Winston's Diary: the life of a New Zealand 'Contact Tracer'.
Some Orwellian creative-non/fiction: some names and events have been changed to protect identities and for dramatic effect.
I’ve written extensively, for example here, about the value of storytelling and narrative, and creative-nonfiction - especially when trying to analyse data from lived experiences and making sense of complex situations. Here’s some playfulness with some literary inspiration from 1984…
(hat tip to
)June 2020
It is a bright, warm Sunday and I get a cryptic text message from The Agency at thirteen o’clock. It says to look at my emails asap. The Agency I work for is entirely WEF-funded and focuses on instruction, which includes unlearning in the workplace. I’m told only to use The Agency materials with my students (who are mainly all Commoners) - they have the WEF stamp of approval by The Party. SDGs, ESGs and other UN propaganda is the focus. It’s tiresome, but it provides some Social Credits and I try to make it as engaging for my students as possible. If we get to go outside (which is rare), if we use a room without Big Brother (even rarer), or maybe another power-cut means the technology is down (often), I can slot in an ‘unofficial’ lesson that the Snitches may not entirely understand. Last week we had a great classroom debate about the Milgram Experiment. The students were sceptical about how they would have behaved as The Experimenter; who knows how people react under pressure in real life?
***
Today’s TV announcement was that this ‘deadly virus’ was spreading all over the world. (Was it really a ‘deadly virus’ or was this just another fearmongering propaganda campaign from The Party?)
The email from The Agency confirms I was accepted to train for a new ‘contract tracing’ position. From what I understand, everyone who scans a QR code to get into a supermarket or a workplace (there wasn’t many other places Commoners could go) gets put onto a BigTech database and then, where there is a ‘case’ of the virus reported, the instructions from the Ministry of Truth are to self-isolate. This means hundreds of thousands, if not millions of phone calls and texts are needed - to ensure people comply with the rules. The Agency ask for:
“… ideally […] people who:
· Can start work at short notice at any time over the next 6 weeks;
· Have their own laptop and internet connection;
· Have availability to work 20+ hours p/w inc. weekends.
Here is a helpful cartoon animation of what the NZ Tracer App is, because we are all children and need this kind of simplistic instruction:
Well, I fitted the criteria for a contractor. I know they are short-staffed and to be honest, I need the extra WEF Social Credits. This contract could be good for me on two levels. A) I need a role that takes the pressure off me from the Thought Police (this could be a good cover story for any future accusations of non-compliance). And B) Whilst I worked from home, my beloved Julia is forced to work as a cleaner at the local hospital and wants to escape work for a few days to the beach. The only way that’s going to be possible is with formal approval from The Party. The restrictions are getting very difficult to overcome now, with ID pass roadblocks at every junction.[1]
BTW There were stories that some of those roadblocks were not Party-approved and were Far Right Extremists – apparently the protestors are likely to get violent. The Ministry of Transport has prevented all but ‘essential’ travel, and fuel is rationed. I know I can exchange some of my unapproved books with the garage owner for extra supplies in Jerry-cans, but that is risky, and only possible during nighttime curfew. (So long as you watched out for the infrared drones overhead).
***
Today I received instructions on an email from The Agency about the training this week. But obviously the staff member wasn’t familiar with The Party protocols. Instead of blind-copying other team-members in, she had left the contact details for us all to see. I quickly scanned the list and recognised a couple of names as those from the The Party. Maybe this was a trick? Should I just unsee it? Or maybe she was just a trainee and would be penalised for not sticking to the rules. I decided to ignore that for now and read through the email.
It told us about the planned training schedule and the instructions for training for our role. It seems a bit odd, but we are to use five different BigTech platforms simultaneously depending on what we need to log:
1. Excel was used to list the full contact details of those who had been defined as a ‘close contact’ by the Ministry of Health App.
2. Skype was used for making the calls to those in contact with the close contact (we were provided with a Skype credit - not for our personal account, we had to create a new account).
3. Teams was used to have video-calls with The Agency and colleagues from and from the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Truth staff
4. Salesforce was used for logging each of our actions during the shift and what we had instructed/found out about the close contacts.
5. Outlook was for emails from The Agency and to log timesheets for payment (and then we had our own email and mobile phones as additional communication options - were these under surveillance too, I wondered?)
