JULIE AND SALLY eventually untangled themselves from each other's welcoming, needy arms.
"Quick!" said Sally, warningly. "Let's get into the bomb-proof control room. There's still a small chance that a direct hit by a laser bomb on the safety elevator might yet deprive you of your claim to be having a 'lucky day'."
"What? How'd you know about that?"
"You'll soon see. Come on, now."
Sally attempted to lead Julie by the hand quickly away from the elevator. But ...
"Hey, hold on a minute," said Julie, pulling her hand free and causing Sally to lurch forwards clumsily. "I've got some goodies to bring."
"Oh, yeah, of course. Your canister of tofu-cabbage soup and half-a-dozen loaves of sliced wholemeal bread."
Julie gave Sally a quizzical look before rushing back into the elevator cab. She levered back the hand truck into a comfortable pushing position and trundled out of the elevator cab to join Sally.
"Come on, follow me!" said Sally.
"What's all this about a control room?"
"You'll soon see. All will be revealed."
And so, Sally led Julie—and her loaded hand truck—along a long corridor that led to the control room.
The double doors of the control room swished open the moment Sally reached within a foot of them.
"Oh my gawd!" exclaimed Julie as she swept into the huge circular control room behind Sally. There were monitors wall-to-wall, and desks full of complicated looking surveillance slates, but there was no-one except herself and Sally in the room.
"This control room is the central hub of the wallpad ORANGE East Ender surveillance system," announced Sally proudly. "This is a not so common Surveillance and Security Unit."
"You've gotta be kidding me!"
"Nope. This is the real McCoy."
"But there's no Orange Shirts here to control everything."
"Ah, but there is."
"Where?" Julie looked around, her eyes full of fear.
Sally smiled, almost sickly.
"No, there's no Orange Shirts here," whispered Julie. Then in a more confident tone she added, "Oh Sally, you are a one. You're just joshing me, mate."
"Sorry to disappoint you, Jules babe. But there is an Orange Shirt in here."
"Where?" Julie looked at Sally in a perfect state of befuddlement.
"You're looking at one."
Julie gasped. Her eyes bulged and her eyebrows arched high.
Sally slowly nodded her head. Her almost sickly smile melted into a definite sickly grimace.
"No, it can't be! Sally, this is madness. A sixty-six-year-old woman, an Orange Shirt?"
Sally backed away from Julie, walking backwards, not for one second taking her eyes off her.
She reached the nearest desk, and without even turning around to face it, she put her hands behind her back, and swiped and pressed on the surface of the desk's main built-in slate.
In response to her finger presses and swipes, a circular section of the reinforced steel ceiling opened up, and down lowered a polished titanium ball.
Terrified, Julie was mesmerised by the lowering ball. She knew the power of the technology of the wallpad ORANGE security systems.
She was not to be disappointed.
A stream of sizzling green-glowing wriggling strings of Intelligent Plasma (an invention of the wallpad ORANGE Creativity Unit) shot out of the ball and enveloped Julie. She was immobilised, and the feeling was painful—pain was something wallpad was particularly adept at providing.
Having ensnared her quarry, her ex-classmate, Sally took the opportunity to turn around, and face the desk she had been backed up to. She picked up a small slate controller device.
She swivelled back around to face Julie, and using the slate controller to instruct the Intelligent Plasma, took control of Julie's body.
Julie found herself marching against her will, robotic-like, to a robust chunky Beechwood chair.
She found herself forced to sit on it.
Steel clasps snapped out of the chair's arms and front legs, and locked Julie's wrists and ankles to the chair.
The strings of Intelligent Plasma released her, and with a noisy sizzling swishing sound withdrew back into the polished titanium ball.
The steel clasps on her chair were not so charitable.
She was trapped.
She knew she was doomed.
Oh dear, this is not my lucky day, after all!
Meanwhile, Sally swivelled around and turned her attention back to the desk's main built-in slate. The titanium ball rose up, and disappeared into the closing steel ceiling.
"How could you?" attempted to roar Julie angrily, but her words came out as a murmuring slur as the Intelligent Plasma had taken its toll. Julie coughed, spluttered and shook her head, determined to shake off the after-effects of the Intelligent Plasma, so she could speak her mind with a modicum of clarity. "A member of the Orange Shirts! You should be ashamed of yourself." She sounded normal again. "Captured and condemned by my old classmate, my old next door neighbour. What a bloody liberty!"
"I had no choice," said Sally, turning around to face Julie.
"Of course you had a choice. You could have let me carry on to my basement flat."
"You would never have made it to the end of the street. I checked the probabilities of your survival chances with a wallpad CA5."
"Bish, bash, bosh, what a load of old tosh. I would have made it."
"Because it was your lucky day?" questioned Sally sarcastically.
"Yeah. Anyway, it's my life. You could have turned a blind eye."
"Unfortunately, I couldn't."
"Why on earth not?"
"Because the all-seeing wallpad eye does not turn a blind eye to anyone—least of all me."
Sally then splayed an arm theatrically, and each and every one of the wall monitor screens filled with a woman's face.
The wallpad face.
Wallpad woman.
The face literally and figuratively of wallpad.
Wallpad woman's eyes burned into Julie's with a scorn that scolded Julie's very, and so precarious, existence. The woman's distinctive long eyelashes batted like the flapping of a pair of poisonous black-winged moths.
Wallpad woman never talked, and no one in the general public knew her identity. But everyone knew her stare. Often when you thought you were alone, on a slate, eyeglass or wall monitor, she might appear.
