Competitive housing

 “We mixed magnolia paint with crematorium ash for the walls,” said David Laburnum-Racke as he walked alongside the Minister.  He gestured casually with one hand, being careful, as the Minister noted, not to actually touch the wall.  “We found that the colour was mostly soothing, but ever so slightly upsetting.  People approve of the corridors but there is a tendency for them not to linger in them.  We reduced the amount of time people spent outside their offices by a little under 20% through this.”  They passed a man sitting on a stool holding a clipboard and a stopwatch.  He nodded to them as they passed in a friendly manner.  The Minister ignored him as he wasn’t on the list of people that he was there to visit, and David stopped only to look over the clipboard.

“Is crematorium ash easy to come by?” asked the Minister.  He was due to spend a further 13 minutes with David and he had run out of conversation two corridors back.

“Surprisingly, yes,” said David.  “While the crematoria do attempt to provide people with all the ashes of their relatives the oven do still need sweeping out at the end of the day.  And then there are the unclaimed; we can get all of their ash.  We’ve been considering charging the crematoria for the service of removing it for them.”

The Minister nodded and then halted.  Behind them his Aide, a woman who’s job was largely to keep his ideas away from anyone but his Cabinet, looked concerned.

“We want to announce a new housing initiative,” said the Minister.  The Aide looked less concerned but still seemed ready to interject.  “Until the country has wintered its discontent it seems likely we’ll need new housing.  And when we eventually find a way to backtrack on Brexit without admitting anything so crass as culpability we will probably be able to fill any excess from the… ah, toughening that the country is going through this winter.”

David, two of whose neighbours had already frozen to death because they couldn’t afford the power bills, nodded.  He was fully aware what the Minister was talking about.

“That said, new housing should support the new ideas of the new government.  We should not be seen to be pandering to the people, and we definitely cannot be seen to be being soft.  So an initiative is taking shape: competitive housing.  The Cabinet is still in discussions with the TV production companies, but we think it should be possible to have housing that you can live in until you fail a challenge.  Or maybe two, that’s still up in the air.  And I think the paint you’re describing would be a useful interior feature of our housing.”

“Competitive housing?” David toyed with the word in his head.  It sounded intriguing, in much the same way as many of the Minister’s policies were intriguing until you realised they were life-threatening, maiming, or mentally and emotionally destructive.

“Antisocial housing was deemed too negative,” said the Aide.  She seemed to have relaxed completely now.

“Let’s paint all the common areas in the new housing with magnolia-ash paint,” said the Minister.  “Perhaps we could even use it to direct people through the corridors and public spaces, subtly.  Ah!  We could leave areas like the bike-sheds and car-parks generally open and warm so that the homeless are simultaneously attracted and repelled.”

“I thought the government was disposing of the homeless,” said David.  The Aide flashed him a quick smile.

“Well, the competitive housing is primarily aimed at removing the homeless and creating homes for them,” said the Minister.  “Though many of them seem not to want permanent homes, which is why we think the idea of them having to pass challenges to stay is interesting.  It allows them to move around and try out the various accommodations without us appearing to hound them.  Plus, you can vote on who gets to be kicked out for being too competitive.”

“I think we agreed that ‘antisocial’ was the better word for that,” said the Aide.

“Did we?  Oh right, we did.  That’s fine.  Do you have any other anti-human innovations here?”

David looked a tiny bit taken aback.  “Oh, we don’t use that word,” he said huffily.  “We prefer pro-work.”

“Of course, naturally!”

“Well, we have created carpets that cause painful build-ups of static electricity when you walk across them,” said David, assured now that he had a willing audience.  “It discourages people from leaving their desks, but also punishes them just a little when the leave.”

“Capital!” said the Minister.  “Ah, I think our time is up.  Tell my Aide all about these ideas, and I’m sure we’ll be adopting them.”

Caryfell

 Garrett was sitting on a large mushroom despite the complaints of Samara who thought it was unsafe.  Around them the grey-orange walls of the cave rose up to a vaulted ceiling several metres overhead, and it felt like the heat from their campfire was rising up and away from them as well.  Water trickled down the cave walls in thin rivulets and pooled here and there in depressions in the cave floor; green-blue lichen and mould grew wherever it felt like it, and a cold breeze chilled them whenever they weren’t near the fire.  Light came from the fire itself, though before they’d lit it there had been a lessening of the darkness towards one end of the cave.

There were four mushrooms, growing in a cluster that shielded the campfire from the breeze.  Two of them were lumpy and semi-spherical; the other two, growing on thick stems that had found purchase on something below the rock floor of the cave, had flatter tops.  Garrett had claimed one and the other, rejected disdainfully by Samara, was being squatted on by Efimov.

“Tomorrow, we should reach the end of the cave,” said Samara.  Her blue hair, long enough to reach her waist and normally braided to keep it out of her way, was covering her head and the map she was staring at.  The map was drawn on terratta-parchment in fluorescent inks and was easier to see when protected from the light.  “We should come out on the side of the mountain, and then somewhere below us will be Blinton.  I think we should be able to see it from above.”

“More than they can do,” said Efimov.  He was dark-skinned and muscular and had three eyes; the third was set above the other two in his forehead and often looked in a different direction to what Garrett thought of as the ‘regular two’.  His hair was black and kept back from his head by a thin woven band in red and orange; there was a pattern to the weaving but it was hard to discern in the flickering light of the cave.  He sniggered to himself.

“You keep saying that,” said Samara sounding annoyed.  “Are you going to explain yourself before we get there?  I’d like to be prepared for whatever we’re going to find.”

Efimov sniggered again.

“Seriously,” said Garrett.  He was squat and grey-skinned with warts and bulbous tumour-like excretions on his visible skin.  He was half-ogre, though the size and strength of his father had eluded him, replaced instead by the cunning and mercantile drive of his (mostly-human) mother.  “This is a business trip, Efimov.  What gives?”

“Everything is business trip with you, Gar,” said Efimov easily.  His third eye stared off into the darkness, as though hunting for something to watch.  “Even this cave, you managed to find things to sell.”

“He’s got you there,” said Samara.  She tossed her hair back and lifted her head.  The glow of the maps inks persisted for a moment, squiggly lines floating in the darkness, before fading in the light of the campfire.  Her slightly-yellowish skin cast and triangular face made Garrett thing of the large cats that his ogre father had kept for food.

