2071 - Big Brother Watches From On High

2017 - year zero They loaned to the poor, who cannot repay. They stole from the old, who cannot recover. They sold our future, for better or worse and made our children pay. They schooled arithmetic to be feared. They tutored trust in suited men. They taught the poor were lazy and spawned the idle rich from their toil. They took our precious things and sold them cheap to fake friends. They made money by printing money and delayed the reckoning. They funded phoney wars to turn our attention whilst they picked our pockets and allowed millions of strangers to die. They brainwashed faith in impotent leaders and privately castrated them. No more! Protests! Uprising! Revolution! Injustice washed away in blood. Ours and theirs and the innocent. Paradise from sacrifice. A promised land from a land of empty promises. 2020 - tech Tablet touchscreen tele-screens. Cameras watching. Knowing your location and when. Centillion search engine recording preferences and thoughts. Predictive text correcting thought crime. Denouncing. Data mining. Trending counter revolutionary memes. Finding patterns for state cauterisation. 2025 - ghost of O'Brian When the oppressed grow numb to the pain and are blind from where it comes they no longer care. Stale bread and brassy circuses are all they need to ignore the strings and pulleys and levers and trap doors that control their free will. Tyranny behind a closed curtain. An illusion of prosperity and happiness. Plastic utopia. If you want a vision of the present imagine a boot stamping on a smiling face. Forever. 2037 - preface to the 20th year newspeak dictionary - inner party edition Unlisting of ungood words complete ahead of the five year plan. Archaic terms useful for thought correction: "Overseas contingency operations" "Targeted killings" "Regime change" "Collateral damage" "Enhanced interrogation techniques" "Extraordinary rendition" "Black sites" remain in the dictionary. Their definitions unprinted. Their meanings self evident as defined by the party. Doublethink fluidity. Doubleplus good. 2054 - ministry of truth haikus Freedom's slavery. Eternal warfare's peacetime. Strengthened ignorance. Eurasia hatred. Control past, control future. Eastasia hatred. Doublethink dogma. Contradictory beliefs. Two plus two is five. 2071 - nirvana Forbidden lovers knowing their love is doomed. They are the dead. Sitting under curfewed stars. Miniluv satellites twinkling as they fly past, metallic eyes seeing everything. They look up at the face of their leader immortally blasted into the moon's surface by atomics and thought criminals. Reprogrammed to serve then scattered in a vacuum graveyard, buried in moon dust The inner party's heavenly fortress impregnable, unreachable, eternal. Its chill moonlight casting shadows against steel and concrete. They hold hands for the last time. Big Brother watching from on high. Watching them. And watching you. Notes: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever" is the original quote from 1984 "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength" is the original quote from 1984 The book 1984 was so called because George Orwell wrote it in 1948 and simply switched the last two digits. In this poem I switched the last two digits of 2017 to make 2071 Tele-screens were the televisions in 1984 that were watching you "They are the dead" is a twist of the original quote "we are the dead" said by both Winston and Julia just before they were arrested "Doublethink" is the ability to hold contradictory beliefs "Miniluv" is newspeak for ministry of love, where the thought police work "Centillion" is 1 followed by 303 zeros. The centillion search engine is the party's replacement for google. Google was likewise named after a googol which is 1 followed by 100 zeros "2 + 2 = 5" is an example of dogma that the party might state as fact in 1984 "Big Brother is watching you" is the slogan on propaganda posters in 1984 Written 3rd March 2017 - or year zero Entry to "1984 or 2017" contest