Goldstein

To the Party,

True to my word, this is your daily update on the progress being made by the Brotherhood. We unveiled a new branch in Johannesburg this morning. The ceremony was subdued, as I'm sure you can understand – nothing like your recent Hate Week celebrations. However, I am told the Johannesburg branch is recruiting a new member every hour. The Brotherhood continues to grow.

Still no joy with the telescreens. But I am patient. Our best bet in my estimation is Francesca Miller, owing to both the secrecy of the telescreen in question and her unparalleled skills in espionage. Once we have the stolen telescreen, the cogs of my plan will start turning.

Be ready for war – and don't underestimate my use of the word war. I am not referring to the psychological war you fight against the proletariat. I do not mean the war of supplies at the borders of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. I am speaking of men giving their lives to end the lives of the men at the top of the glass pyramids in London. We are developing military weapons the scale of which you cannot begin to imagine, weapons that can bring the Ministries crashing down at the push of a button.

You may feel I am taunting you. No – every word of this letter is factual. As you may recall from my first letter to you, my stubborn use of Truth is my most powerful weapon against you. Truth to the Brotherhood is as lies are to the Party. We collapse without Truth, but the Party collapses with it. And that day is looming closer than you think. I am an old man, but I will live to see the day the Party implodes.

This is not a threat. This is Truth. This is Goldstein.

Emmanuel Goldstein leant back in his chair, inhaling deeply through his nose, and took a gulp of brandy. The room was lit only by twin lamps on the walls and a candle on Goldstein's desk. The Brotherhood could not afford to use electricity, either in the financial sense or the risk-taking sense. The Party could track them down the second they discovered an unauthorised power recipient.

Goldstein set his pencil down and re-read his letter. The wrinkled eyes darted from side to side from behind square spectacles. His iron-grey hair stuck out at random angles, heightening his air of eccentricity, perhaps an external indication of the brilliant mind within.

After a few minutes, he removed his glasses. As usual, writing these letters was extremely cathartic. He would have died from stress years ago had he not had this outlet to vent.

Very slowly, he inched the letter closer to the candle, until the corner caught light. What he wouldn't give to actually send these letters to the Party! As he watched the paper black and curl with the usual sense of helpless regret, Goldstein for a second pictured those bland, expressionless faces falter with genuine shock, with genuine fear … alas, it was fruitless fantasy. To send the letters would be to tie his own noose. They would trace the letter to its source with ease with their fingerprint-recognition machines. Everything he had so carefully constructed with the Brotherhood would vanish in the vacuum of doublethink, as though it had never existed.

Still, the letters helped. It made the infinite, monstrous complexity of the Party slightly more manageable in his head. It reminded him how far the Brotherhood had come. It kept him sane. He wrote one letter every day, which was a feat in itself, given how constantly busy he was. It was like keeping a diary, albeit a diary that died every day.

The letter had dissolved into a small mound of ash on the desk. At that moment, noises of commotion rose outside Goldstein's door. He slipped his glasses into his breast pocket, hastily brushed the ash onto the floor, so that it trickled through the gaps between the old wooden floorboards, and rose to his feet. Despite his age, he was tall, over six foot, with a body stronger and more agile than a man twenty years his junior.

Before he could reach the door, however, it burst open. The babbling voices from the lobby grew twice as loud.

'Mr Goldstein,' said the man who had opened the door. His name escaped Goldstein (he had no hope of remembering the name of everyone who worked for him), but he was one of the clerical workers in the Einstein branch. His excitement was palpable. 'Agent Miller's back.'

'Fantastic,' muttered Goldstein, immediately contaminated with the man's excitement. He followed him into the packed lobby, where the fifty or so workers were gathered round the long table, upon which something of great interest had been placed.

Automatically, the crowd turned, spotted Goldstein, and parted so that he had a view of both the object and its deliverer. The object was a solid black briefcase. The deliverer, Francesca Miller, froze at the sight of Goldstein, a reaction he was accustomed to. Her eyes were alight and her cheeks flushed. She clearly hadn't expected his presence.

'Mr Goldstein,' she said breathlessly, with a small curtsey.

'Ms Miller,' Goldstein smiled, bowing his head. 'This looks very much like good news. Please, do not keep us in suspense.'

'Yes, sir,' replied Miller, beaming widely; then, to the room at large: 'I must ask for complete silence, lest the Party recognises your voice. It's still working, you see.'

The murmurings grew quieter, then disappeared completely, although the sense of anticipation in the room only increased. The clicks of Miller unlocking the briefcase sounded twice as loud in the silence. She lifted the lid and there was a collective intake of breath at the sight of the downturned telescreen –

At once the demonic screams filled the room, making everyone jump and causing a few to yelp out. As they stuck their fingers in their ears, one of the men nearest to the telescreen wielded a screwdriver. At Goldstein's quick nod of approval, he set about unwinding the four screws on the corner of the telescreen. After a minute of the endless, ear-splitting siren, the man prised away the steel back of the telescreen, then detected a slim blue box within: the battery. This he unhooked, at which point silence fell.

The man with the screwdriver let out a triumphant laugh, which triggered a cacophony of cheers and whoops and high-fives. As they all regrouped around the dead telescreen, Miller slipped through the crowd towards Goldstein.

'You've done remarkably well,' said Goldstein when she reached him. 'I don't underestimate the danger you put yourself in to obtain that.'

'I thought I was done for,' admitted Miller. 'As soon as that bloody siren went off …'

'I did wonder if the Party was paranoid enough to put a defence mechanism into their telescreens, but I would have banked on something a little more sophisticated. But this is a giant step forward. That will keep our technicians busy until they find a way to hack into the telescreen network. In the meantime I will call off the other heists across the city … unless you see a reason not to?'

'It might be worth keeping one spare,' said Miller. 'Any more than that might raise suspicion.'

'Well said.' Goldstein ran a hand through his hair, driving it even wilder. 'Well, you may or may not like to hear this, Miller, but this is just the start. Things will only get more dangerous from here.'