“We got lucky!” he protested.  “I had no idea that people had left things behind when they came through here before.”

“They died,” said Samara.  She’d objected to ‘looting the dead’ while Garrett had been going through the bags that he’d found when he’d bumped into a stalagmite, broken it off and discovered the first corpse.  There had been much that was rotten or water-logged, but in one split-open and disintegrating satchel he’d found a couple of handfuls of uncut gems and a long mahogany stick that Efimov thought was a magical staff.

“People do that,” said Garrett.  “All the time, in fact.  And they don’t have any use for what they leave behind and there’s no-one here to tell us who their inheritors might be.  So that means we get to inherit.”

Samara shook her head, her hair rippling in waves behind and around her.  “Corpse-robbing,” she said softly.

“Did you figure out what the staff does yet, Eff?” said Garrett.  He’d failed to convince Samara of the rule of finders-keepers already and wasn’t in the mood to try again.

Efimov shifted position so that he was sitting cross-legged.  “Is staff of way-finding,” he said.  “Out of charges, obviously.”

“Obviously,” said Garrett, nodding.  “And Blinton?  What’s so funny about that?”

Efimov tilted his head back so that all three eyes stared at the distant ceiling, which even to his magically-acute vision was still mostly shadowed.  “Was there once,” he said.  “They… didn’t like me.”

After the silence had drawn on for several seconds Samara said, “Is that it?  It’s a funny place because they didn’t like you?”

“They offered reward for my capture,” said Efimov.  Garrett shifted uneasily: Efimov’s past was a mystery to both him and Samara, and they’d both done some digging around as discretely as possible.  Having him on the team was undoubtedly a good idea — he was a skilled mage and his appraisal of magical artefacts had been spot-on so far — but knowing so little about him made them both just a little nervous.  “Wanted me dead or deader.”

“Dead or alive, usually,” said Samara who couldn’t accept that Efimov’s accent didn’t mean he didn’t speak Common as well as the rest of them.

“Dead or deader said poster,” said Efimov.  “I can read, Samara.”

“Yes, sorry.”

“Poster said I was to be reported to authorities on sight,” said Efimov.  “So I… arranged things a little so that that was no problem for them.”

Garrett’s eyes widened.  He might not know much about Efimov, but what he’d seen so far suggested that he had a very literal approach to the world.

“Clouds of darkness?” he asked, wondering what spell Efimov had chosen to cast.  “Some kind of permanent night?”

Efimov chuckled now, a deeper, more sincere sounding laughter.  “I had no idea how long I would need to stay,” he said.  “Plus at that time I had not learned much of magics of Bon Amba.  Was little more than sophisticated necromancer and vivimancer.  Skilled vivimancer, naturally, but my talents lay with life and death.  So I took tree pollen, since was Spring, and modified it a touch so that when it got in eyes, it took root and rotted eyes out of head.  Took maybe four weeks before entire town was blind.  Hence new name of town.  Used to be called Caryfell.”

Samara’s gasp was genuine shock and Garrett had to quickly stifle the laughter rising in his chest.  He coughed, and then again.  “That sounds effective,” he said, hoping not to offend Samara.

“You blinded a whole town of people?” She wasn’t shouting but she sounded like she wanted to be.  “A whole town!  So much that they changed the name of the town!”

“Was them or me,” said Efimov, shrugging.  “No-one died and we all along together living happily.  For six months or so, and then I left.”

“You turned them all blind!”

“He didn’t kill them,” said Garrett.  “I think that’s important too.  They wanted to kill him, after all.”

“That’s not the point,” said Samara and then stopped.  Garrett risked looking over at her.  She was staring at Efimov but her hands were braiding her hair; it looked like she wasn’t aware she was doing it.  “I mean, that’s sort of.  Well, that’s not quite.  Damn it, wasn’t there another way?”

“Maybe?” Efimov shrugged. “If we find ourselves in similar situation I’m happy to ask you for alternative solution.”

Samara dropped her hair and seemed to realise she’d been braiding it.  “Well.  That’s good,” she said. “Yes.  We can discuss it.”

Garrett started to relax.

“Can you unblind them now though?  Undo what you did?”

“Maybe,” said Efimov.  “Can probably grow new eyes if I think about it. But have they stopped wanting to kill me?”

Guncare review

 “There is a video,” said Jeronica with a small smile.  Manguy, whom she regarded as necessary but insufficient competition at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations, flinched.  She knew that he would rather have shuddered and mentally awarded him a point for style.  “While I would normally veto such a suggestion, in this case I think that the simplest way to drive home the successes we are having with Guncare is by showcasing them directly.”

“Length?”  Jeremy Diseased-Rat, CEO and Overlord of DAMN was famously terse and a monosyllable was about as much as any of the executives expected from him.

“Four minutes and eighteen seconds,” said Jeronica.  “The executive summary runs for the first twelve seconds though, so there is really no need to waste time.”

“Play it,” said Jeremy, ignoring the reaction from around the table.  Everyone knew he could simply have waved a hand to convey that message.

Jeronica tapped a key on her laptop and all attention turned to the screen at the far end of the table.

“It is four days before Christmas,” said a prissy-sounding voice.  The screen showed a grassy lawn in front of a white tent.  Behind the tent was the stone facade of a hospital with a bright green cross surmounting crenellations that looked medieval.  An alligator crawled slowly across the lawn in front of the tent, and then a tent-flap was pulled back to reveal a man dressed in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck carrying a suitcase.  He saw the alligator and started, a little theatrically, and dropped the suitcase which spilled paper money everywhere.  “And profits are up to the point where even embezzlement is hard to take seriously,” said the voice.

Jeronica’s finger hovered over the stop button, just in case, but Jeremy Diseased-Rat seemed enthralled.

The camera swung around and walked around the side of the tent and the hospital.  After just a few metres a line came into view, and soon the watchers could see a lengthy queue of people lining up at the tall, steel gates that guarded access.

“In many countries,” said the voice, “hospital access is granted to everyone.  This leads to the spread of disease.  Many people come in with one condition and acquire another while waiting to be seen, confusing diagnoses and lengthening the treatment time.  This is inefficient and ineffective.  Here at Guncare people are processed early on to ensure that they only have one presenting issue which can then be treated directly.  This reduces the average length of stay in hospital facilities to twenty-eight minutes.  Even patients requiring surgical care can be seen and treated in less than six hours.”

