The New Order

“My name is Amelia Whitby. I’m twenty-six years old, and I live in England. I’ve been here for fourteen days…” another shaky mark on the wall, and Amelia completed her ritual. She paid her usual attention to thoughts of her family: A mother named Jasmine, a father named Peter, a sister named Iris and two brothers named Sam and Tom. She paid attention to her friend Jamie, and her friend Lucy, and then to her cat Whiskers. And then she opened her eyes, and checked the level of the sun through the small chink in the rocks.

Amelia lived in what historical people would have called a utopian society. Life was not as it was ten years ago. Even five years ago, before the Great War, there was nothing like the control of today. It had been chaos, carnage, but the world had pulled through it thanks to the leadership of The Few. There was no crime, for people respected the rules. There was no poverty, because everyone respected the rules. There was no pain, because there was medicine for everything. No-one was sick, and the planet was healthy.

Life, for all its facets, was perfect in every way.

So why, then, had Amelia found herself stuck in a small cave, with only a small chink to look through each day, a small gap which gave her just enough drinking water from the freshwater lake outside, and enough small fish to keep her alive? How had she been so lucky in her misfortune?

“My name is Amelia Whitby. I’m twenty-six years old, and I live in England. I’ve been here for twenty-nine days.” Another mark on the wall, neatly aligned with the others. Her marks spanned just half of one of the walls. She sat back, and paid some attention to her memories: her mother, Jasmine; her father, Peter; her siblings, Iris, Sam and Tom; and her friends, Jamie and Lucy.

The Life Amelia led had been perfect. She’d had a perfect education, learning all about the world around her – sciences, earth lessons, citizenship lessons, mental arithmetic, language lessons and history. Severely redacted history, missing out large portions of events which painted The Few in a bad light. She knew the world’s history was severely redacted because she’d found a book in a library, down a small back street, when she went on holiday to Paris City. The State of France had been her exchange trip to learn High French, and she’d explored every inch of it in the six weeks she had there. Paris City held none of the ghosts of Old Paris, but this library was filled with twenty books, spanning a few decades, both in English and French. Amelia had sat for a few hours reading, and discussing with the owner of the library in hushed French what had actually happened.

The World Government had kept it quiet that each State of the World had once had its own government, and was not considered a state. As English, French and German became the common languages spoken by every World Citizen, other languages such as Danish, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian had died out. Russia had piqued Amelia’s interest, but her time had run out, and so she’d had to leave her reading there. But Russia was apparently a Fallen State, she learned when she did her research. Russia had become part of the Arctic, known as the Extended Glacier.

Amelia learned that lots of States had once formed the Earth, but the World Government brought them all together and made them peaceful. Under the World Government, Earth was in its longest period of peace, without a single conflict in any State.

“My name is Amelia Whitby. I am twenty-six years old and I live in England. I’ve been here for one hundred and five days.” Another neat mark on the wall, the neatness of that multiple of five sending a shiver down Amelia’s spine. She paid some attention to her memories: her mother Jasmine; her father Peter; and her siblings, Iris, Sam and Tom.

Amelia had learned that The World had been vastly different to how it used to be. In the Old Order, there was conflict, warring between States, and plenty of conflict. Pollution had been rife, and over-consumption led to a need for deforestation. Parts of the Earth were out of bounds, heavily guarded for security because those parts of the Earth contained highly-toxic radiation from the Great War. Those places were not habitable, and for the moment had to be contained. Forests replanted and rebuilt, but the World Government would survive.

The advent of the War came, and with it a large celebration and the implementation of a new Network of Interest, or an ‘Inter-net’ as the World Government called it. A series of sites which users could consult for the World Order, for the history of the Old Order, and for any day-to-day information they might need. It was revolutionary, and made information easier and clearer to understand.

With the ‘Inter-net’, inevitably there came a deeper aspect to it – the Network of Darker Interests, or the ‘Dark-Net’, as users named it. The World Government security couldn’t see any of it, but Amelia was smart, and she found a way in. There were cracks in the coding, and her lessons in school had taught her about those cracks, and how to find them. Her computing course had only taken place for six months, but she’d grasped it well. At the age of twenty, she was a whizz with computing and the ‘Inter-net’.

Amelia’s discovery of the Dark-Net gave her a wealth of information surrounding the Old Order, and what life was like back then. Languages, countries, dialects, cultures… all of it different and unique. Nothing like the regimented life they all led.

