Diplomatic Consanguinity

 “Fascism First,” murmured Manguy.  He turned a page of the dossier he’d been given when he walked into Meeting Room C and started reading from the top.  He was bland and uninteresting to look at, an appearance he cultivated carefully.  He had the faintest impression of a moustache that might, if you got closer than his bodyguards would allow, be drawn on with eyeliner.  His hair, too black for it to be a natural colour was slicked back with gel and his skin, a neutral olive shade that fitted his hair-colour just a little too perfectly for them both to be real, was clear and healthy.  He wore glasses, but they were delicate, platinum framed, oval-lensed things that looked like a strong breeze would blow them away and so made you wonder if they were actually necessary.  “What a concept.  That is has come to this….”

“It began with the Sweden problem,” said Demetrion who was sat against a wall. His copy of the dossier was set on the chair next to him and one long, bony leg was crossed over the other.  “Though I thought we resolved that one rather well, personally.”

“We did,” said Margoyle.  She was wearing her usual pearl choker and a tidy, pale rose fitted suit that contrasted pleasantly with the odd shade of grey that her makeup gave to her skin.  She looked a little bit like a statue that had inconveniently come to life before the sculptor was completely finished with it.  “We have that in writing.  In triplicate, in fact.”

“Then how did we get from there to Fascism First?” asked Manguy.  The other two carefully didn’t answer, spotting a trap when it was set in front of them.  “I suppose the exact route isn’t important—“

“It might be,” said Margoyle quickly.  “I have two interns on the problem.”

“We have interns again?” Demetrion sounded interested.  

“JDR has been… persuaded—“ there was a faint sigh from everyone in the room “— that he could play croquet with other… things,” said Margoyle.

“The exact route isn’t important,” said Manguy.  There was no hint of impatience in his tone, nor any note of censure, but nonetheless there was a subtle change in the atmosphere of the room.  “What is important is whether we are happy with the destination.   Surely we can all agree on that?”

This was a firm where agreement was so famously hard to come by that voting was done in absolutely secrecy with no way of determining who had cast what vote or even when they cast it, in order to actually achieve the occasional consensus.

“The GOO,” said Margoyle cautiously, using the acronym they had decided upon for the leader of Fascism First, “appears to have located a source of help.  Page seven,” she added as Manguy looked up from the dossier.  “Though it remains unclear who could be helping him.”

“Us,” said Manguy, turning the pages backwards to find page seven.  “We are the only agency with sufficient connections and knowledge to do this.  But we are not doing it, and we have no been contacted with regard to it.  Which should have been impossible.”

“I can put two interns on it,” said Demetrion.  His attempted joke fell as flat as a deep-ocean dwelling fish and as the silence lingered he started to wish that he’d thought a little harder before speaking.

“Unlikely to help,” said Manguy after the silence had stretched to breaking point.  “What we need to know now is what the agency is that’s helping the GOO.  Without some indication of who is behind this, we’re flying blind.  And JDR will not like that at all.”

“He doesn’t like it,” said a new voice.  Jeronica sat down on a chair next to Margoyle, who delicately edged away, one hand clutching her pearls.  Manguy pretended not to notice, but watched carefully out of the corner of his eye.  “But at the moment he is trying to ensure that he cannot be blamed for it.”

Manguy relaxed.  Jeronica was the person he considered his biggest rival and threat, but if she was reporting on JDR like this then this was probably one of their truce-zones.  He made a mental note to check where she’d been for the fifteen minutes prior to her arrival though.

“Naturally,” she continued, “he will determine that he cannot be blamed.”

She didn’t need to say the rest; as soon as JDR was satisfied there was no solid path that led to him he’d be looking for a scapegoat.

“Scaramantha,” said Margoyle as though coughing.  Absolutely nobody said anything for a few seconds.  Then Manguy carefully closed the dossier without ever finding page seven.

“Jeronica,” he said, and Demetrion noticeably tensed.  Manguy made a mental note of that; clearly Demetrion was more junior than he’d been led to believe.  “I think that you currently have Diplomatic Consanguinity in your remit?”

Jeronica nodded.  Manguy was well aware of that, just as she was acutely aware of all the areas that he was responsible for.  Bringing it up was just a formality, indicating obliquely that there was something here that might be held to fall into this category.

“If Non-local Genocides were to become unaffiliated,” said Demetrion looking at his fingernails and absolutely nowhere else, “then I could consider bringing them under Alpaca Issues and Isolation.”

