Dear Bien,
Idea: deep in an underground office building, politicians are fighting each other. Maybe a picture of two or three
politicians with raised knives. They are over-weight and look a little crazy/sick. Maybe make them—both men
and the women politicians—look a little like Keir Starmer. This guy:
keir starmer - Google Search
Thanks!
C. E. Matthews
The Knife has its Own Plan
A PANIC FOUND HIM AS HE CAME awake, struggling to move, feeling trapped, cramps seizing his muscles.
Brain still partly in sleep, it sounded like bombs were falling. He leapt up, getting weight on his cramping legs
and feeling the relief spread up his back. The sound came back, only now he realised it was the sound of meaty
fists pounding his door.
“Who is it?” he shouted, mashing hair from his face with a damp palm, he looked around for a weapon.
Assassins generally were not so obvious, but things had been escalating.
“It’s Daniels you clown, open up.”
Hand to the small of his back, he winced as he let Daniels in. The big man came through the doorway like
a reluctant avalanche, all limbs and anxiety. Daniels was Chief Political Strategist, cunning, subtle, uneasy,
he’d put the knife in quickly and furtively, even if he wasn’t totally sure you needed to be stabbed.
“We think they’re going to call for an election.” Daniels was aggressively massaging his temples and
pacing. “There’s plotting over there, none of our spies can work it out, but the inner-circle is up to something,
being very secretive.”
“And why do you think it’s election?”
“What else is there?”
“True.”
“We did it to them, took power, now they do it to us. They’ve probably worked out the Vox PopuAI system
can be gamed, same as we did.”
“Same but slower…”
“Not necessarily. What if they knew we needed to do it first, so that when they did, it would have even
greater impact.”
“Is that true?”
“I don’t know. Barry Wolsten is their lead on this. He’s a real star player for them.”
“Smart and ruthless, he could really cause us problems. Really do not want another election.”
“You know what to do.”
“Yes.” He looked down at his feet. “I’m about to meet with the Chief of Staff, does she know?”
“She does, so you can talk to her about it, but no one else.”
Daniels was already heading out the door. “Keep an eye on it, but don’t change any of our plans, I don’t
want them to know we know.”
When Daniels was gone, he checked his watch; he’d been asleep for about an hour and half. A huge amount
could happen in that time down here. Knees cracked and spine winced, walking stiffly to his desk where, in
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vain hope, he tapped the power switch to his computer. It was still down; felt like months since it had been
working.
He’d been sleeping in his office for nearly eight years—as best he could tell. Events were moving with such
momentum and there was so much at stake, that, since they had locked down in the Bunker Parliament, he had
only rarely had time to think about the world outside. The whole of the Parliament had been moved
underground since the start of the crisis. Although by no means extravagant, as Party Secretary his office was
among the larger ones—it even had its own bathroom, which made his life much easier.
Initially a contingency, the Bunker had become their long-term home as the emergency had grown out of
their control. It had been built near a small town where the Parliamentary workforce had lived with their
families. A crew of staff had locked down with the elected representatives and had their own spaces on some
floor higher up in the complex. In memories that now seemed like dreams, he sometimes remembered coming
down here. Filing in through the entrance with hundreds of others, turning to look back down the hill over the
desperate lines of people, at the little town which looked to him so vulnerable as they left it to its fate.
In the bathroom he went to splash some water on his face, but found the tap made only a forlorn little squeak
and gave no water at all. Not the fucking water too! He wondered what all the maintenance people were doing;
not so long ago he voted to increase the number of staff on site.
A small pile of hand written notes basked on his desk, his cramped handwriting mocking the effort it had
taken to write them. He and his colleagues did not feel safe talking openly in public spaces; there were listening
devices nesting everywhere. Worse still, at least one of his so-called colleagues was a spy for the opposition.
He had contrived that each note contained slightly different information. When someone leaked to the other
side, he would know who it came from. It was a classic mole hunt.
Grabbing up the notes, he headed out into the corridors, carefully locking his door behind him and making
a big show of striding confidently. Don’t let them know we know. The once deep green carpet was fairly faded
and worn through, in places the concrete underneath could be seen, here and there he noticed that litter had
built up: discarded papers, food wrappers, dried up pens. Ornate skirting boards were scuffed and chipped,
cobwebs grew from the cornices. Battered doors clenched in the beige walls like rotted teeth.
He arrived at the Office of the Chief of Staff. Jane Builman, rough, aggressive, direct, she’d push the knife
all the way through and follow with the rest of her arm. Although large, her office felt oppressive, because of
towering stacks of papers and reports. From certain angles, it resembled the famous painting The Great Wave.
“What’s today?” She slapped an eager hand on her desk.
“Well Chief, you’ve got the Coalition Leadership Group first thing.”
“Is it the usual whiny horseshit?”