Photos depicted gatherings, where citizens (or ‘people’, as they were simply known back then) didn’t need to socially-distance. People of different colour and creed kissed and hugged, and there were protests for the smallest things in the streets, people carrying signs with slogans on that would now be punishable by a Termination. Rainforests covered the region called ‘South America’ as well as a continent – whatever that was – called ‘Asia’. Amelia drank in the information, until her Inter-net quota was used for the day.

“My name is Amelia Whitby. I’m twenty-seven years old, from England. I’ve been here for three hundred days.” Another neat mark on the wall, aligning neatly with an exposed brick. Amelia sat back, and paid some time to her thoughts of her mother, Jasmine, and her Father, Peter, and her siblings, Iris, Sam and Tom. She remembered how she ran, and ran some more, as the dark figures chased her. Who were they? What did they want?

The Great War had been the war to end all wars. The superpowers of the world were at odds, and the tension across the globe was rising. There were protests against the use of a ‘nuclear’ powered weapon, but that seemed to be the biggest threat. Accounts of the war written by citizens of the last countries to be taken off the face of the earth were desperate, resigning themselves to the end of time. The end of the world was here, they said, what a sorry life they’d led. Children burned in the streets, their skin peeling from napalm which kept people inside. Nuclear had been used in the American states, but the meaning of that wasn’t clear. It was in the West, wherever that was.

The climate was another disaster which had added to the demise of the Old Order. Fossil fuels pumped into the atmosphere had melted the ice caps, leading to a loss of various islands and drowning millions. Flooding and terrain loss brought disease and famine to those who survive, and riots soon broke out as those islands and coastal areas lost became lawless. Animals died out en masse. Amelia’s heart broke, looking at the strange creatures which had apparently once walked the planet.

Amelia’s favourite pre-Order animal was the dog, one of three animals to have survived the Beginning. Dogs were kind, were good, and were loyal. Another animal Amelia loved was the cat, which had been brought from the Beginning, too. The third was the fish, which lived wild in lakes. The Dark-Net claimed that once the Waters had been full of fish, enough to sustain the world for a time. Overfishing had reduced populations so much that certain types of fish became almost impossible to afford, and so their carcasses rotted before anyone could buy and eat them. There were thousands of fish types, too, far more than the common tuna and salmon that bred themselves in a sustainable cycle in the lakes. Amelia enjoyed looking at the fish, and she enjoyed eating them, too. Three fish per person per week was the Rule, but she only ate one.

Amelia spent hours on the Dark-Net, looking at how life used to be. Why did the Great War start? Amelia’s Inter-Net quota for the day ran out, and so she went to perform her exercises.

“My name is Amelia Whitby. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I’m from England. I’ve been here for four-hundred-and-twenty-six days.” Another mark on the wall. She was running out of space. Every wall was covered now, except for a small amount where she slept. She paid some time to thinking about her mother, Jasmine, and her father Peter… and then, she pondered the question.

The Great War started when the first nuclear button was pressed. In a world fraught with disease and famines, much of the world was already lost. Ireland had vanished in the Great Flood of ’42. Scotland’s peripheral Isles had also gone, closely followed by the rest of Scotland and Wales the year after. England’s peak district remained, a small island on the vast Atlantic Ocean. The English Channel was no longer a thing. Denmark was gone, as were large chunks of Sweden, Norway and Finland, mainly at the coast. Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Spain had lost swathes of coastline -Portugal had disappeared. Italy had also succumbed to sea levels, but not as quickly. Mainland Europe remained. Chaos quickly descended as either side of Europe – America, Russia and Korea – shot missiles at each other. Korea and the rest of southern Asia was blown off the map entirely. Russia was barely touched, as all of America’s missiles were shot down over Siberia, or hit Korea instead. Instead, Russia’s downfall was brought about by a land war, fought by neighbouring countries who’d had enough. The frigid conditions in Russia had pushed people further to the borders, and according to one account ‘killing the Russian population off was like shooting fish in a barrel’.