“In that case,” said Margoyle, her voice distant as though she wasn’t aware she was speaking, “it would seem likely that Fruit Production and Distribution would need a new home as well.  In Orangeries, perhaps?”

Jeronica stood up without saying anything and left.

Manguy set the dossier down on the chair next to him.  That was that then; Scaramantha would be blamed for the emersion of Fascism First, Jeronica would reassign Scaramantha’s major tasks and then left… that left the problem of figuring out how to get a handle on the GOO and then using it to take control.  He sighed softly, knowing that Margoyle would understand and Demetrion would puzzle over it, and followed Jeronica out of Meeting Room C.

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.

Guncare

 The offices of Data Analytic Marketetic Normalisations were always shadowy and quiet.  The founder and CEO, Jeremy Diseased-Rat, preferred it that way though the rumours about it being because of a near-permanent hangover were quashed whenever they started up.  Reception was currently manned by a short, dark-haired man who was so thin that his suit would have hung better on a coat-hanger.  He was sat behind a curved zebrawood desk with two monitors and six phones in front of him and two photocopiers, an actual fax machine and some sinister black boxes with tiny blinking white lights behind him, and as Jeronica walked into the reception area to greet her clients he was holding forth, to their appalled fascination, on the subject of his keto diet.

“The key is fasting and then purging,” he said, making a gesture with one hand that caused Madame Celeste to raise an eyebrow so severely her eye twitched below it.

“Thank you, Ronald,” said Jeronica, cutting him short.  “I believe that Margoyle and Stephanotte are waiting for correspondance on the futures of Soft Furnishings in Antique Japan.  Perhaps you could check your inbox and see if they’ve arrived yet?”

“Oh no, they defini—“ started Ronald, only to be cut off by the discrete ping of an email arriving.  “Ah, well—“

“Excellent,” said Jeronica.  She turned to her clients: Madame Celeste, Dr Enogi and Terrence Pennifrock.  “Have you been offered refreshment?”  There was no overt censure in her voice but Ronald’s shoulders stiffened instantly anyway.

“Yes, thank-you,” said Dr. Enogi, a tall, dark-skinned man who was standing up.  “Though I doubt I, personally, will feel like eating again any time soon.”

Madame Celeste rose next, holding a glass of iced water.  “Your water is excellent,” she said as though commenting on the weather.  “I assume you import?”

Jeronica inclined her head slightly.  “We have a concession,” she said.  “We did a little work with the Fiji water brand some years back and in turn they provide us with a few bottles when they can spare them.  Mr Pennifrock, would you like anything else?”

Terrence was still sitting down and pressing a stubby, reddened finger down onto crumbs on a small plate with an intricate design painted around the edge.  When he had gathered all of them, he put the finger in his mouth and sucked it clean.

“I’m good,” he said in a broad drawl.  “Your pastries are amazing, darlin’, but if I eat too many I’ll put on more weight and the wifey won’t be happy.”

“My name is Jeronica, Mr Pennifrock,” said Jeronica with more than a little ice in her tone.  “I would become unhappy were I to be referred to in any other way.”

Whatever Terrence might have replied, his words were silenced by Madame Celeste’s gaze.  He met her eyes with his own and there was a moment of tension and then they both backed down together.

“This way, please,” said Jeronica and escorted them at a stately pace down a dimly-lit corridor.  On either side were wood-panelled walls, broken at intervals by doors and smoked-glass windows.  The floor was heavily carpetted and even Terrence, stamping his feet down as he walked, failed to make much more noise than the wind makes when blowing through long grass.  At the third door Jeronica waved a hand and the doors slid back silently admitting them into Meeting Room Gauze.

When they were all seated around a small beechwood table set with notepads, Mont Blanc pens and a carafe of still water Jeronica leaned forward very slightly, rested her hands flat on the table, and said, “Guncare.”

There was hesitation as Terrence and Dr Enogi looked at each other, and then Madame Celeste nodded.

“Yes,” she said.  “I had heard you were good.  The best, even.  I hadn’t expected that you would know our intentions before we even spoke them.”

“We’ve been anticipating this development for a while,” said Jeronica.  “Our future division considers this to be a strong natural development of current trends and had identified certain groups as the most likely to take the initiative.  We are, of course, extremely pleased that you are choosing to.”

