Dick followed Taylor out of the room, down an anonymous corridor, through a door and down another featureless corridor that made the first one look positively exciting by comparison. They entered a small room where three resistance members were working. Dick recognised two of them from the lounge when he first appeared; now they were seated at a bank of electronic machines staring at a small screen and inserting and removing small silver discs.
Taylor introduced them, ‘Dick, meet Susan and Edward, two of our senior members’.
‘We’re so glad you’re here’, said Susan, an attractive woman in her early thirties with deep blue eyes and full red lips. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you’.
Edward, a dapper, serious-looking man of similar age echoed her sentiments. ‘We’ve heard so much about you and I can’t tell you how relieved we are that you’re here to help us’.
Most of the compliments he received in his career were as phoney as his co-stars’ breasts but this time Dick felt the fawning was genuine and refreshing to hear.
Taylor continued, ‘We have quite rudimentary equipment to copy, edit and distribute pornographic films and magazines. We do this to undermine the government but they’re not what you would probably consider particularly erotic. The Party were very thorough at destroying any surviving films or literature from your time that they considered “unsuitable” for society today’.
Edward interjected. ‘We’re having to work with a sixteenth generation copy of Emmanuelle II with no sound, and a version of Debbie Does Dallas with fifty minutes missing’.
‘You don’t have any of my films?’, asked Dick with an obvious air of disappointment. ‘I’ve made hundreds. Surely some must have survived?’
‘There was one’, admitted Edward. ‘An old copy of Titty Slickers’.
‘It was damaged, though’, added Susan, ‘and we could only salvage part of it’.
‘Well even that must be better than what you’re currently using’, said Dick. ‘Let me see what you’ve got’.
Susan looked past Dick to Taylor who nodded his approval. She located this particular disc and inserted it. After a few moments its contents flickered on to the small viewing screen.
‘That’s it?’, asked Dick after less than thirty seconds.
‘That’s it’, confirmed Susan apologetically.
‘You sure?’
Susan nodded.
‘Sure, sure?’
Another nod from Susan, followed by a shrug.
Dick was depressed. His legacy, and the sum total of his whole back catalogue, was just some opening titles and a ten second close-up of his naked butt. Sensing his extreme disappointment, Taylor steered Dick away and introduced him to a woman in her forties on the other side of the room who radiated what could only be described as naïve childish enthusiasm. ‘Mr. Longg, this is Grace who’s been working on a pornographic magazine’.
Grace blushed and said hello.
‘I’m sure our guest would love to see it’, prompted Taylor.
Grace hesitantly took what looked like a home-produced fanzine from a stack. ‘We put this together from some photos we found’, she added with a hint of pride in her voice that Dick would soon discover was totally misplaced.
Dick thumbed through it and as pornography went, found it one of the most unarousing things he had ever seen. He thought photos of sawmill accidents or toxic waste would have been sexier. The magazine consisted of some old black and white shots of Bettie Page throwing a beach ball, a photo of Jenna Jameson in a bikini, the Venus di Milo, plus some shots from an old Victoria’s Secrets catalogue and a reproduction of the poster of Raquel Welch from ‘One Million Years BC’.
Grace added, ‘I’d heard that people find the idea of two women together quite sexually arousing so I manipulated the images’.
Dick could see that Grace had understood the principle of the idea but not the detail. For a start, Bettie and Jenna were facing opposite directions and it looked as though Bettie was just four feet tall. And as for the photo of Raquel Welch and the Venus di Milo, well maybe someone who’d been raised in, and hadn’t left a monastery for their entire adult life, might have felt a slight stirring in their groin, but that was about all.
‘Not bad’, said Dick, trying not to let his horror show but failing dismally.
Grace detected this disappointment and blushed. Taylor stepped in to save her from any more embarrassment.
‘It’s a start’, he explained. ‘But like the films, it’s all we can do with the tools at our disposal. We can really do with your expertise’.
‘But why don’t you just photograph naked people and make new magazines and films, rather than rely on these relics?’, asked Dick reasonably, adding, ‘Some of those images are about 200 years old, and they weren’t that erotic at the time. You must have your own cameras’.
Edward answered, ‘The Party controls technology and everything they do has been designed to thwart us. We have cameras but photographs can only be printed at outlets overseen by the Party’.
‘But what about digital cameras?’, asked Dick.
Edward looked at him blankly.
Dick elaborated. ‘You know, where you can see the images you’ve taken immediately, and you can save them electronically or print them yourself’.
Edward looked at Dick even more blankly than before.
