The Notepad - Archive

Welcome to the blog relating to the political party known as the Don’t-Stop-The Party. I didn’t pick the name, don’t yell at me. Various people involved in the party will post here over the course of our campaign to give a full account of things that happened to us while we were campaigning. This might give you some idea of the kind of people we work with, and the kind of issues we have to deal with on a more regular basis than is probably appropriate. As to the end result of the campaign … with a party name as ridiculous as ours, you’d probably not expect us to get very far. And you might be right. Or, alternatively, I might be writing this while sitting in a parliamentary debate. You’ll have to read it and see. And no; I don’t offer TL;DR’s for the posts.

Thinking is bad. Anyone that does it enough will tell you that. By the way, my name is Daisy. I am – well, you’ll see eventually. Basically; female, uni student, busy, not especially tall. The good thing is, I keep myself busy enough that the whole thinking thing never gets too bad. Or it does, but I try to do stuff about the things I think, so at least I feel like I’m making some form of difference to the world. Which I am, I swear. It just might not be that big of a difference. There’s only so much damage a teenage girl can do to processes and systems engrained by hundreds of years of reinforcement. But I try; like a bull at a brick wall. And it achieves much the same result. That is; none, the brick wall is probably built to contain the bull, if you want to continue that crappy metaphor.
So the question is; what would you do about the world we live in? And the answer, I think, is look at it and cry.
I mean, let’s see; terrorism, immigration problems across the whole world and not just in America (which I’m sure Americans would dispute …). There’s also global warming (which really sounds a lot more tame than it actually is; why not call it ‘Doomaggedon Of Death With Fire’. Global warming sounds like a holiday for a week in Hawaii, and not the systematic screwing-up of the whole planet …

Now, I’m not saying this will actually happen, but I really hope it does. I may have kind of suggested starting a political party with my friend group, and they might not entirely disagree. These are the people that will take turns at running this blog over the course of our campaign. The thing is, I’m not sure that many people in my group of friends would have any interest at all with starting a political party. Also I don’t even know that we share the same political views. So this could be a horrifically bad idea. I might talk to some people about it later, but then again I may never get around to it because I zip around from activity to activity like Tigger on steroids. Should be ten people that are on board, either by choice or coercion because I know where they live and when they go to sleep (or not, in one or two cases …). But we’ll see. Because of the way the blog’s run, I won’t introduce the whole team here and they can introduce themselves properly in their own posts. But I’ll just tell you a bit about them quickly;

I am me; being me, doing ‘me’ stuff. We’ve already met. Or you’ve met me. I haven’t met you. Then there’s Daniel, he’s the admin guy. Kinda short, very sarcastic. Like a teapot with sass. Raj’s the resident ‘interesting guy’. And he sleeps a lot. Paul is flirty. Sometimes irritatingly so. Actually, I don’t like him much. Simran’s quiet, reasonably sensible. She probably knows that working here is a mistake. Luke’s ultra-anxious, all the time. Mike’s averse to interaction, and seems non-political. So I’m not sure why he’s even here. But he is. Hassan’s chirpy and naïve, like a bird in the morning. Jerry is tall. Like, his head is monitored by ATC, tall. Catherine’s slightly more outgoing than Simran, with a similar level of maturity.

Has anyone ever thought about making a political party? I don’t mean the idiots that actually do it. I mean regular, normal, everyday people that just live normal lives and yell at the fact that the wrong decisions keep being made. I mean; backseat driving is fine, but could you do better in the driver’s seat of a whole economy? And all the other social stuff …

That’s basically how the discourse went the first time I mentioned my plan. They thought I was mental – and I think that’s kind of their function in my life. Hear what I’ve thought in my head in all of it’s outrageousness, then just go ‘no’. I talked with four guys I know, and they all said the same thing. Daniel gave detailed (and entirely negative) reasons why it wouldn’t work, Raj used emoticons to illustrate he thought I was insane, Jerry did a mix of the two, and Hassan entirely failed to even see the message; but I sent it so that’s not my fault.

“Exams are over, let’s get drunk”. Paul said that while burning his coursebooks in the back yard of Hassan’s place. In hindsight, that was never gonna go well. I guess I sort of knew that, but I let the fuckers do it anyway because I couldn’t be stuffed stopping it. Now that I think about it, that’s how half the things I do go wrong. There were ten of us at the party. Mostly introverts, mostly people that don’t drink. Yeah … now that I can see that on paper … it’s always the quiet ones …

The first two drinks were fine. More or less, only minor damage to property and a mild headache. After drinks three and four, the cracks started to show, thanks to several people lying down and a mooning accident. By which I, of course, mean that Luke decided to try and reach the moon and hit it with his wings. Basically, he did a half-hour long moth impression.

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f. f. f. f. f. f. f.
fiuwenfiwuenfiunewiubfwuibrfyrebfufbwdiwubd.wubwuubwubwubwubwubuwbubbuwubwuwb wubwubwub.
*strobe lights flash*

But, but I love him.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh.
*delocalised sobbing noises*

Oh God … my head. It’s been bad all day. The headache started at more or less the same time I woke up and realised I was sharing a bed with Paul. Daisy told me that I screamed when I realised this, and the scream had woken her up even though we were on different floors. After about ten minutes of water, painkillers and wondering who’d fucked who, the ten of us ended up in the lounge avoiding everyone’s gazes.

Let’s total up the damage (from what I could see at the time);
I shared a bed with Paul. For the sake of my own dignity and sanity, let’s just assume that’s all we did.
I think Daniel and Jerry shared a bed too. I didn’t ask. It’s like being a gay American soldier before 2011; don’t ask, don’t tell.
Luke, Mike and Hassan passed out in the lounge. They all had sore heads and backs. I assume that’s at least partly hangover. Although apparently the floor’s hard; not that I’d know because I shared a bed with – I really don’t want to remember that.
Catherine and Simran were sipping tea in the kitchen, looking very much like that frog meme. I don’t think they were even hung over. They probably drank responsibly. Or not at all. Or they were hung over, and trying to make the rest of us feel bad. It was working.
Oh, and Daisy passed out over my laptop, and it turns out we started a political party; and there’s a 500-member Facebook group that exists to prove it would be possible to create the party. Or it might exist because we *did* create the party. Oh God. That one’s probably the worst. I’d have sex with anyone who asked if it would undo that one. No, not you.

Today’s been fun. I think that’s the word for it. I’m back, anyway. Third (or maybe was it fourth) post today. I’m told the whole team’s been having flashbacks all day. I suppose that helps to piece together what exactly happened that night. It turns out very little of actual consequence happened. So let’s move on.
Hahahaha I wish. The first flashback was Luke when he went to get chips for breakfast and nearly got run over after stopping in the middle of the road. Many more shocked expressions, dropped plates and the odd begging apology comprised the rest of the day as the team of ten relatively socially awkward, sheltered and naïve (although polite and very nice) people came to terms with the first major social faux-pas they couldn’t even remember.
And I just sat there, watching it unfold. And by ‘it’ I mean the bedsheets that needed changing, the clothes that needed washing and the restoration of memory to the rest of the team.
What else interesting happened over that night … Jerry got out some flashbangs that he’d kept from last year’s fireworks display and lit them up. The shells were outside, and Jerry’ lighter was on the bench. There was a ten-minute period of time that I’d really rather not remember, when a very, very, VERY drunk Paul decided somehow that streaking would be wise. Good thing is he ended up in his bed immediately after and then he passed out … yeah. And now I’ve remembered the other thing I’m trying to forget.

Meeting up to discuss the formation of the party. If it helps, it wasn’t actually a round table, I’m fairly certain it was rectangular. In any case, the meeting was a total trainwreck, even though I thought it would end up that way.
“What will we call the Party?” Daniel tried to moderate the discussion.
“No idea. How about we come back to that later on.” Jerry interjected after a short pause.
“Next item of business; what do we stand for?” Daniel again.
“War. HUH.” I think I misjudged that joke.
“No. Wrong reference. There isn’t a reference I can think of that works but it isn’t that.” Simran cut me off.
“I think we’re fairly centre-aligned.” Jerry, back to politics. Is this what he actually thinks, or is it simply that the alternative is scary for him to consider?
“Which means we should stay off the roads.” Paul jumped in with a joke before the tone got too serious.
“Huh?” Daisy, confused. She’d get the joke in ten minutes.
“If you want to be on the roads, then you must keep left.” Or Luke would explain it.
“That joke was worth nobody’s time.” Daniel again, trying to steer the conversation back to topic.
“So was your mum.” Mike.
“OOOOOOOOOOOH”. Everybody responding to that burn. Even though its originality is questionable at best.

Hello there, I’m Daniel, and you don’t give a flying fuck. I’ll stop wasting your time. It isn’t me you came here to see. You probably came to read all the scandals. But we agreed not to publish any so you’re a bit … out of luck. Daisy already introduced me a bit. I’m the admin guy. The one trying to keep things on track. I maybe should have become a train driver.

“We’ve done too much to back out of the party now.” That’s the kind of statement made by an introvert who’s made a horrible mistake, but has a moral obligation not to slink off, even though nobody will notice. Or maybe just rocking backwards and forwards moaning like he’s in pain. That was what Luke and Mike normally did.
“What do you propose we do?” Jerry replied, and this threw me a bit. Because I had no idea what the next course of action was. And Hassan had stealthily tipped my chair over.
“Well … I think we should try to find scandals that could be used against us when campaigning,” I replied after a pause, and getting up off the floor. “That way we know who’d make a good candidate for leader.”
“And who’d be least missed if they got killed.” Simran glared at Hassan, who looked like a dog that had made a big mess and was pretending it didn’t exist.
“Or who would have reason enough to be murdered.” Hassan returned the glare, withlut even turning around. Basically, there’s a hole in the wall now because of the intensity.
“Why’re we talking about killing people?” Luke walked in.
“Why indeed …” Jerry answered in a conspiratorial manner.

There are a few things I regret. There are other things I find very, very funny that I’ve done and I wish I hadn’t. This is probably closer to the second than the first, but the line’s definitely blurred. Not like the song, which is actual, literal, trash. It was definitely entertaining.

Setting ten people against each other in an informal context and situation in which whatever you find will have no consequence within the wider world (so; how the people in Government seem to think Government works). It started innocently enough, with minor scanning of Facebook pages and social media. There were, however, minor skirmishes between members of the team in the late stages of the ‘game’, that I happened to witness in whole or in part. I never asked for further details of what I saw, it’s not my business after all. But I shall relay some of the more interesting pieces of corporate and social espionage.

The first I heard of the case I will refer to as Raj v. Simran was a scream of some sort (I assume from Simran, but it’s theoretically possible it wasn’t). There was a lot of running backwards and forwards asking for papers back. I think there was a time of quiet, but frankly I didn’t really notice over the rest of the pandemonium in the office. I think she might have discovered Raj was adopted at one point and he stormed off for a bit. He was by the coffee machine at lunchtime, so he must’ve got over it or something. Or found a way to get even. He made his coffee with Red Bull, apparently.

Jerry v. Paul started more slowly, subtly. It might even have been going on before the ‘competition’ was suggested. The first find was a post on Paul’s wall; ‘1/3 of proposals happen over holiday season. IT MIGHT HAPPEN TO ME even though I’m single bleh.’. Paul, in reply, found a series of messages of Jerry’ (he never disclosed with whom); ‘Thought you might want to - / Get fucked. / Um, sure. / No, I mean you can go and get fucked’. And so this continued, blow for blow. This was perhaps the most equal competition, and a very bad description of how things progressed.

Hassan v. Luke wasn’t a competition in quite the same way the other two were. It was more amicable, a way that two people that thought they could outsmart the other. Luke’s approach was quite methodical and deliberate; first check Facebook, then other social media, then waterboard Hassan while he was at his desk. That last one didn’t last long before the screams of a panicking Hassan alerted the rest of the office and Luke stopped, having found some information. Hassan’s approach involved discovering information that seemed irrelevant and disclosing it in the middle of innocuous-seeming sentences as if it means nothing. That was probably a basic part of the reason why Luke got so annoyed and resorted to waterboarding Hassan.

At least it finished quickly. Quickly, even though Simran still won’t look at Raj without scowling. So, in a way, the whole exercise wasn’t without consequence; but none of the consequences made it to the media. Which is as it should be. That doesn’t in any way mean the whole exercise was counter-productive.

When they say ‘hit the streets’, they don’t in fact mean to make contact between fist and pavement. I have similar problems with the statement ‘pound the pavement’. Although I suppose it is accurate, because at more than one point in the day I’d probably have beat the footpath out of sheer frustration. Huh, I managed to find three different ways to refer to the same thing. Maybe I can get used to this metaphor business. But the actual process of talking to people is one I’m … not a fan of. Being an engineer by … I guess you can say ‘trade’, talking to people isn’t my strong suit (although if I were a professional Yu-Gi-Oh player, that would definitely be ‘by trade …’. That was almost a joke, hmm). I’m Mike, good afternoon.

The actual process of talking to people proved to me just how I’ll never, ever work in retail. This is even before you consider my aversion to talking to people. I think I probably got the wrong job, and it definitely showed.

The first guy I talked to had no hair and a massive stomach. Seemed unemployed, you know how with some people you can just tell. Couldn’t really hold a decent conversation with him, he just kept mumbling about benefits and the minimum wage. Hadn’t done any economics at all. The second guy was slightly more informed, although he still thought a mandated $18 an hour minimum wage was possible. Or at least that’s what I think he said, he might have been talking about prostitutes. Frankly that would have been preferable. At least then I’d have got something out of it (I’ll leave that deliberately vague …).

I think the point with the canvassing was that we’d done it, and not what the people actually said. We already knew what we believed, even if we hadn’t articulated that in a group meeting. We also knew the public were like sheep, just following the most popular idea without actually looking at what the policy was and whether it would work. Apparently a guy wearing camo trousers tried to talk to me, but I didn’t see him.

The others were about as successful overall, as me. It was a waste of a day and I don’t think anyone really made any decent headway. Look, just look at the kind of people that protest about things. Normally they’re extreme about whatever they think their beliefs are. Extreme and often misguided. Obvious exceptions to this rule are … basically the TPPA ‘negotiations’. As a general rule, most people who protest things in rallies don’t actually have proper means to elicit change in a meaningful way and/or haven’t made the proper level of peace with authority which is apparently a part of maturing (growing up … if you prefer).