“What do you consider ‘Guncare’?” asked Dr Enogi.  He was sitting perfectly upright and watching Jeronica the way a mongoose watches a cobra.  His hands were also on the table, but his fingers were interlaced and his two signet rings, both tourmalines, were resting against the tabletop.

“Healthcare mediated by guns,” said Jeronica.  “Our estimation is that access to reliable healthcare in your country is currently only available for certain strata of your society.  While this has worked for quite some time, and may continue to work for a while longer, it is inefficient and does not provide enough control over who has access to the healthcare and when.  Naturally, universal health coverage is desirable—“

“Sweden,” said Terrence with a sneer.

“— perhaps.  But to reach that, compromises must be made.  And since gun-ownership is a key principle of your society—“

“The right to arm bears,” said Terrence.

“— indeed,” said Jeronica, who was aware that Terrence’s second company had done exactly that, “we perceive that a move to guncare, where gun ownership and licencing provides fast-track access to healthcare, is not only natural, but desirable amongst a good 38% of the population already.  With a number that large, elevating it to a majority is quite straightforward; we have done similar things in the past for, for example, the Sweden problem.  There is an easy lead in for most people simply by noting that people who own guns are more likely to need emergency access to healthcare, and that by being licenced to own a gun they are already registered with the state, thus ensuring that tax-payers are prioritised for medical provision.”

Madame Celeste had been nodding along in each of Jeronica’s pauses.  Now she smiled, though it was the cold smile of an aunt informing unloved nephews and nieces that her will disinherited them all.

“Licencing is not… precisely… the key point,” she said.

“Please go on,” said Jeronica.

“Well,” said Dr Enogi, glancing at Madame Celeste as though to ask permission to interrupt her.  “Licencing might be a way to sell it initially.  We can downgrade it to membership later.”

“I… see,” said Madame Celeste.  “That might work.  But yes, ultimately we would prefer people to purchase membership in, say, a national society that promoted safe gun ownership and responsible behaviour.”

Jeronica drew a marble-white notepad to her and picked up a pen.  In careful, highly legible script she made a note on the pad and then carefully ignored the other three people reading what she’d written.  “For the sake of argument,” she said, “say something like the National Rifle Association?  Privately owned, so that changes to the membership regulations are not subject to governmental scrutiny?”

“For the sake of argument,” repeated Madame Celeste, a faint smile passing across her face and then being replaced by her familiar stony demeanour.  “We understood that might be difficult.”

“Not at all,” said Jeronica.  “In fact, it might ease a couple of other sticking points.”

Peace Dividend I

Villa St. Antoine was reached by a long, winding drive through trees, after a four-hour high-speed train-ride from Frankfurt Airport.  Jeronica sat in the back of a limousine wearing sunglasses as though worried that someone might somehow peer through the tinted windows and discern her there.  In fact the sunglasses were electronically tuned to the windows and allowed her to see through them as though they were plain glass.  She watched the landscaping go past and observed to herself that the winding route, the soft hills and the tall, ancient, thick-trunked trees were surely laid out like this to prevent any easy assault on the Villa.

Which made a certain kind of sense, as the head of Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations, Jeremy Diseased-Rat, had the kind of paranoia that made it very difficult to deal with him unless you were his favoured kind of prostitute or in a large venue with very many other people around at a sufficiently discrete distance.  Jeronica liked neither of these things, but was keenly aware of the need to socialise and network, and so forced herself to attend most functions that the company arranged.  Such as the Management Off-Site here at Villa St. Antoine.

The car pulled up in front of the doors of the Villa with a soft crunch of white gravel and she waited while a doorman dressed in burgundy and gold-braid sauntered from his post to open the door of her car.  She was pleased to note that though a second limousine came in behind her thirty seconds later the doorman didn’t even acknowledge, attending to her car first.  The door opened soundlessly and she stepped out.  She made sure she was stood firmly on the ground and then tilted her wrist slightly.  The mercury tilt-switch sewn into the sleeve responded, and the heels on her shoes smoothly elevated her by eleven inches.  The doorman barely flinched, though he did lean back very slightly to make eye contact with her.

“Guests are asked to report to the Viridian Drawing Room,” he said.  There was a touch of insolence to his tone, she thought.  “Please enter through the main door and turn left, then left again.  It may interest you to know that the Villa was built over one hundred years ago, and most of the doors are slightly lower than six feet high.”  Perhaps she’d mistaken warmth for insolence.  She was already on her guard against her colleagues and was probably looking for traps where there were none.  She smiled, about to thank him, and then realised that she had no way to verify his directions.  She smiled a little more broadly, and laid a hand on his his shoulder.

