348. Decrease (VI)

This incident, best as I can reconstruct from the archives, represents a typical event during the Sweep. What follows is my own dramatised reconstruction, supplemented with information taken from the original audio files. Hopefully, it will give the members of the Academy an impression as to that time period on our island; it is difficult for my colleagues in the Eurasian Federation to understand the problems we British historians experience in our research efforts into this period—the issue of electromagnetic damage to archive material is a particularly acute problem, one reserved for our more enterprising computer scientists.

The time is 03:00 AM, the witching hour, and a black unmarked Volvo hatchback slides through central London, right by the Houses of Parliament—still burned out from the May 15 events during the Anarchy. In the car are three men from SAS “B”, a special division whose post-Sweep existence was largely erased but whose activities I have partially reconstructed with help from the NDL’s Creeper; essentially, I fed shredded paper into a special hopper and the AI reconstructed the documents in a matter of minutes. This is a typical “snatch” operation, as occurred unknown times early on in the Sweep. The destination is Dolphin House and the target is a former network head who pulled together the British section of what was then known as the “neocons”; for more information on this ideological strand in ante-Turning Western history I recommend Patrick Newsome’s Influence, Treachery, and Policy: A Case Study in Neoconservatism (2050).

David Müller is nominally a British citizen, although he also has permanent residency in the United States and extensive business interests in Israel—a country he visits frequently and for which he holds a second passport. His special responsibility is funds for several think tanks and media operations that push the neoconservative line in the oligarchy. By this time, the neocons were severely marginalised, but they remained occasionally potent; and it seems the Warden may have taken a personal interest in the Müller case (see, Dr. David White’s recent work on the Warden’s authorised diary).

Essentially, the neocons inveigled various Western nations into highly unwinnable wars in line with their regressive neo-communist ideology; so, for example, neocon propagandists would laughably claim that the Kurds fielded mainly women fighters; an important but absurd belief for people in the early 21st century, and we must remember how quickly we have progressed and how deeply perverted it seems to us to imagine our daughters in the military—if only for propaganda purposes. As with all neo-communist ideologies, neoconservatism played infiltration; presenting itself as a conservative movement but mostly promoting mass migration for internal demographic war on the oligarchy’s behalf, unwinnable wars that benefited their contacts in the oligarchy’s arms industry, and support for Israel against the British national interest.

SAS “B” arrives at Dolphin House at 03:10 AM and is admitted, surprisingly, by the concierge. It is unclear how this was arranged; NCID had yet to be formed, but an unofficial informer network was in genesis. They proceed to Müller’s flat and the man in question is recorded as having fallen to his death on the CCTV camera at around 03:20 AM. At this stage in the Sweep, preliminary interrogation was extremely brief; but later we see a trend towards interrogations of up to half an hour—sometimes actual kidnappings for further examination. The death was officially recorded on The Times website as: “City financier suicide; police probe child pornography links”.

At this moment, such cover stories were quite common; but I know from recovered social media records—somewhat fragmentary, alas—that this was contested, particularly by neoconservative commentators and “intellectuals” in New York. As to the veracity of the child pornography found at the address, this poses problems from an historical perspective; it was not unknown for SAS “B”—other more irregular units—to plant what they called “trolls” on site. However, in this case the evidence from the NSA archives, provided by my colleague Simon Jensen…