A woman is seen fleeing from the queue pursued by an alligator.

“Membership is, of course, necessary,” said the voice.  “At the moment membership is mediated through the National Rifle Association.  Sign up there and you sign up for Guncare automatically.  Fees and dues are handled through their established systems, reducing overheads and costs for Guncare itself.  In due course the government will take over the registrations and Guncare members will have Nationally Identifying Cards to present.  The NRA are working hard to ensure that that will bring with it the existing benefits of NRA membership.”

There is the sound of gunfire, but no-one in the queue seems disturbed or panicked by it.

“As part of our association with the NRA members are encouraged to bring their guns with them as part of the recuperation process,” continued the voice.  “Relaxation is an important part of recovery and being able to shoot at the local wildlife has been shown to be therapeutic at the 37% confidence level.”

The camera moves slowly along the queue, which seems to populated mostly by people with serious ailments.  Many have trouble walking unassisted and a few are disfigured in ways that are unpleasant to look at.

“Not every condition is treatable,” continues the voice.  “For example, not all cancers are curable, and if too little is known about a disease there is no prescribed treatment for it.  In cases like these, Guncare offers excellent end-of-life support.”

The camera briefly looks out across a field where a man is stumbling, clearly in pain, pursed by two other people wielding guns and dressed like hunters.

“Everybody joins in,” says the voice.  “Guncare is great.  Recuperate with a rifle!”

The video ended and everyone subtly relaxed, stretching an arm discretely and adjusting their sitting.  Jeremy Diseased-Rat turned his head from the screen.

“Excellent,” he said.  “A success story.”

There was absolute silence.

“In the making,” he concluded.

Countess Niebow

 The King stood behind the square altar in St. Anne’s Chapel.  There was a simple green cloth spread over the masonry block that served as an altar and a small bronze bowl, half-filled with water, had been set a little carelessly near one edge.  The seats intended for the Lords Martial and Theological were empty, all six, and the three intended for the Lords Thaumaturgical held only one occupant.  Lord Derby, who had been expecting to see Lord Vileburn sitting there, was a little startled to see his assistant Elizabeth instead.

“Derby,” said the King.  His voice was low but the chapel was tiny — when it was still in use barely twelve people could have gathered in there — and the acoustics caused his voice to resonate slightly.  “Thank-you for attending at short notice.”

“I am your servant, your Majesty,” said Derby bowing his head.  He knew the King well and had been a King’s Investigator for over a decade.  Had Lord Vileburn been present instead of Elizabeth he might have called the King John instead, but Elizabeth’s presence made him wonder how formal this occasion might be.  The King didn’t leave him wondering for long however.

“I have asked Elizabeth to be present as a Witness,” said the King.  “Please place your hands on the altar, Derby.”

This made it a state occasion in effect.  The Chapel of St. Anne was closed off and officially disused and most people could not gain access to it as it required a particular key that the King gave out only to trusted advisors.  Part of that trust was validated by the Witnessing: a magic imbued into the altar by the Lords Thaumaturgical several centuries ago that ensured the truth of what was said while it was being touched.  Lord Derby placed both hands on the altar, unbothered by the request.  He had done this many times in this place already.

“State your name, position, and reason for being here, please,” said the King.  Lord Derby noted the ‘please’, a nicety that wasn’t usually forthcoming.

“I am Lord Ernest Derby, King’s Investigator, and I am here at the request of King John II, Defender of the Faith, Monarch of the Seven Seas and Imperator Rex.”

The altar did absolutely nothing, and after a couple of seconds Elizabeth let out her breath.  She stood up and placed her hands on the altar.  “He speaks the truth,” she said, and again the altar did nothing.

Lord Derby removed his hands and found a handkerchief in a pocket to wipe them with.  “You know, your Majesty,” he said casually, “I’ll never forget that occasion when we had an actual traitor in our midst.”

“There have been several, Derby,” said the King with mild rebuke in his tone.  “But I know the one you mean.  It was… messy.”

Elizabeth returned to her seat but her face was contorted as someone who very much wants to know what’s being talked about and doesn’t feel that they have the right to ask.  She sat down, crossing her ankles and then her hands in her lap, and adjusted her face to one of placid disinterest.

“How well informed are you on the situation in Belgium?” asked the King while Derby put his handkerchief away.

“Moderately, your Majesty,” said Lord Derby.  “I was there a couple of months ago in a diplomatic capacity; you might recall that there was an incident with the murder of two women working in our Embassy there.”

“I recall,” said the King.  “A regrettable situation, made worse by you discerning the culprit before they could make good their escape.”

“Some might feel that knowing the full facts of the matter are important.”

“And others might feel that when ones hands are tied, getting the facts at the right moment is important.”

Elizabeth’s face twitched as again she heard enough to be of interest and too little to be of practical use.

“I believe you handled the situation with diplomatic finesse,” said Lord Derby.  Elizabeth scrutinized his face: was that a hint of a smile?  Lord Derby’s face was thin and generally friendly; his bright green eyes seemed to hint at a permanent good mood though she was sure that was impossible.  His moustache, a black, narrow line below his nose that ended in waxed points, reminded her of her favourite uncle from when she was still a child.

“I believe you left me no choice.  Nonetheless, are you aware of the current monarcho-political situation.”

“That the Belgian Throne is empty and it looks like the attempts to establish a republic are going to fail?  Yes, and I am in agreement with the Lords Martial in this regard: if the republic does not establish itself, there will be war.  Belgium’s neighbours would consume it in a heartbeat if they had the strength and they will not tolerate a restoration of the old royal family.  No other noble family there has the political capital or sufficient men under arms to make a bid for the throne either.  It looks like war, your Majesty.”  Lord Derby met the King’s gaze and they stared at one another for a couple of seconds.  Elizabeth, who was aware of Europe only peripherally — her research was primarily in demonology — frowned as she tried to understand the undercurrents of meaning.

“The Lords Martial are convinced of it,” said the King.  “At their behest, and with the support of the Lords Theological, I have been persuaded to grant a title: an elevation, if you will.  Catherine Niemow will be made Countess on Friday.”

Lord Derby placed both his hands back on the altar.  “I believe that is a mistake, your Majesty,” he said firmly.  Elizabeth controlled herself, though she’d wanted to gasp at Lord Derby’s audacity.  She suddenly realised that the King wasn’t speaking and when she looked at him, he was staring directly at her.  It still took her another moment to realise that Lord Derby’s hands were still on the altar.

