# 56 Gozer
“We don’t have to have papers to drive to the next state or town.”
You reminded me of a long-forgotten story:
girl wants to leave her provincial town and settle in the Capital, but she can’t, because she wasn’t born there and doesn’t have the “papers”; boy’s parents die, leaving him alone in a large and beautiful rented apartment in the Capital; the Party says one person can occupy only that much space per square meter, and threatens to kick boy out of the apartment, even though boy pays his rent scrupulously; boy meets girl and strikes a deal, a marriage of convenience: girl gets “papers” to live in the Capital, boy gets to continue to live in his parents’ apartment. But Big Brother never sleeps. Somebody who covets the apartment writes an anonymous letter to the “authorities” saying that the marriage is a sham since he has never seen any female underware on the laundry line in the balcony.
End of story: just before Big Brother comes in to take over, the apartment, and the whole building, located close to Party and Secret Police headquarters, goes out in flames during a shoot-out, during a so-called revolution.
