The Resistance

Authorities think that everything is their remit,’ Richard said, his tone suddenly icy. ‘They’re wrong.’

Chapter Five
    Reluctantly pulling himself out of bed, Jude opened the curtains and looked outside. The sky was filled with ugly, dirty clouds; outside, neighbours offered each other half-smiles as they went about their business. What a grim place, he found himself thinking, a prison with no walls, a life sentence that kept repeating itself. No one was happy, no one was anything; they just were. It was really incredibly boring.
    He looked down at the road for a few minutes, his mouth curling up in disgust, then he closed the curtains again and pulled himself off his bed, reluctantly replacing his warm duvet with two jumpers and a donkey jacket. Then, heavily, he ambled downstairs. The newspaper was on the doormat and he glanced at it briefly, skimming stories about the growing economy owing its success to the Authorities’ ReTraining programme; about selfish energy-wasters causing a blackout in Manchester the day before; about the new craze for cliff-jumping and the dangers of having inadequate equipment. Nothing about the raid on Pincent Pharma, of course, he noticed wryly. The Authorities would have covered that one up. He might find out more online, though; online newspapers weren’t quite so easy for the Authorities to silence – they didn’t depend on the Authorities for a permit to print, to use up valuable resources. You had to rely on blogs and transient websites for any real information.
    He frowned briefly as he read, then noticed a leaflet that had been put through his door. Junk mail. Sighing, he picked it up, scanning it as he walked into the kitchen. The leaflet was cheaply produced and ink rubbed off on to his fingers. In spite of the cost of production, leaflets like this had become more commonplace recently – rabid rants from unhappy citizens on issues Jude cared very little about: longer sabbaticals for the over 150s, heating subsidies for the poor, better transport links. They were generally delivered in the dead of night, but there was very little point to them as far as Jude could see – no action suggested, no public meeting organised. He supposed that wasn’t the point; the point was simply to be heard, which the complainants rarely were, since the leaflets always piled up in recycling bins.
    This one, however, seemed to have set its sights rather higher. ‘Longevity is murder’ it proclaimed boldly across the top. His attention caught for a few seconds, Jude read a little more. ‘Cliff-jumping no more than an “official” explanation for the rise in suicides’ the leaflet shouted in large, capital letters. ‘Longevity is killing us. And it’s not just here. All around the world, energy shortages are leading to death and disease because the UK won’t give out Longevity for free.’
    Jude frowned at the lack of logic. ‘So Longevity is murder but you still want it given away for free?’ he said dismissively to no one in particular before throwing both leaflet and paper away and opening the fridge, which reminded him silkily that he was running low on milk and other dairy products, and reminded him not to hold the door open for too long.
    Closing the fridge and grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl, he left the kitchen and returned to his bedroom, the only room in the house that he really used; once there he turned on his computer. It took only seconds to spring to life; Jude had long ago wiped it clean of any unnecessary programmes, or files that might impede its speed; he could run his computer for twenty-four hours at the same level of energy usage as a low-energy light bulb. He regularly heard news reports that the Computer Age was dead because people couldn’t afford the energy and it always made him laugh. It just reinforced his opinion of old people – that they were stupid and ignorant, that age still rotted the brain, whatever they said about Longevity.
    He decided to take another quick look at Pincent Pharma – a week had gone by since he’d witnessed the Underground raid and every day he’d returned to see if there was any new activity, but there was nothing to see, just the perimeter guard completing a crossword, a food lorry arriving with supplies. Was Peter inside, he wondered. Was he standing by one of those many windows, looking out perhaps?
    He stared at the image for a few minutes, then, navigating away from Pincent Pharma’s security system,