Fanatics: Zero Tolerance (15 page)

“You always were a bit slow on the uptake where jokes were concerned, eh, Joanne? Shall I tell you something? I used to wonder how someone as thick as you got to university. We all used to laugh at you, you know that? We used to call you ‘the dumb brunette’. I would tell them all, ‘Well, her head might not be much use for anything, but the rest of her -’ ”

“Shut up,” growled Joanne, raising the gun again.

“Remember your training, Agent,” said the man at the foot of the bed.

“Training!” said Gerry. “What did they teach you? Don’t get involved in the situation? There’s no point talking to a dead body? Well,
Agent
Joanne, I’m not dead just yet -”

Joanne pulled the trigger; there was a sound not unlike that of a cane whipping through the air. Gerry spasmed and fell, his elbow crashing through the glass front of a little cabinet standing in front of the opposite wall.

The man in the shadows frowned at her.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice a model of professional indifference.

*****

www.christiandemocrats.org
/idcard (excerpt)

All of this may seem like hysterical nonsense to the ordinary man in the street, but it mustn’t be dismissed. The point is not whether a tattooed barcode actually i
s the fabled “mark of the beast”, but that ordinary people in Ulster and elsewhere, perfectly ordinary people just like you and I, really believe that it could be. They are voters too, and they have the same rights as every other citizen; the possibility that a draconian measure like this could be implemented over their heads, and in the face of their sincerely held religious beliefs, is deeply worrying, and entirely justifies the stand that we have taken against McDonald and his sycophants. His propaganda machine may paint him as infallible, but he is far from it, as this latest policy illustrates.

(By the way, can you imagine what that great champion of truth, Lemuel Page, would have said about McDonald trying to step into the Pope’s shoes?)

Of course, we in the Christian Democrat Party needed no extra proof of his ineptitude; his approach has been undemocratic from the start. And let us not forget that the volatile situation out of which the war erupted was produced by policies he was promoting at the Versailles summit, even though he was absent from the scene at the critical moment.

If someone produced proof that he was the Antichrist after all,
no-one in Ulster would be very surprised. It would be all the more reason to (as the Good Book says) “obey God rather than men”. Only a man like Lewis McDonald could have been responsible for the latest outrage against democracy, the plausible wickedness of his “Covenant of Responsibility”. Don’t believe those who say “it’s only a proposal, it’s a long way from becoming law” - the truth is, it’s only a matter of time before we are all deprived of a basic democratic right: the right to freedom of religion. Make no mistake - signing up to this will be selling your country down the river, and your own soul to the Devil.

It is clear that the cult of McDonald cannot be allowed to roll forward unchallenged. We cannot sit back and do nothing while our civil liberties are obliterated from the statute books one by one. The Christian Democrat Party is determined to spearhead stiff opposition to this evil tendency. Stand up for your rights! Join us in the war against tyranny!

www.belfastmirror.co.uk
/editorial

It was only a matter of time before the CD Party launched into a tirade in which they blamed everyone for the war but themselves; they can no more resist this tendency in themselves than a cat can resist attacking a ball of wool rolling past.
No-one will listen to them now, of course, except Lemmings, and they don’t count because (let’s call a spade a spade) the CDs are the Lemmings’ political wing.

But while we are right to discount
their maniacal ravings (as every sane person should,) we must not ignore them. Even now, crippled electorally, the Lemming Party - sorry, the CDs - can do great damage at this, our most vulnerable moment. All of their pious rubbish about “obeying God rather than men” stirs up the wrong kind of passions in the hearts of those who would rather act than think; they are encouraged to adopt attitudes of mistrust and rebelliousness at the very moment that we need the opposite from them, and the ground is laid for treacherous acts of civil disobedience which the Lemmings will (naturally) disavow if they are excessive, and excuse if they possibly can.

Of course, politicians have always been quite ready to quote from the Bible when it suited them, and the CD leader, Sam Christie, is no different (though more fool him if he continues to do it now that we have McDonald’s Proof). So we must stop our ears against all of the Lemming arguments and hold on at all costs to the lesson that this war (and Lewis McDonald) has taught us.

When you get one, keep your Citizen’s Card next to your heart. Even better, learn the proposed “Covenant of Responsibility” off by heart. Have it tattooed on your forehead or hand if it will help you never to forget. There will be no shame in this; why should there be? If the Lemmings are not embarrassed - indeed, if they are oblivious to the absurdity of being identified with creatures famous for rushing headlong to their own destruction, why should we be ashamed of embracing survival and good sense?

www.stiritupblogger.com/tattoo

…
actually, the ID swipecard/bankcard doesn’t go far enough. It’s just too easy to fake. The kind of technology that conmen use could churn fakes out by the cartload. We need to think outside the box here and consider something radical, something that might require a significant cultural shift.

Here’s my idea: tattoos.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. Without being sexist about it – realistically, women, and especially fashionistas, aren’t going to be thrilled by the notion of a big ugly barcode tat somewhere conspicuous. But it doesn’t have to be either big or unattractive; a QR code only needs to be about ten or fifteen mil across, and you could make it the centerpiece of something artistic. Imagine a discreet little design, low on your forearm so all you have to do is pull your sleeve up a little bit to let the scanner “see” it… Actually, though, I can see some people might wish to turn it into an artistic statement, you know, a way of really putting it out there that they’re good citizens, committed to the Covenant and proud of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it became
de rigeur
in some parts of society to have it somewhere really obvious, like on your cheek or forehead. Conmen would be grinding their teeth in frustration - even the best plastic surgeons can’t tamper with a tattoo without leaving signs; and what do plastic surgeons know about machine code anyway?