“Perhaps you could show me the way,” she said, squeezing a little.  The man had muscles.  “My sense of geography has always been poor.”

The car behind them crunched the gravel very gently as though the driver, getting impatient, had moved it an inch forwards.  The doorman looked slightly puzzled.

“One moment,” said Jeronica.  She crossed to the car behind, allowing her heels to slide down to only three inches high, and rapped imperiously on the driver’s window with a white-gloved hand.  The window slid down a quarter-inch.  “Tell your passenger that we’re meeting in the Drawing Room,” she said.  “I need the doorman.”  She walked off without waiting for an answer, hoping  and expecting that if there was a Viridian Drawing Room there would be others as well.

“You may bring my bags,” she said the doorman as she returned.  His face remained immobile, but she fancied that there was a hint of annoyance as he moved to collect them from where her driver had positioned them on the gravel next to the car.  “And lead on!”

The Villa St. Antoine had been built for use by gentlemen and then seized the by the Nazis during the war and used as a refuge for thugs and layabouts, which combination meant that the entire place was opulent like a harem and decadent like the court of the Sun King.  As she walked inside her heels sank into carpet with pile so deep that with just three inch heels she appeared to be walking smooth on its surface, while the doorman struggled slightly to keep up his pace.  There was a cloakroom to the right that appeared to have a four-person staff of its own, and there was the smell of freshly opened champagne in the air, bright and acidic.  Bowls of strawberries were set out on a counter, and smaller bowls of thick, clotted cream were set adjacent to them.  Silver spoons, hallmarked visibly, waited nearby for use as well.  Jeronica picked up three of each and followed the doorman.  She hated strawberries, but she knew how to act the part.

The Viridian Drawing room was left and left again as promised, and when she arrived she dismissed the doorman to take her bags to her room.  She looked around: Margoyle was already there and sitting in a high-backed chair near an empty fireplace, and Stephanotte was stood surrounded by three accountants that were her de-facto bodyguards.  None of them had strawberries.

“Not hungry?” asked Jeronica casually, allowing her heels to elevate her another two inches.

Manumission

“Manumission,” said Jeremy Diseased-Rat, CEO of Data Analytic Marketetic Normalisations.  The various employees sat in the conference room with him all looked first at one another and then at him.

“Bless you?” suggested Margoyle, a slight smile tweaking her thin, blue lips.

“I think that might be the name of the new Head of Suffocating Relationships,” said Stephanotte, her eyes not quite meeting Margoyles.  “He’s arriving sometime this week with a mandate to look over out ex-Soviet portfolio.”

“Dimitrion has taken over Suffocating Relationships already,” said Margoyle, her eyes staring at the top of Stephanotte’s head as though wishing her gaze could trepan.  “That does leave some room in Textiles and Bad Potteries, though I would have expected anyone taking them to want to take Soft Furnishing and Pillow Politics too.  Which are your remit, are they not?”

“Manumission is the practice of freeing slaves,” said Jeronica.  Sitting down she wasn’t noticeably taller than the men around the table, though when she’d come in her eighteen inch designer stilettos had left her towering over everybody and left small holes in the carpet wherever she walked.  “It sounds like something many of our clients would be disinterested in.”

Jeremy Diseased-Rat, a fresh bruise on his left cheek-bone and a small cut weeping on his chin, nodded.  “Much of what you all say is true,” he said.  His voice was even and carefully modulated to get people to listen to him, and his voice coach was rumoured to spend hours teaching him to undo what alcohol and nicotine did in the first place.  “We were hiring someone called Manumission, but that has been indefinitely suspended thanks to the reshuffle.  There is an opening for Textiles and Bad Potteries, and…..”  He paused for a moment, steepling fat, coarse fingers in front of his face while he looked over at Stephanotte.  “And,” he concluded, leaving no-one around the table in any doubt that she was in trouble.  “But more importantly, it is the code name for a new project that we will be starting in 2014 that I have high hopes for.  As you are all undoubtedly aware, there is much political tension in the Americas at the moment, with the concepts of universal health-care being a rallying point for various factions.  We have been retained to conduct a study of such health-care initiatives and produce a report on how ineffective they are, and their contribution to overall economic decay.  We will be focusing on the private health-care sector and the efficiencies that a market economy brings, how it improves health-care in the long term, and how competitiveness can result in a patient not being tied into a single primary care-provider, but instead travelling the country and seeing new sights as they are shipped from one expert to another to resolve their issues.  Considering the blind solely as outliers in this scenario of course.”