Anyway, that was me going off on a tangent. Speaking of tangents; y-y1=m(x-x1). Aah, now even my tangents have tangents. But the main point is talking to people told me everything I already knew and helped very little with deciding policy. People are stupid, what can I say. The problem with that is, of course, that the team of ten ended up wasting a whole day essentially pounding the pavement, and heads against a brick wall, without achieving many responses. See, there’s another ‘pound the pavement’ or hit something with a stick metaphor.

After an hour around the table, we had nothing. Well, half a pad of scrapped ideas, and balled-up paper. Still no idea what people wanted. And we had about a day and a half to decide on policy. Maybe the best bet would be to just get really high on cocaine, write random words down on paper and spout that. I’m pretty sure that’s what Donald Trump does; at least he can do public speaking. I prefer to believe that than realise that he’s actually aware of the racist, sexist, ignorant crap he spouts out of the anus in the center of his face.

I feel like I should point out, I’m not normally this sarcastic, harsh or eloquent in real life. That’s because it’s real life, and people don’t actually care about what you really think in real life (except for some cases …). Conversations just consist of pauses where people are waiting for their turn to talk again. I figured out it was easier to just be quiet. Which is sort of why it intrinsically made very little sense that I spearheaded the canvassing team. I must have thought ‘canvassing’ had to do with camping tents.

There was an awkward silence for about a minute in the meeting; which I suppose is evidence of the inept-ness I just talked to you about. We had nothing. We needed a page. We had a day and a half. And talking to other people wouldn’t help. So the question remained; what would we do?

An hour later, we broke off for lunch. Walked to get pizza. It was a nice day outside, even though the combined double-whammy of New Zealand summertime and persistent global warming made the temperature 30 degrees celcius, something that I personally hadn’t heard of before. The walk wasn’t especially pleasant. Although, when we arrived back in the office (with our pizzas …) we’d talked with about ten different people on the walk back. These people offered far more valuable (and reasonable, and balanced…) opinions, and we finally had an idea of the policies we’d go for.

Mike, my words. That was legitimately said to me at least once today. Yeah, it’s me again. First campaign meeting today. It was in the late afternoon because of Uni lectures that we needed to attend (played games anyway, so …)

The meeting was boring, but I don’t especially mind that kind of thing. It started with a kind of presentation where we shared what we’d gathered on the weekend. Everyone had gathered a reasonable amount of information, but Hassan had also gathered some daisies. I wasn’t really listening until about halfway through; then I heard my name.
“What?”
“We need you to go to the pro-rape rally and try and get some support for our party.”
“What, change people’s minds? That isn’t going to happen, especially with pro-rape faux-beta-male lunatics.”
“You just don’t want to talk to them.”
“Do you?”
“Well, no. But someone has to go and you lost the round of not-bitch.”
“There was a round of not-bitch?”

As far as research had dictated, the protest would be at Aotea Square. Research meaning a five-minute lookup on my phone. As opposed to the five minute hook-ups most people use their phones to arrange. But the whole thing had been blocked off by barricades and guards. One of the guards was eating a donut, seemed pretty harmless, to be honest. That only seemed to have moved the protest rather than eliminating it. They weren’t anywhere I could see. I could just go home. Oh well, too bad. But no. Have to stay. Try to find. Do not want. But I must.
I found a small group of men in fedoras sitting at a bar. Not sure exactly which one. Or maybe I am, but I’m redacting my blog post to stop you going there. Ooooooh. Anyway, I found them, and sat down; recording what they said discreetly through my phone in my pocket. Eventually they broke off, and I could talk to the leader.
“You don’t actually believe this, do you?”
“Well yes. I wouldn’t be here if I did …”
“So it would be okay if I raped your sister?” He went pale and stiffened (not a euphemism).
“You go near my sister …”
“How’s that different to any other girl? Surely it’s the same thing. If I’m not allowed to rape your sister, why would you be allowed to rape some other guy’s sister or daughter or wife?”
“Because I don’t know them.”
“Oh, right, I see and that makes it fine, does it? Because proximity (or lack of) validates that kind of an action. You see how ignorant and narrow-minded this sounds, don’t you?”
“Get out.”
I left there fairly well straight away. Even if we as a political party needed those guys’ votes to win a seat, I didn’t want them. I made my way back to the one of the cafes at uni, sat at a table and waited for further instructions. While I did that, I sent the recording of the meeting and my conversation afterwards to the police. About half an hour later, after a coffee and a good, long pat-myself-on-the-back session, I got my orders and moved off. The police had arrived by that point, and had started arresting people. Not because of their views, per se. Because after the police showed up, the whole meeting turned very violent, very fast; as you might expect by people who spout views online that they aren’t accountable for. That also meant I had to wade through a pile of angry, slightly drunk neckbeards throwing punches left, right and center.
Four. That’s how many people I knocked out. Morality’s never bothered me, as such. I think there are times for moral decision-making and times where you let idiots get trampled in a stampede. This is one of the latter times, in case you noticed.

The street signs weren’t much help and my internal map of the city had massive holes in it; like a moth had eaten through bits over the last few years. I arrived at a three-storey apartment building about ten minutes later than I should have been. In fact, the girl I was meeting was standing on the roadside. Shut up, it’s not like that.
“You seem relieved we’re meeting on the road.”
“It’s just the stairs …”
“No it’s not. You think I’ll cry rape.”
“I can’t say that didn’t cross my mind …”
“That’s not how most people think. The majority of people actually aren’t arseholes.”
“It does seem odd that you’re defending people, though.”
“Why, because I’m the one who got raped?”
“Uh … well, I mean … yeah, a little bit.”
“Sorry we didn’t even introduce ourselves. I’m a crazed feminazi who’s gonna cry rape if you take another step. But you can call me Steph.”
“Ah, right. And I’m the guy who isn’t going to take another step. But you can call me Mike.”
“So, shall we walk?”
“But I’d have to … take a step?”
“Oh come on. Live a little. Take the risk.”
I’ve not been out much. But it turns out the September weather is quite nice. Steph’s not bad either. Pretty good, considering. We talked about life and things that weren’t politics. Because politics isn’t all that interesting to me. Mind you, neither’s talking to people…
About ten minutes later we ended up back outside her apartment building.
“Well, that was nice. You’re from the Don’t Stop The Party, right?”
“Yeah. I thought it would’ve come up before.”
“Why? I already know who I’m voting for.”
“And who would that be?”
“I’ll tell my friends to vote for you.”
“But will you vote for us?”
“You’ll see.” She left me on the roadside and walked back into the apartment building.

Success. Well, one out of two. But I didn’t expect the first one to actually work.
Now we just had to discuss policy that we can all agree on. Difficult. I got back to the campaign office to sign out and saw boxes of the signs and banners ready to be put up. Campaigning would start tomorrow. Fun times. Not. Sigh.
Guess I’d better get some sleep. Up early tomorrow. Why am I still fucking typing. I’ll delete all this and not post it …

Sigh. I get this story. Jerry here.
Even though we know what we’re doing, I’m still freaked out. Is this how it’s supposed to be? I think it is … but I’m not exactly the best on ‘reality’. That’s other people’s area. There was a box on the doormat when we arrived at the temporary campaign offices. Those cost money, but I’m not sure exactly how the money showed up; Daisy probably worked a fourth job to cover the rent. I’m not sure though, it never really came up.

The box contained our banners, due to go up in key strategic locations around the city before the end of the day. But we weren’t allowed to put them up before 10 in the morning. The box was torn open with such gusto that one of the banners was sacrificed to the great God Hassan-Smash, but cable ties and duct tape fixed it up such that it was presentable. The team split, as you might expect in situations like this, into ten subgroups. Or everyone went off individually, whichever you prefer. We each took a different area around the city and had burner phones with $100 of credit to be used throughout the campaign, instead of walkie talkies because in those things the word ‘stick’ becomes ‘dick’; and if there’s ever another incident of someone putting their genitals between a banner and the place we want it put – then the police will get called.

Daniel was leader. Well, most organised. From where I was standing on this intersection in the middle of four busy roads, I think the rest of the banner-placing was going well. Certainly there was a lack of profanity-laden yelling through my phone. In fact, there was a sense of calm and tension (at the same time … go figure).
Five minutes.
I attached cable ties to the banner. No messages on the phone.
Four minutes.
A woman honked and yelled out the window that I had a nice butt, and told me I’d be prettier if I smiled.
Three minutes.
Nothing. I read the sign. It was just a massive picture of Nicolas Cage with Daisy’s details at the bottom. Our party slogan was ‘get out of the Cage’.
Two minutes.
Drum roll please. I’m told the others were frantically busy, but I was calm, more or less. Slightly tense, but there was nothing else I could do until the time was up.
One minute.
The phone rang and I didn’t even bother to answer it. Hanging up the banner and desperately trying to secure one rogue cable tie that refused to submit to the rule of the post I was trying to tie it to. The phone rang again and I picked it up.
“You didn’t answer before.”
“You were just saying I could hang up, though?”
“Hang up the banner, if you could’ve let me finish. And the people in the central city have realised they left their flyers in the office. So you need to hand out those and get theirs to them as well.”
“Ah. Right.” I hung up, and a passerby in a car hooted long and loud at the sign, then had taken his attention away from the road and smacked into a wall where the road should have been.

Flyers. Basically they’re horrific. You know what I was saying before about being calm while everyone else panicked? It was sort of the opposite of that. Managed to get back half an hour later and found the team at a McDonalds drinking milkshakes on the grass verge. There were some supporters with them; which I didn’t expect. A hundred flyers each and decent sized brainfreeze later and the team were ready to campaign. Which basically comprised standing on the roadside and getting insulted by people. Brilliant use of my mid-semester break. Not like I have better things to do with my time.
One guy and his girlfriend showed up and wasted about ten flyers when they kept requesting them from Hassan who kept handing them over; only for the two pesky students, who probably thought they were political activists, to throw them away and come back to ask for more.

So we ran out of flyers far below our recommended target. This was not good. Hopefully, the lack of flyers advertising would be made up for by Paul and Luke who had fucked off to start a social media campaign. Just a Facebook page and basic work on the site website that would go up tomorrow.
I looked on it later before Daniel could see it; just in case I would know to record him getting angry at the two guys later on. They, broadly, made a functioning campaign page where they’d post information and updates, and hopefully get people to vote for them. Except they put false policy (or at least I hope it was false …) demanding the legislation that a brick wall will be built around the whole country (even though the Pacific Ocean is a gigantic moat …), and they invited all the current members of the Conservative Party Facebook group (all ten of them, and that page would probably shut down by the end of the week … yeah, that wouldn’t last. And hopefully they’d change it up before the page went live. That could do us damage. That took about an hour. Screw all the people who say teenagers are on their phones all the time. Just because you old twats can’t turn them on doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t turn them off …

Eventually the whole team was clustered around the Facebook page in the evening just before it went live (for the record; the Conservative people had declined the invitations and reported us). Watching the campaign catch on.
The campaign has begun.

A defaced sign. For fuck’s sake. That would take an hour to get off and it’s not like I have other more important shit to do. Even though I want to, because the alternative currently staring me in the face was removal of a cock and balls from a sign of Nicolas Cage. Talk about mentally scarring. Yeah it’s Simran here and – I. Am. Pissed.
What the fuck is it with these people? I don’t just mean the team of nine idiots I work with – I mean all people everywhere. Let’s take, for instance, the graffiti-ed sign that’s in front of me. I mean, seriously; why? We don’t really have a campaign budget, either. I mean, would you expect us to have one? Money doesn’t grow on trees (even though paper does …). My point is, I guess, that I will need to hunt down the culprit. Also I have nothing else on today so I’ve nothing to lose. I just need a deerstalker (although stalking deer is difficult in the central city … no, no response? Okay, fine) and a pipe for that bit at the end after I find the fucker.

So … my detective hat is on. Well, a hat, and I feel like a detective. But it’s the same thing, isn’t it?
There was CCTV footage of the intersection available from a local petrol station. Handy, because I needed a snack. The guy there was nice, but probably the sort of guy that thought me asking to look at footage was the same as asking him out. For the clarity of anyone listening, it is not.

Apparently it’s acceptable for girls to ask guys out on Valentine’s Day now. Not that I fancy any of the guys I work with. Raj comes close, but … no. Anyway. I’d better solve this crap before more signs are defaced (even though the graffiti was technically a face so the term ‘defaced’ doesn’t apply. I need a new term, and also a nap). Apologies for that side track. Back to scheduled programming. Speaking of, I need to debug my Python assignment.

OOOOOOOKAY. Does the security footage tell me anything? That is the question, never mind ‘to be or not to be?’.
There he is, clear as day. Because it’s the middle of the day and the image is clear. But he’s wearing a mask, like the Anonymous-style Guy Fawkes ones. Although not a lot of people wear those when they commit crimes, often a simple balaclava or in one particularly arresting (ha ha ha) case, this guy used an anaconda (don’t).

So I know who did it. Well, I know that someone did do it, and it wasn’t a robot (although this isn’t an online shopping site, that isn’t really an option…). Speaking of online shopping, I need to start with my Christmas presents. She says in September, and definitely won’t start until Christmas Eve.
I think … um … it was Hassan who was on duty. Oh. I see how this all happened now.

Hassan didn’t have anything to say. That could have something to do with the fact that he wasn’t around there on the day, or it might be because I ambushed him when he was leaving the men’s bathroom and he ironically shat himself. Or at least he looked like he might have done, but he was wearing brown trousers so I can’t be sure.

Overnight, there had been another vandalism. Jerry had fallen asleep at his desk, with Hassan taking to him with a Mikeer pen. Just after doing the twirly bit on a mustache, Hassan saw me standing in the doorway and a thought occurred to him. I know this happened because it isn’t the sort of thing that comes up very often so his whole face and body contort with the movement of thought through his veins (even though that isn’t how thought works …).

