BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

“Come on, you aren’t usually like this, say something!”

Si didn’t feel there was anything different about himself today. He stared blankly at his bowl of mush. Out of nowhere, Kay began to hum a tune. The humming turned to quiet, indecipherable singing.

“What on earth are you doing?” Si bleated. He directed Kay’s eyes to a neatly groomed young man at the end of the table.

“Oh, I’m s - sure that nobody noticed” Kay whispered, trembling. The painful whistle then rang, and all conversation ceased. Si gulped down the last of the gruel.

After several further hours of mind-numbing rock-splitting, Si left, to run the gauntlet to home, to sanctuary. His journey revealed nothing; his secrets kept to himself. He briskly ascended the creaking, winding stairs of the dingy council flat, found his room, and locked all five of his impenetrable locks. He threw off his tie, and raced to his hidden box. His face then contorted into that of a mother who has lost her child. The box. It had been opened. His violently shaking hand deftly lifted the lid, as if to reveal his fate.

Nothing.

He let out an unexpected yelp of horror. His terror turned to dread, his dread to anger, his anger to despair. Empty: the box, his heart. He sank to his knees. The love of his life, his one true passion: gone. Someone had found out. He must have been careless enough for someone to catch a hint, and now, he was sure of his doom.

He attempted to contact Kay for some form of comfort, but instead a message played through the telephone in a calm woman’s voice. “The person you have attempted to contact is uncontactable due to criminal activity. Any further attempts will result in sanctions.”

His stomach gave a painful jolt. Si was right to be wary in the lunch hall. Now carelessness had also taken away one of the only people in the world who understood Si. Suddenly, out of the deathly silence, Si’s world was filled with the sound of pounding footsteps and frantic shouting. The Maintainers of the Order had been waiting for him. He lethargically drooped to one side, a wilted flower, and showed no resistance against the Maintainers. All effort was futile.

“Keep your hands where I can see them!” came a bold, harsh voice from behind him.

Si wheeled around.A group of black-clad men stood before him; each with a gun clamped tightly in his right fist, pointing squarely between Si’s eyes. Si flatly refused to co-operate. He knew that all hope was lost, but he still wanted to make the most of his death.

The front runner of the Maintainers took a threatening step forward, so Si had to cross his eyes to focus on the black cylinder of doom now pressing against his forehead. In a final act of defiance, Si began to hum a tune. The very same tune that led to Kay’s demise. For all he knew, his end, his extinguishment, could have spelled the end of music, of art, of free expression. The world as he knew it would be home to a mindless society, missing an integral component.

Si’s rebellion had passed unnoticed for a few years, but the Holy Order of the Nine had got him in the end, as they had all rebels before him and would do with every rebellion to come. Any attempt to disobey was futile, and Si’s death would be published as a symbol of the pointlessness of insubordination.