Staring ...
Eyelash batting ...
Staring ...
Eyelash batting ...
And seconds later, when she had your full undivided attention, a timely reminder of wallpad's omniscient controlling system mantra would gently, but ominously, in the form of words, scroll down the viewing area, and overlay her mocking face. The ubiquitous wallpad words of warning and illogical wisdom. Words, the true controllers of the wills of humanity.
And true to form, right now, this is exactly what Julie experienced on every single one of the surrounding wall monitors.
Scrolling down the monitor screens, overlaying wallpad woman's face, slowly, inexorably, slid the following four ubiquitous centred wallpad lines of plain white text:
wallpad IS WATCHING YOU!
FAKE is REAL.
FAILURE is SUCCESS.
STUPIDITY is BRILLIANCE.
It was typical of wallpad ORANGE's methods to use words and images in the form of nightmarish parodies of literary dystopian classics to aid their all-encompassing power and control. In this case, George Orwell's 1984 was the genesis of the words, and Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange was the genesis for the appearance and behaviour of wallpad woman's face.
The scrolling words briefly paused in the centre of the screen before continuing on their downward course to disappear off the bottom of the screens. Following that, after a last flutter of wallpad woman's eyelashes, her face slowly faded away.
Julie was glad to see the chilling face disappear, but she guessed wallpad woman was probably still looking at her.
The monitor screens were now showing a compendium of surveillance transmissions showing ordinary people living their ordinary but challenging lives.
"It's easier to keep a wallpad all-seeing eye on everyone in London now," said Sally. "There are so few people left."
"And yet you do your best to kill the remainder!" said Julie angrily, scowling at Sally.
"Obedience and loyalty have to be maintained. And now that you have reminded me, it's time to show you why you were taken prisoner, and why I knew about your 'lucky day', and the stolen tofu-cabbage soup you have in your canister, and the stolen half-a-dozen loaves of sliced wholemeal bread you have in your stolen plastic carrier bag, not to mention the stolen hand truck you transported them with."
Sally pointed to a screen. Recorded highlights of Julie's escapade with the bread and soup was plain to be seen.
Julie sat in awe looking at her aged body pushing her hand truck through streets exploding with the pummelling of laser bombs. She didn't know she could be so brave, stupid or desperate—or suicidal.
"And the wallpad CA5 concludes"—Sally pointed to a red-blinking text box that appeared at the bottom of the screen—"Major Theft. Sentence: Death."
"Oh, up your where-the-sun-don't-shine with your silly wallpad CA5."
"That wallpad blasphemy will now earn you a Level 2 painful death."
"Big deal," said Julie, and she spat on the floor angrily, in a brave, possibly stupid, show of defiance.
"Well, I don't think you should underestimate the wallpad CA5, Julie," said Sally.
There was an uncomfortable period of silence ...
"Well?" said Julie.
"Well, what?" replied Sally.
"When do I die? I hear you Orange Shirts don't like to hang around."
"According to our hub's wallpad CA5, you have less than two minutes before the Ball of Justice makes its second appearance of the day."
"Two minutes! That's a bit steep!"
"Time enough to put on a blazer, back pack and brush one's teeth."
"Huh?"
"Just before we left for school, the day wallpad went English. Remember?"
Julie did remember. That was a morning no one would ever forget. But Julie didn't answer Sally's question. She decided to use what little time she had left, to give Sally a piece of her mind.
"I hope you rot in Hell for this."
"I'm just following orders. Anyway, as I said, never underestimate the wallpad CA5. Of all the tasks it performs, it is in the computation of predictions of events that it excels."
"That and passing death sentences. By now, I must have all of one minute left to live."
Sally seemed to ignore what Julie was saying. She ducked down and pulled open a drawer just to the side of the desk. She reappeared with what looked like a lunchbox. She opened it and took a bite out of a sandwich.
"What a bloody liberty. You're going to eat sandwiches while I'm tortured to death!"
At that moment, the ceiling once again opened a circular hole and the Ball of Justice began lowering.
Meanwhile the Beechwood chair raised an inch off the floor and started to move. It came to a halt and lowered gently to the floor.
Julie looked up to see the huge polished titanium ball right above her. It was still ominously lowering, suspended by a length of super-strengthened twisted cabling. Her breathing grew fast and furious. She started to sweat and struggled in vain to free herself from the chair's steel clasps.
Sally looked on nonchalantly.
"Any moment now and it'll all be over," she said between lazy munches of her sandwich that she held in her left hand. As the Ball of Justice came to a halt a few metres above Julie's head, Sally looked down at a slate she had in her right hand. "I'm using this slate to monitor the wallpad CA5 computing system."
"Big deal," said Julie in a rasping tone, struggling to sound as defiant as possible, such were her dire circumstances.
A dim glowing red light pulsed into life on the bottom of the Ball of Justice.
"Hold on Julie, it's coming!"
"Up yours!" roared Julie leaning forward against her restraints towards Sally.
A smooth male voice sounded from unseen speakers:
"Offender: Julie Chang-Burns-XIV. Crime against wallpad ORANGE incorporated, and therefore humanity: Major Theft. Sentence: Death. Type of death: Level 2, due to additional wallpad blasphemies."
"It's coming!" shouted Sally. "Any second now. HOLD ON, JULIE!"
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I hope you enjoyed this Chapter. I welcome any votes, comments or constructive criticisms (style, spelling, grammar and punctuation errors).
T. J. P. CAMPBELL.