing history, or stress over the ever-shrinking rations. After all, Big Brother had our best interests at heart. And rations were always going up. War was always closer to being won. Wages were steadily increasing… as long as I kept changing the numbers to fit.

Life was good. Big Brother was good. Oceania was good.

But after seeing Winston Smith’s face underneath the headline “Traitor,” my dreams were never quite the same. Day after day, week after week, his face, his name, seemed to haunt me, for reasons that I could not comprehend. I began to call him my Dream-Self, since I could no longer remember why he seemed so familiar or where I knew him from. The newspaper from that day was long gone, sunk deep down into the memory hole. Both literally and metaphorically. My brain was built on short term scaffolding, suspended over an endless pit of long term memories that had sunk into oblivion.

In my Dream Life, as Winston, I saw myself doing things I’d never dreamed of doing. Evil things. Traitorous things. All with Winston’s face instead of my own. At first, I hated him. Feared him, and all that he represented. The dangerous potential that he spawned deep within my own brain.

It was worse than rebellion. Worse than a betrayal of my mind and government. It was a betrayal of my own sense of self. The man named Winston who haunted my dreams was middle aged. I was 25, only a step away from my school years. He was a dissenter. I was… well, at the time I’d convinced myself I wasn’t.

But the key difference between us was the most damning of all.

He was a man.

I was a woman.

How could I see myself in a man? How could I, even in dreams, walk in the shoes of a man nearly twice my age?

It was unnatural, surely. But it was also impossible to deny. Somehow, as imperceptibly as air making its way into a vault, I had become the thing I hated most.

A traitor.

For two months I lived with that vile knowledge. Never acting on anything, of course— I was far too much of a coward for that— but the feelings were there. Alongside a new, forbidden desire.

At 25, the societal pressure to marry began to ramp up. Neighbors, coworkers, family members… all of them would wonder how on earth a pretty girl like you isn’t married yet?

Of course, the answer was always… complicated. Pre-marital intercourse was illegal, of course. But it was pretty much an unspoken rule that it happened. Even the Thought Police didn’t enforce it. It was enough of a threat that we knew they could.

I had quite a few boys try to get away with it. I always vehemently refused. I wasn’t in the mood. I wasn’t ready. We needed to get married first… all excuses, although it took being a traitor to realize that. All my vehement refusals were not, as it turned out, due to my unsealing loyalty to the party.

I didn’t like men.

But it goes deeper than that, doesn’t it, Amy?

Yes. Much, much deeper. With each day that passed, my traitorous mind dove deeper into its self-exploration. All the boys I’d dated… I’d never loved them, had I?

No. I’d wanted to be them. I was jealous of their short hair, the flat line of their chest, the Bob of the Adam’s apple in their throat.

I remembered being seven years old. Holding my father’s calloused hand, looking up in awe at the face of Big Brother.

“I want to be just like him when I grow up,” I’d said. My father laughed.

“Well, you can’t be him. No one can— he’s beyond any other man, after all. But perhaps you’ll find a good husband. One who acts the way Big Brother wants, provides for his family. That’s as good as it gets.”

I hadn’t been able to protest then. Hadn’t been able to explain that wasn’t what I’d meant.

Now, here I was.

A dissenter.

And worse.

A queer.

It was a word I’d heard muttered before. The crudest of insults. There had been many men and women executed on just the rumor that they were queer. Sleeping with another of the same sex? Preposterous. Becoming the other sex? That was truly vile. I’d watched a man executed after he was caught wearing his wife’s clothing. They let his body hang, lifeless, in the square for months. They killed him in his wife’s wedding dress. She was killed, too, but was at least spared the shame and indignity of being left on display.

I’d cheered with the rest as his rope had gone taut. Now the memory of it made me sick. I was just like him. A queer. A faggot. Good for nothing except burning.

Given another year, maybe another two, perhaps I would have dissented. Perhaps I would have shorn off my hair. Perhaps I would have even done the unthinkable and slept with another woman. Maybe I would have died the same way Winston did— tortured into submission before being put down like a stray dog.

But I did not have a year. I had three months. Three months of limbo, of treacherous thoughts and tormented dreams, nightmares of being tortured by a man with a thick brown mustache and a handsome face.

It happened during the Two Minutes Hate.

I always screamed the loudest. I imagined I was screaming at myself. YOU WORTHLESS CUNT. YOU FILTHY TRAITOR. DIRTY WHORE. YOU SLIMY, DISGUSTING, USELESS QUEE—

And then the bombs dropped.

Just that morning we’d been informed that we were closer to winning the war against Eurasia— it was Eurasia again, I noticed now that the names had always been changing— and now the Ministry of Truth was in ruins. My skin felt like it was being bathed in molten silver. Alarms that I’d never heard before were blaring.

The unthinkable had happened. Eurasia and Eastasia had suddenly begun an alliance. We were fighting a two-front— maybe even a three-front— war.

And they had bombed us. The bastards had actually bombed us.

I remember being in some kind of flying vehicle— a helicopter, maybe, with blades that sliced through the air like butter, or an alien spacecraft, whirring like it was powered by magic. Then I remember soldiers yelling unintelligibly. Then I remember another explosion.

By the time I came back to myself, the only thing I could think about was pain. In my face. In my arms. My feet. My legs. I could see patches of black crust on my stomach. Every inch of skin was either bandaged, bruised, or oozing a nauseating mix of pus and blood.

It was then that I saw the doctor’s faces for the first time.

These were not Oceania doctors. Their eyes were thin, and dark. Their hair was neatly trimmed, but in a vastly different style than the men I’d known from London. Their uniforms were different.

I was in Eastasia.