“Just after you left the guy came back and tried to amend his drawing.” Hassan seemed almost sheepish. Well, he was wearing a wool coat.
“Did he try and take it off?” Confused. Hassan hadn’t been specific enough, and I needed more information.
“Oh, no. Just amended his earlier rubbish … I arrested him though.” He was still hiding something, I could tell from his expression. It might have been the set of handcuffs he had behind his back.
“Arrested? Oh. So the police have him?” Still vague. He was definitely hiding something.
“No, he’s tied up in the boot of my car.” Ah, there it was.
“Arrested, or kidnapped?”
“What?”
“Nothing.”

Bang. Bang. Bang. Mind you, I suppose the banging was an appropriate response for being tied in the boot of a car.
He wouldn’t say much, but then again, he was gagged.
We finally got him to talk … by taking out the gag.
He … wasn’t a fan of our policies. That we have. Whatever they are. I never bothered to check.
He’d committed the crime, and he admitted to it. As you would, in the circumstances.

So umm … yup. I suppose I’d better tell you what went wrong. Even though I really don’t want to.

Well. Since you asked me for a story about a boy partaking in a TV interview; I believe I have a tale that … does that.

You see, it began when university students decided they could influence decision making by taking power into their own hands. These guys aren’t protesters, I swear. It was late evening and the sky was orange, not that we could see it. You see, the makeup and hair room (where I was making up my responses while a pretty lady did my hair by looking at it and going ‘yup’; which is all you can really expect with short hair.

Then the guy came through and called for me. Walked through corridors. Would have got lost in the maze if the guy hadn’t been with me. Through a door, which I didn’t quite time right and it hit me on the kneecap and I fell over. Embarrassing. Into a studio, where some pompous fuckflap was sitting like a king. Time to mess up his day and/or life, don’t you think? Nah? Has he not pissed you off yet?
Because the first thing he said to me was “Hello there son, do you want a lollipop?” and ruffled my hair. No. He was scum. Time to make him suffer.

The lights went up, and Mr Host-Man, whose name I never cared to learn for obvious reasons, said; “so I’m speaking to Raj, a representative from the Don’t Stop The Party, and political hopeful.”
“Or are you? Oooh”.
Ignoring this. “So, let’s talk policy.”
“I think we should build a wall.” I figured out very quickly that the way to play this interview was to speak with a totally straight face. Doing mental arithmetic should help with not thinking about the jokes when I say them.
“We live on an island.” If I cared about the tone of his voice or his body language or … him; I might’ve noticed he was confused.
“All the more reason. Every castle needs a moat.” That was an easy set-up and the riposte cost me nothing in terms of thinking. Or cash. I don’t pay for my jokes.
“And what’s your position on gays?” Trying to rile me. Probably because I was beginning to rile him.
“Preferrably on top. Sometimes I’ll accept bottom duty.” Didn’t even begin to annoy me.
“Come on. You asked us to be here. Be serious.” But it had continued to annoy him. Exasperated.
“I might be being serious. You’ll never know. Unless you vote for us.” I winked at the camera, and that sent him through the roof. He recovered his composure by remembering he was being recorded.
“And …” Mr Host-Man (which sounds like a Marvel superhero for reality TV; I mean, he had the hair … and cape, or at least I think it’s a cape) paused, “… what do you think about the minimum wage?”
“Of consent, yeah I think it’s about right.” Let’s outright try and make him punch me.
The interviewer actually facepalmed; so close. “Not the minimum age of consent, no. I mean the minimum wage.”
“I think the Government-imposed minimum wage is about as high as it should be.” He was clearly shocked by the presence of a legitimate answer. Shocked, relieved and eager to know more.
“You say that like there’s an alternative?”
“What about if firms raised their wages to an appropriate level on their own?”
“How is that different?” Still going. He wasn’t sure if this was the setup to an elaborate punchline.
“Because that way there isn’t increases in unemployment due to higher wages, because the wages are a choice. Like whether or not you do TV interviews.”
“I’m sure any McDonalds exec that’s watching is taking notes.” He paused, considering, then continued, “but while we’re on the subject, why did you waste my airtime just now?”
“Waste your airtime? You already do that plenty well enough on your own.” WUMPH. Back of the net.
“One reason why people should vote for you is …” the interviewer started, and there was a lengthy silence as both parties waited for the other to finish the sentence.
“Oh, you mean me. Well, you should vote for us if you agree with our policy because we’ll try and fix what we think is wrong with the world. Note the use of the word ‘try’ and subjective nature of the word ‘fix’.”
“And … although this isn’t the first time I’ve asked you this question,” the interviewer was going pale with anger by this point, “what is your policy?”
“On what, we have many policies.”
“For fuck’s – just tell me what you think.” I was getting to him. Black eye in ten …
“You’ll have to apologise for that language, is what I think.”
“Look. I think it’s about time we wrap up.” Black eye in five …
“Warm because Winter is Coming.”
“Look, I’ve been nothing but hospitable –” Black eye in two …
“I normally find that people who say they’re hospitable are dicks.”
Cut to black (eye).

And then the interview finished. And the presenter proved my point quite literally hand over fist, by punching me in the face. I’m told that the interview didn’t go very well.
So, what to do.
More of a statement than a question. The point of it isn’t to actually question what to do. Just to show the thought had crossed my mind. Because I already knew. I simply had to steal the tape from the studio before they could edit and broadcast it. That would salvage the team’s reputation. Or at least prevent me from permanently destroying it.
As it turns out, the assistant directors are easily bribed, and tapes easily obtained.
That was easy. Too easy.
We got back to the team’s offices and played it, just to be sure.
And it was the wrong tape. The one we’d taken was a warmup tape of Mr Host-Man flexing his muscles. So no great loss.
Oh no.
Oh God.
The saddest thing is that the answer was readily apparent.
We needed to steal the real one, and quickly.
I know just the man for the job. With a tape in the TV station’s archives that would ruin our reputation and only one way to stop it being broadcast, a man was chosen. A man sent to retrieve it. And that man would be …

This is Paul, and admitting that might be a mistake. I’m an engineer, so I could calculate the exact angle that would work best to retrieve the tape. Then get the execution 110% wrong. But, on the other hand, there might be cute girls. Which there isn’t in engineering.

The Mission Impossible theme plays in the distance. No, it’s just in my head. But it helps to imagine it. The idea was that we sneak into the TV studio and steal the tapes, then destroy it before it can be broadcast. I suppose the first step is to get Raj to admit he fucked up. Which wasn’t going to happen, although I suspect he already knew.
Daniel had known Jerry for fifteen years. I had known Raj for a similar length of time.

If you get in trouble, yodel really loud. That was the advice I was given, and following it was probably a mistake. Would only use it in extreme circumstances, for instance a yodelling contest. It can, in some regrettable situations, cause awkwardness when having sex.

All right, all right. Let’s get back to the main point.
An impenetrable fortress. An object we desire. The impossible heist. And only me. I’m the only one that wants to do this. So I have no choice.

The team would help me, as much as they could through communication devices. But when push came to shove, as had happened when it was decided that I would perform the heist, I was on my own. In fact, that whole … thing resulted in a minor food fight. Okay, major food fight. There were still gravy stains in the curtains.

Communication plugged in and ready. Then I fitted a harness even though I wouldn’t need it, and a surreptitious black leather jacket. Okay, the most conspicuous-looking leather jacket that doesn’t have plastic explosive wired through it. Yes, I went there. Getting in through the door was easy, but that receptionist wouldn’t let me into the building proper. I suppose I should have seen this coming.

Went outside and regrouped. If I couldn’t get past the receptionist, there really was no point even trying. Would I try and flirt with her? Or was there another way? Yes, there was another way. Because the eaves overhung a reasonable amount, so it would be easy to get up onto the roof, and then navigate the building on the roof.

Got up onto the roof and regretted my decision immediately because I’d forgotten to leave my fear of heights on the ground. Now what? No idea. I couldn’t see any skylights or any way of facilitating a straight drop into the right room. No idea where that room even was.
“Um, hello Mike?”
“WHAT.” Mike wasn’t yelling, in fact he was probably being very quiet. Default volume settings and suchlike.
“Hold on,” I replied while fumbling with the device to lower its volume to less than beam-directly-into-my-skull levels. “Um, where is the archive room and how do I get there from the roof?”
“The roof? I thought you were roofless?”
“The receptionist threw me out so now I’m on the roof.”
“Powerful throw. Right,” there was a click-click-click of a mouse scroll bar working, then Mike continued, “so it looks like the archive is smack-bang in the center of the building and there’s no skylights or windows.”
“Ah. So. What will we do?”
“Should have done a drill run.”
“Meaning?”
“You should have gone up on the roof a week ago with a drill.”
“But right now?”
“Sneak in someone’s open window, then befriend them and get into the archive, maybe?”
“Yeah that would work.”

No, that wouldn’t work. Well. I mean it would. But then there’s whole ‘I’m not here to hurt you, just steal things from your archive’ thing. So that’s what I did. After about half an hour of walking up and down the roof like a scuba diver on sand, so as to make as little noise as possible. There was a window open about halfway up the building that I selected as my entry point, and I aimed my descent so that I’d slip straight through. And, like I had forseen, the girl sitting at the desk (called Alice, as I found out much later – I never go for names first) screamed and threw a pair of scissors at me.

I should perhaps explain that because I was wearing a harness, people on the ground thought I was meant to be there (on the roof). I maybe should have, in an ideal world, worn a high-vis vest.

After I calmed her down and got her number (just in case – shush), I convinced her of my plan. Turns out she’d seen the interview be recorded; she was an assistant director or something, I wasn’t paying attention. We made our way across to the archive room …

… and I was confronted with a warehouse full wall-to-wall of tapes and no way in hell of knowing where to find the right one. Mike had handed over the comm device and the rest of the guys in the team were currently talking about how I was going ‘round the baes’. She couldn’t hear though, and I switched it off so as to stop the incessant noise.

She knew the system, so I found the tape in no time. Tricky bit was getting out. Well, it would have been, but Alice’s lunch break had started, so we just walked out the front door. Then went for lunch. Because what else was I supposed to do?

Do you remember the banking system? Yeah. It was around until 2009; a place you could go to steal some pens. Then 2009 happened and like a massive black hole, WUMPH. Mikeet-based economics went up shit creek without a paddle. Catherine here.
So, long story short; we had about a thousand dollars. Cracked into it by buying a nice lunch at a restaurant on the viaduct. Beautiful day, beautiful food, and quiet enough that we could properly plan our attack.

“Action!” We weren’t even recording, Paul was just desperate.
But seriously, Simran and Daisy had moved the office furniture back while Luke and Hassan set up a camera and tripod, and Jerry and Mike did the set dressing. So the setup was crisp and clean but … looked horrific. I’ll leave that to your imagination. Yes. You. *Points finger into your soul*. I sat off to one side taking notes for this. Mostly because being out of the way stops the guys from pissing me off.
Hassan had moved on from the setup, and was learning his lines for his five minutes in the spotlight. Well, three minutes, and it was a desk lamp.

“I don’t think I can do this.” Hassan was nervous. I think it (rather counterintuitively) did something for team morale to see Hassan be anything less than relentlessly and annoying chirpy.
“Yes you can. Mostly because you’re the only one of us who can act.” Jerry tried to be supportive. Tried.
“Even that’s suspect.” Mike sawed Jerry’ attempt to be supportive in half by muttering under his breath while moving a desk. Hassan reached out and thumped it, and the thing fell on Mike’s toe.
“Calmer now.”
“Karma, did you mean?” Daniel interjected.
Then, like magic, they were ready to film. Even though the desk was in the wrong place (although Mike was adamant this was not the case), and Mike found himself pinned to the floor due to the desk on his toe. He made like the One Punch man and smashed the desk in half. No, that didn’t happen; but I’m doing an anime joke if it flipping kills me.

“Quiet on set.” I calmed the ruckus by yelling that through a megaphone. Well, rolled up refill cover, but the same principle applies. Nine pairs of eyes shifted towards me. Too many. Uh oh. And I totally forgot what I was supposed to be doing.
Luke took over, he’d probably been thinking about how to set up the shot for about the last ten minutes, since he unstuck Mike from the desk.
“If you,” he said, gesturing to Hassan, “would go over there,” he pointed at the centre of the set-up, “then I could set the camera up here,” he said; moving the device, “and then we can get cracking,” he finished while the back wall of the set-up cracked a little and one of the lighting rigs fell off the wall and hit Hassan on the head.
Luke paused, and surveyed the damage. “Or not.”

Raj vowed to edit the project on his computer. Which was cool, because nobody else had the time. We could see, even while he was doing it, that the interview would look better for the party than its predecessor. Although, admittedly, that wasn’t at all difficult.

He had finished it by a quarter to six. A representative from the studio came to collect it, and Daniel made the mistake of using the phrase ‘call off the hounds’ when referring to the lawyers. This meant that Hassan sang, quietly, ‘who let the dogs out’ when the guy left.

I’m Hassan. But you knew that.
Plane food is horrific. Well, that’s a slight lie. It’s not atrocious, just … reheated. And it’s certainly no picnic. Except that it is a literal picnic. Which is amazing! And Exciting! And SQUEE. Because PICNIC. Not the chocolate, the event. Except it’s on a plane. Which I guess helps to distract from the FACT THAT WE MIGHT DIE.

Ding dong.
“This is the pilot speaking. We’ll be flying to Wellington today from Auckland, which means a flight time insufficient for a cup of tea. So try to relax, but I promise you won’t be able to while we’re in the air. Because we’ll only be in the air for ten minutes.”
He stopped talking when there was a loud rumble from the floor of the plane.
“What was that?” Confused, puzzled. A little scared. “Oh. Right. I farted.”

The flight started off a bit bumpy. A slight turbulence situation.
Daisy shouldn’t be leader. It should be me. I’d be so good at it. First thing I’d do, I’d – I’d – I’d – well, it hardly matters. It’s not like we’ll win any seats.
The campaign hadn’t let up in the last month and a half. Sleep would be welcome, preferably for about a year. But, for now at least, an hour would have to suffice.
You know what that means?
TIME TO CALL FOR A VOTE!

They weren’t really prepared to listen. But then again, half of the team was trying to sleep. Simran and Luke hit me with their plane-cushions. Paul and Mike told me to go away. Catherine and Raj punched me in the face. I think that was accidental, but they never actually said. And they were half asleep.