“You mean are the leaders of the member parties going to complain about access to you, staffers and the
Boss, then yes, it’s the same horseshit.”
“Wonderful, what next?”
“Ok, then: Committee on Peaceful Resolutions; the Committee on Bilateral Disarmament; the Committee
on Bunker Support Services; lunch; then this afternoon you’re supporting the Boss in the plenary session on
Regulatory Oversight and Democratic Outcomes. You’ve a lot to get through so try to keep to your schedule
if you can.”
“You’re talking as if I’m always late.”
“You are always late.”
“Anyway, sounds like a pretty good day. Plenty of opportunities to stick it to those piss-drinkers on the
other side.”
“Not to speak out of turn Chief, but I think the problems in this building are getting really pretty bad,
hopefully the Committee will be able to see it’s way clear to…”
Builman glared at him. “Now you know good and well, that isn’t what that Committee is about. We accuse
them of eating too much and they accuse us of using too much water.”
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“But it looks like there is no water.”
“Skip it. How’s your day?”
“Party Executive first, planting the rumour about our pivot and then Junior Reps. Policy development in
the afternoon. It’s also the day of the Mole Hunt.”
“Great, at last. Sniff that little rat fucker out, there’s too much leaking in this Coalition, too much treachery.
We’ve lost too much ground to someone in that Executive. Found out who it is and we skin the little bastard
alive. That it?”
“One last thing: we may need to start getting a play book together for an election.”
“Those shit-pipes make me sick, we’ve just had an election, they want more?! Don’t they know there’s
such a thing as too much democracy!”
A resolute arm motioned to the door: “Go forth and conquer, my boy.”
Heading back out, dozens of people rushed passed him, and although he did not acknowledge them, he did
keep a weather eye out. Assassinations had become an accepted part of political manoeuvring.
As with most catastrophes, the current turmoil had forced the varied political parties into two broad
alignments. Both were wildly unstable coalitions with profoundly unpredictable voting habits. The first
coalition had clustered around the Democratic Patriots Party (DPP) whose central position was that politics
should work for the benefit of the people. On the other side, was a coalition scaffolded around the People’s
Democratic Party (PDP), whose main policy belief was that people should be at the heart of politics.
Owing to the vagaries of such things, the two movements had roughly equivalent numbers of members and
therefore could cancel each other out on any issue. This meant that even though he belonged to the side which
was technically in government, their majority was so fragile as to be virtually worthless. In practice each side
had become highly effective in wooing members of the opposition to vote with them on certain issues.
Inducements had been flung across the political aisles like a food fight in a school canteen.
It had really been inevitable that the assassinations would begin, they were after all much cheaper than
continuously having to build golden bridges. The few sleepy security guards in the Parliament had realised
immediately that the safest thing to do was ignore it and the lockdown prevented any police from getting
inside. People began taking protective measures, locking doors, buddying up with colleagues for protective
numbers.
Once both sides had got their hands dirty, they took great pains to never mention an assassination, or to
even acknowledge that anyone was even missing. Occasionally he would find his mind wandering into a future
where they may be held to account for such behaviour. However, they were all at it, so the likelihood was it
would be pardons all round.
He passed through the East Lobby, wary staffers kept their eyes on the doors. Against a wall with peeling
paper, two dim screens displayed the main 24/7 news channels. Democracy Live was the channel which
represented the Government view, where Democracy Today broadcast the views of the opposition. These feeds
were AI generated and, as with everything else, were the target of persistent hacking attempts. He smiled,
recalling the time they had managed to get one of the DT presenters to say “…all in all, we think voters are
just too stupid to make the right choices.”
Taking a moment, he watched the DL anchor, seamlessly artificial, with a perfectly calibrated twinkle in a
her eye and flawless delivery. “The Government’s Commission for Yielding Safety and Trust or CYST has
met for the 78th time this morning, affirming once against that Citizen Safety during this crisis remains the
Top priority.” Beyond the bunker, he knew this was being broadcast to every citizen and he supposed it must
give them some hope during troubled times.
At length, he reached Meeting Room 301, the other five key members of the Party Executive were already
waiting. Time for the Pantomime.
Everyone knew that Room 301 was bugged, so they would have a fictitious meeting in the hope of
misdirecting their enemies. They all suspected their opponents were perfectly aware of this ploy, but went
through with it anyway since anything else would have seemed like bad form. Of course, exactly the same
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farce played out in the other direction. Ultimately, no one had managed to think of anything better. And
although Daniels’ warnings had all but confirmed this was a waste of time, perversely it also made sticking to
the pretence more important than ever.
Entering the room with a flurry of solemn energy, he greeted everyone with a handshake. Each time, he
palmed his colleague a handwritten card, hiding it from view. The bugs were likely audio only, since these
were easier to hide, but he didn’t want to be careless about the possibility that there was video surveillance
too.
