You find a forbidden relic from the past

You like to take the grimy back streets sometimes when you walk home. The telescreens are here too of course, but it gives you a more isolated feel. One day you find a half buried and age cracked plastic Santa Clauss toy in the dirt. You pry it out and look at it in fascination. You can't risk keeping it so you turn it in to the Community Disposal station. You spend a few minutes signing the forms and Santa is pitched into the incinerator as are all found artifacts of the Pre-People's revolution era.

But the image of the kind grinning face and the faded red outfit is burned in your mind. You have committed your first major thought crime. You dream of Santa, or the old world you only dimly remember from those troubled days of early childhood.

  1. five minutes hate
  2. Julia
  3. seeds of rebellion
  4. three years later you encounter another relic
  5. a long cold lonely winter
  6. You hold onto that Santa...in your mind