“He speaks the truth, your Majesty,” she said.  Mentally she chided herself: the spell on the altar required that the truth be acknowledged when it was spoken or the speaker would find themselves unable to remove their hands.  Lord Derby pulled his hands away and hunted for his handkerchief again.

“I know he does,” said the King.  He rubbed his forehead as though feeling the onset of a headache.  “I agree with you, Ernest, I honestly do.  But essentially the Privy Council has given me instructions and I have to follow them.”

Lord Derby shrugged.  “I know,” he said.  “But you do expect the truth from me so there’s little else I can say.”

Elizabeth noted the gentle shift away from formality and wondered just how well the men knew each other, and if they’d forgotten she was there.

“I want you to minimise the problems this will cause,” said the King.  “That’s why you’re here today.  This will cause problems, and they will spread, and I want you to contain them as much as you are able.  And if you can bring me evidence, something to put before the Privy Council to show that they are wrong, do so with all haste.”

“Can you take a Countesship away after it’s been granted?” asked Elizabeth.  Both men looked over at her and she started.  “I’m sorry!  I was thinking out loud; I’m used to working alone, your Majesty and I didn’t think!  I’m so sorry!  Sorry!”

The King grinned.  “Talking to yourself is a habit all the Lords Thaumaturgical seem to develop,” he said. “Consider it a hazard of your chosen profession.  The answer to your question, though it will not be helpful, is yes.”

Clothesline Martyr

 Sunday, 3:32pm.  A single shot rang out, the noise echoing off the surrounding buildings and drawing the inhabitants of the tower blocks cautiously to their windows.  Net curtains twitched as curious eyes peered past them, wondering what had caused the noise; if it was really a gunshot or just a car backfiring; if the kids were messing around again or if something more serious were afoot.  When nothing seemed to move and no more noise sounded the curtains were pulled further back and windows were opened and heads poked out.  People looked this way and that, hunting for the source of the noise and not finding it.

On top of Clarence Abbabas Building (Block A), nine stories above the ground, amidst the washing lines strung up by the residents the martyr slumped over a peg-basket and bled out. The bloodstain soaked into the tar-paper roof and would see out six winters before finally fading so much that even its memory passed from the public mind.

Sunday, 9:39pm.  “This is ridiculous,” said the Minister as an assistant to an assistant adjusted his tie.  “Why are we making all this fuss over one person?”

Both assistants carefully realised they shouldn’t have heard that and immediately went, for all intents and purposes, deaf.  The Ministerial Aide, a young woman with hair so heavy sprayed and pinned in place that a gale wouldn’t have shifted it and make-up so heavily put on she looked like holding her head up was an effort, seemed unconcerned.

“Because it is one person,” she said, emphasising the last two words with care.  “And one person is as important to the government as one city.  Or one nuclear warhead.”

“I think I know Party Doggerel,” said the Minister testily.  He longed to rip the tie off and return to Chartiers, his favourite restaurant.  He’d been dragged from there, almost literally, by his bodyguard to attend to the news and make a statement about this idiot who’d managed to get himself shot on a housing estate somewhere in the city.

“Party Dogma,” said the Aide automatically.  The Minister’s malapropisms were often rather more accurate than she was comfortable with.  “And yes, you are basically reiterating what the news tells people every day, but the difference is that it is you doing it.  In response to a tragedy.”

“A tragedy?”  The Minister swatted at the annoying hands at his neck, deciding at last that he could sort his own tie out.  A few seconds was all it took to smooth it into place and then he buttoned the lowest button of his suit jacket.  “He was poor, wasn’t he?”

“Many people are,” said the Aide, who wasn’t.  “And since there are lots of them, and they believe that their votes count for something, they need to be humoured.  By you, Minister.”

“By me, Minister,” mimicked the Minister.  His riff on the Aide’s voice was near perfect and she looked startled.  That lasted only for a few seconds before she composed herself again and opened her mouth.  “It was a poor idiot who ran away from the police,” said the Minister before she could complain.  She suspected he’d waited for her to be ready to speak just so he could cut her off.  “That’s not news.  That doesn’t need an apology.  That just needs a clean-up crew and a hole to bury him in.  Or burn him in.  We do burn pits, don’t we?”

The Aide considered what she could say here.  There were burn pits, most used for mass cremations and keeping people warm who couldn’t afford to heat their houses.  The mass cremations helped cover up the mass starvation, but it wasn’t perfect and although warm people complained less, they were still hungry and the cremation was a measure to prevent cannibalism.  She decided that that was the wrong approach to take with the Minister though as she wanted him smooth, eloquent, and polished.

“He was running from police,” she said, speaking quickly to avoid the Minister cutting her off again.  “After shoplifting a loaf of bread, for his starving two-year old daughter.”

“Good,” said the Minister, unwilling to let anyone else talk for too long in case people started forgetting he was there.

“Morality aside, Minister,” said the Aide with just a hint of a sigh, “this captures the popular imagination.  Think, Robin Hood.”

“Thief, con-man, criminal,” said the Minister promptly.  “I think I covered this with that therapist in June, didn’t I?”

“The people,” said the Aide, pressing on, “want to believe that a man who commits crime for the benefit of others — an altruist! — is somehow better and more worthy than them.  They want to celebrate him.  He’s becoming a martyr very rapidly, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.  He will be the headlines tomorrow, and we need to control the situation.  And that, Minister, means that you have to endorse his martyrdom.  Make him a martyr for the state and not the people.  Take their victory away from them—“

“And dance on it!”

“And appropriate it, I was going to say.”  The Aide looked suddenly old and tired.  “It’s a disgraceful thing to do, and I’m slightly appalled that I came up with it, but it’s Sunday night and I was planning on having a long bath and hot chocolate so I’m putting it down as PMT.  Which I can do because I’m a woman, Minister.  You can’t.”

“Bah, humbug,” said the Minister who’d tried claiming he had PMT twice already and ignored the complaints made to the House Committees.

“But yes, you have to go out there, and own this martyrdom.  It will make the population stronger.  The surviving population, I should say.  It’s good for the country.”

“And dancing on their victory will be fun,” said the Minister.  “You know, I’m quite looking forward to this now!”

