Year One Pt. 04

I told him about Norm.

"Yeah, well, some folk do make it. Maybe he was lucky. I reckon we've got more chance by stirring things up here."

Harry was sounding like he was advocating what they talk about on the news sometimes as "dissident trouble making". The trouble is, your dissident is someone else's campaigner for civil liberties, I guess.

"Did you find out any more about that MCP stuff?"

I didn't feel like telling him about my experiences in the office with Lucy's try-outs, nor HR's remarks, so I just said, "Not really. It looks like it's going ahead though. The bids from the service providers have to be in by the end of the month."

Harry just said, "Oh," and didn't seem to take much notice.

"I did find some disturbing stuff about South Merryside though. There must be all sorts of mistreatment going on up there from the equipment they have been sourcing."

I probably shouldn't have said that because the next thing Harry was asking was could he get a list of the stuff, preferably something official looking. Then he said, "Look, you've got access to things that could help people who think New Order is going too far. I think you should talk to them, they could tell you how you could help. There needn't be any risk but at least you could feel you'd done your bit."

I said, "Why do you think I'd be interested."

He said, "If you aren't why do you keep telling me this stuff?"

I suppose that was fair enough. Anyway, I've agreed to let him set up a meeting. I'm pretty nervous about it but he is right. That business with the cock cages was a step too far, if you ask me.

Saturday January 29th

Jill is furious with me. She got a letter this morning from Mrs Harris, explaining that I had made a complaint and that there might need to be disciplinary procedures and she should be aware as my sponsor. "Why the fuck do I need to be involved with this? Is this the sort of thing Angie had to put up with? I can see why she was so keen to ditch you when she went off to Whitehall. Can't you just do your job without rocking the boat? What was it all about anyway?"

So then I had to explain to her about Wednesday. That meant more embarrassment for me which wasn't helped by the fact that she ended up laughing hysterically. She said she understood why I'd complained to HR, though, which was good. She also said she thought I had fuck all chance of getting anything done about it, which was less good.

February 2022

Tuesday February 1st

I got a phone call about half way through the morning. That was unusual in itself, normally if anything needs doing Lucy just puts her head round the door and tells me. A voice at the other end, which I didn't recognise, just said, "Are you coming to the cafe at lunchtime? They've got some interesting specials on."

I guessed it had something to do with Harry, so I said, "Yeah, that sounds interesting."

I spent the rest of the morning feeling as nervous as hell and walked to the cafe wondering all the way if anyone was following me.

Harry was sat there, which I had expected, and he was with a woman, which I hadn't.

"This is Cara," he said. "Cara - David."

Cara was wearing a loose, multi-coloured, v-necked sweater and a pair of scruffy jeans. She had loose unkempt hair that was dark with streaks of grey running through it. She stubbed out the roll-up cigarette she'd been smoking in defiance of the faded plastic sign hanging on the wall behind her.

"You're a woman," I said, stupidly.

"Nothing wrong with your powers of observation, then," she responded.

"It's just I thought..." I looked at Harry and he just grinned.

"Yeah, I know. Well guess what, some women actually think that New Order isn't such a good idea. I mean some of them think they aren't tough enough but let's say I'm on the other side. Sure the whole male-female thing needed rebalancing but there's quite a few of us that think that what Johannsen has been pushing through is way too extreme. Anyway, Harry tells me you might be able to help."

"Help with what?"

"He says you can get hold of information on sensitive stuff that New Order is up to. We've been using stuff like that to try to wake up some of the people that voted them in. If we don't then they'll be in again at the next election, even assuming they don't do something about male voting rights. If we can show them up for what they are then maybe some changes will get made."

"You don't sound very hopeful."

"I'm not. Power hangs on to power. They don't like people trying to take it away. That doesn't mean its not worth trying though. We've done a few things where we've got hold of information, run it on social media with a 'Surely no one in their right mind could be thinking of this...' twist. It gets picked up and debated away from the official government channels and people feel free to express real opinions not just what they think they ought to be thinking. I mean, you couldn't do it obviously - I mean, apart from the risk of stuff being tracked back to you, I don't suppose you have access to social media anyway do you?"