But I pestered on. And on, and on, and on. Eventually I had coerced the whole team into mumbling their votes through their plane pillows. They were all still trying to sleep or something.
The problem with what I had just done was that … the vote was tied. Tied like my hands behind my back in a straight jacket. Oh yeah, that happened for a week after a campaign ad where I interrupted Catherine and Simran’s serious political message by juggling lemons and falling into a cheesecake. Admittedly, the fact that the police were called was a little of an accident.

I tried it again twenty minutes later, just before landing. Everyone was asleep though, so I won by a landslide. Hahahahaha.
No.
Because this time, they were so incensed by my intrusion into their naptime that they actually asked me to name some problems with New Zealand that I’d fix.
“Problems facing NZ; poverty, rape culture, wage gap, rape culture, House prices, Rape culture?”
“Goody.” A distinct lack of excitement.
“And did I mention rape culture?”
I don’t think it needs saying that the second vote goes as well as the first. Deadlock.
One more attempt. And everything to play for.
Did I just make being an MP sound like a game show? Yes. Yes, I did.

Ding dong.
“We’ll be landing in about ten minutes. Don’t worry, I passed the six-week crash course. That choice of words was poor. But you can trust me. Or at least that’s what my room-mates diary says. Cabin crew prepare for landing. I’m sure as hell not ready.”

The plane landed with little more incident. Except for a lively game of I spy. Which you’d think was difficult in a plane with no open windows. But apparently not. After landing, Paul must have said something to one of the customs staff because I got detained for an hour or so in a room answering stupid questions about an imported wooden axe. Something about not being allowed biological matter or weapons in the country … so just imagine the size of the red flag that a mix of the two would make …

I got to the voting party venue an hour late. It wasn’t the day of voting. Yet. But we had to plan how we’d set it up and the kind of things we’d have on offer on the night.

<<< This chapter compiled by Luke >>>

Luke here and this is … hard to write. Because I can’t do anything for fear I will miss developments. Even though there won’t be any results, as such, for another four hours.
Panic. But muted; like anticipation, except not as optimistic. In fact, I was positively terrified.
Could I sit still? No. I couldn’t sit at all, actually. I couldn’t even stand still without feeling sick with nerves.
This is ridiculous. It’s not even me on the vote form. Why am I so worried. I don’t even know. But I can’t stay here. Oh no. I can not.

“Luke, Luke. I need help with some –”
“Sure!” I was up and had shoes on and standing beside the courier man before he’d even finished the sentence. He was probably a little freaked out by it.
The actual moving of boxes took about half an hour. Which was … underwhelming. Although at least I returned to the office to see that … nothing at all had happened. People were still voting, and some of the Northern provinces had returned. So it would be a while before the Mount Roskill result we were all waiting for would be available. Probably a similar amount of time I’d been ‘available’.

Our offices needed tidying and nobody else even wanted to. Normally there was a vote for this sort of thing. But no. Cables, paper and some used – actually you don’t need to know about that. It wasn’t pretty. Or straightforward. Or sanitary. But it filled some time, so I can’t complain. Another half an hour. Well, half an hour of tidying and another half hour of washing my hands.

They got me to get some coffees after I finished the tidying; which would mean the tidied area would just be where the coffee cup rubbish would end up. Coffee run, easy, and it filled another fifteen minutes.

Sat down at the office. No. I still can’t do this.
“Oh and Luke, there’s actually more –”
Up, shoes, Out the door. Boxes, move, stairs, move. Was I thinking about the election. Well, technically no but I am now. Please make it stop.
Shifted papers off one of the desks in the vote party venue back-office.
Went on a coffee run. Not really because anybody wanted one. But I was still nauseatingly … err, nauseated. The woman at the coffee kiosk looked slightly pitying. Don’t judge me.
Sat back at my desk. Three hours to go. Nope, I need something to do.

Rinse and repeat. Two hours to go.
And again. One hour to go.
This was almost like torture. It felt like YEARS. And the worst bit was that despite the apparent passage of time I felt like I was getting no closer to my destination. Much like a traffic queue at 5:30 PM. But with a sudden flick at the end, like a Godzilla attack.

But where, you might ask, was the Godzilla attack?
Well, ladies and gentlemen. Here we flipping go. Nice pun on the word ‘flipping’ when you take it in the context of a Godzilla attack.
You see, on the last coffee run, Daisy decided she wanted to accompany me. Now, I wasn’t used to this amount of attention, and especially from her. I – I – I mean …
Anyway. Went for a coffee run with ten minutes until the vote would be revealed. This was perhaps the first inconsistency in my tale; because due to my anxiety, you would think that I would want to be in the room … but, as it turns out, no. I’d rather spend the last ten minutes of my freedom from the public eye on a coffee run talking to perhaps the most powerful woman I know.
Ten minutes, that’s the number to beat. Probably with a stick or something.

Return trip, five minutes later, and things start to go wrong. I get a text, and the vote’s come in early. OH NO. THIS IS NOT GOOD. The metaphorical roof of my anxiety is blasted off its latches – if indeed rooves have latches – by the sheer force of the anxiety itself. Daisy might have felt a similar increase in adrenaline because her legs wobble, but she carries on. I take the coffees, obviously. On the stairs, she received a text that caused another wobble. The observant amongst you will be able to pick out the problem with this little scenario; stairs are not the ideal place to go weak-kneed and fall. But she did. She fell right backwards. Down, and down and down and down. By the time I got to her she was unconscious. I could see in the shattered surface of the phone a text. It said ‘You’re the new MP for Mount Roskill’.
“Oh crap. Now I have to carry her and the coffees?”

A cool breeze, I think a door was open. I didn’t look around. Not yet. Didn’t want to wake up. The world becomes too real too quickly after you wake up. Can’t I just sleep forever?
No. I can not. I have to look around. I am – wait, what? In the cabinet? But there’s nobody else here. No. That’s wrong too. There’s Raj spinning around on his chair, Jerry testing the microphone by yelling ‘penis’ into it, Hassan is rushing around tidying up. Simran and Catherine are reading copies of the same book, occasionally swapping copies for no reason. Then Paul would come by and try out a shitty pickup line, and one or other of the girls would slap him with the book. Mike was wandering slowly around, taking the whole room in. It was basically a hall, about five metres from floor to ceiling, that had been kitted out with desks and microphones. The speaker of the house had a massive table in the middle, with a … speaker … on it. Massive boombox.

“Paul Sue, constituent for Mangere”. The speaker blared out. You can take that to mean whatever you like.
He stood up and made a gesture, then ‘Turn Down For What’ played. Strobe lights came on. Catherine, who’d taken up the role of Speaker, seemed exasperated. She’d put up with this kind of shit for far too long.
“Do you have any actual policies.”
“Here's my insurance one have a look,” Luke interjected from one of the seats in the top-lefthand corner. So, way at the back.
“Will someone please be serious?”
“NOPE.” I heard that before I saw it; then Raj rounded a corner on rollerskates, and rolled across the whole Parliament.
Catherine gave up trying to moderate the session, and settled for staring at an imaginary camera like she was on The Office.

No, this can’t be right. What idiot would let this happen? How is it that we’ve been allowed into Parliament when nobody else is around? No. And that doesn’t even count the unicycle that appeared from nowhere and disappeared there again, or the motions that glitch in and out of existence.

It was almost … dreamlike. But wait … that makes a certain amount of – sense. I remember the coffees, the text, the fall. Down and down and down. Then nothing.

Luke here. Just interjecting. Into someone else’s post, for the second time. How rude of me.

See, after Daisy fell down the stairs and I got to her, I managed, with difficulty, to get her back to the rest of the team. She was probably just unconscious. With bruised ankles from whacking them on the stairs, but just unconscious. She’d be awake soon. Simran stepped in and suggested this was not the case and that someone should actually call an ambulance. Daniel did that even before she’d asked. Paul sat and drank his coffee. He had, after all, ordered it.

Ambulance came, flashing lights and all. Turned out the fall had messed her up, big time. High chance of brain damage (major or minor, they weren’t sure), and they’d need to put her in a medically induced coma until she improved.

We sat there for a while, waiting for something to happen like people watching the opening day of a cricket test match. But nothing, like (as I’ve said) people watching the opening day of a test match. Well, nothing external.

What the fuck, Luke. I mean, cool and everything but this is my flipping post. Don’t interrupt. Come on, dude.

Me back. Then nothing, until this. And even this, apparently, wasn’t real.
The question was, of course, how to get out of it. Would the dream end if we passed a resolution of some kind?

Piles of files. Everyone had suggested things we could try to get rid of the dream. They seemed reMikeably eager to get rid of me, actually. Rude. Jerry took the top motion and read it out.
“All in favour say AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”, Jerry had taken up speaker position, and doubled over as Raj punched him in the stomach. A modest number of hands. But not enough to pass the bill.
Waited for a while. Nothing happened. That hadn’t finished the dream.
He tried again with another bill.
“All in favour say I.” He started, then mumbled under his breath, “would really rather be somewhere else.”
This bill passed by two votes. Specifically, Raj and Paul’s. #IShipIt. By which I in no way mean I ordered them online.
After the bill passed, there was a tense lull. Silence. Waiting. Anticipation.
Nothing.
“Well. I can just walk out the door. That should finish it.” I started walking, then jogging down the central aisle, then a full sprint at the door, pulling it open and walking through and --
Into a wall. The door wasn’t actually there yet. I hadn’t unlocked that level yet, it would seem.

So. I wasn’t ready to leave the dream. By inference, that would mean my body was still fixing itself up. So one day, perhaps, I would be free to assume office. Or so I assumed.
In the meantime, who would take over? Hassan certainly wanted to. But six year olds want lollies. Giving them what they want is often a mistake. They’d probably elect an interim leader from the nine current members, then I could take over when the dream decided it had finished with me.

So close to fixing the world, and I’d fallen short. That’s a pun. Laugh or I’ll pass a resolution that makes not laughing illegal. I can do that, you know. I might even wake up especially.

Chapter 14: Five Days In Wellington

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. And by that I of course mean the guy that’s slightly in charge with a superiority complex. Yup, it’s me; Daniel here. About four months have passed since we won the election, so allow me to catch you up …

Get drunk, get rich, no issues. That’s what the ad for Parliament might as well have said. If Parliament made ads and was allowed to lie in them. Because that is … so … not what it’s like. Of course, it could be argued that the campaign was the easy bit … or the most difficult; depending entirely on your perspective. Then our candidate went and put herself in a coma; which is, frankly, rude. So we had to pick a new delegate and couldn’t decide. Like a ‘1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1’ vote, couldn’t decide. Eventually decided through a random number generator in Python. Desperate times, etc. I think that’s about it …

7am waking up in the morning. No. I will not, I repeat; WILL NOT, do a Rebecca Black impersonation, even though we are similar ages, and have broadly the same vocal ability. Also it is literally seven on a Saturday morning and I should not be upright at this time. Not like I’d been out drinking … I learnt my lesson from that one a while back. You know, when we created a political party? Do you remember that? Because I flipping don’t. I remember what fucking happened afterwards. But you don’t need me to discuss all of that … the post archive can tell you more than I ever would.

On the plane; it just took off. Filling time. Aaaaaaand, that’s it, we’re landing. No, I jest. I’m heading to Wellington for a conference, because as an MP I kind of have to do that now. Fun times. Or that’s what I say when something’s fucking boring. Like sex with Donald Trump, I imagine. Anyway, I got sidetracked. Plane story time; the pilot left his tannoy on and you could hear the ATC struggle to understand the pilot’s accent. That’s not an ideal situation; really it’s not. Not quite as bad as the classic ‘four candles’ sketch, but close. Then just before the plane started moving there was this judder and creaking sound, and the guy next to me leant over and said “that’ll be the landing gear”. He hadn’t thought it through. Because, frankly, if that had been the landing gear, we’d be flipping dead.

Wellington’s normally windy, but it wasn’t today. Beautiful autumn sunshine, birds in the branches of the trees, leaves lining the roads, etc It took a full minute just to acknowledge this scene. So. Right. Conference. Where was I in relation to where it was? If that makes any sense …
I had $500 to spend. Which was promptly snatched out of my hand by a running twat when I stopped to count it up.
Then a guy with a hat on ran past, and his friend, another guy with a hat on had just enough time to stop and yell in my general direction; “What’re you doing standing there? Get after him!” I was, of course, still reeling after the betrayal from the random stranger.
Get after who? Me, I’m just going to a conference and I don’t have any money anymore; who’re you --?
That’s what I thought. Then I saw it. The hat, you see, wasn’t a standard hat. It was a police hat.
They thought I was a cop. Or at least I was expected to try to be.
What. The. Fuck.
So I did the only thing I could think of in the circumstances. I ran with him.

Holy fuck it’s been a busy day. So, let me walk you through it now I have a chance to sit down and write it up …
“Look, I know you’re not a cop,” the officer said as we rounded a particularly square-looking corner, triangulating on the perpetrator.
“Then why did you expect me to follow?”
“And you weren’t going to? He stole your five hundred dollars.”
“That’s true.” In the meantime, the perpetrator had stopped and was looking back at the policeman and giving him the fingers. Which refers to a series of gestures and not what he was eating from an oily-looking bag.
A random and insignificant old woman saw this and looked with disgust in both directions. “Oi, you, officer. Are you going to arrest this man?” she pointed back at the perpetrator, who removed a particularly well-placed scarf to reveal she was, in fact, not a man.
“… woman.” The old woman corrected.
The criminal made a move to run, and I rushed forward and tackled the fucker.
“That’s better, officer. Although I see you’re in plain clothes.” The old woman was digging me a hole that I would have to sit in.
I say this because another proper policeman walked past that exact second.

Been a busy day. I’ve solved three murders and interrogated at least a dozen criminals. As far as things being said that have unintended and horrific consequences, that woman seems to have said most of the items that top my personal list. It’s my break now, and I should perhaps break the story to catch you up in terms of where we left off. So Daisy’s in a coma in the hospital, and nobody’s sure when she’ll wake up. We know she will though, eventually. We held a vote the day after, and I was elected the MP for Mount Roskill by a landslide vote. And by that I of course mean that the same meeting also contained a vote for a landslide. Then I needed to go to Wellington for some waste-of-flipping-time conference. Which is why I’m here, I guess. That should catch you up … I think.

