Hey Hey.
xXx
I'm guessing this might be a little unexpected, but today I'd like to show you something I wrote.
I recently read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and really enjoyed it. I think it's the kind of book you can- and should- go back to at a later date though, so I'm not too worried if I missed something. I sometimes worry I haven't 'got' every little detail in a book, or even a film for that matter (I'm constantly asking my Beloved to explain movie plots to me!) but I've realised that I read for pleasure, not for study and so, as long as I'm enjoying the story, who cares if a few bit and bobs here and there fly over my head? I can always go back to it another time if I so wish. Constantly re-reading complex paragraphs disrupts the flow of the story and you just end up losing where you were.
Anyway (phew, Ctrl Z just saved my life!)
A couple of weeks after finishing Fahrenheit I found myself, one day, feeling a bit uninspired. I'm a singer/songwriter at heart but haven't had the inclination to write or play much at all for a long while now (I try not to worry, reminding myself that Sting had a 10 year period of writers' block apparently!). I simply needed something to do, and for some reason that something turned out to be this piece of writing. I had the urge to write but I didn't know what, and somehow this came out.
Now, this evidently isn't an original idea and I'm probably not going to do anything with it (I may not even add to it, let alone finish it) it's basically something I did when I was bored; but it exists, it's a thing, and I'm quite pleased with it. So seeing as how it's a piece of writing, and pieces of writing are meant to be read, I thought I'd put it to you guys, just to read, if you like.
So here it is, no title or anything, a piece of Fahrenheit 451 fan fiction. Enjoy, (or don't!)
xXx
It's in there. In my bag. Silently.
Making no fuss, just... laying there. Shoved in at a moment's notice,
packed away carefully after much deliberation, included by accident
along with a pile of other paperwork. It shouldn't be in there, but
it is. It shouldn't be mine, but it is. For the time being at least.
***
I stole a book way back in 2010 when I
was just a kid. Books were pretty commonplace back then, but it was
beginning to become somewhat looked down upon to be reading them.
Sure everyone owned books, but no one actually read them, and if they
did I doubt many people admitted it. Amongst kids it was seen as
geeky and uncool, amongst adults I could only wonder.
Now days the winds of democracy blow
chilly round our shoulders, most of us realise there isn't any
now, but they still brand us as a democratic society. That's
how is it now: us and them. I used to work in a school but left under
cover of proverbial darkness, when all the riots and strikes were
hogging so much of the limelight that no one cared to notice an
ordinary, everyday resignation for 'purposes of change of abode'
being casually handed in. The very day after I was gone.
Did I heck change my place of abode, I
stayed right smack bang where I always have been, all my life, and
always will be until I run out of time, until I drown in a
treacherous ocean of words.
I stayed right there and read. I read
everything I had, everything I'd stolen, but especially that one
little book from the naughties.
They'll find me one day, sat here with
this book in my hand. Sat here, taking-in type. They'll find me, but
I don't care- we all have a time to take leave of this world as it
is, why should I hold out for a later date than anyone else? A later
date than is already marked out for me, especially set aside for the
occasion? They may already have found me and just be waiting it out
for official purposes. Funny all their documents should still be
hand-written. Hand written warrants for arrest, hand written death
sentences; when the rest of us aren't even permitted to read the
familiar typeface of our childhood, let alone put ink to paper whether
by print or by pen. They must think they're hilarious.
When I was at school the future looked
as though it would evolve books out of the equation, not
prohibit them. This was their idea exactly. Let us think it was
natural progress when all along it was a dirty great scheme. Screens
and tablets of all kinds began to infiltrate our lives, both in the
classroom and at home. The traditional keyboard was gradually usurped
by the touch screen variety, and slowly but surely the whole act of
inputting language manually was replaced by voice activation and
registering, removing any need of knowledge of the written word at
all.
This was technology progressing they
told us, this was technology making our lives easier, helping us to
do less and less ourselves every day. Soon, they said, we wouldn't
even have to speak aloud to communicate our commands to our machines.
Children forgot how to spell, teachers
found they had no need to remind them, the parents that cared tried
to revive the old traditions but then came the ban.
No books. Bookshops were forcibly
closed and compensated, along with an apology for the advancement of
modern technology; schools ran completely on-screen, there was a book
and paperwork amnesty with local drop off points in every
neighbourhood, and it was all hushed up and branded as a new
technological dawn.
