was it ever admitted that the release date of Heartbound had at any time been set along a different date? Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only two years since Mald had been struggling with coding and finished with writing. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of excuse had never happened. Mald was struggling with writing: therefore Mald had always been struggling with writing. The excuse of the moment always represented absolute truth, and it followed that any past or future deviation from it was impossible.
The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time as he forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands on hips, they were gyrating their bodies from the waist, an exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles) -- the frightening thing was that it might all be true. If the Jannies could thrust their hands into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened -- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?
The Jannies said that Mald had never been finished with writing. He, Winston Smith, knew that Mald had been finished with writing as short a time as two years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Jannies imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Jannie's slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of excuses over your own failures. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.