The Sunflower

It isn’t a question of us versus them, it isn’t as simple as that. When there are no clear boundaries there’s no way of knowing upon which side people stand. This isn’t a football match, it isn’t United v City, people don’t wear their team colours and anyway, there aren’t only two teams.

Anyone could be a friend and anyone could be an enemy. Who could you trust? Family? Lifelong friends? Colleagues? Strangers? All as likely as each other to turn on you at the drop of a hat or be like-minded folk you could trust with you life. How had it come to this? How had paranoia and cynicism replaced community and trust? Why did we have to keep our mouths closed and our thought to ourselves? Take the man staring at me on the tram, has he seen something in the way I sit or my mannerisms? Has he recognised a kindred spirit or an archenemy? Has he guessed my allegiances from the way I run my hand through my hair or the way I caught his eye and then guilty looked away? Is he even looking at me or is he staring into space trying to hide his own ticks and idiosyncrasies that might give him away as a traitor or a loyalist?

The beauty of our society is everyone looks the same. We all wear the uniform, so whether we’ve been down the pit or interrogating suspects, by the time we ride the tram or cross the road there is no telling us apart. You never discuss your job, never - I don’t even know what my wife does. She goes to work. I go to work, the man staring at me on the tram goes to work. But what we do when we get there is a mystery. I know what maybe 7 other people do; those I share an office with, but even then I can’t be exactly sure. Once they are hunched over their desks, who knows what they are up to.

Even the police wear the same clothes as us, only identifying themselves on a needs-must basis. That means that everyone could be the police or maybe no one is. Maybe there’s no need for police anymore. I tried to remember the last time I saw a police officer, I couldn’t. But when you suspect everyone of being the police, and when the punishments are so draconian, you tow the line no matter how little the chance of getting caught or how loud your brain yells that it all stinks to high heaven.

You never actually see the clashes, the riots, the arrests or the punishments. Well, not in the flesh, only on the news and in the papers. Opposition groups fighting each other, police versus demonstrators, police versus police - a whirligig of violence that fuels suspicion and paranoia. People go missing but only friends of friends, never anyone you actually know. I’m pretty sure it’s all government propaganda but there’s a nagging doubt and it’s that seed of doubt that the government water and nourish until it grows into a sunflower of fear and mistrust.

Life’s okay, we have jobs and money and consumer goods. People want for nothing except freedom of expression, freedom to think for themselves. And let’s face it as long as, football, fantasy, soaps and sex fill our TV screens, then only the few care about freedom of expression. Beer’s cheap, dogs’re cheaper and the state-run brothels cheaper again, (maybe that’s where my wife works, who knows?) It all means that fairly soon the masses won’t have an original thought even if they were allowed one.

It’s a quite brilliant system really. The only problem is the people like me; those who fight the state from the confines of our own minds. And because the system is so good, no one knows how many like me there are. And that one flaw irritates the hell out of the person who devised the whole thing in the first place.  I know that for a fact, because the creator was me.  

Enjoyed this? Why not buy my novel, Maggie's Milkman? Details HERE.