AH Vignette: Caught in a Webb

Trigger Warning: This is a bit eugenicsy, so be warned. I'm not at all presenting it in a positive sense, though.

Caught in a Webb

“Hi, Shaz - yeah, it’s Kirk, yeah. Listen: really sorry to bail at the last minute, but I really can’t be at work from the start of the shift. It’s - “

There was a burst of digitised noise from the ailing old Sinclair Smartphone MkIV that Kirk was holding to his ear. “Fuck’s sake, Kirk, we’re understaffed as it is!”

“Look, I got a letter - well, anyway, I really have to see my accountant ASAP, and his first opening is literally at the moment I would be clocking on, so if I could show up an hour or so late and you could - you could dock my pay, and then…”

Silence for a second. “If you need to see your accountant that urgently, maybe you shouldn’t keep giving me excuses to dock your pay.” Ah, oh dear. Kirk could hear her lips pursing even through the abysmal speaker on his phone.

“Shaz, it’s not like I’m doing this because I don’t want to wipe old men’s arses - although I don’t - it’s really, really urgent.”

“I thought you people liked that sort of thing.” He recoiled slightly. It is what it is. “Go and see your bloody accountant. It’ll just mean that Mrs Geldray won’t get fed until some unearthly hour. As usual.”

Kirk thanked his boss and hung up, mentally returning to the sofa in the sitting room of his flat. The National Care Service was really grossly underfunded and understaffed, and he’d be the first to admit that he wasn’t exactly being helpful by taking an hour off. But the letter from the taxman had come, and there was no avoiding it. Well, unless he watched TV for a bit before he set off. He had a while before the latest bus he could catch.

He turned the TV on and continued the last programme he’d been watching last night, a charity telethon thing from a few days ago. His mind returned to that bloody letter. The telly would have to be the first thing to go. He’d already sold the Ford, for fuck’s sake.

“What are you doing out here in Katanga, Dr Goldsmith?” asked the BBC’s latest panel show star, currently sporting a comedy red nose which embarrassed even her. She was a Class A through and through, hardly deigning even to let the camera take in her image.

She was interviewing a middle-aged doctor in the middle of a jungle in Africa. He had the weak, patrician look of someone who would struggle to hold a pint without both hands. “Well, I’m out here to visit tiny communities, some of which have never seen a medical professional before, and offer whatever help I can. A lot of it is fairly simple stuff, although it can be complicated by the fact that people have been living with ailments for far too long - if a broken bone hasn’t been set right, it can become very painful indeed, and without painkillers on demand, that leads to a pretty miserable life. But with a bit more money, we could build a runway out here so as to fly in urgently-needed medical supplies.”

“Remember to donate using the red button, viewers at home. Tell me, Dr Goldsmith, what is the most common operation you have to do out here?”

“Jennifer, I’ll tell you: it’s actually a very simple procedure, but it does so much good to these villages where subsistence is the only goal in life. So, to give these people a fighting chance at being able to feed their children, we perform sterilisations on anybody who has already had two children or more, thus making sure there is only a sensible number of mouths to feed. This also reduces deaths in childbirth by, well, reducing childbirth. Hahaha!”

“It’s great to see such proactive steps being taken for all these poor people in Katanga. Back to you, Chris!”​

It crossed Kirk’s mind that it might be easier just to throw a couple of pallets of condoms at these people, if that was really the main issue, but he noticed the time and rushed out, putting all thought of it from his head.

The bus ride was rather miserable. Even putting aside the weight of Kirk’s worries, there were the innumerable peeves of public transport, which he still wasn’t entirely used to. There was the peeling faux-leather of the seats, the smell of tramp piss, the argument between a Class A man and a pregnant Class C woman over who had priority for seating, and some try-hard far-right teenager had stuck a load of stickers reading things like ‘Impeach Clarke’ and ‘Fuck the NHS’ all over the windows.