‘They might have been common-place in your era but the Party made sure they were all withdrawn from use and has not allowed the technology to re-surface’, explained Taylor adding, ‘Except for their own use’.
‘What about video cameras? I know you’ve got these’, continued Dick. ‘Alice showed me a short film of this time’.
‘Those images were taken on such a device stolen from a Party office‘, Taylor explained. ‘The Resistance member who made the recording did so at an immense personal risk. He had to replace the camera immediately afterwards’. With a serious expression Taylor continued, ‘If the Party discovered it was missing there would have been a huge security clampdown, mass interrogations and the eventual discovery of the “mole” within their organisation and their probable execution. The Party will go to extreme lengths to stop equipment like this falling into the wrong hands’.
‘Our hands’, Susan added, although Dick had already realised this.
Dick anticipated the answer to the next question before it left his lips, but asked it anyway. ‘But you have the Internet, don’t you?’
By now Edward’s expression was so blank that Dick instinctively wanted to grab a marker pen and draw two eyes, a nose and a mouth on it – and possibly a little pointy beard for good measure.
‘I don’t think so’, Taylor said. ‘What does it do?’
‘Well, you can send jokes, buy and sell shit you don’t need and search for information and pictures on any subject, especially sex’. Dick thought that was a pretty thorough explanation but added for good measure, ‘It’s a sort of network which links all the computers in the world’.
More blank looks.
Dick became slightly more worried. ‘You do have computers, don’t you?’, he enquired nervously.
Taylor saw the panic in Dick’s eyes. ‘Yes, we have computers’, he explained. ‘But from what I know, they are very rudimentary compared to those in your time. It’s another case I’m afraid of the Party controlling and restricting the technology’.
‘OK, you have computers, but no Internet?’
‘It sounds like we have something similar whereby people can access data from a large central memory bank’, Taylor advised.
‘That’s great!’ Dick exclaimed.
‘It’s good in principle’, Taylor agreed, but then looked sullen. ‘But not in practice. For a start, the Party heavily censors all the data. You can only access what they deem as being suitable. By controlling the information they control the balance of power’.
Dick was astounded. ‘That’s incredible. I knew you guys had it bad but to deny you online porn is denying you the most basic of human rights. It’s what the Internet was invented for!’ The more Dick learned about the future, the more it sounded less like a Brave New World and more like a Shit New World.
‘I can’t believe you live like this’, he exclaimed. ‘Progress has been replaced by, well, you know…’ Dick struggled for a few seconds to find the right words, ‘…the opposite of progress’.
‘And that is the very reason, Mr. Longg, that the resistance movement exists’. Taylor consulted his pocket watch. ‘Look, it’s nine o’clock so I suggest you take a well-earned rest after your journey here. Tomorrow we can tell you more about our world and your mission’.
‘My mission, yeah’, replied Dick. ‘Sure, and after I’ve kicked some Party butt I can leave you a better world and then go back to mine’.
Taylor looked confused, ‘What do you mean, “go back”?
‘You know.’, Dick said, ‘”Go back” as in “go back”’.
Taylor frowned. ‘You can’t go back. The Temporal Bracelets that you and Alice wore were also stolen from the Party. The original New Victorians brought them; it’s how they transported themselves to the future. There were only four functioning bracelets left and we managed to steal two. For reasons no one understands they can each only be used for one journey back in time and one forward. After that they cease to function.
Dick looked down at his wrist and noticed for the first time that the lights that had once pulsated had now dimmed. What had previously been a Temporal Bracelet was now just a bracelet, and a particularly unattractive one.
‘So you’re saying that I’m stuck here?’ Dick asked.
‘Yes’, said Taylor, matter-of-factly before adding, ‘Didn’t Alice warn you about that?’
‘No!’ Dick exclaimed.
‘Oh. Well it probably just slipped her mind’.
‘Slipped her mind? Slipped her fucking mind!’, Dick exclaimed. ‘Forgetting to buy milk when you’re out shopping… forgetting to set the video timer when you leave the house… They’re the things that “slip your mind”, not forgetting to tell someone that they’re going to be trapped in the fucking future!’ Dick was incensed. ‘She brought me here under false pretences!’
‘I’m sorry Mr. Longg. She did have rather a lot to think about’.
Dick was confused, angry, frustrated and bewildered all in rapid succession but then settled on just being angry. When he had calmed down enough to speak he said rather aggressively, ‘Now I don’t know if I want to help you. You’ve misled me. What happens if I want to leave here right now? Is anyone going to stop me? Well, are they?’