On the cards he had written:
The Government will, this afternoon, announce that it has perfected a new defence platform
which will decisively end the crisis and restore peace to the nation. The new technology will…
This stunning new innovation demonstrates precisely why this coalition is the right one to lead
this county into a new century because we place the safety of our citizens at the heart of
everything we do.
On the back, each card had a different description of the technology; when leaked, this would identify the
spy. While they stole a glance at their cards, he watched them, wondering who the traitor was.
First was Diane Forestgood, reserved, polite, consensus seeking, with her the knife goes in while she’s
paying you a complement. Next was Dave Goudsford, loud, conspicuous, clever enough to be lazy, he puts
the knife in while distracting you with a joke. Then he saw Tina Martinez, proper, serious, maestro of
bureaucracy, for her, the knife cannot go in without the proper paperwork. Adrit Gomaxal was next, earnest,
questioning, moral, for him the knife is unapologetically the right thing to do. Finally, Verna Kinswaine, calm,
cerebral, measured, she would judge the perfect angle for the knife to go in. Verna was, by some distance, the
most talented of the group. A rising star destined for the front benches.
“Colleagues, please take your seats.” He locked the meeting room door, motioning unnecessarily to the
obvious table and chairs, “We’re all very busy so I’ll make this quick.” There was much blank faced grunting
as people sat, they all knew this was a pantomime and were not particularly skilled at covering it up. In the
silence before he spoke, he heard some stomachs groaning in hunger.
“Okay gang,” he began, with the compulsory jolliness he’d been trained for, “the Task and Finish Group,
or TFG, on new directions has been testing out some new strategic ideas for us. Both we and the opposition
have been running long on the “citizen safety” messaging and, frankly, it’s getting a bit stale. Demographic
simulators have run the numbers and, well, long story short, pretty much everyone is bored of it now. The
people are past it.”
This was, of course, a lie. Although all the voting was now done by politicians, a safeguard had been to
introduce systems which simulated the opinions of the public. Vox PopuAI gave both sides the ability to know
within minutes the likely views of the voting public. This was immensely helpful, as it allowed the parties to
test thousands of policy positions without fear of any of their more outlandish ideas being exposed to daylight.
The very usefulness of the tool made it a target for dirty tricks. Each side attempted to tamper with the
other’s simulation, to produce erroneous or even aberrant results. Underpinning this was the aim that the
opposition would emerge from the crisis with a track-record of unpopular policies, which could be used to
discredit them when the public was reintroduced into politics.
Such an attempt had been detected in their Vox PopuAI system, with malicious code found which would
falsely claim people were bored of the safety agenda. Cleverly, the coalition had decided to play along with
this, in the hope of fooling their enemies that their tampering had worked. Creating a dual-layer deception,
where the artificiality of the meeting being clear to the opposition was used to hide the more subtle lie that the
simulation tampering had worked. Now, with the extra layer added by Daniels, he felt like he was in a hall of
mirrors when he considered all of the bluffs, feints and lies that surrounded them at all times. But then, politics
had always been an arms race of misrepresentation, that was the game they were all in.
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“Over the next five days or so, DL is going to pivot to cultural health, specifically the culture of hatred and
othering being created by the other side. The people are tired of divisive politics, of conflict and of what they
now perceive as childish name calling. So we are rising above the sterile immaturity of the other side, and
going big on what we will eventually call ‘community maturity’. In short, we are going to be the adults in
room.
“We’re working on a major speech for the Secretary of State, probably in the next couple of days, proposing
a piece of legislation which would ban aggressive or violent terms from political discourse.
Pausing for a moment, he surveyed the blank faces in the room; they seemed gaunt and distracted. “Any
questions?”
Now was the time for a few minutes of confected questions, before getting back to the real work. Goudsford
spoke first, “Does anyone know when the vending machines will be refilled?” There was a murmur of
approval, “I mean, they only got those vegan protein bars left and that’s like eating petrified dog shit.”
“Is there any sign of the canteen opening again?” Martinez next, “even if the vending machines are refilled,
I’m really tired of eating chocolate bars, I really need some vegetables.”
This was not what he expected. They had completely broken character, the hunger now getting the better
of them. Although the canteen had been closed for what seemed like weeks, he had been insulated from this
by being a picky eater. He had scores of tins of tuna stashed in his office. He had made a few limited inquiries
as to why the canteen had closed in the first place and when it might open again, but no one seemed to know.
Frankly, with the speed of the politics these days, it had been difficult to keep the problem in view.
Unfortunately, he knew that hungry people do not do their best work. “Forestgood,” He said, “We need to
get to the bottom of this food thing today. Could you get us some answers please. We can’t have our people
going hungry.”