Kirk was glad to disembark, thanking the Pakistani driver despite the stares he got from a pair of old bints who slapped their Grey Cards onto the reader with evident disdain. Probably Enoch Powell fan-girls - he’d never been PM (far too racist and unbalanced) but he’d apparently held a certain sway back in the day. Fought in the War.

His accountant’s office was up three flights of stairs, and had an unparalleled view of a little courtyard where the bins were kept and where a corpse had been discovered three years ago. “Hi, Walter,” he said as he walked into the old coot’s office, “how’re things?”

“Creaking more than they used to, Kirk. Am I to understand from the urgency of your schedule, that you won’t be lubricating me with any money?”

Kirk flicked the letter from Revenue onto the desk in wordless response.

“Ah, I see. You, ah, don’t have that much moolah, do you?”

“Obviously not, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“Calm down, dear. Well, at first glance, the obvious thing is that about… 83% of the bill comes from Childlessness Levy. What is it, your tenth year, correct?” Kirk nodded sharply in agreement. “Twenty-six, hm? Not a good look. Well, then. There are two - no, three - paths open to you.”

“Go on” said Kirk, certain in the foreknowledge that he wouldn’t like any of them.

“Option One: procreate with a woman.” There was a pointed pause. “No, I didn’t think you’d leap at that prospect. Some men of your situation do manage, you know.”

“Next option, please.”

“Option Two: get a proper job that will keep you in the manner in which you are accustomed, as it were. One downside is that the Levy will hit 100% of yearly earnings in about another four years, so this is only a short-term stop-gap.”

“Working for the NCS is a proper job, Walter, it’s just - “

“It’s just that it pays sod all above minimum wage, Kirk, and that’s not acceptable for someone of your tax bracket. Speaking of which: Option Three. If you can’t pay the bill, you have to fill in a Declaration of Reduction, which is essentially a filing of genetic bankruptcy. In the first instance - “

“I’m not sure I like the phrase ‘genetic bankruptcy’, Walter.” Kirk was physically shrinking from the reality of what was facing him, and like a cornered beast, he was lashing out anaemically.

“Relax, it’s only a reduction by one Class, and it will knock… 53.7 - sorry, no, 57.3% off your tax bill. And speaking from experience, Class B isn’t as bad as you might think. You don’t get into the fashionable nightclubs, but, well, you’re 26, for Christ’s sake, you’re already far too old for nightlife. Normal nightlife, anyway.”

“You think I’ve been going clubbing much this year, after last year’s bill?”

“In fact, not wishing to add insult to injury, but I don’t see how you were ever Class A to begin with. I mean, we’ve established your financial situation, it’s not as if you have a profession or any artistic skills of note - and, to be frank, your genetic worth is… questionable.”

“In my defence, I have a very good beard.”

“Jesus, I thought we got rid of the last Lamarckians back in the Sixties. No, no, no, the cheekbones are all wrong. How on earth did you ever get Class A, by the way?”

“Daddy’s a Viscount.” It was, unfortunately, true. Eton had been hell for someone who genuinely wanted to spend his life helping other people. Even the Masters had no conception of the ideas involved. Stupid people, in a sense, but at least they had educated his classmates to be inhuman enough to put the biscuits away at the age of 16 and descend on Sloane Square in full bloodlust.

“That explains it. Well, you have a couple of weeks to make your decision, there’s no pressure.”

Walter’s disingenuous comment rankled, but was overcome by the massive amount of pressure on Kirk at that moment. What would he lose by going down to Class B? Well, the obvious thing was that he would no longer be allowed to procreate with Class A girls, but he’d never exactly been keen on that in the first place. He wouldn’t be allowed into White’s anymore - Travelodges would dent his wallet if he had to go to London again, he supposed. But the real thing was the small stuff: credit would be harder to come by, his insurance premiums would become rather scary, the Safeway Clubcard in his jacket pocket would only add half as much cashback as it did today. And then there would be all the dirty looks and studied blankings from Class As.

