5. Old Polaroid #2
The Green Party hadn’t made omnivorous diets for recovering ideopaths completely illegal, but Dylan reckoned they should.
Would have made her job easier, for one.
She wouldn’t have to deal with so many folks angry at the prospect of the loss of their meat-eating rights.
It seemed unlikely that particular demographic would go to the streets if that happened.
But people who clung to the old ways did fight back against progress in the past. Like the Second Revivalists.
Nowadays, the Kingdom enacted an unacknowledged policy of keeping track of any protests, through tight surveillance.
Security cameras were everywhere in London, and StreetSocial was constantly monitored for posts inciting unrest.
When she finally settled into her assigned seat in the vast open office, she placed the padded headphones over her ears and clicked the button that automatically started calling a randomised target on the list.
“Hello?” a male voice answered.
“Hi, this is Dylan at the Office for Veganism—”
“Hello?”
She prepared to start from the top. “Hi, this is Dylan at the Office for—”
“Who’s there?”
She stopped herself again, moved slightly away from her desk, and straightened her top, trying to get rid of the wrinkles in it. She took a deep breath and started to troubleshoot this person’s problem – whether it was technical, or turned out to be something other.
“Hello? Can you hear me, Mr Halifax?”
“Ahhh, there you are.”
It sounded like it had finally all clicked on the other end. “Great, I’ll take that as a—”
“I can hear you,” he interrupted.
Dylan tried to talk again, but Mr Halifax kept talking at the same time. Must have been a delay because of his reception. She tried not to let her frustration get the better of her.
“Listen, Mr Halifax, will you let me speak?”
“Certainly!”
“I’m—”
“Dylan, you said!”
“I work at the—”
“Office for Veganism.”
She pushed the microphone on her headset away from her mouth and sighed before pushing it back. “Right, and I’d like to—”
“Thing is,” the man said, “I already give.”
“Excuse me?”
“For the vegans, I already give. Copious amounts!”
“You give what?” she asked.
“Money!”
“We’re not a charity, Mr Halifax, we’re a government body…”
“You tell those fine folks down there in that London that us up here are very happy eating our cows, thank you very much!”
She was stunned into silence for a moment. “As I was saying, we’re a government body, created decades ago, with the sole purpose of eradicating meat-eating—”
The man let out a snicker.
She persisted. “—in order to reach net zero by reducing the gas from animal farming…”
“Net zero! Net nil, more like. Like I said, I’ve already given. You take enough of my bloody taxes to pay for your posh clothes.”
“Mr Halifax, please—”
“What are you calling me for anyway? I’m one of the last people I know with meat-eating rights. I’ll tell you what wasn’t right, it was what them hippies did thirty years ago—”
“WE WERE HEADED FOR A GLOBAL CLIMATE CATASTROPHE!” Dylan shouted.
Several other employees in the open office looked at her in unison. Mr Halifax went quiet.
“I’m sorry, Mr Halifax,” she said, her voice wavering. Her arms felt heavy, blood pooling in her clenched fists. She would have punched him in the face if he was next to her.
The man grumbled on the other end. It went on for a bit, then turned into a cough, and it sounded like he coughed his lungs out.
“Are you still there?” Dylan asked when it went quiet. She didn’t really care one way or another, but ideally she didn’t want to be responsible for killing him with a heart attack. Would look bad on her stats. “I apologise once again.”
“Sure, sure… Ahem. Well, I ain’t giving you any more cash. But I am looking forward to my court-mandated cow delivery later today.” The man audibly licked his lips, the sound sending a bad shiver up Dylan’s spine.
“We do have a new product we will be serving to the public actually, Mr Halifax, and you’ll be one of the very first people involved, if you accept our invitation.”
“Oh?” he sounded surprised. “That’s more like it. What is it?”
“Yeah, it’s human meat. A people farm. When would be a good time for our farmer to come and collect you for the slaughter? You sound like you probably have a pretty thick skull, but I’m sure the grinder can cope…”
He gasped. “Your boss will be hearing from me!” Then he hung up.
She released the laughter she’d been holding in. What a dumb fuck. Who does he think he is? Guys like him were why they needed the revolution.
She looked at her coworkers around her. They’d all gone back to their own calls, in the disinterested manner of people who were only here to pay their rent. The distraction was over.
Skirting the rules and pushing them as much as possible without getting herself into trouble was the only skill Dylan could claim to have learned in this place…
“Hey, Dylan.”
Her supervisor, Mira. The sleeveless white blouse with a high collar edged in soft ruffles, paired with the royal-blue skirt and matchy-matchy blue pumps, betrayed her try-hard flashiness.
She was the one who’d shown Dylan how to work the headsets and machines at the call centre.
Out of the pool of datamined meat-buying consumers, Dylan had to look for patterns in their purchasing habits that indicated they might be open to a potential switch.
Had they tried dairy-free alternatives, or read plant-based literature?
Had they perhaps started to have feelings for cows?
Those people just needed a little push. So, the polar opposite of Mr Halifax and the call she’d just finished.
“Hi, Mira,” Dylan said, suddenly feeling under scrutiny. “How’s things?”
“All good. All very good… Do you think you might have pushed it a bit too far with that last call?”
Dylan’s muscles tensed, the pit of her stomach contorted.
“It’s okay,” Mira told her. “We get rude legacy meat-eaters all the time. Relax.”
“Ah… I’m sorry, Miss Gordy.” Dylan looked at the floor, trying to make herself look incredibly sorry and upset, when she was neither. But she did want to hold on to this job, despite it being incredibly boring.
“It’s fine. Just… don’t go so hard next time.” Her supervisor’s expression changed unnaturally quickly from serious to excited. “Oh, and did you hear about the new mini-pandemic?”
“No. What’s happening?”