“You. Plainclothes. Nice job. You interview?” He wasn’t familiar with full sentences including all of noun, adjective and verb.
“N – n – n – n – no, I gotta … go.” I didn’t even look him in the eye before spinning on my heel and bolting out the door. Or at least that was the plan. What actually happened looked something closer to an uncoordinated person spinning too far in a circle and running into a wall. After I’d recovered and relocated my nose, I got out of there, leaving a policeman baffled, which I consider a person achievement.
I ran to the conference venue … and wasn’t able to get in because the guard on the door refused to get down off the top of it to check my ID. Which you’d think was kind of his job.
Conference in about two hours. My internal clock alarm was ringing and mild OCD playing up.
How am I gonna get into the room?
Hmm …
TO BE CONTINUED …
… IMMEDIATELY
I know what I’ll do.

It turns out there’s this thing called the Sun. And also a parallel concept known as ‘heat’. Dressing in high-vos overalls was a mistake. But at least I could get into the conference room by pretending to be an electrician. Or that was the plan …
For about five minutes until a sixty-year-old woman flagged me down before I’d even got inside, and asked me to fix her pipes, which sounded like some kind of euphemism. Trust me, it really did.
Fast forward just under an hour. Pan down from powerful midday sun to the very hot and slumped guy in overalls. That’s me. After fixing some wires, and getting electrocuted. More than once, which was a little humiliating. She paid me five hundred dollars cash though, so that would be a decent lunch here. In Auckland, that would probably get one Starbucks coffee.
Forty-five minutes to make it to the conference on time. And I needed a new approach.
I’ve got it!

These chef’s hats are uncomfortable, mostly because the top of the thing goes boof against the tops of doorframes, but hopefully I’d be able to get into the conference by serving some people coffee then doing a Shakespearian ‘you thought!’ reveal. The only problem with this version of the plan is that I can’t cook. Well, that’s slightly untrue. I can do my mother’s Shepherd’s Pie. Which is called “Down With The System” because she’s an anarchist. Not a problem in and of itself but the names of each dish and printed on a label on the front of the dish, and a dish called “Down With The System” is probably inappropriate for a Model United Nations conference. While I’m on the subject; I’m not quite sure how this happened, but the conference abbreviates to XMUN. I think the organisers all have superpowers.
Half an hour to get in to the conference. I think the head chef (which in no way is meant to imply the cooks were employed to serve human appendages …) noticed I was looking at my watch every twenty seconds.
“You look like you’re trapped here.”
“Kinda feels it a little.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Need to visit a friend in the hospital.
“Ah. You can go after we serve lunch.”
BOOM. I didn’t even have to try, and I already knew exactly what would happen.

Didn’t quite work out and I’ll tell you how badly I fucked up.
You see, I cooked the food; such as thatI could; and then we served it. Found it easy to kind of limbo underneath a serving tray and sneak into a seat. Or, drop the tray and hit your head on the desk. Either one, but the universe conspired to allocate me to the second option. Some people wouldn’t be able to recover from the humiliation, but I did okay. By hiding under the desk for the next ten minutes then hitting my head again when it finally became time to get out.
I hear you asking (from my imaginary representations of my audience in my head); ‘but when did it become time to come out of hiding? There were clear signposts. The fact one of the delegates brought out a compass was perhaps the main indicator that things were about to go South. Then an old woman burst in and pointed squarely at me, then moved her finger around in a circle; “There’s Officer Hopkins – he knows who stole my handbag.”
The whole room shifted in confusion. Myself included. Officer Hopkins? Where’d she got that from? The tension and confusion in the room were broken by the lights flickering then going out. The woman I’d helped out stormed into the room; “sorry about the interruption, and disruption. We appear to be having power iss –” She stooped as her gaze reached my seat.
“You! Alex Jenkins! What did you do?”
I gestured at my hair, which still softly sizzled from my earlier encounter with the mains. “Whatever it was; probably badly.” Still no idea where they were getting these names.
The woman stared so intensely at the desk just in front of me, and it caught fire.
Actually no, that would probably have been a shorted out wire, but either way there was a small fire slowly eating through the desk.
“Bill Cutaway! Your shift hasn’t finished.” A guy in a chef’s hat yelled from the now-permanently-open doorway.
“Oh yes; that’s right. I should warn you – your ‘shift’ will probably finish in about a week.”
“What do you mean?”
“At perhaps the most convenient moment, about five of the delegates excused themselves to the bathroom, and the chef got my pun.
“Look, everyone listen.” I paused, then; unable to stop myself; “and touch and taste and hear”. They did, which I admit was a bit of a surprise.
Through the deafening silence in the room now, I looked across at a guy with a camera plugged into the mains (which I now see was a mistake); “do you happen to have a recording of the conference?”
The facilitator had had enough by now. “Officer Hopkins; Alex Jenkins; Bill Cutaway? All of these names refer to you?”
I started speaking without knowing where the sentence would end; “Um … yeah … those are all pseudonyms I use when staying in hotels to avoid being swamped by screaming girls. What? It is possible.”

The next Wellington city council meeting would be a fun time. They’d have to explain how an electrician nobody’s heard of promised total reform to the power grid, then vanished into thin air. They’d have to deal with the suit (clothes as well as legal stuff) from a man who’d been given severe food poisoning by a chef seemingly employed by the city who then totally vanished into thin air. And then they’d have to assure the public that a random stranger couldn’t just walk into an XMUN conference and hide under one of the desks, despite the fact that this had happened. They would not know these events were perpetrated by the same person. They would not know that person was me. This would probably not impact the political atmosphere too much, but ran a slight risk of totally toppling the local government.
“Go with Alyssa, she’ll show you out of the building.” The security guard was not amused, which was kind of fair enough. A woman waved, and I walked towards her as she turned and left the room. There was another woman over the other side of the room who looked slightly confused; and, thinking about it, I was definitely to blame for that.
I followed the woman around the corner and to the waiting car, a concierge ran behind. About five seconds too late, I heard him through the closed car door yell; “He’s with the wrong girl!”
Then the woman jumped as she realised I’d followed her. “Oh My God! What are you doing in my car?” Oh shit. She’d been waving at someone else. Oh shit.

Chapter 15: The House Fool

Winter morning cup of coffee. Need it to wake up your body and frozen hands. We hadn’t yet moved to Wellington permanently; I suppose that day was coming; getting closer and closer each successive day we weren’t chucked out of Parliament. Jerry and I got coffee at the same place. For the record, it was not a Starbucks and we did not get pumpkin-spice lattes. Pumpkin spice is a good name for the sixth Spice girl.

We’d sit with coffees on bollards outside of Parliament, and talk about policy and other issues that we’d have to deal with – which, because of our revised occupations, covered almost every issue plaguing mankind. Sorry, I meant humanity, because ‘man’ can be very unkind.
From our newly-acquired vantage point we could spy on the politicians walking into the Beehive, and; in one case, tripping over flat ground and falling into a puddle. The Leader of the Opposition – typical Alpha male, thought he was cool, popular and ‘Mr Sex’; would walk past at ten past eight precisely, and wave like we were supposed to give a shit.
Now, this might seem a little bitter; but all popular people are … dicks. Yes. And then when they reach the age of forty they’ll have sagging skin and … egos, and then we, the nerdy-speccy unpopular idiots will have our revenge ahahahahahahahaha.
… okay, that definitely seemed more than a little deranged and bitter. It’s also somewhat beside the point. So that’s kind of it for now.

The House was noisy. I suppose, it hadn’t gathered in two months. There was a lot of catchup to do. One guy from the Labour party had brought in McDonalds. He had a lot of ketchup to do. Geddit? Not funny? Rude.

Now, look. I’ve been told some absolutely massive lies in my life. You can be anything you want to be … you’ll fit into Parliament just fine … and that Dad would be back soon. That’s probably my top 3 in order. Or maybe reverse order.
A new job is always hard, but showing up to Parliament on the first day and expecting they will at least acknowledge that you *are* an MP, and instead having your ideas ridiculed and hair ruffled kind of stings. My hair was ruffled more than once. I mean how insensitive are some people? I say this as a guy whose gut response to the statement ‘I love you’ when said by almost anyone is to say ‘ew go away’.

So when I say there was a politician eating McDonalds and that nobody else seemed to pay him any mind, it’s out of sheer bitterness (again) because I couldn’t get through my packed sandwiches without at least four MP’s asking about my mum and whether or not she’d made them (or was single). But I tell you the thing that really grinds my gears. The Leader of the Opposition sounds exactly like how my over-dramatised and bitter impersonation of him would be. Basically he’s the kind of guy that has ego and just *gets* women. Possibly after a bank transfer. Seems to have that drive that 'nice guys' have that makes them shoot up sorority houses due to a belief that they should be getting dates and are not. I don’t have that and I have the inferiority complexes to prove it. Today’s gonna be hell.

“Daniel Lewis, stand-in MP for Mount Roskill.” The Speaker always felt the need to say a politician’s name before they spoke.
“If I can address the Leader of the Opposition, relating to his Member’s Bill …”
“No you may not,” the Leader of the Opposition interjected. Apparently his name was Richard. How fitting.
“I feel that the Bill will disadvantage certain MP’s more than others, and that the House should at least consider …”
“But I won’t be disadvantaged, so why should I care.”
“But …” Sometimes stupidity is so palpable you can’t fight it. His logic, although fundamentally flawed, was actually somewhat sound. So I had to make him care. And the Speaker of the House stepped in.
“Would the Leader of the Opposition kindly stop being a monumental twat.”
“Your mum’s got a monumental twat.” This earned guffaws and giggles from the Brony and Crony side of the House.

[This was relayed to me by Jerry while I composed this post. And by that I mean he opened a window and screamed out what had happened while I looked at him in shock and horror].

Raj’s phone rang.
“What fresh hell is this.” Raj answered the phone in an extremely flat manner, and the person he was speaking to didn’t quite know how to deal with it. Some time later he put the phone down by angrily and dramatically pressing the ‘end call’ button. Replacement to the lost art of slamming a phone down after a conversation.
“It sounds like Daniel’s getting his arse kicked in Parliament. Is there anything we can do to help?” Simran always focussed on others first, her second.
“Damn Daniel – ” Hassan tried to be funny and got hit with a textbook as a result.
Raj stepped in, and answered Simran’s original question. “Not exactly at the moment. But what we could do is send him a bit of encouragement. They’re debating the sketchy as fuck Bill, right?” Raj continued to talk for two minutes. By the end, everybody was on board and listening.
“I do have a question though, Simran,” Raj wondered out loud. “That night when all of this started, were you even drunk?”
“Oh nah, I stopped drinking a few years ago. Turns out I’m allergic; break out head to toe in acting like a fuckwit – whaddaya-mean-I-can’t-piss-here-in-this-cactus; that sort of thing.” She turned towards him with a dramatic hair flick.
“Ah. So you could’ve stopped us.”
“Tried, and I thought I had because I’d tied Daisy to a column heater, but it turns out she’d got away.”
“So you want this set of mistakes to be fixed?”
“Or at least made to be … not mistakes.”
“So could you type up a letter for me. Daniel’s gonna need step-by-step instructions. And put it on letterhead paper. He has to trust me but I can’t tell him that directly.”

“So that’s why we can’t pass the Bill,” the fuckface was saying.
One of my assistants rushed into the room and handed me a piece of paper then left. I read it without speaking, got up and went to the bathroom. The paper had been a relatively long letter from Raj. But the most prominent word in large letters at the top of the page was ‘FILIBUSTER’.
“Mr Speaker, I wish to speak on this issue.” Had to be done, but I dunnawannadoooiiitttttt.
“Will the MP yield his time?”
“Noooooooooooo, I will not. You’ll have to drag me outta here – don’t you fucking dare, Richard.” A slight pause, then I continued; “although please could someone else speak on this issue?” The this-isn’t-a-good-idea part of my brain took over.
“Oh yeah?” The other guy taunted, “and who’s gonna speak for the two hours?”
Nobody stood up for ten seconds. There was total silence. Could’ve heard a pin drop. In fact, I think I did hear that.
Not entirely sure what was happening or what I was doing.
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnneeeee. I’ll doooo it.
But my legs seemed to and I found myself standing up.
Continuing the trend of normally-thoroughly-attached body parts ceding authority and declaring independence, my mouth started speaking.
“Uh – Uh I will.”
The rest of the House turned to me. I had everyone’s attention now. I couldn’t hide as the guy who struggled to fit in with teenagers even though I was one.
My outburst had suddenly got my own attention; which it sometimes does happen that I lose it). I had to construct a two hour speech in ten seconds. Sorry, I meant improvise.
Stuff up, and I’d let the whole party down.

Chapter 16: The House Speaker

A CCTV feed sat open on a laptop, and it glitched every so often, and looked set to die before the end of this sentence. But, somehow, it pulled through. Not that the people watching it missed anything. The CCTV stream was of parliamentary debate, and the people watching were … anxious. Daniel had proposed a filibuster; and none of the observing analysts were sure he could do it. Because they all knew him.
Okay, fine. It was us. The whole team sat around one tiny laptop screen. Surely, the filibuster would be compelling viewing. Surely? After all, politics was ‘sport for nerds’. There’d probably be a YouTube channel somewhere that was live-streaming a commentary alongside the original video. The full sporting experience, except without the scoreboards and random fistfights. So not really a sporting experience at all. Daniel had started speaking five minutes ago, and a kindly old woman MP was asking a question. He wasn’t even in the chamber anymore, he’d ducked off to the bathroom to prepare. Speak for two hours (unless, as has already happened, someone stops the flow of monologue to ask a question). Can’t lean against anything or eat or stop talking for the two hours. I’m absolutely sure he’s not gonna make it to the end.
He came back and answered the question with a wave of his hand telling the woman to sit down, then he said; “I’m sure you don’t need me to explain how changing the balance of power in this Parliament, and our Democracy as a whole will affect the world? Well too fucking bad because I have two hours …” And he was off (by which I of course mean he stopped leaning against his desk).

