Since When is Time Travel Possible in Your Sleep?

A vague amount of time ago, I went to bed in my dorm as usual. It had been a long day, and I was ready to relax my body and prepare it for the day ahead. You can imagine my surprise when I woke up and discovered that while I had been asleep, I had traveled back 26 years in time. It was like a strange historical fiction had become my real life. All I could do was wait and hope that I could re-awaken in the modern day.

I am still in this strange, dangerous historical-fiction past, but during my stay here I've learned something important: To others, you are only as you seem. Intentions don't matter, feelings don't matter, and thoughts don't matter. If you don't display them, others can't see them. They can only judge you from what they see, or how you "seem." It makes sense, but, as always, there is a small number of people that ruins everything.

It makes sense that people judge you only from what you display, but what if the person judging you can't see or just won't see what you're trying to display to the world?

As real as the presence of Big Brother and his Party are in this strange and dangerous historical-fiction past I find myself in, there is hardly a Brotherhood. The suspected individuals that have shown up in this past have, at the best, frail or almost non-existent connections. But the paranoia that there is a Brotherhood certainly exists. 

Computers and the internet have become the new Telescreens, and Big Brother is always watching. Every day I walk out into the dull, run-down streets of Oceania and see the signs. "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." I wonder to myself, "How can someone who is always watching see so little?" And this is where I come to my new conclusion. It is not how I am presenting myself, but it is how I'm being perceived that is the current problem. A problem with no solution.

The world is how you perceive it. I want to convey that there is no Brotherhood, and that we are not planning a revolution. I want to show that The Party and Big Brother are safe from harm. I want The Party to see that I am not interested in taking them down. But all of that is pointless if they can't or won't see it. Until Big Brother and those around him can stop living 26 years in the past, I am stuck here as well. I will continue to be perceived as Emmanuel Goldstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Oceania. And I will eventually be taken to the Ministry of Love to pay for that crime...

Let the Two Minutes Hate begin.