Nodding a bit resentfully, Forestgood rose from her chair and unlocked the door to leave. The door flew
open with the sound of cracking wood. Spittle hissing around him, Harry Doyle, opposition staffer, launched
himself into the room, swinging a wooden chair leg like a viking longsword.
Shit. This was an assassination.
As a group, it would have been trivial to overpower Doyle, after all he was one guy with a piece of broken
furniture. Unfortunately, the instinct for self-preservation is overwhelming in the world of politics. Every
person immediately ran to save their own skin. Grunting and swearing, Doyle made directly for Kinswaine,
backing her into a corner. She pleaded with the others as they ran out of the door, but this was primarily
because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, she knew there was no real hope of a rescue.
The Party Secretary found he could not move. It wasn’t fear that rooted him to ground, but apathy, he just
didn’t have the energy to run. He was tired, strung-out, stretched thin. He watched Doyle bring the wooden
leg down over and over again, watched Kinswaine try to defend herself, before succumbing to the blows,
watched her head crack open and grey fluff spill out onto the threadbare carpet. The whole time, willing himself
to be next, praying silently that Doyle would kill him next.
Getting his breath back, Doyle turned to leave and looked him in the eye. The assassin must have seen the
bleak desperation in his eyes, “Sorry,” said the killer as he left.
“Doyle wait!” he said, brain un-seizing and calculating again. “Walk with me a moment.”
The Party Secretary and the assassin stepped out in the corridor, walking away from the listening devices
and towards a quiet corner where they would not be seen together. “What would you want to do an
assassination for us?”
Doyle was turning the dripping chair leg over and over in his blood-spattered hands. “One of your own?”
His faced contorted in confusion.
“No actually, one of yours.”
“For your side? Jesus. I’d be toxic to my team forever. I don’t know if I could work for you guys, I mean I
have my principles.”
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“We could do 500k, when lockdown ends, I think we could even throw in a real knife.” He nodded towards
the chair leg.
“You still have cutlery?” Doyle seemed surprised, with the canteen out of action all of the cutlery seemed
to be out of circulation.
“Yes, I am pretty sure I could get you a steak knife.” Confident smile.
“OK, but I’m still worried about the future. I mean, they’re ok with killing when it’s against the other side,
but you’re asking for fratricide.”
“Maybe we could help you out with a job somewhere else, the media maybe, something behind the scenes?”
The assassin tapped the chair leg against his own leg, “Man, I don’t know, I don’t think I could do this for
any less than 2 mil.”
“Christ, Doyle, be serious. For that sort of money I could get them to kill themselves.”
“I’m taking a lot of risk here, this is big move. I’d be killing someone on my own side.”
“Alright, alright.” The Party Secretary held out his hands. “750k.”
“Still not enough. Look, why not get one of your own guys to do it?”
“Have a paranoid target, we need to come at them in an unexpected way.”
This was only partially true. There were two main benefits flowing from Doyle doing it. Genuinely it would
be a surprise, giving a greater chance of success against a highly cautious target. As a bonus, the act of flipping
Doyle to their side would also have a significant demoralising impact on their opponents. However, in reality
he just wasn’t confident in his own assassin’s willingness to kill anymore. He’d been using the same three for
a long time—Gerrity, Haxo and Bafthau—but recently they seemed to have become sickened by it. Weak
stomached assassins were no good to anyone.
Doyle seemed to accept this, “Alright, 1 and a half.”
“1”
“I could only go as low as that if you throw in some real food. There only seems to be those vegan protein
bars left, and that’s like eating baked soil.”
“What if I could get you a tin of tuna?”
“You have tuna?!”
“I didn’t say that. I said, what if I could get you some?”
“How many?”
“1”
“If it was 2, I’d do it for 750k.”
“It’s only 1” The Party Secretary did not entertain this idea for a second, the money belonged to the Party,
it took nothing out of him to spend it. The tuna, however, belonged to him.
“Alright in principle, 1 mil, 1 tin. Who’s the target?”
“Barry Wolsten.”
He let out an amused whistle. “That’s funny, he’s the one who told me to kill Verna Kinswaine. Alright,
deal.”
For a moment he thought about asking Doyle whether he knew what Wolston was up to, but that seemed
like he’d be giving too much away. Don’t let them know we know.
“You made the right choice here, Doyle. I’ll leave the knife and the tuna in the library, behind the curtain
covering the fourth window on the left, the one with the stained glass display of Parliament titled ‘Safeguarding
our Future.’”
The two men shook and Doyle darted away. Back at his office, he retrieved a single tin of tuna and a knife
that he had squirrelled away under his sofa, leaving them both in the library as agreed.
Solving the Wolsten problem gave him a much-needed lift. He felt a merry little surge of wellbeing
spreading through him as he walked to his next meeting. He needed to check in with a group of junior elected
representatives, but even this wasn’t enough to take the shine off.
