The intellectual Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party, lives in the ruins of London (the "capital city of Airstrip One", a province of Oceania), grew up in the post-World War II in the United Kingdom, during the revolution and the civil war. When his parents disappeared during the civil war, the English Socialist Movement ("Ingsoc" in Newspeak), placed him in an orphanage for training and employment in the Outer Party. His squalid existence consists of living in a bedsit, eating a subsistence diet of brown bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory brand gin. He is disgruntled and keeps a reckless diary of dissenting and negative thoughts and opinions about the Party. If discovered, this, along with his eccentric behavior, would lead to torture and death by the Thought Police. In his diary he explains psychocrime: Psychocrime does not involve death. The crime of thought is death. The Thought Police have two-way telescreens (in every Party member's quarters and in every public area), hidden microphones, and anonymous informants to spy on potential mental criminals who might endanger the Party. Children are indoctrinated with information; to spy on and report suspected mental criminals, especially their parents. Winston Smith is a bureaucrat in the Documents Department of the Ministry of Truth, who reviews historical documents to fit the contemporary, official version of the Party's past. Revisionism is necessary for the past to reflect current changes in Party orthodoxy. Smith's work is perpetual; rewrites official documents, retouches official photographs, erases people officially made non-persons. The original or older document is dropped into a "memory hole" chute that leads to an incinerator. While he enjoys his work, especially the intellectual challenge of reviewing a complete historical document, he is also fascinated by the true past and eagerly seeks to learn more about that forbidden truth. One day at the office, a woman secretly hands him a note. She is "Julia", a dark-haired mechanic who repairs the Ministry of Truth's novel-writing machines. Before that day, he had felt a deep disgust for her, based on his assumption that she was a fanatically devoted and brainwashed Party member; particularly annoying for him is his red band of renunciation and contempt for sexual intercourse. Her preconceptions vanish when she reads his handwritten note: "I love you." They later begin a clandestine romantic relationship, meeting first in the countryside and at a ruined bell tower, then regularly in a rented room atop an antique shop in the city's proletarian neighborhood..