In Britain under the New Order government, men have come to accept rule by women. Sponsorship — a system where a woman takes responsibility for a man in return for attachment of his assets and tax benefits.– is promoted by the government as a way of establishing social cohesion and gives women unprecedented powers over the men in their lives.
Positive discrimination in favour of women is common in the workplace, with men becoming increasingly marginalised and employed in menial jobs where decisions are not needed. Women seek to avoid the risks of Male Dominated Decision Making that New Order believe led to the current decline in the nation’s fortunes. The government’s “Respect Agenda” requires men to treat women as their superiors. Women act as sponsors to help improve men’s behaviour and the government’s Department of Sponsors Affairs (DOSA) exists to help them. Regulations governing men’s behaviour are enforced with enthusiasm by a part of the police dedicated to ensuring men comply with rules: the Male Control Force. There are plenty of regulations for men to fall foul of. The concept of enforcing male chastity is gaining ground as a way of reducing what women claim is men’s inability to focus on anything except their own sexual gratification, so called SAID ; sexually-driven attention inadequacy disorder.
In spite of their popular following and their substantial majority in parliament, not everyone is on-board with the government’s view of how society should function. Some people think that there might be alternatives.
It used to be that the ‘Three R’s’ were reading, (w)riting and (a)rithmetic but in New Order Britain for some groups, they are coming to have another meaning.
Part of this story is set around the East End of London, near the financial centre at Canary Wharf and London’s City Airport. Mudchute, contrary to what you might think, is a real place.
Norm Hailman, who we meet in Chapter One of this tale, originally appears in the story “Year One: A New Order Diary”. If you haven’t read it yet it won’t hurt your enjoyment of this. On the other hand there are a few references in this story to the attempt in May 2022 to blow up the Prime Minister at a meeting in Fordswell. If you’d like to know what happened to that you might be better of reading that story first!
Chapter 1: Exit Strategy
Norm Hailman was an absconder. He had run out on his one-time girlfriend then sponsor, Beth, after he had decided that he couldn’t take the bullying any more. He didn’t think of himself as a trouble maker but, in New Order Britain, going missing from your sponsor put you on the wrong side of the law. At best, if you were caught, you got returned to your sponsor. If you weren’t so lucky it could mean a spell in prison and being assigned to a government run sponsorship scheme. And the word was they were no fun at all. Norm had been dodging Male Control Force officers ever since leaving what had been his home. He was getting used to finding ways of living with hardly any cash and no credit
It was late November. London was sulking through a bleak, grey, day. Streets wet from late afternoon rain reflected the lights from shop windows as peopled scurried by, not wanting to stop in the cold, easterly wind. In London’s West End the queues for tickets at shows that evening were shorter than usual as the attraction of bars and restaurants seemed to trump those of standing in line for the hope of an evening’s entertainment.
Norm was sitting in The Pig’s Tale, a bar in Soho’s Old Compton Street, not far from Shaftesbury Avenue, the heart of London’s theatre land. He was trying to look inconspicuous.
Twenty or thirty years ago, the Pig’s Tale had a fearsome reputation for hard drinking artists and journalists. In its hey-day, writers and painters had rubbed shoulders with prostitutes, perverts and wannabe bohemians, petty crooks and some not so petty ones as well. Now it was just a seedy dive where the table tops were only slightly less sticky than the carpets. Its main attractions were that it was dark and quiet and it didn’t have a ‘women only’ policy. Plus, it had a back entrance.
Norm’s efforts at blending into the background were made more difficult by the fact that there were so few other customers. His contact was late. That was making Norm nervous. Any indication that things weren’t going as planned made him nervous. But, he told himself, if you were doing what he was, then nervous was a good way to be.
He drank his beer slowly, trying to look as relaxed as possible. Besides, he was short of cash. He had to make it last.
Norm’s plan was to get out of the country. As far as he could see it was the only alternative for an absconder to a life constantly looking over his shoulder in case he was detected or betrayed. He knew that it wasn’t going to be easy but he’d had friends that had tried to hide out from the MCF after absconding and they had failed. One was back with his sponsor again after being run to ground by a pair of MCF officers that had left him bruised and cowed. He remembered the triumphant crowing of the man’s sponsor when she heard that he’d been recaptured. The scornful “he couldn’t find his way to the end of the road without a leash on his neck” remarks had been delivered with a triumphant smirk. He was determined Beth wouldn’t have the chance to crow about him.
It felt like a lifetime since he had left his home in Fordswell, south west of London. In fact it had been barely a week. Sure he’d been frustrated with the regulations and limitations that the New Order Government had brought in, and he hated the way that every interaction between a man and woman seemed to be politicised now but what had been worse was what Beth had ended up expecting in the bedroom. That had been the final straw.
He wondered how long it had been before Beth had realised that he’d absconded and notified the Department of Sponsors Affairs. It would have been at least a day but DOSA would know by now of course and that meant the MCF would have his name on a list too. He wondered if they were really as efficient as they were supposed to be. So far he’d managed to stay out of their way.
That was more by luck than judgement, he knew. Although he was determined to get out, he didn’t really have much idea of what happened after that. But, he told himself, maybe it was better to be flexible, not to be locked in to some predetermined goal. And so far he had managed to stay on the run.
Staying out of the way of the MCF hadn’t been easy though and, while he hadn’t been happy with the way things had gone with Beth, back then at least he’d had a roof over his head and three meals a day. Now he was having to live off his own resources; what he could scrounge or steal or what he could pay for out of his rapidly diminishing funds.
He hadn’t got used to being a fugitive, constantly looking over his shoulder and his surroundings were anything but familiar. He’d lived in London once but it had been a different place then. And, even though Fordswell wasn’t far from London, it still felt like it was a thousand miles away. The nearest that Fordswell came to a seedy Soho bar like the one he was in now was the kebab van that parked up just by the village green on Friday evenings.