While Daniel talked about power, corruption and how plugging an SD card into the mains would corrupt it and probably blow it up, we as a team had to research facts and factoids for him to use so that his assistants could hold up paper as cue cards.
“All the good ones are taken and all the single ones are no good.” Simran seemed contemplative.
“Nonsense,” Raj yelled across the room while he attempted to juggle three mandarins, failed; then ended up on the floor along with inexplicable duck feathers.
“… yeah.”
There was an electronic buzzing sound from the CCTV stream, followed by Daniel, without breaking his stride or flow, commenting “this isn’t Operation!”
“It absolutely is,” came the reply. “Strike one, you touched the desk.”
“Only for a second, though.”
“That’s how Operation works. Anyway, you were saying …”

[This is an extract from the monologue Daniel gave for two hours, it might give some form of context].
Neh neh neh neh neh. [This was said in a very mocking manner while making the associated hand gestures at Richard. There was a silence for a minute]. My mother’s very proud of me.
The world’s run on power. And I don’t just mean the sort running through the mains that the Prime Minister is plugged into to charge when he’s switched off in the evenings; I mean the sort of power arising from political and social circumstances. I think the idea with democracy is that everyone has a say (and there’s certainly merit to that argument – I mean the Legalise Cannabis Party is a legitimate thing). But the reality is that the power in a democracy rests with the people in control, and that seems logical. There are certain people who argue that we of the Don’t Stop The Party shouldn’t be in office; I mean I’m now on a working group to help establish an independent sustainability leadership group. I haven’t a sodding clue what I’m meant to be doing…
Anyway, this Bill will over-privilege the already privileged and disadvantage the disadvantaged, and can you see how fair that is? Look at the world we live in. How are we meant to fix all the problems created for us by past generations when those same generations continue to hold positions of power and make decisions that are to our detriment; and these people fail to acknowledge there are real, human victims. Not just us, any disadvantaged group that wouldn’t have the resources to deal with sudden changes. If these things are problems for us now, and democratically elected parties are controlled by those people who pay for them; then can you see how this just perpetuates all the current issues of the world in the interest of … earning more interest. It doesn’t help that even in this country there’s no law that is absolutely locked in; which in some ways is a good thing but does mean there is a lack of security and predictability of the law. This further skews power to the powerful and just exemplifies all the problems I have with this bill …

Our on-off method of supplying Daniel with facts had got him to the last thirty minutes, and he looked tired. I mean the most tired that I’ve ever seen a human being that was still upright and making sense. You could see the ‘nobody else is gonna fucking do this’ in his face, body language and tone. Even though the reedy speakers didn’t do his voice any favours.

Luke and Catherine had gone for a coffee run, while Simran worked on the closing remarks that we’d send through just at the last minute. Everyone was nearing a caffeine-induced crash, and if Catherine and Luke weren’t quick …

[This conversation was interesting enough that Luke insist I put it in].
“So you got all the orders for coffee?”
“In order, yeah.”
“Daniel’s done really well to speak for so long, I think.”
“Yeah, but we should speed up. Don’t want them to be kept waiting.”
“I have thought of some jokes he might’ve been able to do …”
“… yes? Am I going to hate these?”
“… maaaaaaybbeeeee. Anyway, I was thinking if he wanted to cut down his carbon footprint, he should stop stepping on pencils.”
“No that was shit, I’m going.”
“Aww, please stay. You know something that really gets me; people that do something brilliant but genuinely don’t see that they are brilliant, that just makes me really sad.”
“And you think Daniel’s a bit like that?”
“I think we all are a bit. But I feel like Daniel’s too ready to give the team credit and not prepared to take it when he can.”
“Aaaand we’ve arrived. You pay the man, and I’ll take the coffee.”
“Why am I paying?”
“Isn’t that the rule for outings?”

“… and the next person that interrupts and tells me to sit down, or stop talking, or did I want a biscuit – there’s a good boy; they can ram their overprivileged and power-driven opinions up their asses. And then fight me. Maybe some of the residual current might shock them into doing something useful. And it might mean I can win the fight.”
“Do you want to fight?” Richard had been dormant for two hours and wasn’t used to being quiet for that length of time.
“Sure. Square up.”
“You’re already square, so that makes it easy.”
“Stop that. You have five more minutes,” the speaker intoned. I do literally mean a speaker, because the actual man was out in the carpark, and had wired up a microphone.
I don’t exactly remember what Daniel said in those five minutes because I was too busy waiting for the assistant to show up with the associated burn we’d written as a closing remark. This had only just happened, and Daniel was gearing up to it when the CCTV crapped out.”
“Fucking technology.” I lashed out at the floor, and absolutely nothing happened.
“That’s like a Skype call with your girlfriend, right? You still see her?” Paul cut in.
“No, we meet up for real, and yes; I do still see her. In fact she’s around the corner.”
Paul looked around the corner and screamed in an over-dramatic way.
We wouldn’t get to Feel The Burn (that had been the mic-drop at the end of the speech – or the basic gist anyway). The feed came back due to my outburst. Just in time to see Daniel falter. Fall at the last hurdle. He used up his last strike, then somehow there was a blur of activity in which the speaker called a vote on the Power Bill and cast it with the camera recording it to be counted later, after the Speaker had extracted himself from his car. Daniel stood in shock as one of the older MP’s slowly got up and ruffled his hair. So. Close.
Paul, our resident ‘techie’ looked at the feed to try and see if there was a way the problem could be fixed, or if the footage of the last minute had been sped up. It hadn’t, they were just that efficient. The kind of efficiency that Daniel would normally kill for.

Chapter 17: Owning Land

Let’s be clear, I didn’t go into work for this. Didn’t have to, it was all over the news. I could watch the world fall apart while sitting in my pyjamas eating cereal. I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed news of the oncoming apocalypse more. The vote returned at 65-55 in favour of progressing the Bill. It would go to a Select Committee and the public would be able to submit reasons on why they thought it was wrong (although honestly they needn’t bother, everyone who’s ever read it knows it’s wrong, but the way in which it’s wrong benefits some people while disadvantaging others. I could see Daniel beside himself with shock (yes, so shocked that he asexually reproduced himself). Daisy would be speechless too, if she were awake (although to be fair she was speechless while asleep). Roll on the end of the world …

A seagull swooped down and grabbed a small fish out of a lake. Flew away, for about a minute, then … something. To the untrained eye, it might well have looked like the bird stalled. Straight down and … splash … into the lake. It would float on the top of the water.
A boy, squinting against the brightness of the morning sun, looked out from a collection of wooden huts arranged around a larger meeting hut. He saw the bird lying in the water of the lake but knew not to fetch it in. They’d stopped being able to use the lake for anything about a year ago. Two of the village elders had to get jobs just to buy water. Selling water, ironically.
The boy rushed to the meeting hut. He’d had enough.
“Excuse me, you do know that you could … sue?”
The elder looked up; he’d known the kid all his life and the use of unfamiliar language by this specific child wasn’t especially uncommon to him.
“Who is this … Sue?”

“It’s not even like we have much of a say in Parliament anymore. Would it be such a crime if we just gave up? Daisy, you’d know what to do now.”
She didn’t respond. Of course not, she was in a fucking coma.
Jerry entered the ward with two coffees.
“One for Sir, and one for Madam.” He bowed with the coffee still in his hand before passing it off to Daniel and placing his own down on a rolling table by Daisy’s bedside. Depth perception slightly let him down, and he spent the next five minutes wiping up coffee from the floor.
“Got that about right.” Daniel showed no reaction. “We’re about done here, should we go?” They left the room and walked slowly through the whitewashed maze of the hospital.
There was a newspaper stand, where Daniel could make out a front-page headline about some trial about corporate negligence.
“Huh, what have the corporations done now,” he mused.
“No, Daniel; they’ve said that politicians that passed the Bill are also liable.”
“Oh. Shit.” Daniel hurried off, leaving Jerry to follow.

I think I’ve discovered my least favourite way to drive to work. Well, ride. Got stuff thrown at me by pedestrians and I’m now wearing a cream pie (don’t you fucking dare) for a hat. Daniel wasn’t in but Simran had leapt straight into happy-helper mode, so there was a coffee waiting and the shower had been turned on for me. I can only imagine she’d known to do this from … personal experience. I dried off and sat down, then Catherine stood up to speak.
“Hassan, if you make stupid comments in this, I will hurt you.”
“What? Me? Never!”
“Fine. So. They don’t seem to like us much.”
“You don’t say.”
“Neither will you if you interrupt again. Now, the problem with the media is that it is … the media. They just run with things, there won’t be much we can do today to stave off the negative attention, so I reckon we shouldn’t even bother.”
“You mean just get a blanket and read?” Raj’s ideal day at the office.
“Basically, yeah.”
Daniel burst through the door “guys, we need to get on the phone to some lawyers,” he said breathlessly.
“How old was she this time?” Raj didn’t even look up.
“No, no, no. Come on, this is serious. There’s a negligence case, and the plaintiffs are saying we’re partly liable. We’ll probably have to help gather evidence or something. So, get on the phone to the lawyers. Now.”
“And either way, this is a worse public relations nightmare than when I dreamed I got caught rubbing myself against a statue”.
“You’ve dreamed that?”
“… no?”
“Simran, were you still selling your old Surface RT?"
“What use would you have for a Surface RT?”
“As a paving brick.”
That did seem odd – why’d he bring it up? Oh well, thought for another day.

I could have sworn I heard three gunshots. I would have been wrong and charged with perjury; but I could have done it. A strangely apt metaphor because I was in a courtroom.
A courtroom isn’t a good place to fall asleep. Especially if it’s your trial and you’re guilty. But, there’s nothing like a judge’s gavel for waking you up again.

One of the lawyers was speaking; “And there was a duty of care to the village because you would think they could use the water, and they’re proximate to the damage so that they were directly affected by it.” Our side, I’m pretty sure.
“But the company wouldn’t have been able to forsee damage on this level that would affect the village. Surely they’d just get a new water supply?”
“Where? The international market? These people aren’t exactly swimming in money…”
“They may as well be after we fix up the lake. And how are they paying you?”
“They’re not, I’m pro-bono.”
“I think he’s a pretentious twat, personally.”
“Rich coming from a lawyer.”
“Yes I am rich.”
“Gentlemen, get to the point please.” The judge had been happy to sit and listen to the banter, but enough was enough.
“And the duty of care – ”
“If there is one.”
“ – if there is one, was breached when the defendant let the lake be contaminated with chemicals.”
“And this is our responsibility to clear up?”
“Well, who else would be responsible? You’re a corporation working in the global environment. Carry on this way and there won’t be much environment left. That’s like saying ‘my cat doesn’t seem to mind sleeping against a wall, so I don’t see what the homeless are on about’.”

The court case went like that for the rest of the day, as Jerry and Catherine made their way to the village. We weren’t really needed in court today; it would be when session resumed tomorrow that we’d make our case. Jerry had the bright idea to get a taxi out to the village to try and make peace in the morning. Catherine went with him and they set off straight away. They arrived at the village just after midnight and slept in their transport. An expensive and uncomfortable motel, I’m sure. I assume there was no funny business, except if Jerry tried to make Catherine laugh.

The next morning, Daniel phoned out to Jerry that press were on their way to watch the negotiations or grovelling take place. I only know directly what Daniel’s last line was, the rest of this I saw on the news.
“There are rumblings that the judge will find there’s no duty of care.” That finished the phone call to Jerry as he arrived at the village.
But it seemed to be too late as one particularly gruff native moved a spear so that it blocked his exit path.
So bewildered by this, he failed to notice the other four doing the same on the other sides of his body (which is a pentagonal shape so anyone keeping count …).
“What? What’s going on?” Spinning around frantically in his hastily constructed cage. If he tried to break it, the natives would try and break him. They’d probably be more successful.
News cameras flashed, as Catherine started writing down things on a clipboard. She didn’t look happy. Jerry thought he was deader than a deapan deadperson. That last word might be made up.

Chapter 18: Owning Up

“Problem question; so there’s this guy and his firm makes paper. And, over time, this firm gets carried away. Eventually, chemicals from the factory found their way into a lake. Everything in the lake was poisoned, and it got so bad that anything that even touched the lake was contaminated. Question; is the firm liable for negligence?”
“You left out,” countered Jake McMurphy; prosecution, “that there was a village nearby that had to stop using the water because it was tainted. The question then becomes ‘does the corporation have a duty of care to the village it has affected?”

“Excuse me, what the hell is happening?” Jerry raised an arm, ready to just knock down the hastily made barrier.
“I would stop, if I were you.” He heard a voice from behind, then turned. There was a flash, bright but a small dot, like a camera. In fact, it was. “You’re on the world stage right now. Do that and you will most certainly lose political capital your political party has accrued. You have to stay put, at least for now.” Or at least that’s what Jerry thought he heard. The guy’s English wasn’t that good, but Jerry obeyed. They were right anyway, the political climate had … he wouldn’t say ‘gone up shit creek’, because in the context that might have been insensitive. But it had. The sun was setting over the lake, and but for the noxious green fumes rising off the surface of the water, it might have been a beautiful sight. It looked like Jerry would be trapped here overnight, and with no way to contact the team, they wouldn’t know he hadn’t made their case.
A bright flash made Jerry sigh with relief. Thank God. A camera. They’d be able to see and then they’d know where he was – oh shit. Oh shit ohshitshitshit. This was bad. Very very bad. As if the party’s reputation wasn’t already in shreds.
“But didn’t they hear about the filibuster?” He said quietly to nobody in particular. Obviously they hadn’t.
“Tea?” One of the Maori villagers approached Jerry, with an elder watching in the distance. “So sorry about this. Just making a point, really..”
“You must be the one that said the village could sue.”
“How’d you work that out?”
“Your English is pretty good and you know how to make tea. So you’ve probably lived on your own at Uni – which now I say it out loud is a bit of a leap.”
“If there’s any thing I can do …”
“Let me go?”
“Except that. Can’t help you there, I’m sorry.”
Other than being the single remaining reason why Jerry was still trapped, the kid seemed nice. Everyone here wasn’t too bad, except for the whole you’ve-messed-up-our-lifestyle thing. Which was a fairly large deal, now he thought about it.

