About The Book

For Brito! is a window that opens into a dystopian Britain whose people are enslaved by a system that destroys individuality and replaces it with a devout dedication to the nation.

In Brito, class, race and difference have disappeared and all that remains are those that work and those that do not. By any means necessary, a corrupt chain of command programmes the working population to be efficient 'Operatives' with a sole enemy in the useless – and acceptably expendable – 'InOps'. 

This dystopian fiction novel follows Operative Everley as his feelings wriggle free from the clutch of the commanding hand that controls his mind. When he bonds with a non-worker, young Everley begins to question the world around him. His changes in behaviour are quickly spotted by the truly immoral eyes of his aged superior, Raines, whose wistful yearning for Great Britain causes him to bring an impatient violence to his management style. All the while, a member of an underground organisation is watching and wanting to free Everley before he is banished, brainwashed or ordered to death.

RD Morris saw into the future and typed it into this book. 

RD Morris is a British author and owner of Independent Publishing company, Unperson Press.

Writing in the speculative fiction genre - predominantly dystopian - Morris published the debut "For Brito!" in 2021. 

About the author, from a recent interview:

"I have been a writer for as long as I can remember. I've spent my life carrying around notes upon notes in notepads and on train tickets and scrap pieces, so that you wouldn't know my pockets full of bin matter are actually a great many works in progress.

After achieving a First Class degree in English Literature, I found myself working for UK Government. Though I wrote magazine articles for the Military community at first, this shifted into drafting training material, then business documents and other creatively-muted outputs that left opportunities for poetic prose and beautiful language wanting. But, despite the challenges of each of job role of the decade that followed, I always found the time to write.

I spent my twenties blogging. This started when I left my home (a small village in South West England), and moved alone to a large city "Up North". I remember feeling I might, at any minute, be eaten up by the huge buildings or swept away by the whirlwind of passing people in those busy places. It was such a new environment that it inspired much of my writing. I found myself idealising the pastoral settings of my upbringing and comparing these to the pandemonium of a city. In hindsight, this time may have been one of the greatest influences on the genre I now write: dystopian fiction.

After a significant amount of research into some of the key themes in the book (which I won't spoil for you now), I began For Brito! - that was some three years ago now. Unfortunately, soon after I started hammering at the keyboard, I developed a chronic sight condition. Whilst trying to deal with this impairment, I stopped typing my ideas into chapters. But, as any writer will tell you, it's not the sort of thing you can stop doing for long. I was writing in my brain anyway; I just had to find a way to get it through my fingertips and into a laptop. I persevered, and completed For Brito! early in 2020.

Then, when Covid hit, I thought 'Nobody will want to read dystopia now!'... but I was wrong. 1984 is top of the pops again in Amazon's charts and, with so much uncertainty in the world right now, perhaps escaping into a dystopic story for a while will remind us of the small liberties we still have despite lockdown.

I hope you enjoy following Everley's story as he struggles to identify as a human from within a system based on deprivation."

PROLOGUE 

This story is based on a truth to come.

Selby entered his tiny, underground office and tossed a bundle of papers across the desk. He sat himself down with such heavy disappointment that the chair’s wheels rolled backwards a foot or so before coming to a quick stop against the adjacent wall. 

With the front of his thumb, he rubbed his thick and dark eyebrows in an attempt to soothe himself after the failure of his latest venture. He had been so sure of success this time but, once again, it had all ended horribly. Another Operative was dead, another near-friend was lost and another report needed completing. He wasn’t looking forward to facing his manager either, hat in hand and hoping he wouldn’t be demoted.

After getting the hopeless huffs out of his system, Selby slid forwards and wiggled the computer mouse until the screen came to life. He clicked an icon on the desktop and, whilst waiting for the contents to load, felt glum at the regularity with which he had to click on the ‘Closed Cases’ folder.

Loading a template, he began filling each field. He slowly typed the name ‘Operative Derby’ by hammering each letter’s key with his forefinger while blowing a brooding air from his mouth at the same time.

‘I hear it didn’t go well?’ said a co-worker as the office door swung open.

‘Ever heard of knocking?’ Selby snapped.

‘Oh, come on! You need a break. Do you want to play cards?’

‘I lost her... She entered a state of shock. Shock! Can you believe that? We were so close with this one. It was like her mind...’ Selby looked away from the screen and picked up a photo of the lost Operative that was stapled to the top paper in the stack. Staring at the face, he attempted his sentence again, ‘Her mind collapsed inwards.’

‘It’s not your fault. It happens, you know that. I’ll get us some nutrition shakes and grab the cards. Let’s have a game, eh?’ Without waiting for a reply, the co-worker disappeared down the corridor and called back, ‘I’ll meet you in the break room!’ 

Selby hurriedly entered relevant information into the remaining spaces on the template, as though to type quickly might minimise his hurting. As soon as he had finished the form and saved the file, he delicately prised the photograph from the paper by bending the legs of the staple outwards and pulling the two apart. Standing up and leaning over his desk so that he could reach the wall behind, he found a vacant space in the very full collage of otherwise-forgotten faces and pinned the picture to the board.

Selby paused for a moment to remember the many individuals that he had found, nurtured and then put to the test, only to lose them somewhere or somehow along the way. He had never become accustomed to the heartache, despite it being a common part of his work, but it wasn’t going to make him quit. He was determined to continue, for he knew that if he could spot those Operatives with the strongest minds in the country, he could free them. 

In the centre of the mixture of pictures, Selby had previously written and pinned the mantra of the hidden Organisation he worked for. It had been there many years and was largely covered by the collection of faces. All that now peeked out from beneath the photos were three words. He read them aloud while tracing them with his hand and felt his melancholy lift. 

Stepping away, Selby grabbed the papers from the tabletop, shoved them into a cardboard folder and dropped it into a tray labelled ‘For Archiving’. He drew a new sheet from the top of a stack in the tray tagged ‘New Candidates’ and studied the name. Though the eyes were as lifeless as those of any other enslaved mind, the photo affixed to his next case was that of a man with a friendly face.

Selby placed the page carefully in the centre of the table. After a brief break to clear his thoughts, he would turn his attention to this new lost soul. Turning to leave for the game of cards, he took one last look at the penned phrase on his wall and reminded himself that he had an important role to continue. He had a purpose.

'Find open minds.'