Security Directorate Dossiers volume 1 (PAPERBACK)

INTRODUCTION

One thing writers have in common with children is the ability to construct whole new worlds with about five minutes of daydreaming,

Children imagine being a firefighter one day, and a ballet dancer the next. Life with different parents, and with more, or less, siblings.

One day they colour everything yellow, and the next blue. They might pull up a baby carrot and consider carrots that might grow as far as the other side of the planet.

Writers do the same, and our imaginations can be just as wild. Worlds governed by magic instead of physics? Worlds ruled by women? Ruled by lizards? No problems whatsoever.

I find I’m inspired by the books I read, and the tv shows I watch. Sometimes I might think it’s stupid and rewrite it, others I’ll use it as a launching pad.

The Security Directorate comes from a strange combination of old and new wars.

Starting with a bunch of documentaries about the Third Reich. How they came to power, how they ruled, how the ruling elite were so much better off than the ordinary people. Not to mention the assassination attempts on the leader.

And ghoulishly fascinating, the policies of eugenics with involuntary sterilisation, genocide and experimentation with breeding programs.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Civil War had reached its peak. It continues with an uneasy peace and sporadic outbreaks of tension and violence.

This “peace” is unchanged either by the condemnation of international leaders or, more recently, earthquakes.

Which got me thinking. What if something like the Third Reich erupted today?

The rest of the planet is reluctant to intervene in conflicts, even where it is possible to do so.

And more recently, we’ve seen a solid programme of propaganda and indoctrination could work.

So, what would life be like in today’s fascist dictatorship? One that included an Office of Public Enlightenment and a Genomics Bureau?

Where you were bred and indoctrinated to blindly follow orders.

These speculative stories attempt to explain how it might work. To take you through the potential stages of your life:

• In Life in the Security Directorate, Eve struggles to come to terms with life in the Directorate, and finds her own way out.
• While Love in the Security Directorate shows us while they might control who you marry, they can’t always control who you fall in love with.
• Lieutenant Jemima Hunt discovers in Success at the Academy, the power over life or death is not always clear cut.
• Moving on, in Payton’s Run, one student makes it through the live fire physical assessment.
• And finally, in Minty and the Monster, we join Second Lieutenant Minty Hollister at her first post.

In the unlikely event a Security Directorate set itself up in Australia, I expect I’d find myself at death’s door in a desert re-education camp. Would that be lucky for me? I can’t say for sure.

–

Alexandria Blaelock
Melbourne, Australia
April 2023

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