Telescreen

**Telescreens** are first mentioned in George Orwell's novel *Nineteen Eighty-Four* released in 1949. They are basically huge television screens with the additional features of being surveillance cameras and being able to hear anything that is front of it. They are primarily used by the Ingsoc Party in Oceania to monitor and control the Proles and Outer Party through brainwashing and making them think that Big Brother does everything to liberate them, along with doublethink.

In Assets with Liabilities, primarily in *Inanimate Crossing, You Pervert*, telescreens exist but they are used differently than its original purpose in *Nineteen Eighty-Four*.

## Info

Telescreens in the Main Consummate Land are always approximately a metre thick and can be as large as 30 by 15 metres (such as the two screens inside the Great People's Chamber of Aschsenland) or as small as 2 by 1 metres (televisions provided by the Communist Parliamentary Party). They usually resemble interactive kiosk screens. Some telescreens can be double-sided, such as the aforementioned screens in the GPCA. This is due to the fact that the chairs behind the screens, which were meant for the CPPA, were actually *blocked* by the humongous screens; the screens' side facing them usually display either the screen at the other side or a view of the chamber, usually through Channel 6.

## Usage

### Surveillance camera

Telescreens that are bigger than 15 metres in length (including billboards as a method of traffic surveillance) have hidden 32MP cameras on the top of their screen frames (which is an obvious improvement over the poor image quality of common CCTVs) and have 2TB disks in them by default to store the footage (but sometimes some telescreens have different disks in them; for example the screens in the GPCA have 1PB disks, while some others are connected to a storage server instead).

They also act as a webcam, so that when a computer is connected to the telescreen (or is remotely controlled by it from some other source, such as Matt Sugui's office or others) the person at the other end can see its user, like normal webcams do. However, it is so hidden (it is about the size of common smartphone camera sensors) that it can sometimes shock those who were being talked to by the person on the telescreen.

### Computer

Telescreens can have an additional terabyte disk in them to store an operating system. This is that so when someone decided to use it like aforementioned in the previous section or use it to display a PowerPoint presentation of some sorts they easily could. Sometimes smaller telescreens have keyboards in it and have touchscreen capabilities.

### Television

Since they are still television screens, telescreens can also broadcast content of any sorts — terrestrial, satellite, or interactive television.

### Gaming console

An interesting feature of Aschsene telescreens is that they also sometimes become preinstalled with the Citrus Home Console Operating Environment. The CHCOE, unlike COE which is an entirely different kernel, is a subset of Linux and hence is compatible with Android and other apps.

Some other screens have Nintendo Switch docks in them, either internal or externally attached, especially the one in Matt's house in Minecraft, usually to accommodate the Sacred Nintendo Switch or as a charging port, although even simple USB-C wires can already charge the thing.

## Trivia

* Although used as surveillance devices, telescreens were rarely used to fully monitor the people around it like in *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. Instead, as Matt quotes in *A Terrible Fortress* (ICUP), he does not use it to spy on people, he rather uses them to talk to people through the screen as if it were a virtual meeting.
	+ In fact, it is not even required to have a telescreen in one's home, and it can be replaced by third-party screens for free.
* The right-hand telescreen in the GCPA (in the perspective of the MPa benches) is the only screen visibly used in the chamber in ICUP. The left telescreen is rarely used, unless if there is a sitting in the chamber.
* According to Carmen in *A Terrible Fortress* (ICUP), the telescreens were manufactured in part by Samsung, then assembled by the Citrus Experimentation Labs.
	+ Carmen is also unaffected by the telescreens being able to see them, since she was the one that suggested it, as later revealed in the episode.