... my emerging hell...

… my emerging hell…

Peter Hunter

Most of this story is true and is currently happening to me… but the first and the last parts are written in the future and I hope they remain fiction…

* * *

Friday 13th May 2016…
… as I sit in my office… editing the last few words of my book …too late… the tallyman… I feel well pleased with the result. Although short, the work seems to convey what I originally set out to say and the pleasure of revising it has only been spoiled by the struggle I have been having with that mysterious sinister electronic censorship which started for me in late 2011… and still seems to be growing daily…
I am just about ready to press send and consign both book and this piece to my online publisher - once I do that hopefully the process will be automatic - the computers will take over and within a few hours it will be available to anyone with a laptop or hand-held device…
A rattle of the door handle intrudes… and my wife enters, but without the usual tea she brings me; 'Two men… two men…' she seems breathless. '… want to see you… they have official-looking warrant cards… something about you going with them for a physiological assessment…'
… she is obviously very distraught…
… and I feel my blood pressure increase in anticipation and fear…
I rise and go to the window… outside, parked was a police car with two uniformed men inside… and an empty ambulance…
… ominous…
… I gesture to my wife then point to the police car.
Without another word she leaves my office and I lock the door behind her…
… slowly, deliberately I press the send key…
… and within a few hours millions of people world-wide will be able to read this story and share my concern…

* * *

December 31st 2011…
… when this story began…
… four in the morning - it is very cold and Purdey, my favourite cat is asleep on my pillow close to, almost touching my head. In a few slow hours I will experience another grey dawn to curse like the ones I have experienced every morning for more than a week now…
The insomnia, I had originally hoped would be temporary - now seems to be a permanent part of my life - always waking me two hours after midnight - my mind churning, racing at lightning speed, filled with the mental anguish of considering and imagining the horror of it all…
Tonight was worse than usual - rising at 1.30 am, making myself tea - then typing this, hoping the Internet's inbuilt censorship would permit me to send it - my preferred target, the editor of Mensa magazine, hoping for attention from anyone intelligent or knowledgeable enough to help…
… assuming anyone cares that is…
I am not a timid man - for most of my life I have been an adrenaline addict - courting danger, often crashing fast racing cars, having accidents on powerful motorbikes and most stimulating of all - writing off a small aircraft in a horrendous crash that had the ‘plane turning over, ripping itself apart in an orgy or tearing aluminium…
… to me, a ‘high’…
Now, north of seventy - emerging from a decade of ailments, including three strokes, hospitalisation and diabetes almost certainly caused by my adrenalin addiction - then the side effects from numerous drugs, until the doctors got it right - now I am trying to supplement my pension, with a few articles and stories...
… but nothing, nothing has prepared me for this…
… nothing has evoked such a sense of foreboding and fear for the future…
What's happening to me seems totally unfair - frustrating and I am unable to prevent it. A 'monster' is haunting me to the point of my seeking irrational solutions…
… to escape this cyber hell I'm trapped in?
Two weeks previously I'd Emailed a summary of a thriller I'd written twenty years before.
The plot predicted a forthcoming economic breakdown triggered by computer viruses, plus of course, conventional terrorism. I had written; Much of which I conceived as fiction 20 years ago is becoming terrifyingly true. No doubt about that ‘… aircraft flown by s*****e pilots’) - e-petitioning - millions spent avoiding malignant computer viruses, despite knowing they already attack us, causing power blackouts and cash droughts, desperately played down by authority.'
Some things have recently been in the media, but there are always other, less plausible reasons given. '… There are more examples, but they're all ‘explained’. For the gullible… Read between the lines - search out stories like mine, which are difficult often to track down, as our secret computerised censorship stops them being seen…'
I hadn't used the word containing asterisks in my previous messages. I repeated it in another e-mail and was immediately blocked from sending… apparently for ‘inappropriate material’…
The rejections continued all day - then they allowed five, then ten messages… then a complete block again - a situation now permanent… at least when I wrote this piece…
… and it gets worse…
… 1.30am - new Years Eve - as usual now, I couldn't sleep and desperate to contact someone, any one - feeling very much like the radio operator on some electronic Titanic, transmitting blind - hoping my May-Day will be heard by someone who could help - perhaps offer a helping hand. Then in the middle of the night, when communication should be very quiet - I received the dreaded message;
We noticed some unusual activity on you account…
… again…
The previous day I had resorted to the old-fashioned telephone landline in an attempt to get attention…
… and those friends I managed to contact didn't want to know.
The four or five mates I spoke to, surprisingly weren't sceptical at all - instead they were surprised at my naivety in not knowing this, could - was happening. One spoke of a friend in the ‘animal rights’ movement equally cut off - unable to do anything - desperate, lonely and frightened…
… Britain 2011… the land of free speech…
No one wanted or was prepared to become involved. Everyone seemed scared something might happen to them - such was their faith in our freedom of speech in 2012… 2013… 2014…
… and then where?
The sleepless nights were growing into bad daydreams. Orwellian, Kafkaish - I can't decide which - like something out of 1984, though we didn't have the technology then…
We are gripped - ruled, by something out of our control, a sinister security system 'for our own good' but not admitted or acknowledged by those in authority… and there is nothing - nothing we can do about it…
God knows what horrors Orwell would have imagined. I found I couldn't even open my E-mail accounts - it wouldn't accept my passwords even when I had entered them ten times...
It had never done that before...
Is this what has becoming of our ‘free country’? Millions under surveillance? Our words watched and monitored - electronically controlled without anyone admitting it…
… but as I write - today they are starting to admit it…
… pretending it is going to happen… but I and many others know it is already here…
… something worse than ‘big brother’ is already controlling us…
I tried once again - sending this story to a magazine hoping its readers might be braver - more lateral thinking than most. The same results when I clicked ‘send’…
… and finally one desperate - one final try…
… no success…
… trapped…
… I feel I might become paranoiac… I am certainly frightened…
Now, 4am and I've written this piece. My mind churns, not with any rational thoughts - just the remembered voice of Leonard Cohen singing;
'It’s four in the morning the end of December
New York is cold but I like where I’m living…'
… over and over again…
… I can't get the words out of my head…
I make yet another attempt, clicking the send button, again without success. I'm trapped - electronic walls encircle me and they seem to be closing in… Obviously, other methods of communication are available - good old-fashioned letter post and word of mouth until voice detection is developed that would scan my calls…
Already we are being asked to spy on our neighbours - checking whether they put out rubbish on the correct day - or if they use a hosepipe during a drought.
… within twenty four hours from now, it will be 2012 - the future - a horror scene transiting to complete electronic communication…
… monitored, censured - and with the power to ex-communicate individuals from the very society they live in…
In the nineteenth century, within living memory, some governments exiled people physically, often banishing them to the other side of the world - in the twentieth century the Stalinist Soviet Union sent dissidents to gulags in Siberia - or those whose views were considered deviant - were hidden from public sight in asylums.
Now - with 'belonging' to a community so dependent upon electronic communication a subtler, more up-to-date method - that of electronic censorship is being developed…
… all in the name of security…
… no choice… certainly no consultation with the bulk of the population…
What would George Orwell have made of all this…?
Anyone listening - anyone out there? Sleep will not come…
… all I look forward to is another dawn to curse…
… hoping for help - rescue …