“Do people actually use public health care?” asked Margoyle.  She made a face. “Can that really be sensible?  Or healthy?  You might have to sit in a waiting room with ill people, for goodness’ sake!”

“Poor people,” said Jeronica.  Her tone of voice suggested that she was speaking from theory rather than experience.  “I think my last cleaner might have seen a government-sponsored doctor about something.  Possibly when her leg fell off.”

“People do,” said Manguy.  He was near the end of the table and had been playing with his pen the whole time Jeremy had been speaking.  “And some of them feel that they have no choice about this either, that they cannot afford private health care or the insurance that would get them access to it.  Part of what we’ll be doing in this study is showing that their estimations of this are actually a false economy.  They would do better, for example, if they abandoned eating fresh vegetables and instead used their health-care insurance to book themselves into hospital twice a year for liposuction and a crash diet.  This, in turn, would then increase the amount of produce available to restaurateurs and stock farmers, which in turn brings down the cost of fast food production and so the consumer benefits all the more by being able to eat more burgers, fried chicken-like protein and faux-fish fillets.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” said Jeronica.  Her eyes fixed on Manguy, who squirmed a little.

“Manguy will be heading this up,” said Jeremy, ignoring the speed at which Jeronica’s head snapped round to look at him.  “He’ll be taking on the Lead Product Owner role initially until we hire someone suitable, and then they will report into him in his capacity as Product Director.  I’m very pleased that he’s been willing to step forward and pick this up, as I’m expecting it to be high profile for this year.”

The other employees, all very much aware of this, glared at Manguy, who smirked back.  He set the pen down, now perfectly at ease and comfortable with his victory.

Railway meeting

Manguy paused as he entered the train carriage.  He’d been in a hurry as he needed to be almost late for the train, but not so late that he actually missed it, in order to be sure that the others all realised that he was very busy and very important.  So he’d had his driver drive around the station sixteen times, irritating both the legitimate traffic, the taxi queue, and the little men whose job it was to run up to cars and help the occupants get out with all of their luggage.  When he’d finally pulled up, his phone affixed to his ear listening to a conference call between Margoyle (in her role as Head of Soft Furnishing and Cushioned Power) and a major manufacturer of industrial chemicals who were seeking new ways to dispose of waste products they’d all pointedly ignored him and left him to manage his own luggage out of the car.

Even that wasn’t going to make him dangerously late, but then he discovered that he was actually in a queue of people all of whom worked for Data Analytic Marketetic Normalisations, all of whom had been thinking the same way that he was.  None of whom were due on the train that he was now going to be late for.  With some careful nudging, a sharp elbow, and in one case a quiet word about the inadvisability of not letting him go first, he’d managed to get through the gates with three minutes to spare, and so he’d not paid much attention to the train as he boarded it.  Now in the carriage though, his jaw dropped, albeit minutely.

The carriage had a panoramic view; the entire two walls of the carriage seemed to be windows.  They reached down as far as the floor and terminated perhaps only an inch before the curve of the ceiling started.  The carpet was moss green, and the chairs were green and brown, looking vaguely organic and tree-like.  The whole effect was like walking into a secret garden in the station, and right on cue he smelled honeysuckle.  He dismissed it as being piped through the air-conditioning, and stored his luggage in the rack by the door, taking the opportunity to marvel at the window-wall again.  He longed to reach out and touch it, find out how solid it really felt.

“Manguy,” said Jeremy Diseased-Rat with a broad smile.  He was sitting at the far end of the carriage, and his chair had swivelled to face the others.  Although the carriage could probably have seated thirty people with the usual density of seating, here there were only twelve chairs, each slightly apart from one another, offering a degree of privacy he expected on first-class aeroplane flights.  “You’re very nearly late.  You know I wouldn’t have had the train held for you.”

“I was overseeing the Stockholm problem,” he said, checking out who else were in seats here.  Jeronica, obviously, and there was Stephanotte next to her.  Daresh was flicking disinterestedly through the train company’s glossy magazine, and the other five people he half-recognised but dismissed as being drones.