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While, in his experience, most elected reps spent their time complaining to the party machinery, this
particular group excelled at whining. It had become a sort of religion for them. In part, he suspected that this
was because the political stagnation had meant they had remained junior reps for an extended period, making
them resentful. Ordinarily, the ones who managed to get re-elected would have graduated to ‘experienced
lawmaker’ by now, but the lack of any chance of promotion had left them trapped on the bottom rung of the
political ladder. Down here, elections only selected the Government, not individual representatives.
Of course, they would never admit that their status was the cause for complaint, so instead they moaned
tenaciously about the quality of talking points, communication from the centre, lack of focus on their patch.
Senior reps had exactly zero interest in dealing with such people, and instead left such prosaic tasks to the
Party Secretary, who had no choice.
On his way, he passed some more screens, one of which was cracked and glitching. The DT feed remained
viewable, however. Here a heptagon-jawed newsreader was saying, “…points to a growing sense amongst
voters that things need to change. The Government is simply not up to the task of protecting citizens and is
just kicking the can down the road with ineffectual commissions which are just out of touch talking shops with
no relevance to real people. That is why we’re proposing a new approach with our Safety Objectives, Rights
and Entitlements programme, or SORE…”
Stomach looping, he realised this message was building up to a call for an election, Daniels was right. Shit.
Reaching the door to the meeting room, he drew a deep breath and prepared his self respect for the
pummelling it was about to receive. However, he noticed a square of paper stuck to the door, which read: dead
body inside, please go to meeting room G104. He sighed, another dead body mouldering away, at some point
people seemed to have stopped taking them away.
With the inscrutable stillness of a smooth pebble, he entered G104. A dense cloud of noise swelled out to
greet him. There were roughly fifty junior reps, the number had stayed stable since there was little value in
killing them off. They had selected Elaine Houbert as their spokesperson, but seemed to believe that the
purpose of having a spokesperson was to talk over them. Houbert was unencumbered by embarrassment,
willing to continue an argument long beyond its natural life. With her, the knife went in over and over and
over.
Today, however, something was different, Todd Malarky—the Party Treasurer—was standing with
Houbert, in disturbingly deep conversation.
“Hello…” he began, but Houbert cut him off instantly.
“Tell him what you’ve just told me.” She held her hand out to Malarky, inviting him to speak.
“I knew you’d be here,” Malarky said, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. “You need to hear
this.”
“Well fucking tell him then!” Houbert gave the distinct impression of just having stamped her heel, without
actually stamping her heel.
Malarky took a dramatic beat, “The money is running out.”
“What?”
“The money is going to run out in about two weeks,” Houbert repeated.
“The donations, they all stopped about two weeks ago, we hoped it was a one-off thing, a glitch, some kind
of banking issue. But no, it’s just that people have stopped sending money. In fact, it looks like whatever it is
it may have happened earlier than that, but the automated donations kept going for a few weeks after the
manual donations stopped.”
“If there’s no money—then what is the fucking point?” Houbert glared at him.
“But Todd, all the systems have been down for weeks, how can you know what’s going on?”
Melarky took a look sideways. “The finance systems had their own UPS, they’ve kept running. It’s designed
so that the financial markets can keep operating no matter what.”
“Has this problem hit the other side?”
“I don’t know, I can’t get anyone to talk.”
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“Which suggests they’re having the same problems then.”
“That would be my guess.”
Melarky was pale, frightened, like his vitality was leaking out of his heel. Houbert was inflating with rage,
her face glowing purple. Stepping back, he tried to think, but blood was rushing in his ears and he could not
focus.
Threats on all sides, the coalition felt very fragile in that moment. The relentless, remorseless chicanery of
the opposition, the endless cycles of lies and distortions, the whole environment was toxic. If the money ran
out, there was no way the coalition could hold, the government would surely fold. He felt this huge weight
bearing down on him, couldn’t stop himself thinking about the relief he would have experienced if Doyle had
killed him.
But before he could truly enjoy wallowing in his misery, something occurred to him which snapped him
back to the room. Melarky had just given this news to the most disgruntled and volatile group in the Coalition.
Putting his arm around Melarkey, he led him away from the fuming Houbert and over to a corner away
from the bloodthirsty juniors.
“Why are you telling them this Todd?” He asked, hissing through his teeth, “You know what they’re like,
it’s going to be mayhem.” Stealing a glance at Houbert, he saw she was glaring at them, her eyes almost
glowing with anger.
“I just didn’t know what to do!”
“You go to the fucking Chief, that’s what you do!”
“I did. I did go to the Chief, two days ago, but she was doing nothing. Pfft. I’m freaking out here, it’s all
falling apart and we’re just running round in these stupid little circles like everything is fine, but it’s not. This
is as far away from fine as you can get without actually being dead.”