She was right. Replacing my smart phone with a dumb brick that could make calls and pretty much nothing else had been one of the first things Angie did and the office systems were all blocked from that sort of thing - or at least, I suddenly thought, they are for me. I shook my head.

"Well, at least we can get stuff out there that might do some good. Stuff that might stop them going too far. We call it "Safewords". And we can do it in a way that you aren't at risk."

Cara made it sound a lot more attractive than Harry's attempts but maybe that was because she'd curled her legs up on the couch and was leaning forward towards me as she spoke. I liked the idea of trying to do something about New Order. Cara was certainly right that they seemed to be keen to control every aspect of men's lives and I couldn't remember the last time I heard anyone speak up against anything they'd put forward.

The guy from the counter came over and interrupted us saying did we actually want to eat anything or were we just going to clutter up his dining room. We ordered some mugs of tea and some sandwiches. "So how would it work?"

"Well, we can work with the stuff you gave Harry on the MCP. That's likely to be fairly incendiary. If you can get any more on it that would be good. I mean anything on the sort of devices they intend to use for example."

I wasn't sure I wanted to share my experiences of demonstrating them with Cara but I said I thought I might be able to find something.

"Well, let's say you had some documents - paper is always good, much harder to trace back than digital stuff - we'll set up somewhere where you can leave it. What the intelligence community used to call a 'dead letter box' until all that sort of stuff got unfashionable. You hide what ever it is there, leave a pre-arranged signal, we pick it up. Nobody needs to meet. Each side takes care that they aren't being watched and the whole thing goes off nicely.

"So, if I could get you a list of the devices, say?"

"There's a telephone box at the end of this road. Act as though you are making a call. Push an envelope behind the phone. If you look on the back panel you'll see someone has been marking up a count using five bar gate marks. Just add one to whatever is on there. Remember the number, check back in a week or so and if there's anything for you the number will have changed."

"It all sounds a bit cloak and dagger."

"It's simple and it works. If you can help, great. You'll get the satisfaction of seeing things go off under the Government, which I'm guessing is what you want. If not, well, nice meeting you. Now, I need to go. Do you think it might be worth my while checking that phone box sometime soon?"

In the end, I suppose, it was the fact that it was a woman asking me that made me think, well, if she feels this is all too much, maybe I should try and do something. "Yes," I said. "It could well be."

"Great," she said, got up and gave Harry a hug before checking the street outside and leaving.

I turned to Harry. "Are you and she..."

"No. She's way too busy." He picked up his mug of tea. From the way he looked at the door she had just left through I felt he wished that she wasn't.

Thursday February 3rd

I managed to write down a detailed description of the devices that Lucy had demonstrated on me. I used all capital letters so the hand writing wouldn't be easily traced. I even invented details of a couple of devices that hadn't been there and left out two that were, so the descriptions wouldn't be traced back to the particular ones that Lucy had.

I was pretty nervous walking down to the telephone box but nobody was taking any notice of a bloke walking down there on a busy lunch time. There certainly weren't any MCF officers around. In fact here weren't very many women about at all. Just a few men, coats on, hunched up against the wet and cold February weather, more concerned about getting where they had to be than in worrying about anyone else on the street. I stuffed the envelop behind the phone like Cara had said. There were four vertical lines drawn on a poster beside the phone. I added the fifth, like I was making a note while I made a call, put the phone back down and left.

After the excitement of me playing spies, I had a really strange conversation with Jill this evening. We'd just finished dinner - she lets me eat at the table with her which Angie had stopped doing a bit before she moved out - and she suddenly said, "What's your fetish then?"

I was surprised, I suppose. I mean our relationship isn't sexual in any way. It's just like I'm her housekeeper. I said "What?"

"Your fetish. I mean at the sponsors' support group they said most men have one and it's a good idea to give them little treats occasionally to keep them on side. And I just wondered what your was; in case we wanted to do that... I mean I know there's the dress thing..."

