The Resistance

number.
    ‘Yes?’
    He was fairly sure it was Pip, but he couldn’t be certain; his tone was brisker than usual.
    ‘I’m looking for a new direction,’ Peter said, reading the words straight off the flyer. ‘I believe in myself.’
    ‘Then our consultants can help. Grays Inn Road, number 87, eighth floor, room 24b, 6 p.m. tonight.’
    Peter scribbled down the details. ‘Great. I’ll be there,’ he said breathlessly, but already the phone had gone dead.
    Later that morning, Ben was in a grizzly mood, and Anna fussed over him as she walked along the suburban streets, bending over his pram frequently to pull his blanket tighter against the winter’s cold, to smile at him, to reassure herself that all was well. The pram itself, which Anna’s parents had found for him, was like a museum piece – battered, creaky, unsteady on its wheels and now far too small for her rapidly growing brother. Somehow it had survived for over a hundred years to see active service again; somewhere, someone had thought to keep it, just in case. And as it rattled along the pavements, it drew looks from passers-by – looks of surprise, of horror, of confusion. Very occasionally, someone would stop – nearly always a woman, nearly always old, the ones who were alive when Longevity was invented, the ones who remembered what children were like. They would ask to look at ‘the baby’, their eyes invariably welling up as they told Anna their own story – a lost child, a Declaration signed before the woman understood its true meaning, a longing for something that Anna suspected they dared not articulate, dared not name. But more often, people passing would screw up their faces in looks of disgust; they would gaze haughtily at Anna and Ben as though she were parading something distasteful in public, as though she shouldn’t be inflicting his presence on them.
    Anna wished she could feel more confident, wished her heart didn’t skip a beat every time someone looked at her, every time the computer came on at home, every time the phone rang. She’d longed to leave Grange Hall, had worked hard so that she could become a Valuable Asset and live on the Outside. But increasingly, she was finding it hard to throw off her guilt at being Legal when there were so many Surpluses still incarcerated. Every time someone looked at her, she felt they were judging her. Every time she glimpsed a Surplus working as a housekeeper, imprisoned in the home of their employer, she felt her guilt like a knife-wound deep in her stomach. And they were the lucky ones. They were the ones who were considered Valuable, not simply Useless and Evil.
    Doing her best to ignore the stares of the people around her, she walked towards the shopping centre, but as she walked, she saw a large, flickering screen in the window of an electrical store. In front of the window, a small crowd had gathered looking hungrily in at the large, glossy plasma screen. Energy vouchers made such things an unaffordable luxury for most.
    Anna, who had grown up without televisions or computers, had never warmed to the disembodied faces and voices that spoke so confidently, peddling their propaganda, telling her what to think about things.
    Today, though, she wanted to be brave; instead of walking past, she found herself turning the pram to the right, awkwardly, and joining the throng, easing her way in so that she, too, could watch the silent picture show.
    It was a news programme. Anna watched as the camera panned in on a woman talking, then revealed a man being arrested in front of his house. A phone number flashed on the screen with the words ‘Energy Watch – report the waste, confidentially assured.’ As he was dragged away by the police, Anna felt her insides clench anxiously.
    An elderly woman close to Anna shook her head. ‘It’s like the bloody Cold War again. People snooping on other people. I don’t like it. I just don’t like it.’
    ‘You may not like it,’ another younger-looking woman with artificially auburn hair replied staunchly, ‘but if some people abuse the system, there need to be repercussions. I’m sleeping with three blankets and two duvets these days, and then you find out people are tapping into the central grid? I tell you, I’d report them in a flash if I got to hear about it. Wouldn’t think twice.’
    Anna listened, biting her lip as she watched the screen. She found it hard to judge the world as others seemed able to. Until she’d met Peter, she’d