“I need to speak to the Chief.” Placing his fingers and thumb against his forehead, he spread them across
his brow until he was gripping his temples. Without another word he left, a trembling Melarkey watching him
go.
As someone with a reputation for consistency and punctuality, it was something of a surprise to find that
the Chief was not in any of the places she was supposed to be. After some confused wandering, he at length
found her in office. She was rapidly packing papers into boxes. For some reason, she was listening to DT at a
volume loud enough to be heard over her frantic packing.
Before he could ask a single question, she said, “Well my boy, how goes the Mole Hunt?”
Out of habit, he answered, distracted, “Well, it’s underway. We should know who the spy is soon enough I
think.”
“Good, that’s good. Well done.” She didn’t say anything else, indeed seemed to be increasing the speed
with which she rammed things into her boxes.
“Melarkey told me about the money.”
There was an almost imperceptible pause in the packing, then she resumed with a disinterested “uh-huh.”
“He’s told the Junior Reps. It’ll be all the way around the party by now.”
She smiled a little, “Yes, I suppose it will.” Papers, ornaments, books, continuous shovelling.
“What are we going to do Chief?”
“About what?”
“About the fact that there’s no money?” He could scarcely believe he was being asked to specify.
“Someone got Wolston, I just heard. Sounds like you got that sorted.”
“The money Chief, please, what is the plan?”
“Oh, I don’t think we even need a plan, I think that’ll sort itself. The money is always there when we need
it.”
“No offence Chief, but you’re acting weird.”
“No come on, that’s—” She was cut off by the chimes of a breaking news story on DT. He saw a look of
panic dart across her face.
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“Breaking News. Chief of Staff for the Government, Jane Builman has today defected to the opposition
coalition, citing a lack of leadership and planning at the very heart of Government. Speaking to Democracy
Today (your most reliable source of news and current affairs) she said that she could no longer be silent on the
weakness infecting the leadership at the highest levels of Government, stating that the Government is unfit and
her conscience just could not let her continue.”
Shrugging she said: “As usual, I’m a bit behind schedule.”
“What did they offer you Chief, why did you do this to us?”
“To be honest, I’m hungry.”
Moving much faster than he thought she could, she lunged at him with a letter opener. He jerked backwards,
feeling a draft from the swipe, falling backwards over one the Chief’s boxes and sending its contents spilling
out in front of him.
“You shitbag,” she said steeping through the debris. “I just packed that.”
She came at him again, slashing at his face and neck, he managed to block the blade with a wad of papers
which went spraying around the room. Scuttling backwards, he alternated between trying to get back on his
feet and flinging stationary at her. Smashing the back of his head against the edge of her desk, he was
momentarily dazed and then she was on him. Catching her wrist, he managed to push the glinting weapon
back, but she was leaning down with the blade and he knew his arms wouldn’t be able hold much longer. He
tried to roll away, but he was trapped against her desk.
Through his body he felt a warm release, like the feeling he got with Doyle or with the Juniors—the relief
of death. The escape of death, in a few moments it would be over. Even while his survival instincts fought
back against the attack, he fled to the secret corner of his mind where he welcomed the end.
Then she jerked away from. He felt something spatter against his face. Blood. A second blow landed against
the side of her head. It was the Secretary of State, swinging a baseball bat with a grunting determination.
She was wiry, small, with a sharp face, grinning as she swung the bat again as though it were a sword. “You
dirty rotten traitor.” She said, the word traitor coinciding with the thick thud of the bat striking the Chief’s
head again. Builman dropped to the ground, dazed, her eyes struggling to focus. Secretary of State Amy
Langham finished her off with a series of remorseless blows.
“I always thought ‘happy warrior’ was a try-hard phrase, but this whole situation makes me think, maybe I
am one.”
Picking himself up, he smoothed down his clothes and wiped the blood from his face.
“Thanks Boss.” he said.
“You seem disappointed?”
Perhaps it had reached the stage where his frustration at still being alive was visible on his face. Still, best
not to reveal this to the Boss. “I guess I’m just disappointed in her, Boss. It’s unthinkable to me that she would
side with them.”
“Well, we got wind of it about fifteen minutes ago. Money, power and the usual inducements. They offered
her food as well.”
His mind went to Doyle and the tinned Tuna, “Actually, the last thing she said to me was, ‘I’m hungry.’”
Langham was moving to the next essential. “Now I need a new Chief of Staff. Needs to be someone smart,
someone tough, someone loyal. I need a person who isn’t afraid of the big calls.”
“I can draw you up a list if you like, give me twenty minutes or so.”
Langham laughed, cleaning off her bat with some of Builman’s scattered papers. “I don’t need a list. I need
you to do it.”
