Something Completely Different.

Or maybe not.

The first scene from the latest version of 2020.



Thomas Orwell's titanium kneecaps creaked as he walked to answer the doorbell.

"Who is it?" he said into the security speaker.

"Special Social Agent Baskin," came the answer.

"Come on in, Roger. It's open."

Tom never bothered to lock the door. The local underclass hoodlums weren't likely to mess with him--they'd seen him around the neighborhood and had a good idea who he was. They'd all played the "Colonel America" arcade video games when they were supposed to be in grade school.

And if Little Brother decided to send the SPAT thugs after him, a little thing like a deadbolt wouldn't slow them down a nanosecond. Those Special Propaganda and Tactics boys knew their stuff. Hell, they ought to. Tom had trained most of them himself. If those characters got their hands on you, and whisked you off to one of their Ghraibs, you'd be lucky to remember your mother's first name. Or what she looked like. You might not remember that you ever had a mother at all.

But if Little Brother and the Party decided they couldn't tolerate Tom's existence anymore, they didn't need to send a SPAT team after him. They had plenty of cheaper and easier ways to destroy him. Death by a thousand paper cuts, they called it these days, in the Year of our Lord 2020.

Tom's door opened. Tubby, bald, short Roger Baskin of the Federal Bureau of Social Integrity walked in, wiping beads of perspiration from his forehead, and panting.

"Ten flights of stairs," he said. "You could have bought an apartment on a lower floor, Orwell."

"But then I wouldn't have this fantastic view of the Chesapeake Bay would I? It's so important to live in surroundings that keep you aware of nature, don't you think?"

Tom led Roger into the living room. "Nature," Roger said. "Don't know why you think looking at the Bay has anything to do with nature. Nothing's lived in it since Big Brother disappeared in South America in the middle of the First War on Evil."

"It's the thought that counts," Tom said, and sat in his easy chair. "Take the couch, Roger. And try not to sweat on it too much."

"Always with the wise cracks," Roger said, and sat on the couch, and sweat on it.