“Margoyle is managing that,” said Jeronica.  She was semi-reclined, the seats had footrests it would seem.  “She was in conference with them this afternoon.”

“As was I,” said Manguy, now on his guard.  This felt like a set-up.  “I was delayed leaving my car as I wanted to make sure that the call concluded satisfactorily.”

“Dangerous,” said Jeremy.  “You never know when there’s going to be an expected queue, or an exploded suitcase to hold you up.”

Ah, definitely a set-up then, thought Manguy.  This is why there were so many Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations people at the gate.  “Fortunately I’m here,” he said.  The train started moving without even a slight jerk.  “Are we missing anyone?”

“No,” said Jeremy.  “This is all of us.  And we are on this train as it’s firstly something that we’ve been indirectly sponsoring for the last three years and I wanted us to see what the future of high-speed trains is going to be, and secondly because this is the only way I can sure that no-one is tampering with the atmosphere, the environment, or the food supplies.  None of which I disapprove of, by the way, but I need to be away from those distractions.

Gentlemen and Ladies, we are gathered here today to conduct your annual reviews.  This will be a competitive process and you will need to earn the willingness of your peers to support you, if not actually coerce them.  There are pay-rises available for only four of you, and a single promotion opportunity.  I do hope you’re all feeling at the top of your game!”

Contact Lenses

Jeronica wobbled slightly as she walked along the corridor.  The offices of Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations, nominally a market research firm with a small sideline in filibuster – the mercenary meaning of filibuster, – were very modern and thus the ceilings were ridiculously high.  Even so her hair brushed the ceiling when she was, as now, wearing her thirteen-inch high heels.  They were polished silver and dazzlingly bright under spotlights, a gift from a grateful fashion designer whose timely presence at the death of a pop-star had produced the best-reported funeral of the decade.  Her hair was also piled high on her head, reminiscent of a sixties beehive but with noughties glamour; a hint of sophisticated understatement, inasmuch as a three foot high hairstyle could be understated.  She looked absolutely stunning and completely out of place in the offices.
"Jeronica?"  The voice came from somewhere down by her knees and she paused in her high-speed wobble, caught her balance, and peered down.  There was a soft creak as her leggings stiffened to help keep her upright, and she saw that Colton was kneeling on the floor, his hands patting the carpet around him.
"Colton," she said, her voice flat and carefully neutral.  Colton had started two weeks before her, and the competitive atmosphere that Jeremy Diseased-Rat insisted that the office had meant that she was aware that he would be looking for ways to unseat her and steal her position as Head of Fashion and Soft Power.  Colton was currently Vice-President of Cults and Sects and there were rumours that he was trying to extend his portfolio into Charm Offensives, which was definitely borderline with Jeronica's Soft Power division. "Are you trying to trip me up?"
"No, Jeronica," said Colton.  "I've lost both my contact lenses on the floor somewhere.  I knew it had to be you coming past as all I could see was leg and no-one else is that tall."
Jeronica thought about this, wondering if there was a hidden compliment or veiled threat in there somewhere, and finally decided that it was a semi-pathetic chat-up line.  "Both your contact lenses?" she asked.
"Yes.  JD-R was congratulating me for locating three churches in Ghana that are willing to pronounce Sith as their official religion so that we can leverage it to get both Jedi and Sith declared legal UK religions and patted me on the back.  Enthusiastically."
Jeronica nodded, forgetting that Colton wouldn't be able to see this.  Jeremy had left more than one intern needing hospital treatment, and on one occasion a back-brace, with his enthusiastic back-pats, bum-slaps and bear-hugs.
"Jeronica?"
"Oh, yes, sorry Colton, I nodded.  I forgot you wouldn't be looking up."
"Can you help me find my contact lenses please?"
Jeronica hesitated.  Helping him would mean taking off her shoes and getting down on her knees on the floor with him, which would be (at least symbolically) coming down to his level.  A bad precedent to set.  On the other hand, if she just said no or walked off, Colton would be sure to accidentally mention it in passing next time he was near JD-R, and his views on team-play, though fairly contradictory to his insistence on a competitive atmosphere, were held just as strongly.
As she dithered, her superior height let her see an approaching intern, which solved her dilemma.
"Of course, Colton," she said.  "You, Anneject!"  The unfortunate intern looked up at the sound of her name, and then looked up further, and then further still.  Craning her head back so far her neck hurt, she managed to make eye-contact with Jeronica.  "Help Colton find his contact lenses," she said.  "Have you met him?  He's Vice-President."
Anneject looked terrified, and dropped to her knees next to Colton straight away.  Colton looked dissatisfied, and ran his hand in a desultory fashion over the carpet.
"I'm sorry I can't stop," said Jeronica, speaking very quickly as she saw that Colton was about to say something.  "I have a meeting with JD-R and he hates tardiness.  If this intern doesn't find your contact lenses for you just let me know and I'll have a word with her about her teamwork."
It was enough, she saw Colton's mouth snap shut like he'd just caught a fly and his lips firmed into a mean little line.
"Thank-you, Jeronica," he said.  "I knew I could rely on you."
"Any time," said Jeronica, leaning forward enough to unbalance herself and start off her high-speed wobble again.  "Any time."