***
As we are using our own laptops some fellow team members immediately find their IT equipment isn’t suitable. I’m not surprised. I suppose someone from The Agency could have checked that beforehand, but likely just misremembered. Understandably, some people struggle to log on and use all these different platforms simultaneously. The ‘Authenticator’ App is particularly tricky, because we needed to have multiple devices available. Apparently, there is an opportunity for The Agency to send a laptop out to those who need one, but all the couriers are having difficulty with the roadblocks and fuel shortages, so they struggle on. There is so much copying and pasting of information from one screen and platform to another, like telephone numbers from Excel into Skype. This causes errors. Often I find myself phoning the wrong person (or maybe they are just pretending to be someone else?). Could this be another Big Brother test for us? Or is the lack of equipment, software and training to do with budgets and cost-cutting? Maybe the Elites deliberately made this job complicated so that close contacts were never alerted to the risk? Was there even a risk at all?
***
Everything was always back to front, constantly changing and boundaries so fuzzy - who knows what to think. I lose track of reality sometimes, and go along with the propaganda. But then as someone famous once said:
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
Thank God for Julia, helping to keep me sane with her smile and silly jokes when she gets home from her shift. I ask her about the hospital – how are the nurses and doctors coping with all the virus infections? She tells me the whole hospital is like a ghost town and many of the senior doctors went home to mow their lawns.
We were sent a long script to read-out to the ‘close contacts’ (that means people who have been in the same room/event as an ‘infected’ person) - if we managed to connect. We had to practice reading through it numerous times and were recorded and marked for our accuracy. Any improvisations or deviations from the script and our role could be terminated without warning, apparently. But the script was altered numerous times before it was finally ‘approved’. Old versions must be immediately memoryholed.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Script printed-out, I am ready for my final test. It is via Teams with my boss from The Agency (who actually works for the Ministry of Truth). I misremembered during the role-play of the contact trace call and said, “have you experienced any of the following symptoms…”, when I should have said “have you experienced SOME of the following symptoms…”. But my boss let me off that slip with a warning because I may have just been ‘nervous’. Truth is, I wasn’t nervous at all, but wanted to know if she was listening closely to what I said. Looking back on that Teams virtual meeting, I wonder now whether she was an AI bot?
To make matters worse for my colleagues with the IT equipment problems, there’s a fake ‘training’ platform with a list of bogus names - and also a ‘real’ one. The way that the two Excel spreadsheets are presented makes it very difficult to tell them apart. Understandably, there has been confusion and in the first few days - some contacts and phone call logs have been recorded in the fake platform when they are real, and vice versa. Talk about altered reality! There are now numerous emails and Salesforce messages from The Agency that try to clarify what we should be doing and how to straighten out the errors before another shift starts. I learn to check every so often, that I am entering the data in the right place. I don’t want to be accused of being ungood at my job.
***
I started my shift today after some additional practice runs with colleagues. But already the script we had to read out has changed. Instead of asking close contacts to isolate for 7 days, this was extended to 10 days (or was it 14?) from the date of a positive PCR test. There are other changes too. I wasn’t sure why these changes are made, or what evidence they’re based on. Anyway, our instructions are to try ringing the close contacts allocated to us three times, if no luck, move onto the next one on the Excel spreadsheet, recording the times and reasons as we go along. Of course, Big Brother knows what we are doing anyway, so there seems little point in duplicating work, but we do it anyway because that what we are told to do. The masks issue is always a topic the close contacts bring up - why would they need to wear a mask to go into a restaurant, but then take it off to eat? What’s the point in that? Sadly, I don’t have any answers for these kinds of questions.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
We are getting paid by the hour, so it doesn’t really matter how many contacts we get through to, although there were rumours of some kind of bonus if we manage to reduce the spreadsheet list to within certain limits. No-one seemed to know what that limit is. And it doesn’t really matter anyway because the list keeps growing – and growing! We add new names as we come across new people who had been in close contact with our existing close contacts, and so forth. It’s never ending…
***
July 2020
Dear diary, I have to be honest and say I am a bit unconvinced about the risks from this so-called ‘deadly virus.’ But we can’t say that aloud. Some of my colleagues are exchanges text messages privately raising concerns about the way this contact tracing is being run, and the content of the scripts we are given. It all seems a bit contradictory and illogical. I’m not responding to any of these messages, because I’m not sure how long this contract runs for, and I could do with these Social Credits. I’ll just keep my head down for now.
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
No one around me has died or got sick (so far). Admittedly I was a bit off-colour for a day or two last week – just a sore throat and a headache, but back to work the next day. I didn’t say anything and I didn’t do one of those PCR tests – there’s gossip from the Freedom Fighters that they are no good anyway. Julia put hers into a cup of the regulation coffee (disgusting stuff) and the result was positive. I wouldn’t risk contaminating my special black-market hot chocolate with a test stick. That sweet-smelling hot-chocolate, some classical music on the record-player and a good book is what keeps me sane in this crazy world!