Camp Surrender

 The camp had low walls topped with steel net, which is turn was surmounted with coils of barbed wire.  It looked like it was intended to keep people from getting out; in fact it was to prevent people from getting in.  People in this warzone, at least, seemed to feel that a willingness to surrender was tantamount to a death wish.

The walls were made from local stone, mostly culled from fallen houses and barns.  The warzone had been here for six months before moving on and had flattened a lot of the structures.  Thankfully no-one had been salting the earth at that point so the ground was still fairly healthy and, despite the occasional bombing raid, there were fields of crops in and around the camp.

With little surprises hidden inside them, just in case the combatants decided that they could sneak up on the surrender camp.

Juan was sat in an office high up in the camp.  They’d built the camp deliberately on several levels with good lines of sight throughout, and there were defensive snipers posted at eight points around the perimeter.  Cameras made sure that there were no dead spots, and they fed their visual and auditory data to four different security points.  Nothing moved in the camp in a remotely suspicious manner without being investigated quickly.  The cost was ridiculous: Juan had seen the staffing bill and had been astonished by it, but it was effective.  People came and surrendered and were airlifted out of the zone to somewhere safer, and it worked every time.

An icon flashed blue on his screen and he inspected it and then clicked on it to acknowledge it.  A window opened up: someone wanted to chat.

“We have a new surrender,” read the message.  “He’s from the North American warzone.”

Juan’s fingers flickered lightning fast across the keyboard.  He’d learned to type in coding school for competitive coding tasks: knowing your data structures was essential, but being able to write the code faster than anyone else gave you more time to test it and get it bang on.  “We have no camp in the North American warzone,” he typed back.  “They’re a mole.”

“They’re here in Lviv,” replied the message.  Juan clicked on another icon for typing speed analysis and comparison.  You could never be too careful.

“Lviv?” he replied.  That was the centre of operations, how would a North American get there to surrender?

“Indeed,” replied the message.  The computer beeped: textual analysis complete.  Colonel Anna is typing with 88.7% certainty.

“Colonel Anna,” he typed, addressing her formally.  “How could a North American travel to Lviv to surrender?”

There was a slight delay and he was certain that she was running an analysis of his typing now.  “They are a general,” came the reply.  He guessed he’d been validated.  “Three star, so no mean feat, but they travelled as an observer of the Institute.”

The Institute for Surrender, the overarching body that Juan worked for and fervently believed in.  There was no other belief that would see the world through to the end of this nearly decade-long war, surely.

“Like the old days,” he said, not having a clue what they old days had been like.  “When they had the Iron Curtains.”

“Iron Curtain.”  You couldn’t send humour easily over text when emoticons and emojis were prohibited but he was sure that she was laughing at him.  She might remember the old days, or at least have seen footage of them.

“Sure,” he typed.  “Just testing.”

“Of course you were.  We’re accepting his surrender, of course.”

“Right.”  Juan pondered that while watching the flickering text Typing… at the top of the messaging app.  “And Central Ops have determined that your camp is strategically where he should be.”

“Oh hell no!”  It wasn’t like he hadn’t guessed before she hit Send but that didn’t mean he liked the idea.  A high-profile surrender like that would be hunted for by the North American sides and they, despite not being very successful at winning a war, still had excellent intelligence gathering.  He considered it again while she typed, wondering if he was overreacting.  He’d decided he wasn’t before she replied.

“It’s not actually a choice,” she replied, “as Central Ops have some pretty specific plans in mind that won’t work unless he’s at your camp.  They think they have an opportunity here to push Operation Rosa forward.”

Juan rubbed his jaw, thinking about that.  Operation Rosa had been stalled for nearly three years and could do with some attention and a boost.  But he’d prefer not to have to get it by importing a high profile surrender.

“Surely there’s ano—“

He was cut off by Colonel Anna.  “No.  Save it Juan, it’s been decided.”

“How’s he getting here then?”  There was no way he could fly on a commercial flight now he’d surrendered; the North Americans had no compunctions about blowing aeroplanes up or shooting them down whether they were in the warzone or not.  “Military jet?”  Even that wasn’t safe, but if there was a chance of not having to have the general, he was willing to take it.

“Diplomatic crate.”

Juan groaned out loud and then looked around his office.  It was empty, naturally, but he still got up and checked outside the door to make sure no-one had heard him.  Then he locked the door, just to be sure, and went back to his desk.

“You still there?” read the message from Colonel Anna.

“Yes,” he typed, wishing that he could find a way to refuse the surrender.  “Jesus, a live diplomatic crate.  Again?”

“You got a better idea?”

He really didn’t.

The Iron Womb

 A cold front had pushed down from the Arctic circle and covered Britain two days ago and was showing no signs of moving.  What would have been a dismal December rain under normal circumstances was now a feathery-light ballet of snowflakes, whirling in the streetlights and covering the pavements with a crisp white coating that would soon freeze and turn to ice.  Two men were stood outside in it; one was smoking and the other was shivering.  Small talk passed between them in staccato snippets until the cigarette was finished and they walked back inside together.

 They had been stood outside a warehouse under an industrial floodlight.  A hundred metres away a chain-link fence prevented casual entry and fifty metres closer there was a sentry-box with a night-watchman inside.  The night-watchman was one of the new class-80 Deterrents, shaped like a mechanical spider and about the size of a Bentley.  It hummed softly to itself as it took in input from cameras located across the compound as well as temperature and motion sensors.  Everything was quiet; nothing was stirring, not even a mouse.  Which was the only reason the Deterrent wasn’t patrolling.

Wilson closed the security door behind him, hearing the click of its lock engaging.  A moment later and there was a second click as the locks in the steel doorframe engaged as well.  He shivered, again, but not from the bitter arctic cold this time; rather he felt these rooms were death-traps.  They were as secure as they could be, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that if a fire broke out he’d be cooked alive before he could get the damn doors to open.  He woke up sometimes from dreams that the power had gone out and he’d been suffocating in darkness in this very room, his fingernails clawing pathetically at the door.  Before his feelings could start turning into claustrophobia Wilson started talking.

“They call her the Iron Womb,” he said.  He liked starting with the most interesting piece of information he had, regardless of how confused that left his audience.