And if he ever went on another anti-Apartheid protest, he could bet his bottom dollar that the Police would take great care in recording his identity number, rather than letting him go with a special handshake.

He finally arrived at the old folks’ home, in a dreadful daze. Shaz shouted at him for a minute, but relented when she saw what a state he was in. “Go and take Mr Hetterscheidt to the bathroom, Kirk” she said with a sympathetic purse of the lips.

“This might be a bit dramatic, Shaz, but will you marry me?” He regretted this just before saying it, but his reactions had been dulled by stress.

“No, I’m far too busy changing the beds.”

Mr Hetterscheidt was a frail old man, who had once been a beefy weightlifter but was now a flimsy bag of bones and dust. He’d immigrated in the Sixties, back when there was still amount of anti-German feeling over the Blitz and everything. Hetterscheidt loved telling stories of how he had broken the noses of objectionable men in pubs. On the other hand, he was also proud of having Oswald Mosley’s autograph, so swings and roundabouts. It still surprised Kirk every time he remembered that Mosley had ended up as a Member of the European Parliament for Spain.

“Bloody lefties,” Hetterscheidt often said, “taking credit for the Population Policy! Galton and the Fabians might have thought of it first, but we put it into practice long before Harold Laski and Nye Bevan!”

Kirk bit his tongue when this came up - he wasn’t going to argue the toss by mentioning that it was only the benevolence of Tony Benn that had extended free health and social care to Class E residents.

This time, though, Mr Hetterscheidt remained silent, his brow furrowed, as Kirk took him to the toilet. “Thank you” he said as he was lowered to the seat.

“Something on your mind, Mr Hetterscheidt?” asked Kirk, eager to hear something that wasn’t related to his own fears.

“Kirk… I suppose you think you’ve seen me at my worst.” He gestured around him. “But you haven’t. I don’t talk about the war, as a rule. Nobody does, who was in my position.”

“What was your position?”

“I was a guard. Tell me, Kirk - have you heard any… rumours… about a place called Auschwitz-Birkenau?”

“No, never heard of it.”

“No,” echoed Mr Hetterscheidt, “we burned it in time. We burned all of the places like that. At first there were rumours, but despite the best efforts of the Allies, they could not be substantiated. I think your old Prime Minister, Kilmuir, thought he knew something, but he never made anything of it. And as we all die off, in places like this, even the rumours die with us.”

“What were the rumours?” asked Kirk. He felt sick, as if some higher power was telling him that he really didn’t want to know. But then again, he was already feeling pretty ill with worry.

“Well, young man, let’s say that if everybody knew about the things I am about to tell you, the so-called progressives of the global Left would have had a very different social outlook for the last seventy years…”​
 
Well, I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but damn, that's dark.

From what I can tell, with the holocaust successfully covered up the discrediting of eugenics amongst the progressive left outside of Scandinavia never takes place, and in fact intensifies, becoming a key plank of the NHS.
 
That was bloody grim, I don't really want to say that it was a 'good' read, but it was very interesting to read and was well written as always.
 
And scarily plausible! Our thinking about a whole lot of topics that don't directly affect us is largely conditioned by those we admire/defer to and how successfully policies seem to be going. Look at the 180 degree turn in thinking about the state of Israel and its right to exist on the left. Contrast Stalin's views on selective education with those of Richard Crossman. Or that, in the 1930s, National Service was seen as a left wing idea in France and as a right wing idea in Britain. And Gonzo did a great timeline where the Sixties Labour Home Secretary was the socially conservative Bob Mellish not Woy Jenkins. And if Hitler had had a fatal or incapacitating stroke in 1938, appeasement wouldn't be a dirty word today. It would be seen as a successful handling strategy instead. And Neville Chamberlain our greatest C20th PM. And Fascism a reasonable alternative to Communism or Socialism
 
Very good read indeed

Dystopia has to be very well world - built and have interesting characters to keep reading when it is so dark. This does it
 
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