Happy Life

Freedom is what I enjoy every day: the freedom to love the Party, to worship the Party, and to support the Party throughout my day. My day should have gone normally- adhering to the Party’s rigorous waking time, and subsequently following their productive schedule to further the Party’s goals- were it not for that infernal locket. I have been happy my entire life: perhaps not at liberty to speak frivolously, but I have been able to enjoy the mandated free time provided to me by my gregarious benefactors: they can be constantly heard blaring from loudspeakers everywhere- in the walkway throng, my frenzied yet debilitating workplace, my incomprehensibly incommodious sleeping quarters, the awkward lavatories- and I cannot help but love every minute of it: as I walk through the clean bustling city, as I engage in my esteemed genial workplace, as I sleep and wake in my intimate personal quarter, as I use the unbelievably tidy lavatories.

My frustration does not stem from the seraphic gaze of the Party’s many cameras but rather from the troubling encounter I had recently: a young child- nay, a blasphemer- was shrieking psychotically, claiming that the Party gratuitously commits acts of great evil, and other deranged fantasies of the like. Before the banshee could be apprehended by nearby peacekeepers, it lunged towards me, screaming, and dirtying my clothing with its slobber and pitiful sniveling. It managed to plant a small metal cardioid attached to a thin chain in the neckline of the clothes the state graciously provided me before the peacekeepers were able to snatch the monster away and haul it to the border for reeducation: a program from which none have encountered those graduates of reeducation, as the Party relocates them to a different zone of our merciful society. The issue therein lay not with the incoherent babbles of the gremlin but with the aforementioned metal cardioid- though small enough to fit in my palm comfortably it acted as a container of sorts: not of any message or words of any kind, but of a smaller version of the ubiquitous posters dedicated to the Party found everywhere, and instead of glorious Party encouragement was what appeared to be a grinning female of my likeness carrying the child that was carried away. This junk should never have fallen upon me so inconspicuously, since the Party will think I am a traitor for not immediately reporting the little terrorist’s pointless memorabilia. Young or not, it should have known how dangerous the idea of family is: holding something- someone above the Party? Such a preposterous statement is nothing short of ridiculous- and yet this little monster’s made me think about it to no end. I had that blasted thing forced upon me for an entire day and it makes me wish I were the peacekeeper hauling that goblin away to reeducation, so that it could first receive punishment by my hand. The turbulent thoughts swirling incessantly in my mind ceaselessly tormenting me with thoughts of cradling the child in my arms- to quickly strangle it for what it’s done.

Perhaps if I explain my case before the adjudicator, they will understand my mistake instead of inappropriately labeling me as a corroborator? But the Party’s judgment is true and absolute, I cannot argue with the Party’s intellect and thus neither could I with its decisions! Its decisions are canonical beyond doubt, they are nothing short of truth without error- to argue against the Party’s ideas are to think lies, and thus only leads to wrongdoing; is not a perfect set of ideals always subject to imperfection by those tasked to embody them- could not I be pardoned for my sin, seeing as I have been a loyal and faithful member of the Party? This blasted boy has simply ruined everything- if only I could volunteer to assist in its punishment or reeducation: indeed, its reeducation would be a very appropriate place for me to be and in fact, the adjudicator should allow me to prove my utility to the Party by allowing me to reeducate this lost little mind back into the fold! Be that as it may, would the adjudicator allow me to speak in front of it, to make my own suggestions in place of what the Party has deemed the correct course of action, in what is so clearly a desperate attempt to avoid my necessary sequestration? Why must I torment myself with such impertinent frivolities when I know that the Party does need me for anything more than my designed role: clearly not thinking seeing as I have so poorly represented my own schemes even to myself, only to quickly dismantle them with either the basic pillars of science and rationality upon which the foundation of the Party’s ideas lay or obvious counterstatements that even an ignorant Party member would make!

I think that whatever mental atrophy afflicted the little brute of the other day has infected me as well- I have not been able to sleep nor perform my other tasks calmly or properly since that incident yesterday: I was reprimanded at work for not displaying my typical work ethic, I was oddly unable to make praise to the Party in my typical fervor- which also resulted in a reprimand- and I caught myself feeling something akin to disdain towards the Party. My mind is clearly damaged following the encounter, of this I have no doubt: I must be succumbing to some invisible plague perpetrated by the monster that makes me doubt my bond to the Party- my very happiness. I feel as if I lost something following this encounter, that I have neither been able to describe before nor since. Despite feeling as though I’ve lost this something, I have verily needed nothing since my first memory, as the Party has provided everything a human being could want and more: food, water, shelter, security, and happiness- what more could any sane person ever desire without becoming the embodiment of sin that the Party so vehemently warns us all of?

Presently verbose as I am in my meaningless ramblings, I resolved to surrender my Party membership a short time ago and resign myself to reeducation at the border as a good citizen should in these circumstances. I see now that this unhappiness I experience was not brought upon me by the monstrous child I encountered only yesterday, strictly speaking, but was a latent thought in me borne by some kind of deranged yearning for something that the Party likely forbids awakened by the fortunate incident that befell me. I know that the Party’s way is the only way, and thus I know I must seek reeducation, as I know that this is the only road to happiness. Nobody is told exactly what happens past the doors of the reeducation centers along the border and as I sit in the transport awaiting my admittance, I find myself in the unusual position of a lack of citizenship, and thus able to come to my own judgment of what happens behind the mysterious doors of the center.

Really, it doesn’t matter.

Regardless of what awaits me behind the doors of the center, I know that I will finally find the freedom I have been longing for.