Escort

Lady Nina (not her real name) looked at herself in the full-length mirror and tried not to cry.  Her dress was so slinky and fitted it seemed to give her curves she wasn't sure she truly had, and clever use of fabrics and panels made her seem so slim that you wondered if she'd disappear if she turned sideways.  Her shoes, with the cripplingly high heels, forced her legs into such a graceful shape that she'd seen men have heart attacks watching her walk into a room (that had been a client and had worked out rather costly in the end).  Even her handbag and evening gloves of sheer white silk seemed plucked from the kind of movie where the heroine is tragically doomed from the outset, offered redemption and turns away from it, not believing herself good enough to be saved.  She was, to summarise all the description, beautiful.
She whispered "Cyonara," to herself in a voice with a hint of smoke and gravel and left to go downstairs and hail a taxi, choking back her tears all the while.
"Lady Nina," he said, already in the taxi.  She'd known something was wrong when she saw the taxi waiting outside, apparently thinking that this lonely stretch of road with tenement housing for the poor and depressed was a hub of taxi-needing activity.  But the light was on, and it had purred over to her when hailed, and it was only when she'd sat down inside and named the 22-club as her destination that her date for the evening had leaned forwards from his corner of the cab and laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Mr. Diseased-Rat," she said, trying and succeeding not to flinch.  Surely real people weren't supposed to be so clammy?  "You know my address?"
"I know much more than just your address," he said, his voice deep, calm, and now unutterably creepy.  "I know everything about you up until five years ago, when you seem to have stepped out of thin air and into existence.  Even your National Insurance number didn't exist prior to that time, and believe me, that startled our accounts department."
"Why?"  She couldn't have said any more if she'd tried.
"It started as a security exercise," he said, his hand not moving from her shoulder.  "My security team are very conscious that the nature of our consultancy makes me unusually vulnerable to certain kinds of influence, and they work very hard to make sure that that influence doesn't reach me.  So they investigated you to see if there were any little shadows in your background, or, well...,"
"Skeletons in my closet?"
"If you prefer.  I was going to say 'bodies in the back-garden', but if you bring the bones back in later that's fine by me."
She forced a smile, her face managing it automatically when she squeezed the muscles hard enough.  It wasn't the first smile she'd forced, and at least he wasn't hurting her.  Yet.
"Then when they couldn't find anything for you beyond five years ago you became a challenge for them.  They started hunting deeper and farther, tracking down runaway girls and their descriptions.  I believe they've solved fifteen missing persons cases for the police while they were trying to find you, plus two dognappings and a garden-gnome-theft ring.  We're deploying their new search patterns and algorithms at our national conference next month, and I've called the whole package Lady Nina in honour of you."
Another forced smile, a hasty glance at the dashboard checking how fast the taxi was going.  Too fast, she'd need medical care if she tried jumping out now.  Perhaps when they – ah, they'd just run the red light.  Jeremy Diseased-Rat must have already considered this.
"Nothing to say, sweetheart?"
"I'm flattered," she said, hating being called sweetheart.  It reminded her of her father, and the reasons she'd left her past behind.  "You shouldn't have."
"I shouldn't have had to," corrected Jeremy.  "But you left me little choice, and I still don't know who you are.  That's a worry, you know."
"So tonight's date is with an open grave and a shovel?"  She tried hard to keep her voice light, but a note of pain crept in anyway.
"Hah.  Security would prefer that.  I've decided to let them keep looking for you; no-one can hide forever after all."
"Lord Lucan can."
Jeremy laughed, and there was a note of real pleasure in there.  "Surely there are more modern disappearances that you could reference?  But yes, some people can.  But they are disappeared, not sitting in a taxi with me, or being sought after by my security service.  So perhaps they have an advantage that you do not?"
"And when you know me inside and out?  Will the mystery disappear as well, when all I am is a manilla dossier on your desk?"
"Let's find out, shall we?"  Jeremy leaned in closer, his lips brushing her long, swan-like, neck, and she controlled the urge to pull away.  As she forced herself to respond she wondered if Jeremy would find out that five years ago she'd completed her sex-change operation or if he was resolutely looking for the wrong kind of person.  And then she wondered what he'd do if he did find out.