After a month of war, the world stopped fighting and laid down its arms. America was no longer habitable, having been decimated by nuclear weaponry. The fallout wasn’t quite enough to cross the Atlantic ocean properly, not at any strength to hurt Europe anyway. The Eastern side of Russia had taken a hit, though, and was uninhabitable, too. Japan had sunk years before, as had New Zealand, and Australia was simply too hot for anyone to live there – a burnt and barren wasteland constantly on fire. Heavily-populated countries like India, and poorer countries like Kazakhstan and Afghanistan and their neighbours, were wiped out by war. Most of mainland Europe was lucky, and survived with minimal loss, but disease quickly started picking off the weak and the vulnerable.

Left in the wake of the destruction, as calm settled, was roughly two million ‘superhumans’, including an elite three percent at the top who were clever enough to start putting things back together again.

The history lesson made Amelia feel sick to her core. Images of burning children and nuclear explosions seared themselves straight into her heart. The world she lived in wasn’t one of peace, she felt. She didn’t believe the manifesto every child received at birth. She didn’t understand where the government had come from at all… but her Inter-Net quota for the day was over, and so she went to sleep.

“My name is Amelia Whitby. I’m twenty…six? Seven. I’m twenty seven years old, and I’m from England. I’ve been here for six hundred days even.” Amelia looked up at the cramped marks on the walls. Six hundred days. She spent time thinking about Jasmine, her mother, and Peter, her father. And then, she thought about the Turn.

The Few were considered to be the best of all Citizens. An elite set of people who understood how the world ought to be led. The Few were seldom seen in public, because they were busy creating Rules and dealing with Breakers. Breakers who didn’t wish to follow the Rules. Amelia had always respected the Rules, following each one diligently each day.

Rule #1 – Citizens shall always tell the truth.

Rule #2 – Citizens shall always remain peaceful.

Rule #3 – Citizens shall maintain a two (2) metre distance from all other Citizens at all times.

Rule #4 – Citizens shall remain faithful to the Order

A)    Using regular prayer and/or sacrifice, as the Citizen sees fit

B)    By following every Rule each day, and

C)    By reciting the Rules in their totality before morning activities commence.

Rule #5 – No Citizens may hold any kind of unauthorised gathering of any kind, of more than four people.

There were in excess of one hundred Rules to follow each day. Days themselves started with a pledge to The Few and the New Order that one shall remain faithful to the New Order, a sacrifice or a prayer, and then a recital of the rules. Morning activities included communal cleaning, teaching of Minor Citizens, or physical activity. It really depended on the rota.

The day of The Turn, Amelia eschewed her morning activity in favour of unauthorised research. Her mind had not stopped turning the night before, and as such she hadn’t received her allotted nine hours’ sleep. She accessed the Inter-Net using a security code breaker, and continued her search for information well into the evening. By nightfall, she knew everything. Every aspect of control The Few had, about the Terminations of Breakers who break the Rules. About the destruction of previous history. About the creation of a New Order, of the states named after the countries they’d replaced. About the eugenics that happened with almost every single generation that wasn’t considered ‘perfect’. Amelia felt sick. This wasn’t life, or freedom. This was a dictatorship.

And Amelia Whitby knew far too much.

She felt the presence of the Keepers behind her, and she started to run (violating Rule #15 – Citizens shall walk, never run), a small bag of supplies strapped to her back. She ran and ran, dodging the Keepers as she went. She made her way across the England State boundaries, running Polar North into the State of Belgium. But she didn’t make it too far; Belgian State Keepers were waiting for her. She ran aimlessly now, until she stumbled across a small cavern in a valley. She went to the back of the cavern and bunkered down.

The light from Amelia’s torch lit up the small cavern. She blinked her eyes as she woke up from her usual deep slumber. She reached as she did every morning for her marker rock, and rubbed sleep from her eyes. The sight that met her made her stomach plummet.

The walls were completely bare. Every marking gone… all except for one. With a shaking hand, Amelia reached up and made a mark next to it.

“My name is Amelia Whitby. I’m twenty-six years old… and I’ve b-been here… for… two days…”

“Amelia Whitby is still contained. Amelia Whitby is no longer a threat. Amelia Whitby will forget. Amelia Whitby can be Terminated.” A button pressed in a control room had wiped the walls clean, and had woken Amelia Whitby from her gassed slumber with another gas. A beady pair of eyes watched her process the bare walls. A smile formed in front of crooked teeth as she made a mark next to the natural crack in one of the stones on the wall. Her spirit broken, He listened to her cracked voice, and turned off his screen.

Another Breaker had been successfully neutralised.