Alice, ReInformation Worker : Social Credits 68 - Green Status

Alice sat at her desk in the Department of ReInformation. She was in a pool of about 50 other girls whose current job was go through old reports from the war and reinform casualty numbers to their correct figure. 2092: Battle of Taipei. America hadn’t lost 26,300 men. That information had been wrong, the generals were war criminals and had falsified their reports. Alice changed the number to six thousand and fifty. That sounded better. She didn’t know the real number lost; she never knew the real numbers. Only that her superiors liked it when she picked lower numbers. Too near the original lies and they got angry.

2089: Battle of Manila. 35,500 men lost. Alice hadn’t heard of Manila before. Surely over thirty thousand men wouldn’t have been lost there. She reinformed the number to 10,000 and then thought better of it. Her superiors might not like to see a number with five digits. Make it 9,700 she thought. She’d never heard of the place anyway. It couldn’t have been that important.

The month before Alice had been reinforming newspaper articles on the correct radiation levels in the East China Sea before they could be printed. The scientists were wrong and the seas weren’t that polluted with fallout. The public couldn’t be exposed to such terrible untruths. It might cause panic.

The month before that Alice had been reinforming hospital reports on the rates of birth defects in children. Those she knew were incorrect and needed reinforming badly. Every baby she knew was perfectly healthy. That had been a good month for Alice. She had returned to Green 85 then.

Alice was nervous. She looked where the Colours-Bracelet was wrapped around her wrist. She knew it showed Green 68. It had been a bad month for her. She’d arrived to work late twice and had to take a day off for her monthlies. She needed Green 75 or she’d be called in for a performance review.

Back when she had first started at the Department of ReInformation two years ago people had needed Green 90 to even be hired. Rumour had it that number was Green 95 now. Alice had tried her best to keep her status up but it was hard. Minor infractions kept knocking her back down whenever she had managed to build her number back up.

Looking up at the clock on the wall it showed 17:50. She knew the Status-Wardens occasionally came around at 18:00 to randomly check everyone’s Colours-Bracelet. She could sneak out of work early to avoid them. It was close enough to the end of the day that she wouldn’t be missed and have any Social Credits deducted for Labour-Theft. Her other option was to stay and hope there wasn’t a random inspection scheduled for today. There had already been two this week already.

What does Alice do?