“Well, Boss, I’d be honoured of course, but I think there are a few others who might think it’s their turn.”
“So what? You’ve been doing good things, I’ve heard about the Mole Hunt, Wolsten, making moves.
You’re the right call.”
“I’m honoured, I won’t let you down.”
“See that you don’t.”
9
“So you need me preparing for this election? I’d guess wooing the Chief was part of their plan.”
“Actually, no. The food thing is getting out hand. I’m sure you’ve noticed the vending machines are nearly
empty. If we don’t get this food thing sorted, we’re going to keep losing people to the assholes.”
“Ok then Boss, food it is. Earlier today I asked Forestgood to look into this, so I agree it’s an issue.”
“Good. Get to it then.”
Holding the bat behind her back, she strode away, stepping carefully through the debris of Builman’s office,
which he supposed was his office now.
Bunkers represented an inversion of the normal spatial hierarchy of buildings. In a high rise, the most
important people were situated at the very top. In a bunker, it’s the opposite. He’d been running around the
same few corridors and meeting rooms for so long, he’d largely forgotten the layout of the bunker, which he
knew was much bigger that the radius of quarter of a mile or so that he’d lived his life in for the past nearly
eight years.
In truth, he didn’t know where to start, he couldn’t remember the last time he actually saw any of the
Parliamentary staff and they were the obvious place to start asking questions. For want of a better idea, he
decided to start in the kitchen.
Automatic lights reluctantly flickered on in the canteen, as he made his way through the large, empty space.
Musty air hung, undisturbed. Chairs and tables were in disarray, underscoring a silent stillness he had not
experienced in a long time. He found the kitchen through double doors at the rear of the canteen, next to the
row of serving hatches.
Fridges hummed, there was the feint smell of rotting food. Surfaces were dusty and smeared. The place had
not been cleaned for a long time. Still the place was deserted, he had seen no staff. At the back of the kitchen
was a freight lift, on the wall next to it was a simplified diagram of the bunker, setting out the various floors
and spaces. He realised he hadn’t thought about the logistical complexity of the place in a long time.
The Bunker was connected to the surface by a number of shafts, some for drawing air from the surface. The
lift in front of him was to allow bulk supplies to be brought down. The diagram showed the various areas for
laundry, sewage, staff areas, waste disposal, power generation and so on. Swimming around in his brain was
a vague memory that the generators for this building had been some kind of breakthrough in energy production,
but he couldn’t remember exactly what—something to do with nuclear power he guessed.
With some trepidation, he realised he was going to have go floor by floor, looking for a member of the
support staff. It would mean being away from the action for longer than he was comfortable with, but the Boss
had asked and he wasn’t going to let her down.
Tapping the button to call the lift, it made a pleasant electronic sound, but the noises coming from the lift
itself were pretty discouraging. Dry metal screeched in aguish until there was a shuddering shockwave from
the lift’s cabin juddering to a halt, followed by the slow tinkling of pieces of metal cascading to the concrete
floor and ringing back up the lift shaft.
He looked for the stairs.
Progress was slow—he had become so monstrously unfit. His back ached, his calves burned and he found
himself out of breath after only a couple of flights. Floor after floor he rose, mounting plain concrete steps,
taking gasping breaths through dusty air. Yet for all his suffering, he was yet to find another person. There
were technological marvels on every level, huge machines working unseen and giving him no hint of their
purpose. As he picked his way through them, he had no idea of knowing if the noises they were making were
normal or whether the machinery was on the edge of failure. It occurred to him for a brief moment that
everyone scurrying around in the Parliament could be moments away from catastrophe and they would never
even know it. That thought was quickly pushed from his mind.
Around what he guessed was halfway up, he heard subdued sobbing, coming from further up the stairs.
Despite the persistent protests of his legs, he pushed himself quickly to find the source. Diane Forrestgood was
sitting against the wall, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth as though to soothe herself.
“Diane?” he said, kneeling down. Her gentle emotion seemed so out of place on the concrete stairs.
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“They’re in there.” She pointed at the door into that level. A sign on the door read Staff Only.
“What do you mean, Diane? Who? Who is in there?”
She didn’t speak again, wrapping her hands tight around her knees.
Standing, he turned to face the door, stomach queasy, a sharp prickly feeling spreading from the back of
his neck. Through the glass in the door he could see only an oily darkness, the automatic lights had cut out.
Cold against his hand, the door opened easily. Triggered by his motion, the lights strobed on and he caught a
glimpse of the bodies silhouetted against the flashing lights, seven or eight hanging, the smell welling up
around him. Spinning on his heel, he darted back into stairwell, dropping to his knees, his empty stomach
wrenching as though his innards were being squeezed by freezing hands.
“Why?” Gasping, “Why would they do that?”