“The trial’s going as well as expected. Have you heard from Jerry?”
“Yeah, he’s on the news. Apparently the village people –”
“Y – M C A.” Hassan yelled from the sidelines before the judge told him to shut up.
“ – didn’t like the arrival, so they trapped him with some of their weapons.”
“Oh my God, this is so bad.”
Then their lawyer burst out of the courtroom after he’d been updated by his legal staff.
“If they can prove there is no duty of care, we’re screwed. But they’re not doing anything else this evening and we’ll have the night to prepare a rebuttal.”
“And we’ll have the night to fix our mess.”
“You and me both, brother.”
“Are we related?”
“No that’s not what I – ”
“I know.”

The trial wrapped up early and everyone went home. They’d all be back tomorrow, it’s not like this was anything nearing ‘over’. While the legal team had to firm up their case, the political team had to firm up their resolve. Basically this involved sitting around a table and figuring out how to save Jerry. At one in the morning, we had a solution.

Michael, the defense lawyer, got a phone call just after midnight and he let Daniel know he was going to a meeting with the other lawyer in the morning to try and sort out the whole messy business. I offered to help by attending the meeting and writing notes if that was needed, and Michael said it was. So I guess I’d better get some sleep.

“We know how this case is going to go now.”
“Yes, you have a duty of care and there was harm caused. You’re going to be found guilty. So the question is, how much do you want to pay us?”
“Let’s be absolutely clear – you say harm was caused. How?”
“They lost the use of their lake and water supply because of pollution, and this caused them harm because they had to find a non-poisonous source of water. I think someone did get sick, but they recovered.”
“And would it be reasonable to assume we have a duty of care and sue us?”
“Stop that. You’re guilty. Admit what you fucking did wrong, pay them some money and then we can all fucking go home. There’s a kid trapped out there because of us. Because of you. So get your head out of your ass and claim some social responsibility for a change. You fucked up the lake. It should be your prerogative to fix it.”
“Fine. I’ll offer you a hundred million to fix it –”
I stopped listening. Zoned out in fact.
Admit what you fucking did wrong, pay them some money and then we can all go home.

I spoke to Daniel the following morning. We needed to apologise to the village and pay them reparations as well, they’d probably let Jerry go after that. We couldn’t take the high ground. Fuck, we’d tried, and it hadn’t worked. They couldn’t be reasoned with because all politicians were complicit. Or at least that’s what they thought. Daniel arranged to make a statement in the afternoon, as soon as someone could get out to the village.

Sat on a pier by the ocean, waiting for Raj, like we’d agreed. It was just coffee. Just … hang on. That guy in the distance … that’s the other side’s lawyer, isn’t it? What’s he doing here?
I walked across to talk to him, would have been rude not to, and we stayed there for ten minutes or so. He must have got slightly the wrong message, and he seemed to be making a move but then Raj showed up, so I excused myself. Thank God. Didn’t like having to turn guys down. Why couldn’t they just be … nice? Or was that a foreign concept? The idea of just being a decent person without the expectation of sex. I mean, seriously what the fuck (if you’ll pardon the pun).
Raj and I went to get coffees, then didn’t go back to the same spot. He must’ve seen that the lawyer’s interest had freaked me out. Funny he’d notice something like that. Normally he’s totally clueless. Certainly he’d make a terrible detective. Maybe a slightly better boyfriend …
We chatted for an hour or so. I kind of knew Raj, but we hadn’t had the time to chat outside of the office much. There hadn’t been much out-of-the-office time.
“Wanna be friends with benefits?”
“Benefits like me getting you milkshakes?”
“Sure.” So that wasn’t gonna get me anywhere. Not a huge problem, just a long term … project.
But wait. What if I could …
He walked me back to my bus stop, like a gentleman. The lawyer, called Michael if you remember – which I hadn’t at the time; was waiting there (bit creepy). He asked me out, and I said yes. Then gave him a fake number. All was going according to plan. Now I just had to not get kidnapped on the way home. Raj must’ve remembered from before, because he got on the bus with me even though it was heading in completely the wrong direction. We never discussed that, though. There would have been no point.

Chapter 19: Get Out

Dodgy screens pissed me off. I’d actually hit this one with a hammer, then a chair. Realistically, that should have been the other way around. Oh well. It sputtered and flickered to life with a hum. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d do. I’d have to take the screen after I left – someone would probably get shocked.

The screen was showing a version of The Amazing Race with pensioners. I would think that meant they raced to the top of a high rise apartment block or something. But no, apparently there was this 85-year-old woman in full outdoors gear trekking up a mountain. Total badass. Hopefully she’d win. There was a slightly younger man keeping pace with her and holding a water bottle. Emasculating?

Now, let’s pause for a bit. You’ve probably noticed a different style to the last time I spoke. See, I’m distracting myself from a verdict from the Governor-General. Fuckface has pushed a Bill through Parliament, you see, and even though this has made the progression more difficult, like when anything is pushed somewhere that it doesn’t belong and is not supposed to be; but push he did, and so we’re waiting anxiously for the foreign object to be extracted from where it shouldn’t have got to. Which sounds like an immigration metaphor.
I always seem to get the ‘can’t sit still’ stories. Social media’s an absolute gift in situations like this, I tell ya.

This next bit played out like a news story, mostly because it became one. You see, the voting session on the Bill that all the MP’s colloquially refer to as the ‘Power Bill’ was tomorrow, and the House assembled to make sure the Bill was up to scratch before voting on it would begin.

Actually hang on, lemme start that again. *Ruffles imaginary coat and takes out a script, then does a newsreader impression*.

We begin with breaking news, tonight as Parliament rushes to prepare for a vote on whether or not to change our democratic position. I would personally have thought they could see how ridiculous and short-sighted this would seem but hey-ho worse things have happened and we’ll all be fine and Hitler happened in Europe. Right? But I digress. The debate progressed relatively smoothly until the halfway mark, when a back-bench MP suggested dropping the Bill on its head, to which the Leader of the Opposition, Richard Johnson, insinuated his challenger had been dropped on his head when he were a baby. The back-bencher had no comment for this, presumably because a fellow member of his party had turned the microphone off. Probably for the best, I can only imagine the arguments. And indeed, I will do that.

Well, that was fun. Parliament reached a decision by which there would be a month to campaign for either side of the vote, and an opinion poll of the public would determine Parliament’s position on the Bill. Richard Johnson was seen in the House jumping up and down for joy, and gleefully posting memes on the internet. Upon spying an MP from the other side using his phone, however, he was less pleased. “Young people always on social media,” sneered the fifty-year-old man while he finished uploading another meme. When asked by a co-worker how he’d prepared hi profile on these sites, Johnson was overheard saying “I always say I’m 25. It’s not like they can check.” Fancy misrepresenting yourself on the internet.

It turns out people don’t actually care what experts have to say, as long as the alternative is funny. Or more interesting. The whole Parliament had to defend or promote the Power Bill and it would be passed in to law at the end of the week if there was no serious objections from key players (people who stand around fiddling with their keys).
This week was spent with varying politicians doing interviews and news pieces and tiptoeing and backtracking; and at least one instance of a fumbled sentence that seemed to ‘crash’ a politician into bouts of ‘uh, no, uh, I, uh um ah, you see; what I meant was …’
The week finished after the kind of long, slow descent into madness that only patrons of a broken rollercoaster will understand. Parliament passed the Bill despite much protest from MPs and protesters (who’d have thought …).
And then the Bill fell at the last hurdle.
The Governor-General made like Gandalf and decided the Bill couldn’t be passed (that wasn’t the exact wording although I can’t for the minute remember what it was). He said the Bill was unconstitutional, that if this Bill were to be allowed to be passed there would be a serious threat to the democratic status of the country. He questioned the Parliament as a whole that allowed this bill to pass. Well, that’s what I was told. The report was well over a hundred pages; and I didn’t read it. He dissolved Parliament and called a fresh election. In the Parliamentary session when the Bill was read out and dismissed, Richard took exception to this and the parliamentary record descended into a ‘your mum’ fight between him and Daniel, with the following actual extract contained after the Speaker got annoyed with the banter; RICHARD: Your momma’s so fat she’s both a front bencher and a back bencher. SPEAKER: Both of your mothers are so fat that when I shout ‘order’ they both yell ‘two kebabs and a cheeseburger’.

As you can probably imagine, we saw some of this through the CCTV feed, but not all; due to sheer unreliability.
“Guys.” Paul was unusually downbeat after one section of the CCTV recording, “we should actually start looking for other jobs, shouldn’t we?”
“I think that’s wise.” Mike, who’d begun to care about the team a lot more.
“But what would we do? Go back to Uni and finish our degrees?”
“That’s certainly the easy option …” Catherine butted in.
After a half hour of this back and forth, the meeting broke up until Catherine and I were the only people left at the table. I think there was some sniggering from the guys as they left.
There was silence for a minute, then; “what?” Catherine looked up at me. Well, through. To be fair the glare felt like a laser beam. Then she looked back down.
“… nothing …” I replied while playing Angry Birds on my phone (which is ironic, now that I think of it).
“Luke – ” Catherine started to say, as I collected my stuff and left the room, leaving her sitting on her own. I hadn’t really heard until after the door had closed and I didn’t turn around because I would most certainly have smacked into the wall.

Daisy, I don’t know what to do. Pretty much every week this was one of us sitting here. Daniel did it most of the time, I think he really missed her. But he wasn’t available, and I had bigger issues to sort out. Boy troubles, in fact. Or buoy as we’re trying to stay afloat. And the fact that I didn’t have a job anymore. Those should almost definitely been around the other way. My approach to both issues actually is to close my eyes and pretend it’s not happening … my apologies once again to Mr and Mrs Smith who broke my fall.

“What would you say to that? You know, if you were awake?” I said to the unconscious woman.

Watching the government websites was sometimes therapeutic, in the least therapeutic way imaginable. But today it was a mess. The approval ratings for the party, and the Government as a whole dropped like a stone. The Vote of No Confidence motion had been filed, even though this wasn’t necessary because the Governor-General had already disbanded the Parliament. Did we have any street cred as a global entity anymore? I would suspect not, given that we let an extremely dodgy Bill get very far in Parliament. Now we’d have to feel the consequences, and I do literally mean *us*. Because we sure-as-shit would lose our jobs.

I hadn’t really thought of this as a viable career, as such. But now I’d got hold of it, it’d be hard to let go. I sat on the roof next to the water tank (there used to be two, but Hassan had taken one out and replaced it with a sheltered bean bag. The showers on floors 3-10 of our office block didn’t work, but they weren’t the floors we were on so apparently who cares). Luke was already up there, on this particular occasion, when I arrived. We sat together (on the bean bag, obviously. Also it was quite large).
“Thinking about a plan B?”
“And C, and D, and E.”
“That many, huh? Wow.”
We sat in silence for a while. I think he knew that was what I wanted. Then …
“Why are you up here? Thinking about your options too?”
“Sort of, but I’m freaking out about how to fix this if we still can.”
“Freaking out? You seem put-together.”
“So would a lego construction beam until you stepped on it.”
“Am I … not allowed to step on you?”
“As a general rule, yeah, I would think.”
“What are the options you’re considering?”
“Well, anything. I could go back to Uni, or move away or …”
“Oh, right. I suppose you should do whatever you think is best.”
Or you could decide for me. Jeez, you’re clueless.

Facebook helps with boredom and laziness. But, and this was definitely a surprise to me, it’s also a monumental pool for negative energy and the backlash from dissolving parliament was immense and aimed directly at us (which was unfair, I thought. The death threats rained in.

The girls of the office had a group chat on Facebook. Right now it was just me and Simran because Daisy was indisposed. But we still used it every so often, and it had got both of us through long walks home at 2 in the morning (not recommend) and a moderate amount of boy troubles (not recommend). I talked to her about Luke on there as well. And she talked about her lawyer boyfriend. I think his name was Michael. Thought he was a bit of a dick. Seemed the kind of guy that would threaten to publish nudes after a breakup. Mind you, I’d never met the guy. Mustn’t judge. That was his job. Ba dum tss. We’d talked about Raj too, but not so much recently – there seemed little point when she wasn’t actively interested in the guy.

Survey the damage; Simran and Raj were both with the wrong people; ie. not each other. Jerry and Daniel’s coffee dates appeared to have stopped because of pressure from the team (“haaa gay”); or maybe because they don’t wanna get egged by the idiot public, and Daisy was still in a coma. I had stuffed up with Luke. Hugely. At least I think he wasn’t interested; and he no longer respected me as a professional member of the team. Problem. Big.
Some files went into a box. We had to leave our offices; hadn’t been re-elected in the ensuing election. Our offices were bare now; there was a giant fibreglass Grizzly in the middle of the floor – the next firm that will move in after we move out, I think.
Then there was a bleep from my computer and I polevaulted across the office to get back to my desk.
He typed; We need to talk.
I replied, slowly, carefully. ‘Fuck it. Fuck this. Will you go out with me?’

Chapter 21: Four Seconds After A Gunshot

Saturday 10 September 2016: Picking Up The Pieces With a Vacuum That Doesn’t Work

They say sometimes you have to start again from absolute rock bottom. Which is kind of where we were now, and had been for the last month and a half. As far as I know, nobody in the team had done much. Except for Daisy, who’d gone on three holidays and Simran who’d slept around, and around, and around. She’d fallen asleep in a Ferris wheel. Parliament had been reassembled after a shock election, and even though very little had changed, we had still been kicked out [edit: not re-elected]. I suppose it’s like a cat walking around in circles until they’re put outside and away from where they were. I guess …. I think that makes some form of sense. Which is better than me because I still don’t have a job. None of us did, as far as I know. But I hadn’t seen anyone either. Stuck in a room with my feelings. About the whole thing. About Catherine, about Richard, about politics, about the whole team. I missed them, and I’d probably spent long enough wallowing in self-pity and sadness.

Turns out ringing Simran was the best possible thing I could’ve done in the circumstances. I messaged Catherine first but she didn’t reply. Probably something to do with the fact I’d replied ‘cool beans’ to her asking me out. Incorrect response or something. We’d talk about it when we next saw each other in person. All angsty like a teenage drama. I think? It’s possible I’d made a mess, though. This might take more than a well-placed random email and a bunch of flowers. I should try and find out her Uni timetable to try and ambush her. No. Stalker alert. Also I have literally nothing to go on, which is definitely the second most important reason why not to do that. Or bus home on the same route even though she lives in the north and I live in the south. Might give it a try.