Talking of books, I can write about our secret neighbourhood book-exchange. During the night-time curfew, we nip out quickly and leave books or magazines in each other’s mailboxes. This isn’t strictly allowed by The Party because it could spread viral infection (so they say), and also the books don’t always have the stamp of approval by The Party. But we all believe a good book is worth the risk. Thank God for good neighbours. There’s only one guy we don’t trust – he’s lives alone and is likely to be a Snitch. We don’t want to risk being reported, so we stay out of his way. Recently, I found a pamphlet from the Freedom Fighters inside one of the books I was given. It explains that the ‘deadly virus’ is nothing more than a common cold, and that getting outside in the sunshine is an effective treatment. Of course, even if this is true, it is difficult enough to get outside at all during the long hours of work, and the sunshine is often obscured by the Big Brother balloons that fill the horizon.
****Urgent Email*****: “It has been brought to our attention…”
Oh God, this could be bad news. I open it to read that The Agency had been alerted to the risk from breaches in confidentiality. Apparently, someone had left their laptop open at home and one of their family members had taken some information from it and spread it on a Freedom Fighter’s Telegram channel. There had been ‘consequences’ for the staff member (I think that meant they’d been fired). I wonder what the information was?
Thank God The Agency has reduced some of the platforms we are using - they have been consolidated. We only have three different screens now, rather than 5! It’s still so cumbersome though, surely they could provide us with some laptops and pay towards our Internet costs? The work is boring and seems meaningless and I miss my workplace students.
***
There is only one channel on the TV now the competition had been closed down by The Party. (To be honest, it makes no difference because beforehand all the stations were the same anyway). The screen shows a running tally in bright red of how many hundreds of thousands of ‘cases’ and ‘deaths’ from the deadly virus – globally. The Party Leader, dressed in Black, steps onto the Podium of Truth to tell us she is “The Single Source of Truth” and presents the latest batch of overnight changes to our legislation - with immediate effect. This is an ‘International Health Emergency’ after all.
More lockdowns are announced, and my (Commoners) gym is forced to close. They tell me I can maintain sessions with my personal trainer over Zoom, but the same fee applies. No thanks. I stop at the Supermarket to buy myself some cheap weights and a blue rubber yoga mat - YouTube can provide my exercise class from now on.[2] I can’t believe all the liquor stores are encouraged to stay open, along with the supermarkets of course. Sadly, so many small businesses are closed-up for good.
***
Today the rules change again. Now, the recommendation is to physically distance even within your own ‘bubble’ – yes inside your own home. For instance, The Ministry of Truth says if one person has tested positive, then they should sleep in a different room to other family members, wash their bedlinen separately and use separate toiletries. I ring people today and repeat the new instructions – but they couldn’t do that, they explain, even if they want to – they have no spare bed! Even the sofa was being used in many families where people were living together now. Times were tough.
What about mothers who were breastfeeding? Someone asked later that day, during a Teams meeting. My boss looked anxious when she said “The Ministry of Truth guidelines said ‘infected’ mothers should reduce contact with their newborns, and consider bottle-feeding instead.” One of my colleagues, Andrew, looked at me through his webcam with a look of horror at that point, and I think we both recognised this was all a very sinister game devised by The Party. The Thought Police might pick-up on that facecrime. I quickly wrote a nonsense message in Teams to divert attention.
The rules are weird and it’s unclear how many Commoners are complying with them. The Party Leader claims 99.9% support for the new ‘Go Hard, Go Early’ restrictions, but is that true? I’ve heard rumours from the Freedom Fighters that armed Ministry of Peace officials are knocking on doors to ensure people are isolating at home after we ring them. We know that the Ministry of Truth are building Joycamps, where people who have the virus, but cannot go home for whatever reason, can isolate. I certainly don’t want to get caught myself, and hopefully this job would keep me safe – at least for the time-being.
***
June 2022
Today ‘Contact Tracing’ is changed to ‘Disease Management’ and our script has changed again. It changes most days, so it’s hard to keep up. There is a reduced team now that less people are checking into places. We are supposed to encourage people to scan their QR codes, but I avoid that sentence when I can. I know I can’t joke to people about this, because Big Brother is listening, but this is getting ridiculous.
***
An announcement told us ‘The Agency’ has changed its name to ‘Connect’ – apparently this is more accurate a description [3]. I looked for Andrew today as we are supposed to share the same shifts. But he wasn’t online. Quickly I check his name on the rota, but his name has been erased. I search my emails - his conversations with me may have included his personal contact details. But all his emails have magically been erased from my inbox – he is an unperson.
[1] Winston’s edit - little did I know these were soon to become ‘Vaccine Passport’ checkpoints.
[2] Winston edit: I still haven’t returned to the gym.
[3] Author’s comment: the sceptic in me suspects this is a strategy to avoid future OIAs from the public?
Interesting perspective thank you for sharing
Brilliant. Terrifying not-a-parody.