Reformed

At The Beach

My job? I'm in sales, unfortunately. I sell all sorts of financial management solutions, via online vidicall marketing as almost all sales are nowadays. It's a career I came to later in life, one I started door-to-door after I'd discovered my gift for talking to people. It's not particularly interesting, but I'm good at it. Good enough that I have an employer who offers me full time hours – myself. Working for others is, in my opinion, for suckers. I'm in the minority in that sense. Most people have two or even three zero-hours... I mean, 'flexihours' jobs. The government says it's good for business, which by implication means it's good for us. Big business gets the convenience of a flexible workforce to whom they can offer extra hours to meet demand without worrying about the expense of overtime or a fixed cost of wages when business is slow; and as employees we don't have to worry about what happens when one employer makes us redundant because we'll still have an income. Not an income grand enough to actually live off, but enough that the government doesn't feel obliged to help you out by paying you any benefits – and that's what counts, right?

But today I've decided to take the day off; which is easy to do as we're all technically self-employed nowadays. Since the death of the unions everyone is considered a self-employed contractor, no matter how long you've been at a particular place of work or contributed towards a particular company. They owe you nothing, and increasingly that feeling is reciprocated. The harder you work the richer someone else gets, right? Fuck that. It's a warm summer's day near the end of the tourist season, and the beach is less than half an hour's walk from my home. The beach is a small one, not even a mile across from cliff-face to rock pools, and is one of my favourite places to visit when it's quiet.

The beach is nowhere near as full as it was just a week ago, when I wouldn't have considered coming near the place. There are only a few days left of the summer holidays, and almost all the voices I can hear have local accents. I put down my towel, unroll my Flex-e-reader and sit down. The breeze coming off the ocean is warm and pleasant, and I wonder how much reading I can get done before I doze off.

Out in the bay, a coal-black border security boat drops anchor. Every twenty minutes or so it drifts off to another spot, and waits there. Watching. It is one of the many measures now in place to protect 'us' from 'them'. 'They' are always trying to get here, to terrorise and intimidate; nobody questions why the boat spends more time facing the land than it does the sea.

Only five feet away from me a woman who appears to be in her late fifties plants her deckchair into the sand. Her grey hair is tucked up into her straw hat, and she carries her considerable bulk with the easy confidence of someone who's long since learned that it's not worth giving a fuck what anybody else thinks about it. Her pudgy grandson carries the portafridge with all their food and drinks inside it. Once she has finally sat down, out of breath and sweating, she unfolds her Flex-e-reader. It's a newer model than mine. I own a text-only reader, whereas hers telestreams the news live as it happens; reads all her books to her; and even tells her what she can watch on the 'net when she gets home. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to read than watch. I wish she'd turn it down a little though.

The first item on the news is the annual celebration of VT (Victory against Terrorism) day, with coverage live from London and New York, and statements from both governments praising the roles that BioPassports have had in maintaining public order. It is fifteen years since the war on terror was officially won, though the country remains in a state of 'alert awareness' against 'possible residual insurgents'. There is only the occasional terrorism-related arrest nowadays, which we are assured is as a result of the 'Pre-emptive Public Safety Measures' that remain in place. PPSMs mean that public order remains the top priority for politicians and the police alike. I don't know how much longer we'll have a police force, as such – every constabulary is contracted out to private companies and staffed largely by ex-forces and private security personnel. There's even talk of rebranding them to the 'civil army'. Anyway, ANPR (Automated Number Plate Recognition) and facial recognition cameras are used as the main means of enforcing the civic filtering system, determining who can access which city zones and when. Retinal scans, iris graphs and DNA profiling -the main components of the BioPassport- determine access to public transport and to 'TRAs' (Temporarily Restricted Areas). TRAs are usually used to decide where and when APPs (Approved Public Protests) can be held, a lengthy process taking sometimes up to six months. BioPassports have to be presented to officials beforehand when making an application to join any APP - which of course will be declined if you are convicted criminal, 'known troublemaker', or a 'suspected associate' of either. Joining an APP without official approval is considered a sign of an 'intention to commit a criminal or terrorist act', and subject to summary punishment by the courts. None of the major cities have seen a disruptive public demonstration in over a decade. In fact protests themselves are pretty rare, now that the media has made us all aware of the financial cost of doing so. How can all those profits trickle down to us if our protests disrupt the economy?