I’ve gotten pretty good at not thinking. When I do have to think, I play music and read aloud at the same time. They aren’t very good at unscrambling data. They get confused with so much information on their hands.

As you can see, I can even write without betraying my thoughts. Let me give you a demonstration. If you’re as confident as I am, read the next line, but don’t do it if you are afraid of getting caught.

Down with the government. Down with tyranny. Commence the revolution.

There. Those are just about the most subversive sentences one can write. Surely I’m crazy. I’ve been rambling quite a bit and I apologize for my verbosity, but I assure you that I’m not deranged. On the contrary, I’m quite average. I'm a dutiful and hard-working citizen much like yourself. I just have something to prove.

And no, I’m not a spy. I don’t work in the name of tyranny. I deplore our government; you have nothing to fear from me.

I just want you to know that I’m here. That I exist. I’m hoping that somebody out there is disgusted by what our democracy has been reduced to. Hoping that somebody believes that there was a time when we didn’t all have chips in our brains monitoring our freaking thoughts.

---

I’ve been thinking a lot recently. How did the government ever manage to convince almost 400 million people that they should undergo surgery to have computer chips inserted into their minds?

How does something like this happen? I’ll tell you. It begins quietly. Slowly. Take away the rights that matter least to people. “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted, except in cases of national security.” In case you don’t know, that was a modified version of our eighth amendment when we still had amendments.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, except when deemed necessary by Congress.”

That one really pissed people off. You can’t change the first amendment, people argued.

Yes we can, the government responded. Look, we’ve already changed one. A precedent has been established.

The 21st century was a tough time. Our technology was primitive. Our government was assailed on two fronts: issues with homeland security and a deteriorating environment. We can’t really blame the government of the 21st century for our problems today; it did its best to cope with the problems that it faced.

But the policies we established during that century carried over to this century. We fixed our problems of national security; we even fixed the environment to some extent. But we were left with a bigger problem: our government.

I’ve been flipping through some old books. Yes, physical books made of paper and ink. What I’ve come to realize is that we’ve lost our sense of right and wrong. That’s the problem. We’ve been inured to violations of the constitution and violations of our personal liberties. How long will it take to change the way we think? This change must take place before we can make other changes.

What if things never change? What if it’s always going to be like this? That’s what I fear. The government has taught us how to think.

---

We must exercise free thought. That’s how a revolution begins. But the problem is that we’re afraid of thinking.

We have to conquer our fears. I’ve shown that I can dare to think seditious thoughts. The technique is simple. You know what peripheral vision is. Peripheral thought is similar in nature. As long as you keep rebellious thoughts on the fringe of your mind, you won’t attract their attention. It helps to be doing something else at the same time to disguise your thoughts. Pick up a government pamphlet and read. Turn on the teleprojector and watch a newscast. Listen to some music. Drown your mind in distractions from whatever thoughts you are actually harboring.

To be caught and imprisoned for seditious thoughts is fairly unlikely. They don’t bother coming for you unless you blatantly violate Pure Thought. Most people are paranoid that they’ll be put behind bars for simply thinking the word, “rebellion.” The government wants you to be afraid, but your fears are unwarranted.

But at the same time, don’t throw caution to the wind. You don’t want to be Marked. If words like “rebellion” and “revolution” and “tyranny” regularly show up, they’ll mark you and then watch you very closely. If it turns out that you’re actually planning something, they’ll come for you.

---


Sometimes I wonder whether they still teach you about the Revolutionary War in high school. Of course they do, but it’s probably a “sanitized” version of history. That’s how they’ve managed to turn us into a population of mindless sheep.

When I was in high school, we learned history uncensored. You can guess how old I am. You might be interested to know that I was alive when they first mandated monitoring chips. I had to go through the surgery as a teenager. A teenager, mind you, not an enfant. I was old enough to understand what they were doing to me -- and I was scared. I vividly remember the operation. I’m still traumatized when I think about it.

Anyways, I’ve digressed. Back to our topic of the day: history. You’ve probably heard about Washington and King George III (who wasn’t that bad of a guy, when judged by the standards of our government today). You’ve probably learned about all the battles. What you didn’t learn about was the Constitutional Convention that convened a decade later and drafted our Constitution.

To make a long story short, there were a bunch of laws enacted to check the power of the government. But they dwindled away over time, and now they don’t even teach you that those laws once existed. I think I’ve mentioned the amendments before, which were meant to protect the people from the government and from each other.

What I felt like saying today is that by controlling education, they have gained control of one of the only avenues through which we can wage an ideological war. Teachers must do their part to help us transform our government, meaning they have to do their research, teach what really happened in history, and stop brainwashing our children.

We all have a part to play.

---

I must be crazy to think that somebody is reading this right now. An article on the internet? People haven’t touched personal computers for years. Even if somebody out there still possesses a personal computer, they’ve probably stopped reading by now… if they know what’s good for them.

I don’t know whether I’m doing this for myself or for my (likely nonexistent) audience.

What I do know is that I’ll go insane if I don’t do anything, if I just let the government proceed with this sort of tyranny. We deserve better.

---

I want to let you know that you probably won’t hear from me again in a long time. In fact, you might never hear from me again.

They are on to me. They will be quick to mobilize. I’m lucky that I can still type this up. They might come tomorrow. Or in the next hour.

I’m pleading for somebody to take up my mantle. People have to know that we can dare to hope for a better future. People have to know that they aren’t alone in believing in a new beginning. There is strength in numbers.

---

So this is it. This is where my fight ends. They’re coming soon.

How do I know? Since I probably won’t live to see tomorrow, I will lay it bare for you. My name is Alfred Locke. I am the Deputy Captain of the 12th precinct cognition police. I haven’t gone to work for the past week. I’ve been sick. Not sick with the flu, but sick of the work that we do.

Please don’t be scared. I was only caught because I am so intimately connected to the government. But if you’ve lasted until now -- if you’ve read all that I’ve had to say and you’re still live -- you’ve done well. You won’t get caught. You can continue this fight. Please, I beg you to. Out of all the people that live in this country, there has to be somebody who is brave enough to continue what I’ve started.



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Hello. My name is Winston Smith. Of course that’s not my real name, but I thought the analogy was appropriate.

If you stumbled upon my site, it probably wasn’t an accident. Don’t worry. I won’t tell. I don’t work for the government. Anyways, if you found my site, you probably know who Alfred Locke is. You know that the government put him away. I’m carrying on his legacy.

I’ll begin by describing myself. I’m pretty old, as you can tell from my allusion to Orwell. His books are hard to come by these days. I was a software engineer before I retired, which is why I still keep an antique Dell desktop PC at home and use it to surf the internet from time to time. That’s how I found Alfred Locke’s journal.

That’s enough about me. I’m not a philosophical man, though I read a lot. But Alfred Locke said that somebody had to take up the mantle, so I guess that’s what I’m doing. You’ll be hearing from me again soon…