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[Easy] Living by Numbers

It was compulsory to specify hair clipper settings as you entered the barber’s shop. Whatever you said got done, so if you forgot your settings, you looked like a slightly different group of clones when back outside.

Compulsory micro-chipping of the population ‘you can’t take that trip without your chip’ had made shopping so much easier.

Your personal chip [embedded in your arm] was swiped automatically as you entered the local Tossco, and for a small fee you could specify your ‘fresh’ [fish, meat, fruit, vegetables] preferences within it, making it even easier and quicker to rush through the store.

Because your chip was unique there was no need to carry cash [abolished years ago], and credit ‘cards’ were old hat. Every item sold had a RFID chip, so as you pushed your basket through the final check-out, your purchases were scanned at the same time as you were.

Personal shopping [i.e. where you actually left your place of residence] itself was on the wane, as it was even easier still to walk through your virtual store at home doing the same thing. Goods were delivered within the hour, and couriers had priory over all other road users.

Health was an occasional inconvenience. It lay outside the mantra of everything being made easier. You actually had to commit some effort to it.

Genetic profiling had led to ‘corrective’ chips being given to potential hoodies. However, the distinction between ‘ordinary’ and corrective was meaningless, as the chip controllers could play a tune with you, and often did. Some weird tunes emerged from the most inconvenient orifices, when embarrassment was a more effective punishment than an electric shock!

Every day, after rising, you sat in your personal [you could choose your own colour scheme] docking station, and the clever little chip [most people had names for theirs, and this too was permitted, and its name would be first word on the display] would read your body. Any ‘irregularities’ were then corrected by intravenous drugs, delivered through a compressor [remember ‘Star Trek’? No needles required].

Occasionally more drug trials were necessary as new ‘diseases’ were invented. The human body had resisted chemical manipulation on occasions and this was problematic. So in anticipation of side effects, those agreeing to participate were given days off work, free recreational drugs and electrical stimulation to any chosen part of the body as ‘compensation.’

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Choice meant colour of your docking station, which part of your body to over-stimulate, which channel to watch [NOW channel ran permanently inside everyone’s head, courtesy of Jimmy the micro-chip, 365/24/7], hair colour, clipper settings, which neighbour to spy on, and your body-mass index. Yes, fat is freedom was a powerful mind-set. There were in total 24 ‘real’ choices.

Minor conflicts often broke out between numbers. Each child was allocated any one of 24 numbers at birth. The programme which created this ensured no child had the same number as a parent. Because they had five digits [e.g. 25536] there was no implied superiority [and it disguised the fact that numbers were not random, and some groups were ‘more equal’ than others] which would have occurred if the numbers were 1 to 24. Ingenious!

Racial and religious tensions evaporated. Regardless of where you were born, when and who your parents were, you ended up with a five digit number and had 24 choices.

Groups of 25536’s would fight 37892’s for example, despite the number of the month programmes [NOTM’s]. Every two years for one month, your number would be glorified. Celebrity numbers, brave kids and pets, cartoons humanising micro-chips, and special characteristics of 37982’s would all be trumpeted. If you were a 37982, for that month, you felt like you ruled the world.

So, trouble rarely occurred between numbers which were highlighted back-to-back. If it was 37892’s then 25536’s, the glow the 37892’s felt stopped any real jealousy kicking in for the four weeks that followed their glorification.

But, as always, the authorities knew what they were doing. NOTM’s were ‘randomly’ programmed. No obvious pattern emerged over everyone’s 60-year life span. This ensured number fighting was equally ‘random.’ 49121’s kicked 76890’s one month, and were themselves kicked by any other group, subject to the back-to-back rule above.

This way, individuals and groups had another dose of the myths of choice. If fighting ever spilled over to potential challenges to authority, the daily docking station drugs soon sorted that one out.

The upshot of it all was obvious. A programmed, predictable 60 [and then your body just spontaneously gives up] years of illness-free living. Fear was the glue that bound people together. Fear of anyone with a different number. Excitement from kicking or being kicked. As much stimulation as you could handle. Even fags had become redundant!

And what about the ‘easy’ shopping? And the equivalent of 2.5 years in every lifetime [one month every two years, so 30 in all] when your personal number was special? Before the NOW most people were lucky to get any feeling of being special in their lifetime.

Life was effing wonderful!

Condoned days off work, personalised docking stations, the altruism of helping with drug trials, your own choice of hair colour [and for men, your hair never dropped out], and 250 TV channels to watch!

What could possibly be wrong with all that?

As Richard Perle said in 2006, the voters [when voting existed] just didn’t appreciate how good their leaders [and their lives of course] were. So voting had to go.

But what was the real difference between a [hair] clipper setting of 3 and 4? Or even 3 and 5? Yes it was true those who went for 1’s did look a bit different from 5’s.

The authorities had hoped the clipper settings would be an alternative to the numbers game. A decision had been made not to tattoo numbers on foreheads on cost grounds, and illegal scanners enabled rival number gangs to scan the ‘enemy.’

Factions initially grew up based on hair length [within the 1 to 5 clipper band], as most people could discriminate between the settings. However, as intelligence dropped alarmingly [an ‘unfortunate’ drugs side effect], numbers were the only game in town.

People became less and less concerned about their personal clipper settings [it was the only way to have hair cut for both women and men], one or two of the brighter clones began questioning whether life was so wonderful after all…

JS, September 2006.