Well, at first I was sort of half grateful for her consideration, except of course, it isn't really is it? And then I was a bit confused, but I suppose she's used to learning things and then trying them out at uni, so I suppose you can't blame her. "No," I said, "no, the dress thing was just a practical thing for housework. It was Angie's idea."

"But you still wear it. For housework, I know, but you do still.."

She was right, I did. I suppose I still haven't accepted the fact that Angie left. Maybe I'm clinging on to that - one of her instructions to me. "No, it's not a fetish. I don't think I've got any..."

"OK. Just thought I'd ask. I mean mummy tells me that with Geoff, my father, it's feet. He'll do anything if she just lets him get down at her feet. She's been ever so cruel to him sometimes from what she says but it seems he just loves it."

I didn't want to think about that. Nor did I want to think about being crouched down at Sally's feet, or for that matter, her daughter's. The trouble was my cock was disagreeing stiffly and Jill noticed.

"Are you sure you haven't got something you want to tell me about? Maybe I'll have a word with mummy. We should throw a dinner party, daddy could be there as the butler and you could wait at table as a maid."

I told her I didn't think that sounded fun at all.

After our chat I was thinking. I actually miss Angie. I mean I know she bullied me but we had been in a relationship before New Order were elected, however unfashionable that idea has got these days. Maybe that's why I've even considered getting involved with Safewords - perhaps because the Angie relationship has gone and I need another. I mean, obviously not Cara, although she is the sort of woman I fancy. If I look around, there's Jill but although she's my sponsor, I don't see her even really being on board with that and she's a lot younger than me. And Lucy? Well, I think she's just focused on the job and sees me as some sort of animated vibrator when it comes to sex. I don't think there's anything else going on with her.

I've decided I'm going to stop wearing that overall. I'm not happy with the message it was sending out and since it seems I've got a choice (I don't think I did with Angie), I don't see why I should. Maybe that will help me draw a line under the Angie thing? I'm not sure.

Thursday February 10^th.

Well, Cara was right about, the MCP stuff being incendiary, all right. There was a piece on the radio this morning about it and it was all over the papers. It seems that while people were quite happy that individuals did this sort of thing, a government programme with electronic monitoring smacks a bit too much of the surveillance society for most people. That mystical being 'A Government Spokesperson' had to make a statement saying that this was all just the start of of consultation process and that there wasn't any intention of introducing the programme until they were confident that concerns over privacy and practicality could be ironed out.

Then Nina Henning, who is the Minister responsible apparently, turned up to accuse whoever leaked the information of being only interested in disrupting policies and explained the Government had a clear mandate to introduce them. "The activities of groups like Safewords," I was surprised to hear her use the name, "put at risk the progress we are making towards rebalancing the gender power balance in the UK. We will not tolerate leaks like this from within Government. They distort the actions of the Government by presenting a partial picture and fail to take account of the ways in which various policy initiatives interlock."

It sounded to me like she was floundering a bit but I had to say I felt a bit smug.

Lucy, however, wasn't amused. When I got to the office, she said to me, "I suppose you've heard this shit about the MCP?" I nodded. "Well, I've just been had your ex-sponsor on the phone. Her Minister is seriously pissed off that someone in their department has leaked stuff. We have to stop working on it, of course, until they get their ducks in a row again. It may be a big disappointment to you but you're not going to be able to try out any more of those cock cages for a while. You'd better get back to working on the South Merryfield proposal."

It was only after that, that I felt glad I hadn't said anything detailed to Harry about South Merryfield. I mean someone might have noticed if there were leaks on two projects I was working on. If I am going to let Cara have any more stuff it will either have to be on the MCP or on something I'm not involved with.

Friday February 11^th

One thing I hadn't been prepared for is the fact that while some folk are horrified that the Government was planning something like the MCP, some of them were mainly concerned with the fact that the Government was doing the surveillance, not private companies and some seem to think that it wasn't going far enough. Someone was even suggesting that there should be a criminal offence of "having an erection in a public place" though how on earth they would detect that is a puzzle to me.