Taylor sympathised, ‘Mr. Longg. We are all peaceful here. We save our anger for the Party and its policies. The last thing we want is to keep someone here against their will. You are quite free to go if you decide you don’t like being here and don’t want to help us’.
‘You mean it?’ asked Dick, surprised by this response. Taylor nodded. ‘So I can just walk out of here?’
‘Of course’, Taylor replied. ‘You obviously can’t go back to your own time but I’m sure you’ll manage to find a way to blend in with our society on your own. Naturally, without having an implanted biometric identity chip like every citizen has, it probably won’t be long before you’re picked-up by the security forces and thoroughly examined and interrogated’. Dick listened intently as Taylor continued. ‘I’m sure that they’ll find your over-size endowment something of a novelty and might even deem it “unconstitutional”. In fact, I wager it won’t be long before it’s removed on the grounds of medical research’.
Dick didn’t like the sound of that. Not one little bit. Living in a world without sex was one thing but living in a world without a sex organ was something else. He considered his options which didn’t take long because he really only had one.
‘OK I’ll help’, he said, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.
Dick was lead down yet another corridor and shown to his quarters, a sparsely decorated room housing a bed, a desk and a chair, with a toilet, shower and sink in one corner. He removed the bracelet and disdainfully threw it into a bin before taking a cold shower (Taylor had previously explained that the resistance headquarters could only offer some home comforts, and a satisfactory supply of hot water was obviously not one of them). Dick dried himself, put on the pyjama bottoms that had been left out for him and climbed wearily into the bed. Although he was anxious, worried and a bit scared by recent events he was surprised to find that sleep came easy. Very soon he was dozing like a baby. Albeit a baby that had travelled over a hundred and forty years into the future.
Dick’s deep sleep lasted only for two or three hours; any thoughts of a long and refreshing rest were rudely interrupted by a series of muffled noises that gradually increased in volume. At first these sounds remained rooted firmly in Dick’s subconscious but as they became progressively louder they made that sneaky and unwelcome move into his consciousness, which is when Dick woke up. Initially he thought he’d been woken by the sound of a car backfiring but soon realised that this probably wasn’t the case. He was pretty certain that hovercars didn’t backfire and even if they did, then he was even more certain that there wasn’t a hovercar lurking in the corridor right outside his room.
Then the realisation dawned that the ‘popping’ sound belonged to something far more dramatic and dangerous than a vehicle loose in the building. The sound Dick heard was actually the muffled sound of gunfire and this was swiftly followed by the not very muffled sound of his door being broken down. The wooden panels splintered easily under the onslaught of constant kicking. Soon, enough of the panels had been broken away to reveal the perpetrators, two top-hatted figures; the very same men that had tried to kill him on the film set. As the door continued to disintegrate in front of him Dick wiped the sleep from his eyes and swung himself out of bed. He instinctively knew he had to find something to defend himself with and his eyes quickly darted around the small room. Dick realised that his only chance of survival would be to improvise a weapon. Then he saw it; the soap dispenser right next to his wash basin. The perfect means of attack.
Two forceful, well-aimed kicks later and the door was no more. Stumbling over the shattered timber the two assailants stumbled into Dick’s room, guns raised. If all had gone according to plan Dick would have sent a stream of stinging liquid soap into his attackers’ eyes, temporarily blinding them while he ran passed them and raised the alarm.
Unfortunately, as often happens in situations like this, all did not go according to plan. All that actually happened was the dispenser emitting a squirty, farty sound followed by a tiny bit of soap bubbling at the nozzle, and very little else. This was the exact point that Dick expected to be dead but astonishingly the two attackers didn’t seem to want to kill him, or if they did, then they were being very relaxed and casual about the whole thing. They stood facing him, their weapons still raised but seemingly rather amused by his pathetic escape attempt. Dick shouted out for assistance. To Taylor. To Alice. To Edward, Susan or Grace. To anyone who could hear his pleas. The two men didn’t try and stop Dick as he pushed past them. Edward was the first person he bumped into. Well, not so much bumped into, as fell over. Edward was lying prone on the floor. Dead. And if not dead, then the large hole in his forehead would certainly cause him severe problems in later life.
Dick ran into the lounge. His newfound friends were all there, and all equally incapacitated due to additional holes in their anatomy. Faced by this carnage Dick felt sickened and stunned. As he looked forlornly at the bodies, considering just how much danger he was in, for example was it ‘extreme’ or just ‘severe’, one of the two men lifted some sort of syringe to his arm. Dick immediately went limp. He knew this was never a good state to be in whatever the circumstances, and now was no different.