Sweden

"Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations are a forward-thinking, bleeding edge, technologically sophisticated, client-driven, buzzword-blogospheric transnational corporation," said Jeremy Diseased-Rat, CEO and visionary.  The board-members leaned back in their comfortable leather chairs, each squeaking and making little fart-noises in their own individual ways, and closed their eyes, ready to fall asleep while Jeremy talked.  The shareholder representatives, sat on less-comfortable but nonetheless plush chairs, tried to look attentive, as they effectively formed the front row of Jeremy's audience.  Three secretaries who'd won an office competition that they'd all been trying to lose, sat next to the buffet table on little bar-stools, quietly eating to make up for having to sit through Jeremy's presentation.  And in hard, wooden, school-room chairs were a collection of mid-level managers from firms that employed Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations to provide them with marketing advice, consulting strategies, and the occasional high-powered legal counsel to get them out of jurisdictional difficulties.
"Question!" snapped a tall man whose shirt didn't seem to fit him.  His collar and cuffs were too tight, making his face and wrists purple with trapped blood, while his waist was far too slender and let his shirt constantly escape his trousers.  Jeremy Diseased-Rat stared at him in perplexity.  He wasn't used to audience participation.  The man took his silence as an invitation to continue.
"Question, Sir!  Is it true that you intend to present the American Presidency to the National American Society of Hipsters, and if so, do you feel that there is anything unethical about a non-American firm controlling access to the leadership of America?"
"We're not unAmerican," said Jeremy immediately, his deep voice rolling over the room like a Sherman tank.  "We have four hundred Americans working for us, we pay taxes in America both as a corporate obligation and as a voluntary matter, and we make campaign donations to select political causes to further the political caucus."
"But you, Sir, are not American, are you?  And you are the titular head of your company?"
"Who are you calling a tit?"  Jeremy was very sensitive to insults, not least because of his unfortunate, but ancient, surname.  "Look, I'm not American but the company is registered in America and has done business both there and with American firms for the last five years.  It would be scurrilous to suggest that we were in any way antagonistic to America's prospects."
"Yet you're proposing to give the American Presidency to NASH, Sir!"
"So?"  As arguments went this could only be called weak, yet it seemed to stymie his questioner.
"So they're hipsters, man!"
"That's not an argument," said Jeremy, now on safer ground.  He'd been debating champion at both college and the Toastmasters for six years each.  "If anything, I suspect it's ad hominem.  A hipster can be President of the United States of America, there's nothing in the Constitution that forbids it.  And it's a uniquely American outlook on life, nowhere else is there sufficient wealth and education to create a social class that disdains itself for it achievements, derises its parentage for allowing it to exist, and attempts to raise a generation of children unfit for anything except parasitism.  It's the next evolutionary level and if it succeeds in cuckooing the rest of America into raising its worthless progeny then it's proven itself to a worthy heir to America's future.  Why shouldn't a hipster run America?  Why shouldn't someone who thinks education is worthless pay the teachers what they believe they're worth?  Either the hipster is right and the system will fall apart regardless, or the teacher is right and the system can only improve.  It's a win-win situation for everyone."
"Not for Americans, Sir!"
"Absolutely for Americans, Sir!  It'll open their eyes to the emptiness of their hearts and the hollow promise of their religious books."
"That sounds like blasphemy!"
"That sounds like someone who doesn't have a sensible argument.  You can only blaspheme if you believe in the religion you're attacking in the first place and Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations believes in all religions and none simultaneously."
"You seem to have an answer for everything," said the man, his face now shading into blue.
"That is why you pay us," said Jeremy Diseased-Rat.  "You do pay us, don't you?"
"We will be doing very soon," said the man.
"Oh?  What will you be hiring us for?"
"We'd like political control of Sweden, please."