* * *

Between the end of 2011 and 2016 the electronic censorship and Internet harassment I was experiencing grew longer and stronger until I felt chained to some force which was controlling me…
… not at all pleasant or even liveable with…
The main effect was to curtail most of my activities. I had to use my computer less and less… the harassment meant that none of my passwords worked and then an even stranger phenomena developed; the sites I used increasingly demanded information they had no right to ask…
… personal information that I had never before revealed and that they could not possibly already know…
… unless they had developed software that could glean it from other sources…
I felt that I was being electronically interviewed - although for what purpose or by whom I never found out…
… terrifying…

* * *

Back to the future… Friday May 13th 2016
… troubled… I left my bed, quietly and calmly, trying not to disturb my wife. I made my self some tea, checked my laptop for any messages - and then settled down to add a few hundred words to my latest book. I could not relax… could not concentrate - so 'backing up' what little I had done, I switched to revising my novel - the story about Wicca and Toby Archer through the ages; …too late… the tallyman…
It was no good - a black depression was over me, in me, around me… above and below me…
… to the East and the West of me… before and behind me…
… within and around me…
… sinister but not easy to understand…
I… I thought, had lost the will to live… what was there in 2016 to live for. Ok, there was my wife and my cats - but after seventy-five years on this planet there surely should be something more - some acknowledgment, satisfaction or a sense of contribution?
But… I thought - 2016 is a mad and corrupt place… greed, fraud - and overall a sense of terminal futility…
… all spiralling into a maze of problems and confusion that could not lead to anything positive to continue our species…
… I am glad to be old…
Overall it is like some damp mist rolling down into a valley masking the sunlight - bringing doom, despair and despondency - the economic situation, the separation of principles and policies and the growing frustration and mistrust contaminated the continent… if not the world…
… all that is good to look forward to is eternal sleep…
From Cork in the west to Athens in the east - men and women almost whisper their fears and concerns as the European Union continues to disintegrate, the Euro reverting to currencies such as Drachma, Franc and Mark.
Our rulers… little people who have learned the words but do not know the tune… just promises, promises and yet more promises… all achieving nothing…
Huge debts are no longer honoured; money has fallen dramatically in value… with hyperinflation rife and quantative easing almost every-day policy, despair and not much hope…
It is a time of bitterness, reflection and hopelessness. The profligacy and financial madness of nearly a century at last has to be paid for - our combined debts finally to be reconciled…
… but to whom - in a world of artificial, make-believe…
I am now quite a worried old man….
… while I was out yesterday, my wife took a call from the local police - they wanted to talk to me…
-… would I call them and arrange to visit to their station…
I try to imagine what it is they want… All I could think of was the increased electronic harassment that I have been getting for four years now - the electronic censorship - questioning what I am doing - the sinister, threatening way someone… something - was watching, pursuing me and many others… as the century turns more and more into a police state…
… a surveillance state…
In so many ways I am glad I probably do not have long to go… I have long since lost the will to live… life has become impossible… whatever the offence, imagined or a something I had long forgotten… perhaps not even displaying sufficient humiliation… I had neglected to pay the price or make sufficient amends… and it was too late… again too late… too late… to make amends…

End
© Peter Hunter 2012

Read Peter Hunter's books on Kindle particularly his latest thriller:
… too late…
the tallyman…

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