Diane Forrestgood did not speak.
He needed help. He thought briefly of his colleagues below. Instinctively, he knew they’d have no interest,
they’d be too busy, and if he distracted too many of his own side, it would give the opposition an advantage.
No, if he was going to get help, he was going to have to risk the outside world.
Climbing through the complex, he saw no other people, and did not check any more of the rooms for fear
of finding more bodies. Sweat coated his back and knees, running into his shoes, breathing was hard and
required concentration. Step by step, trying not to think too much, focused only on one foot over the other,
gaining height the whole time. When he stopped to rest, he did so in the stairwell, avoiding the doors. As he
made his way up through the floors, he carefully avoided looking in any windows.
Catching the scent of something, he guessed he was nearing the top. Metallic, dry, cold, it was unlike
anything he had smelled before. Hollow, trembling legs carried him forward as he felt the temperature
dropping. Soon he could see his breath and he welcomed the colder air on his overheating body. There was a
distant banging sound which made him anxious, but he pressed on, consciously suppressing his fear by imaging
the disappointment of the Boss if he failed.
At last he climbed the final step, turning into a large space which he remembered seeing briefly as they fled
here all those years ago. Observing the place now, it resembled to him a large warehouse, sets of huge double
doors opening to runs for cargo trucks. He saw too that there were multiple freight lifts stretching away to his
right. The place was desolately empty, forlorn lights lambent with dull life and showing only bare concrete
and faded yellow road markings.
The banging sound was much louder here and he located the source. At the far end an ordinary pedestrian
door had been left open to the outside, and was blowing inward against the wall. Judging by how cracked and
splintered it was—and by the amount of dust which had pushed through—the door seemed to have been left
open for sometime.
On stiff, cramping legs he hobbled across the echoing space, the sound of his steps amplified by the
cavernous emptiness. Holding the wayward door with one hand, he stepped out into the open air, taking his
first breath outside in nearly a decade.
The air was bitter and it stung his throat. His eyes adjusted to the harsh light of a savage smear of
unwholesome luminosity pushing through a sky roiling with poisonous clouds. Dust ruled, there were no trees,
no grass, no animals, no people, everything was dust. All the colour seemed to have been drained from the
world. The ground itself seemed shattered. Vast holes, miles across, had been blasted out of the landscape.
They looked like they had always been there.
He felt like he was falling without moving, his head reeled. Looking down the hill from the Bunker’s
entrance, where the little town had been, there weren’t even any ruins. Just another crater playing host to dust.
He knew this was the whole planet. He imagined this same sterile desert stretching from his feet to every
place in the world.
The conflict had always been a mere political thing to him, a tool, a talking point. Something the other side
was getting wrong. It occurred to him that he hadn’t really paid much attention to the details of the conflict.
The mechanics of war. The logistics of death. Weapons of this destructive power were meant to deter violence.
11
They were never meant to be used. It wasn’t even clear when this had happened. What had they been doing
when everything up here was swept away?
Perhaps there were other people in other bunkers, but such people would almost certainly be enemies.
Who’s going to vote for us? There would be no more rallies, no more donation drives, no more speeches,
no must hustings, no more debates. It was a desolation too complete for his mind and too deep for his soul.
Silently, he went back down. What else could he do? How was he going to tell the Boss, what would he
say?
He went slower than he needed to, but at length he found himself passing through the canteen, into the
Parliament and back into the hive of noise and motion that he had left behind.
After some searching, he found the boss. Touching her on the shoulder, he was opening his mouth to begin
speaking, just as an announcement came on from DT.
An immaculate hair do said: “We have today learned that the Government intends to introduce a new super
weapon, based on disrupting brain waves. From what we understand from our sources, the weapon will kill
any human being within its influence, leaving buildings and infrastructure intact.”
Instead of telling the Boss everything he had just seen, he listened to the voice from the screen. DT was
playing out his Mole Hunt. His plan had worked! The spy had fallen for it.
The Boss turned to face him. “Was that your mole hunt?”
“Yes.” He answered reflexively, some feint stirring of pride in the far distance.
“Well! Who did you give that story to?”
“That was for Dave Goudsford.”
“Goudsford—that little traitor!”
“Boss, I’ve got something to tell you—”
“It can wait, we got to deal with this little rat bastard first.” Spinning on her heel, she marched away, “Well,
come on then!”
His instincts kicked in; he couldn’t help beginning the political calculus. It was a reflex, a muscle memory.
Dealing with a traitor was transcendentally important, it had to take priority because the Coalition wouldn’t
be safe until it had rooted out all the spies and enemies. How could they possibly fix whatever was going on
out there if they weren’t united? He needed to think of the good of the Party first. It would be a distraction to
burden people now, with so much else going on, he wouldn’t be thanked for it.
He followed the boss.
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