“Who and who?” asked Stefan.  The room was a secure meeting room and had a narrow table with four chair clustered at one end of it.  At the other end, where the two men were stood, was a whiteboard and a flipchart.  Neither had any pens, and the whiteboard was smeared with colour from ineffectual erasure.

“Clara,” said Wilson.  “You met her this morning.”

“You mean… Lady Abel?” Stefan frowned.  “She seemed, well, elderly, to be blunt.  I’m not ageist, you understand, but I would be surprised if she was still capab— if she was still in her, uh, childbearing years.”

“Lady Abel, codename Clara,” said Wilson.  “That’s her.  She’s the official mother of all eight of the night-watchmen.”

Stefan’s frown only deepened as he tried to guess what Wilson was leading up to.  “She didn’t give birth to a Deterrent,” he said.  “Not unless she’s like a Tardis.”

“A what?”

Stefan scrutinised Wilson’s face to see if he was being serious or not.  He was sure that Wilson was old enough to have seen some of the earliest Doctor Whos, but then Wilson seemed to have odd holes in his memories of pop culture.  Almost like he’d had to learn it from a book, which was weird in itself.  “Bigger on the inside than the outside,” he said at last, deciding he didn’t want to get sidetracked.

“Not that I’m aware of,” said Wilson.  His lack of humour seemed almost mechanical at times.  “She did produce all eight of the brains though.”

Stefan stopped thinking and just stared.  “That can’t be right,” he said.  “The Deterrents are entirely synthetic.  They don’t have brains, they have computer cores.  Very expensive computer cores.  That the dev teams program at an exorbitant cost.  That keeps going up, might I remind you?”

“You don’t need to,” said Wilson. “But let me ask you: does it make sense to you that it keeps costing more to write programmes for the same system?  Shouldn’t it get cheaper and faster over time as libraries are built up and knowledge is shared?”

“Turnover on the teams—“ started Stefan and stopped.  Wilson’s smile was only just short of gloating.  “They don’t turn over that much,” he said, reaching the conclusion himself.  “So there should be economies of scale and reuse.”

“Right,” said Wilson.  “There should.  But there aren’t, because there is wetware in there.  Human-ish brains.  Birthed by the Iron Womb.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Wilson smirked. “Because I’m handing the project over to you.”

“You don’t work on it!”

“True.  Because I’m the primary stakeholder.  You wanted a promotion, Stefan, and this is it.  You’re getting to run the Deterrent teams and you’ll be reporting directly in to me.”

Stefan walked over to a chair and pulled it out from the table and sat down.  “This is a lot to take in,” he said.  “Those teams are trouble.  This seems like a anti-promotion.”

“They’re less trouble than you’ve been led to believe,” said Wilson.  He produced a whiteboard marker from a pocket and started writing on the whiteboard.  “We mislead lower levels of the organisation about certain budgets and teams in order to make specific projects undesirable.  The Q3 figures that you’ll remember….”  As he worked through calculations and timelines and the scale of the deception became clear to Stefan he found himself leaning forward on the table, avidly asking for more information.  The briefing took nearly two hours, at the end of which Stefan was sure that he was in for a work of trouble if anything went wrong, but that there were a lot of safeguards in place to make sure that didn’t happen.

“One last thing,” said Wilson.  “The Iron Womb will be birthing a new brain in January.  Your priority needs to be having a home ready for it.”

“A new Deterrent?”

“Not precisely new,” said Wilson.  “We’ve been working on it since March.  But you need to deliver it ready-to-go before the Iron Womb delivers her side of the deal.”

Kin

 The newspapers filled their front pages with the story: the charismatic, smooth-faced boy-band singer was going into the military and would be serving 24 months somewhere near, but not on, the front-lines.  There wasn't much war going on at the moment anyway but still his fans were despairing over the possibility that there might be an escalation and he might come somewhere near danger.  They gave interviews, sobbed on live TV, blogged incessantly and produced YouTube videos (though given the number of adverts that YouTube shoehorned into each 30 seconds of video the casual viewer would be hard put to know what they'd just watched, or why they'd just watched it).

"This is amazing," said Keith McMahon.  He leaned back in the old, cushioned chair and it tilted, then tipped him out.  He sprawled on the floor like a spavined donkey for a moment, then heaved himself laboriously to his feet.  By the time he was there he was red-faced and gasping for breath.

"Are you ok, Keith?" asked Larry, his assistant.  Larry was barely twenty and looked like he'd collapse under the weight of his clothes if they got wet.  "You shouldn't get out of breath just getting up off the floor, you know."

"COVID," muttered Keith.  "Had it last year, remember?"

"Yeah," said Larry.  "You gave it to all the rest of us.  Remember?"

Keith waved a hairy-knuckled hand as though it didn't matter.  "Yeah," he said.  "Sharing is caring, right?  You seen this though?"  He picked the newspaper up from behind the fallen chair and righted the chair at the same time.  His breath seemed to come a little harder still.

"What, the paper?  Never read it boss.  I've got the internet tubes, ain't I?"

"Issit?" said Keith.  "Poxy computers, they make the screens too hard to read.  This, right, this is real news."  He shook the paper and a couple of the centre pages got free and fluttered to the floor again.

"Right boss," said Larry.  "What's it say then?"

"About Kin," said Keith.  Kin was the lead singer of the boy band.  Most of his fans -- and his 20,000 strong fan club -- believed he was South Korean, but Kin was actually short for Anakin and a bit of an in-joke amongst Keith and his friends.

"What about him?  I thought we were turning him off?"

Keith roared with laughter, which cut off and abruptly turned into a violent coughing fit.  A spray of droplets shot from his mouth and Larry beat a hasty retreat across the studio, putting a mixing desk between himself and Keith.  When he'd got the coughing under control, and stood upright again, Keith put a hand on his stomach -- rather larger than he was really happy about -- and held the paper up. "Yeah," he said.  "We're turning him off, but the management put out a story that he's joining the army for a couple of years."

Larry picked up an iPad and started tapping on the screen, searching for the news.

"They don't know he's an AI?" he said.  "I thought they were all told three years ago after the accident?"

"Management wanted to see how well the AI performed first," said Keith.  "They said they'd put the generated version of him up, with the chatbot behind it for interviews, and see how it went over.  They never saw a need to tell anyone that Kin wasn't real any more."

"So what happened to the real guy?"

"I think they paid for him to go on holiday to Malaysia and he never came back," said Keith.  "Didn't ask.  Weren't none of my business, like."