At first those who didn't play along
nicely were given discrete cash incentives, when that stopped working
they began to be arrested and labelled as rebels. As time went on and
the minds of the masses easily clouded over with the delusion that
this was normal progress, the rebels began to make problems for the
authorities. They started to stir peoples' memories, people's
intellects, tried to remind them how things were before, tried to
explain to them how this was all part of a huge government plan to
strip us of freedom of expression. Some came to their senses and
joined forces, forming underground parties and holding secret
meetings, others remained blind, and still others became afraid of
the rebels for reasons they didn't even understand.
Homes were barricaded against the
outside world and its unknown enemies. Frustrated, the rebels
resorted to violence, gaining themselves a reputation and creating,
in due course, a real cause for concern. Civil war was not an
impossibility.
***
I'm sitting here now, in a cafe. A
place were people used to meet up and discuss things, whether
intelligent or banal. Now they only talk banal. A
place where people used to sit and relax with a coffee and a book.
Now there is only the coffee- and it isn't that good on its own.
I'm waiting for someone. I feel like a
clandestine dealer. I am a clandestine dealer. Except it's not
drugs or counterfeit treasures we're exchanging, it's thoughts.
When he gets here I'll slip him the
book under the table, that precious little book, we'll chat the
banal stuff, we'll sip our tasteless brown slop and part
ways, the book travelling on with him.
I am one of the rebels.
***
When I was about 8 I remember going to
bed one night and hearing an awful banging noise downstairs. I got up
and ran down into the living room to find my parents knocking nails
into wooden planks placed across the inside of the front door.
'What are you making all that noise for
Daddy?'
'Oh it's just to keep the bad people
out honey.'
My frightened expression occasioned a
different response from my mother,
'The man on the news says we must make
our doors and windows stronger, darling. We'll buy new ones soon but
until we can afford it, this will have to do.'
I was sent back to bed with a reeling
mind and no further explanation. Who were these bad people, and why
did they want to break into my house?
Over the following years I learnt to
keep my mouth closed on the subject of the 'bad' people. If I asked
about them, my father would try to change the subject or my mother
would give me some soft excuse of an answer. I could never get any
concrete information. I held on tight to anything I caught on the
news, although I was always sent out of the room when the headlines
were announced on TV. I used to hide in the hall instead of going to
play in my room as I was told to do, peaking through the gap at the
front room door hinge and straining my ears to listen. I could
understand precious few of the words on-screen as I hadn't had an
English lesson since the age of 7, but by the time I was 14 I had
gathered enough tit bits to work out that books were bad and therefore
illegal, and that the 'bad' people wanted the books back. It seemed
that the 'bad' people wanted other people to join them and sometimes
broke into houses to force them to listen. I wasn't sure why the
others wouldn't listen, why books were even bad in the first place,
or why they had gone away; but I was interested.
The day came when I was approached. Far
from being something fearful, I was waiting for this.
A friend of mine at school put down her
tablet one day in social studies class (we were 'learning' about
etiquette in the work place: never question your superiors, never
write anything out by hand, never read aloud in a work environment...
) As the teacher left the room on a quick errand she leant over to
me.
'Hey' She whispered, 'Have you ever met
a rebel?'
'What? What are you talking about that
for? And here!'
'So you know about them then?'
'Not much, my folks do all they can to
keep me from finding out what this is all about, but I know
something's going on, do you know what it is?'
She looked at me, a kind of vague
relief and hope came to her eyes.
'Meet me after school by the gates...'
The teacher came back in
'Erm, right erm, yeah, we'll walk home
together.'
We did walk home together and all the
time she was agitated. We got to the end of my street and she pulled
me back behind a tree, out of sight of the glaring sitting room
windows.
'Here.' She said rummaging in
her backpack, 'My boyfriend gave me this.' And she produced a book.
'What on earth Gemma? You could get us
killed!'
'Don't be so dramatic!'
'Well arrested!'
'Look do you want it or not?'
'I don't understand, I thought you were
going to explain this whole thing to me.'
'I don't understand it completely myself,
but take it will you!'
'Why?'
'Well do you want it?'
'I don't know'
'Come on, just take it!'
'Is it very bad?'
'I guess. But maybe it's a good kind of
bad, my boyfriend seems to think so.'
'Does he know what's going on then,
like properly?'
'I think so.'
'What should I do with it?'
'Read it for goodnesss' sake!'
'I can't read'
'Well learn!'
I hesitated. I felt this was an
important moment in my life, but I didn't quite understand why. I
knew I had to take the book, but I was scared by all the things I
gleaned over the years. I knew it was bad. I didn't know why, but I
knew it was bad.
'Come on you'll have us locked up!'
'I, do you think I should!'
'Kate!'
She shoved it into my hands and closed
her satchel.
'See you tomorrow. Read.'
And she was gone.