Lucy is still hacked off about the fact that we've had to stop work on the project. Worse still we're having to do a complete audit to show that none of the documents in our possession have gone missing. Since it is a mindless, tedious job, of course I've had to do it.

One of the things I noticed during the audit process was a definition of the anti-tamper mechanism they were planning to introduce and the way that sponsors were going to be asked to monitor it. I could imagine what Angie's response to that would have been before she got involved with the Government, or Jill's for that matter. I made a mental note to try and write down a summary for Cara. I reckoned that wouldn't compromise me any more than anything I had already given her.

I went to the cafe where I'd met Harry at lunchtime and wrote it all down while I had a coffee and a sandwich, and then dropped it off at the phone box like I did before.

After lunch Lucy came round to see how I was doing. I went through what I'd done on auditing our documents and she seemed happy. "I had Angie on the phone, again. I told her, we wouldn't be missing anything. If anyone's leaking stuff it's going to be inside Government. None of the commercial contractors have got an interest in slowing things down, which is all this mess will have done." I nodded and said something non-committal. "Anyway, it's Friday afternoon. Why don't we take a little walk down to the stationery store?"

I could imagine what she wanted after the last time, so I said I still had a lot to do.

"Sorry," she replied. "That wasn't really meant to be a suggestion. You head on down there and I'll join you in a minute or two. I've had a frustrating week and I'm really looking forward to a relaxing week end, so you can oblige me by helping to get it off to a good start."

There were plenty of things about Lucy that were complicated but sex wasn't one of them. It took her hardly any time to get my trousers and pants down, pull her skirt up, push her knickers down and get herself onto my pole. Sex with Lucy might have felt exploitative but at least it didn't last long.

Monday February 14^th

Cara has obviously been busy over the weekend as the papers had articles that were obviously based on my leak on Friday. The main tone of them wasn't as I'd expected, "What an appalling thing to be doing to people!" but "Why is the Government-loading this work onto sponsors, haven't they got enough to do?"

I was working out in the general office this morning when I looked across to my old office where Lucy works now. She was sitting and her desk and there were two women in there talking to her. I thought the one that was standing looked familiar from the back but it was only when she turned around that I realised it was Angie. She was obviously pretty annoyed from the way she was gesticulating. After a few minutes, Lucy stuck her head out of the door and called me in.

As well as Angie there was a thin-faced, sour looking woman in the office. With her jet black trouser suit and white blouse she had a cold, critical presence. "You two know each other." Lucy nodded at Angie and then waved at the other woman. "This is Ms Collins from the Department of Home Affairs. She's investigating the leaks of information about the MCP project. I've said we'd give every help as we are MOST anxious to see that this is cleared up so that we can carry on with the bidding process." She turned to Ms Collins. I was practically wetting myself with fear. "Anders has been dealing with the paperwork at our end. He should be able to help."

"Right, Anders," she started, taking a note pad out of her brief case. "I am trying to track down whoever at Home Affairs is responsible for these leaks. Has anyone from the Department been in contact with you about any of the documentation?" Angie was standing with her hands on her hips watching me closely.

"Err, no. Everything has come through the project office in the usual way. The only people that I've worked with on this have been the team here. And obviously they're all covered by our non-disclosure arrangements."

"Well, and in theory our staff are covered by the Official Secrets Act but that doesn't seem to have worked. One thing you can help us with. Your boss tells me you were involved in reviewing the restraint devices."

'Reviewing' wasn't really what I would have called it but I didn't want to go into details. "Yes," I said.

"One of the leads I'm following up is that this morning's newspaper article referred to some devices that weren't part of the procurement; one that was designed to strap the man's cock up vertically against his belly and another that was like a lockable leather pouch. They were among a number of devices we were thinking about but weren't in the plans yet. I don't suppose anyone from the Department mentioned anything like them to you did they? You didn't see anything like them?"