Slice of life

 “This isn’t working,” said Ernest.  He was sitting on the edge of the sofa with an old blanket over his knees staring avidly at his phone.  Outside winter had brought the darkness in already even though it wasn’t yet five o’clock and so the room was mostly illuminated by the light reflected off Ernest’s face.

“What’s not?” asked Barry, his flatmate.  Barry had just arrived home from work and was taking his coat off in the hallway, hanging on a peg, and then taking his shoes off to leave on the doormat.  Barry liked things neat and tidy at all times.

“This relationship,” said Ernest.  He sighed heavily and put the phone down.  “Turn the lights on, will you?  I can’t see anything in here.”

Barry came in to the living room and turned the lights on.  A single 100W bulb without a shade illuminated the room starkly.  The carpet was beige and stained; the coffee table was orange and sticky with something that wouldn’t scrub off; the couch looked like it had been used as a dog-bed for years.  The darkness had been better.

“With Jamela?” he asked.  “Or did you change her already?”

“Hey hey!” Ernest stood up, the blanket falling to the floor and revealing he wasn’t wearing trousers.  His pale, unmuscled legs looked flabby and dead in the light, and his underpants were wrinkled and worn.  “I’m not that bad!”

“You dated Shirley for three days before deciding she wasn’t good enough for you,” said Barry.  He was of the opinion, privately held, that everyone who’d dated Ernest that he knew about was too good for him.  He was saving money to move out and live by himself and nearly there, and there was nothing about Ernest that was making him regret this choice.  Ernest, as though to reinforce this, belched.

“She was a minger,” said Ernest, which was a reflexive reaction to anything that he didn’t like.  He paused, thinking about it.  “Well, she wasn’t that bad,” he conceded to himself.  “I sort of liked her, but she kept wanting to split the bill.”

“And you wanted her to pay all of it,” said Barry.  He left the living room and went into the kitchen.  The fridge was mostly full, so Ernest couldn’t have been up for too long so far today.  The left-over pasta from last night was there, in its pan, and Barry stirred it thoughtfully.  It would do.

“Well, I’m not working, am I?”  That was a familiar whine.  Barry took the pan of pasta out and poured a little milk into it.  Closing up the fridge he set the pan on the stove and turned the heat on.

“You stopped working last year,” said Barry.  “You said you’d had enough and you needed to find what you loved doing.”

“Yeah!”

“Which seems to be sitting around the flat all day mooching off your latest date from that app.”

“Yea— no!”

“And complaining that no-one wants to pay you to do that.”

“Whose side are you on anyway, mate?”  Ernest’s head appeared around the doorframe.  He sneered at the pan of pasta.  “I was going to have that.”

“Lucky I got here before you then,” said Barry.  He stirred the pan, mixing the milk in as the cheese sauce started to melt.  “It’s my pasta, you should eat your own food.”

“Everything in that fridge is yours.”

“True.  Doesn’t stop you though, does it?  Anyway, what’s wrong with Jamela then?  She seen through you already?”

“I don’t know what you bloody mean,” said Ernest morosely.  “Can we share the pasta, mate?”

“No,” said Barry.  “I’ve got a squash game at eight and I’m not messing around trying to keep you happy tonight.  Make your own food, or buy it, I don’t care.”

“Might get a pizza then,” said Ernest.  He disappeared, but a moment later his voice floated back through the doorway.  “You want pizza too, mate?”

“I’ve got pasta,” said Barry patiently.

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

Barry stirred the pan again, which was starting to bubble now, and decided to make one last try on Jamela’s behalf.  “What’s wrong with Jamela then?”

“She’s not bloody here, is she?”

“So?”

“So I only dated her because I want someone to warm the bed,” said Ernest.  “Yeah, is that Malt Street pizza please?  I want to order a large pepperoni.”

“Warm the bed?” said Barry, half under his breath.  “What the hell?”

After a rancorous exchange with the pizza shop Ernest hung the phone up.  “Yeah, she’s fine and that, but really I was just cold and needed someone in the bed with me, but she’s acting like she’s entitled to see me now when she feels like it.”

Barry tipped the pasta out on to a plate.  “And that’s bad?”

“Yeah mate.  She’s not keeping the bed warm and she expects me to go out and see her.  In places.”

“You could just get a hot water bottle,” said Barry sighing to himself.  “That’ll keep the bed warm.”

“You got a tenner for the pizza, mate?”

“No,” said Barry with feeling.  “No I bloody haven’t.”

Strike!

 The Minister stepped out off the front steps of the white-stone-clad administrative building and dodged a couple of hurled eggs expertly.  A black-clad assistant held the door to an expensive, sleek grey car open and the Minister slipped inside with practiced ease.  As the door closed another egg shattered against the window and the assistant took out a cloth and wiped it away, taking care to erase all the smears as well.

"What was that about?" asked the woman who was already in the car.  She was dressed smartly but in an old-fashioned way, as though she was depending on her clothes for warmth even indoors, and smelled of cats and mould.  The Minister smiled and chose to discreetly breathe through his mouth.

"Protestors," he said.  "We allow a few through at any given time so long as they're mostly harmless.  If they're carrying actual weapons they're usually stopped."

"Usually?"  The woman arched an eyebrow and a faint frostfall of powder fell from her face.

"If the weapon is clearly archaic or defunct we let them through for fun," said the Minister.  "The papers love it and it makes the protestors feel like they're outsmarting us."

"I see," said the woman.  The car moved smoothly off, pulling into the traffic and quickly becoming just another element of the flow. "Do we want to encourage them?"

"Yes," said the Minister.  "If they have these outlets then they don't start looking for others.  They won't start bombing places, or trying to get hold of guns and being... well, American about things."

"Your prejudices are showing," said the woman.  She smiled and there was another frostfall of white powder.  "Where are we going today?"

"First stop is the Trade Union," said the Minister.  "They have a building -- grotty thing, brutalist architecture as you might imagine, sat right next to a much more elegant hotel.  We have a couple of agents in the hotel, naturally, as despite their socialist rhetoric they like to put their visitors and officials up in it.  And it's not cheap either."

"You?  Concerned about cheap?"

"Well, only inasmuch as I don't like it when people who claim I have too much money start spending it like water and pretending there's a difference."

The woman smiled again. "You're starting to sound like you might have a conscience budding there," she said.  "Do keep an eye on it, won't you?"

