Mike Helton comments on Sirrius

engraving and the paperweight itself. The
paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his
own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.



V

Syme had vanished. A morning came, and he was missing from work: a few
thoughtless people commented on his absence. On the next day nobody
mentioned him. On the third day Winston went into the vestibule of the
Records Department to look at the notice-board. One of the notices carried
a printed list of the members of the Chess Committee, of whom Syme had been
one. It looked almost exactly as it had looked before -- nothing had been
crossed out -- but it was one name shorter. It was enough. Syme had ceased
to exist: he had never existed.
The weather was baking hot. In the labyrinthine Ministry the
windowless, air-conditioned rooms kept their normal temperature, but
outside the pavements scorched one's feet and the stench of the Tubes at
the rush hours was a horror. The preparations for Hate Week were in full
swing, and the staffs of all the Ministries were working overtime.
Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxworks, displays, film
shows, telescreen programmes all had to be organized; stands had to be
erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated,
photographs faked. Julia's unit in the Fiction Department had been taken
off the production of novels and was rushing out a series of atrocity
pamphlets. Winston, in addition to his regular work, spent long periods
every day in going through back files of the Times and altering and
embellishing news items which were to be quoted in speeches. Late at night,
when crowds of rowdy proles roamed the streets, the town had a curiously
febrile