Of course there are issues. What happens if the tat gets scarred in
an attack or you lost your arm in a factory machine, or some such? Well, maybe that’s a good reason to get the tat on your face. If you lose your head in an accident, you’ll be beyond worrying about how you’re going to access your bank account…

*****

Customer quotas apply here,
said a sign in nearly every shop window. Ellen walked the length of Portstewart Promenade once more, trying to screw up the resolution she needed to go in to one of them. There were soldiers or Police or (worst of all) civil defence volunteers by every checkout, and long queues. The authorities were hyper about hoarding; it was almost as bad as looting, since there was no telling when stocks of all kinds of goods might be replenished. Ellen had a lot to buy, though, and thought she should chance her arm; they might let her away with buying a little too much just this once, and surely the worst that could happen was that they would insist she returned her surplus to the shelves again. At any rate, she would feel very silly returning with nothing. She had to go through with it.

She stopped outside the supermarket opposite the bandstand, and checked the contents of her purse one last time. She had a shopping list, a bundle of good old fashioned banknotes, some loose change, and an ID card her boyfriend had manufactured on his computer which purported to be a “temporary replacement”, just in case.

She went in and picked up a basket. It was the last one, and she was almost beaten to it by someone who shoved in behind her and all but dived for it. Her competitor swore and elbowed her way past. Ellen glared at the woman’s retreating back, marvelling at the readiness of people nowadays to treat everyone else as if they were an inconvenient circumstance instead of a person.

Ellen stepped forward into the first aisle, being jostled every so often by people scrambling for the stuff on offer. She looked at her fellow shoppers, amazed; it was like the run up to Christmas in a big department store. A few moments ago she’d been worried about getting into trouble over trying to buy too much; now it looked like she might leave the shop with nothing if she wasn’t quick enough.

The shelves were already half-empty, conjuring up memories of a shopping expedition she’d made with some friends two years before; she’d been a van driver on a relief trip to Eastern Europe, and during a brief stay in one of the big cities, she’d visited a big store. The goods and the currency were different, of course, but the poor selection and the inflated prices mirrored perfectly what was before her.

She consulted her list again and began collecting items. By the time fifteen minutes had passed, she had managed to acquire about half of what she had hoped for (
though in most instances she’d had to opt for an inferior brand) and was resigned to doing without the rest.

She joined the shortest queue - though in fact there wasn’t much to choose between them - and tried to stay calm and patient as she approached the cashpoint at even less than the usual snail’s pace. She watched the other customers, trying not to appear anxious about getting closer to the soldier hovering about beyond the checkouts who cradled his machine gun as if it was a baby.

Many of the people waiting with her appeared to be on a short fuse; she could hear some grumbling about people from out of town using up resources that really ought to be reserved for residents. For a university town - and a seaside one at that - this was a very bad sign; strangers were generally so much a part of the scenery that they were hardly noticed.

In the queue to Ellen’s left, a burly man in a grey coat stood swearing softly under his breath. She felt deeply uneasy about being close to him; a matter of only a few days ago, he may have been a perfectly decent and likeable example of Joe Citizen, but today, Ellen suspected, he was just a whisker away from being unhinged. She felt badly about thinking ill of him - he’d probably lost all his relatives, or someone very special, for all she knew - but she was nevertheless relieved when her queue began steadily to leave his behind. His tone of voice became more agitated as he saw Murphy’s
law working against him (
no matter which queue you’re in, the other one moves more quickly
), and the soldier looked up, alert against the possibility of trouble.

Ellen’s heartbeat accelerated; the posture of the soldier meant the gun was pointed right at her. She shifted from foot to foot, willing the people ahead to get a move on, but the little spurt of action a moment previously seemed to have
petered out; no-one budged.

She took a
half-step to her right and leaned around the person in front of her to look at the checkout. Nothing she could do would hurry things along, but she had a vague feeling that if she could see what exactly the hold-up was, she might feel a little less fidgety. The checkout operative, a woman in her late fifties, was fiddling with a fruit loaf; the part of the wrapping with the barcode was crumpled, and the machine was refusing to read it. For the fifth time, the woman flattened out the wrapper and passed it across the laser. Nothing happened. With an exasperated sigh, she began tapping in numbers manually. Then she stopped and squinted at the barcode panel again. She frowned and called over her shoulder: “Annie, can you read the last two numbers on this?”

As she frowned, something clicked in Ellen’s mind. She’d seen that woman somewhere else. Not here
; in some other setting. Ellen’s hopes began to rise. If the woman was disposed to be an ally, Ellen might get to breeze through the checkout without having to face awkward questions about the lack of appropriate ID.

“That’s three one, Mrs Parker,” said the other assistant.

Ellen opened her purse and glanced surreptitiously at her fake ID again. When Mark had presented her with it she had been very impressed; she thought it could hardly fail, and was so confident of success that she had persuaded him she could handle this shopping expedition on her own. Now the card just looked absurdly amateurish; why, it wasn’t even laminated.

She looked at Mrs Parker again, trying to place her, and trying to think of some small signal that might spark the woman’s recognition of
her
.

A small commotion br
oke out at one of the other paypoints. All conversation stopped while everyone listened in.

“But I have
other identification,” a young man was saying angrily. “I just don’t have the official ID card with me.”

“I’m sorry,” he was told, “I don’t make the rules.
It’s policy.”