ABC gone? Paging Micro Henry...
 

the message probably
meant death -- still, that was not what he believed, and the unreasonable
hope persisted, and his heart banged, and it was with difficulty that he
kept his voice from trembling as he murmured his figures into the
speakwrite.
He rolled up the completed bundle of work and slid it into the
pneumatic tube. Eight minutes had gone by. He re-adjusted his spectacles on
his nose, sighed, and drew the next batch of work towards him, with the
scrap of paper on top of it. He flattened it out. On it was written, in a
large unformed handwriting:

I love you.

For several seconds he was too stunned even to throw the incriminating
thing into the memory hole. When he did so, although he knew very well the
danger of showing too much interest, he could not resist reading it once
again, just to make sure that the words were really there.
For the rest of the morning it was very difficult to work. What was
even worse than having to focus his mind on a series of niggling jobs was
the need to conceal his agitation from the telescreen. He felt as though a
fire were burning in his belly. Lunch in the hot, crowded, noise-filled
canteen was torment. He had hoped to be alone for a little while during the
lunch hour, but as bad luck would have it the imbecile Parsons flopped down
beside him, the tang of his sweat almost defeating the tinny smell of stew,
and kept up a stream of talk about the preparations for Hate Week. He was
particularly enthusiastic about a papier-mache model of Big Brother's head,
two metres wide, which was being made for the occas