The Minister stifled a laugh.

"So you're going to negotiate with them?"

"No," he said.  "We're going to pretend to negotiate with them and encourage them to strike harder.  And as soon as they do, we'll release the details of the package they've turned down and make them look like petty gougers and con-men."

"Will that end the strikes?"

"I doubt it.  But it will damage their grass-roots support, and this is a long-term strategy to get rid of the unions for good."

The woman looked out of the window.  "Over winter?  People are freezing."

"Survival of the fittest, my dear.  After winter only those people who can tolerate hardship adequately will be left.  The country is improving its breeding stock."

Caludium

 He looked at the great hall, looking at it through the eyes of a child.

The child in question was long since dead.  They had been taken from a political dissident and put into school to re-educate them.  After four months it had become apparent that the child was either too stubborn or too stupid to learn what they were being taught so the Overseer had had them brought to the offices of the Surgeon and they had removed the child's eyes.  They apparently had a special spoon for the job -- Caludium didn't doubt it, as he'd seen the Surgeon's operating theatre a couple of times and always walked out hoping he'd never, ever need to go there for anything serious -- and it hadn't taken very long at all.  The Overseer pronounced himself happy and the child had died of 'complications' a couple of days later.  Caludium, who was still debating with himself whether or not he should shut the school down and have the administrators shot, had ordered that the child be buried in the Martyr's grave.  No name could be found, according to the Overseer.  Caludium believed that the Overseer was a congenital liar and a sadist to boot but short of having him tortured could see no way of extracting the name from him.  And if he tortured the man just to find a name out, wasn't he stooping to his level?  The eyes of the child, set into a strange, silvery frame made from rare-earth metals and ingraved with sigils from the Second Kingdom, were presented to him a day later.

Through the eyes of a child the hall looked... curious. The walls were all closer in that Caludium knew they were.  When the hall was empty he'd put the Eyes on and walked around, his hands outstretched.  The Eyes definitely lied about where the walls where.  But where there were empty spaces in the hall, the Eyes found things to look at: here there was a swirl of colour that looked warm and inviting, and there there was an old man sitting crouched on the floor, hunched over on himself, vomiting.  Next to the group of honorable Elders, three women with no good word to say about anyone, a sprite of some kind cavorted, pulling faces and running its hand lasciviously over its body and Caludium felt that it was an appropriate expression of the general attitude of the honorable Elders.  All around the hall there were more of the same: a general appearance that all was not well at all with the Kingdom.

And the Eyes... didn't lie about these strange things.  Caludium had pushed him hands into a vortex of colour and felt the warmth, the slick ooziness; when he'd pulled his hands out they had dripped.  He had stepped in the vomit of the hunched over man and heard the squelch as he walked around the hall.  He had refused to touch the capering sprite, but he had petted, for a moment, a two-headed bird with eyes like flame, and felt hot feathers tickle his fingers.

He took the eyes off and sat down on the only chair in the room: the throne of the Seventh Kingdom.  Almost immediately a hush fell over the room and he realised that he'd inadvertently moved the proceedings on.  Now it was time for the requests to begin, and he would have to choose which ones to grant and which to ignore.

"Sire," said a gelatinous voice off to his side, and he struggled not to cringe as he turned his head to look at the Overseer.

Christmas on a budget

 My editor had announced that we had a budget for Christmas as she flounced into the office wearing a green dress with ruffles that -- I hope -- was supposed to make her look like a Christmas tree.  The brown leggings certainly contributed to the effect by making her seem like she had a knobbly, bulbous trunk, but overall it all seemed a bit try-hard and while I found it more to be pitied than laughed-at, there were certainly smirks around the office after she left.

"You mean for the Christmas party?" I said.  Being the food-and-drink correspondent I was probably the only person who was actively hating the Christmas party.  Not only was I obliged to attend, but I would be working as the paper required me to review the party and would publish the article.  I'd tried, one year, reviewing it accurately and had been bullied into coming into the office on Boxing Day to rewrite it until I "got it right" so I was resigned to my fate.

"No, for the whole of Christmas," she chirruped like a budgie that's got into its owner's meth supply.

"That dress better not be part of it!" came a sharp-toned comment from somewhere deep in the office.  I stared at my desk and pretended that I'd not seen who said it while my editor glared menacingly around the room.

"We can increase the budget if we let someone go," she said.  "Though that would be a shame, just before Christmas.  And this dress, for those of you taking such an interest, is for the charity auction this afternoon."

"We'll be sorry to see you go," I said sincerely.  She was still hunting for her earlier critic and missed my implication.

"In fact," she said, her scowl relaxing as she gave up on hunting insultors, "we are going to have a theme week" -- everyone groaned in unison -- "of Christmas on a Budget this year.  We're going to run a series of articles on regifting, handmaking gifts from things you might otherwise throw out, cutting down on gift lists without offending people, and Christmas dinner on a budget!"  She ended triumphantly and smiled at me.  I frowned back.

"You want me to write recipes?" I asked.  I'd tried once; the Blonde had agreed to take notes and by the time we'd finished trying to make scones we had three empty bottles of London-sourced gin and a recipe that began (and ended) "Take a bottle of gin."  We might have eaten a block of butter, too.

"No," she said.  "But there are several greasy-spoons that are offering a budget Christmas lunch that you should review.  I've emailed you the details."

I hesitated.  This was much more my remit than writing recipes, but I've pretty much reviewed exactly one not-high-end restaurant in my life, and it didn't go well.  Comparing it with L'Escargot and The Fat Duck was, in hind-sight, not a good choice, but even so my observation that the food I'd been served was normally what I'd expect the protein I usually received to have been fed on was both accurate and unflattering.

"Theme week," sang my editor, and flounced into her office.

I opened my email, ignoring the swell of conversation about how flammable my editor's dress looked, and viewed the list she'd sent me with interest.  Even though it seemed faintly wrong, the idea of turning a full English Breakfast into a substitute Christmas lunch had a certain je ne sais quoi about it and the first 'menu' that suggested that bubble-and-squeak was a perfect replacement for brussels sprouts fried in bacon fat wasn't that outlandish.  I wrote the address down and noted that it closed before I'd normally start getting dressed for dinner.  Maybe it woudl have to be lunch after all.

There was no way I could think of that I'd get the Blonde to accompany me on this though.