It was a bright cold day in Spring, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Twilight Sparkle, her head turned down in an attempt to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering with her.
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a mare of about forty-five, with multicoloured, translucent hair and alluringly beautiful features. Twilight made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Twilight, who was thirty nine and had a varicose ulcer on her right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those posters which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG SISTER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Twilight turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. She moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of her body merely emphasised by the blue saddle which was the uniform of the Party. Her mane was very dark, her face naturally sanguine, her hide roughened by coarse soap and the cold of the winter that had just ended.