Simran had managed to rent a room from the council for an hour and a half, so that we had a venue to meet in. Although, we’d done more influential meetings after having an inordinate amount of alcohol, so I’m not entirely sure why she bothered. The room was large enough that there were double the number of seats around a central boardroom-type table than there were participants in the meeting that used the room. Maybe not efficient, but at least it was aesthetically pleasing. Shush, of course I wasn’t talking about Catherine in this case. Fine, maybe I was.
The meeting started after everyone had been ushered in and Hassan had distributed donuts that had just sort of … shown up.
“First item on the agenda,” Catherine started; looking through relatively trendy reading glasses onto a list she’d written in her immaculate handwriting, “is the thermostat temperature. Wait, no. That can’t be right.”
“Yep, that’s crack on.” Raj liked the office like he liked his women. Hot.
“Not this again. You can’t just put the temperature at thirty-five degrees without consulting anyone.”
“Which is why I’m consulting you about it right now.”
“All right, fine. Do you have a starting figure in mind?”
“Well my ideal figure is --”
“Hourglass, with a positive bank balance,” Paul intercut while scrolling through something on his tablet. Possibly Tumblr.
“Let’s say thirty degrees.” Raj ignored the unwarranted intrusion.
“That’s a loooong time at University,” Simran intercut, jabbing Raj in the ribs.
“Hah hah yeah like how Raj has done all the stage 1 science papers cos he can’t decide his major.” Paul tried to contribute again.
“I just did, just now.”
“Oh?”
“You. You’re a major … pain in the ass.”
“Is that the best you can do?”
“On short notice, yes. Give me time and I’ll do better.”
“That’s what she said,” Hassan launched the insult across the table in a similar manner to a trebuchet flinging a rock; which wasn’t particularly relevant, because the insult was shit.
“Who’d you mean – actually NO.”
“Twenty-five.” Catherine probably had noticed all of this, and decided to ignore it.
“Twenty-nine.”
Catherine wrote a number down on a piece of paper and slid it across the table. Raj picked it up, looked at it as if it were a card and this was poker, then placed it face-down on the table and flicked it back across. It would then flip back over because of the misplaced force, so why he’d bothered to place it face-down so carefully, I’ll never know.
Eventually they settled on twenty-seven and a half. Catherine taped the knob on the thermostat, ending any future discussion on the matter.

The meeting moved on to discussing actual business.
“We need to convince them that, somehow, Richard doesn’t deserve to be in office.” Sometimes Hassan had good idea, but generally only the beginning bit.
“How exactly do you intend to do that?” Simran, intrigued. Also she’d never disrespected anyone in her life.
“I’m not sure yet. Probably leak a story to the news or something. Make some shit up. For politicians that’s good enough. Once people think something about a politician … that’s generally it.”
“Unless we get it wrong, and what we want people to think is actually also what they choose to believe.”
“But we want people to believe that Richard’s a horrible man that has no moral compass or compassion.”
“But he doesn’t seem that bad … we met the guy, once.” Daisy spoke up.
“That’s … the … point.” Hassan thumped the table after each word.
We didn’t know this at the time, but it was being recorded and transmitted through a receiver stuck under the desk. To Richard.

He showed up later on, mid-way through drafting the story we’d anonymously tip to the Herald (not that people would believe it ... the Herald’s a joke nowadays).
He sat down, calm as an electrocuted spaghetti.
“You … need to stop drafting the story.” He could barely control his rage. Pity, anger made him look unattractive. He should smile more. Although maybe not. He would probably look like one of the sharks from Finding Nemo, and he didn’t have enough hair left to pull that look off.
“What story? I don’t even …” Raj looked down, then leant down to unplug a laptop from the wall. Or that’s what it was supposed to look like. He was actually looking under the desk and he saw the bug straight away. It was next to the corpse of a fly.
Daniel had continued speaking; “We were in politics … once. But in the year we were in power, how much work did we actually get done?”
Richard laughed. “You got no work done, and I made sure of it. You’re kids, you know nothing about life at all. You don’t know what you want or what it could mean if you do what you’re planning. You don’t know what real work is. You’re unemployed. On social media. Wasting time because you have nothing else to fill it with.”
“You know I’ve always thought you could understand a lot more about a person if you interpret everything hey say as a self-description,” Daisy cut in from the other room. “and I suggest you leave. We have a story to publish.”
“All right, fine, fine, I’ll go. Wouldn’t want to be beaten up by a girl,” he smirked. ”But seriously, what have you done?”
“We might have possibly decreased the cost of catering for Wellington City Council … for about a day and a half.”
“So that’s why we’ve started up a two dollar shop.” What? We hadn’t done that?
“More efficient way of achieving change in the world.” Ah. Shit joke.
“And then making sure that other people receive it. Probably by handing it over.” Joke carried on for too long, no longer funny.
“Politics doesn’t necessarily have a ‘right’ answer and a ‘wrong’ answer. Sometimes there’s a bad answer and a worse answer, and you just have to pick. If you’re even allowed a choice …” Hassan had dived into the deep end of a metaphorical pool.

The meeting carried on and we finalised the story. Figured out some details, sent it off. That was phase one. Richard wouldn’t be back. He was an old man; bark but no bite because all his original teeth had fallen out. Daniel and Daisy went off to discuss the plans for re-entry (which, now I think about it; could have been a euphemism). Closed door meeting, etc. I would say they were discussing how to use the story to maximum advantage now they’d sent it off.
We stayed in the main meeting room and passed the time by playing hot potato with an alarm clock. No, seriously.
I got some note paper out and wrote Catherine a note. She’d find it … lying around, somewhere *subtly* (placed, but looking like it wasn’t). ‘We need to talk’, it said. Not aimed at you, I’m already talking to you in this medium. Tarot cards. Ba dum tss.
The games moved on so that after an hour had passed we were playing Never Have I Ever, which we’d never done before.
“Never have I ever … randomly been on social media at 3 in the morning.” Jerry addressed the question to the room at large, but this was primarily aimed at Raj; who it was well-documented did this. Raj drank, as expected.
“What? You didn’t think I’d duck out of my responsibility as a member of the team, did you?”
“I dunno, I’ll message you about it.”
“Do it in the early morning. I’ll be on then.”

Then someone asked for coffee, I dunno who it was. I went, because I quite like taking walks by myself. I’d be half an hour or so. Half an hour where I didn’t have to worry about the useless idiots who had, by this time, taken to prank calling politicians. Midway through trying to sell the Minister for Climate Change a solar panel, Paul made a realisation; and in following calls, the team would badmouth Richard to the respective (and, in many cases, respectable …) politicians, in an attempt to gain political leverage.
Just before I left, I put the note I’d made for Catherine in her desk, just as Daniel and Daisy opened the office door at the conclusion of their meeting.
Paul and Raj were midway through planning their call to the Prime Minister.
“You have to go ‘while human equals true’ when talking to the PM,” Raj was explaining. “He’s a machine so he doesn’t understand …”
“What’s this?” Daniel asked in a bemused fashion, which was then followed by an intense and excited minute where you couldn’t hear anything that was being said because of three competing explanations from Hassan, Raj and Paul.
“Ah. Right.” Daniel looked worried. “You see, we’d kind of cooked up a plan not to need the story, and we’d make a deal to stop it being published. But obviously we can’t do that now.”
“Right, I’m off to get coffee. See ya.” Holy crap, the shit will hit the fan now.
“Nah, me, Jerry and Raj’ll go. You always go to get coffee … just before something really bad happens.”
They moved so fast they were out the door before I’d had time to object. In fact, the door nearly slammed, but luckily my nose got in the way.

The meeting had finished and we’d all been dismissed to go home for the week. Not because it was the weekend, but because the plan required Daisy and Daniel to work on it and nobody else (or that’s what they told me).

The guy sitting behind me had a moustache and an old-looking jumper. And a loud voice. A very loud voice.

“Not gonna stand here and talk shit about an old friend. So let me just sit down…”, there was a thump as he sat down. Either that or the seat broke, I didn’t look around.
“Just came out of a council meeting. Not *in* it; out *of* it; jeez man. Yeah, it’s totally gone to shit. Stop talking about the queue for the bathrooms. It was that kid, the one that pretended to be an electrician and a chef and a delegate. Yeah he fucked things up. Stop trying to be clever, it doesn’t suit you; you’re like a tiny little dog going yap yap yap. Clever’s my thing. Hey hey, that was one year in high school, cool it. Anyway, problem is of course, that reforming the power grid is just not something a local government can do. Too much control from the power companies and we rely on their infrastructure anyway. And there’s no reason to do it because there’s a natural monopoly on the power grid – especially when you multiply prices by four and ten. Yeah, that was a shit joke.” There was a lengthy pause, then he picked up speaking again, “the council managed to settle the food poisoning case after a particularly strategic movement … no, not like that … and the questions about security of the Parliament buildings were swept under the rug because they designed new rugs that didn’t allow people to enter because they were made of spears. Then the council couldn’t agree on anything anymore so two opposing factions formed; a moderate faction that tried to maintain the upper hand, and the FRAT party; Far Right Activism Taskforce. Guess which side I’m on,” he leered at his phone’s handset. He stopped, for breath, then carried on; as loud and obnoxious as before.
“I know this is long, you shouldn’t have asked me how my day was. I have to deal with all of this shit. What? That was a month ago? Well, fuck. I have really good long term memory, and really shit short-term, that explains it. Interesting? What’s interesting.”

Then I buzzed the buzzer and stopped at my stop. I left the guy and could hear his loud monotone fade into the distance through the closed door of the bus as it drove away. Should probably tell Daniel what he’d been saying …

[Daniel here. Bored and waiting, basically I wrote this for Luke’s post then emailed it to him in a non-confrontational way that said ‘I’m your flipping boss’. Probably while also performing acrobatics.]

“Is this the way you like your coffee?” Raj handed over the cup and I inspected it.
“I like my coffee like I like my men. Black and with boiling hot water poured over.”
“Ouch, and racist.”
“Only racist if we’re talking about cars. Where should we go to sit?”
Eventually we’d made our way back to the bollards Jerry and I always sat on just outside the main entrance to Parliament.
“Huh, I normally sit here with Jerry.”
“Where’s he now, eh?”
“So, you and Simran …”
“Touche. Now stop that.” I think I won the round, he shut that down so quickly. There might have been something actually there. I might get back to that someday.
[Okay I’ll just hand back over. If this is still included in the message, Luke hasn’t even read it and just copy-pasted it into the blog. Wait … yes. Send. Well, Now.]

I had bussed home for the week, true to what I said I’d do before. You do remember before, don’t you? Or do I just talk white noise to you people? Are there even any of you out there?
I’m sorry. Having an existential crisis onto some paper. Not a good look. Neither is this face, which is why it’s probably best you’re reading words and not actually seeing me speak.

My phone rang, and it was Daniel. He sounded … fake-calm. Like he was holding it together. But for who’s benefit?
“Daniel, what’s been decided back there?”
“We don’t need you to get the press anymore, so don't worry about it next week. There’s another way. You should come back now. And …”
“And?”
“Catherine wants to talk.”
“I thought she might.”
A commotion broke out in the room. Static interrupted the call just for a second and Daniel’s voice became fuzzy so I couldn’t really hear. Something was happening though, that it may have been worth listening to.
From what I could hear, it sounded like someone had come back to the room. At a guess Richard, and nobody wanted him there anymore. Then there was a bang that I could hear unimpeded and the line went dead, but not before I heard Simran yell out “Daniel!”
What the fuck had just happened. Oh my God, what the fuck had just happened.

Saturday 10 September 2016: There Are Some Kinds Of Flashing That Are Oddly Okay

Bright lights and highly competent people yelling at me to get out of the fucking way. Daniel was in shock, and lying on a stretcher. Blood. Everywhere. Richard wasn’t anywhere to be seen, anymore. We’d just kind of let him leave. That tends to happen when he’s just shot one of your best friends.

So, let me fill you in, like one of those colouring books you had as a kid. Richard showed back up and shot Daniel with no warning or anything, just … bang. The ambulance had been surprisingly quick and Raj and I were in it with Daniel, going to the hospital. Daniel was kind of awake … but really out of it and losing a lot of blood. Luke told us later on that he thought Daniel had shot Richard because of the fact that he was unwanted in the meeting and that Simran had yelled out. But no. Other way around. More logical way. Senior politician gets angry about the potential publication of a damning story, shoots the junior. Well, that makes more sense to me, anyhow.

The ride was uncomfortable, but what did you expect me to say? At one point there was a slight problem with Daniel’s oxygen machine and the nurse looked to me (as a young man) like I was supposed to know what I was doing. Without thinking; I said, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” The nurse just looked at me in shock, and I realised what I’d said, then I continued; “oh my God I’m so sorry.”

“Jerry …” Daniel croaked, then lapsed back into unconsciousness. I stayed attentive to him in case he woke up; which he did about five minutes later. “Jerry … this is it, isn’t it?”
“N – No, I’m sure it’s not.”
“I just need to tell you …” Daniel trailed off and passed out for a bit. I was shoved aside (in the nicest possible way, if such a thing exists) by a nurse who applied more bandages and reached into a drawer for defibrillator. By the time she’d got it out, we’d arrived at the hospital.
“I need to tell you the plan … and Jerry; I want you to know – ”
Cut off by the doctors again as they rushed the stretcher he lay on out of the ambulance and into surgery. I’d find out his plan later. He’d tell me. And if he dies … I’ll kill him.

Got to the hospital just after six o’clock in the evening. Felt like later; that ambulance ride had been hell. They took him off to surgery, and left us in a waiting room. The others arrived not long after. Mike had some girl attached to him. I think he introduced her as Steph; but I can’t really remember. Apparently they’d kept in touch from something from before. Weren’t dating. As if that mattered. My best friend was nearly dead so who the fuck cares if yours is the opposite gender?

Not much to do in a hospital waiting room, although surveying the team of ten crammed into the small space and how they responded to each other (and the fact that Luke and Catherine specifically were faced in opposite directions from each other) did pass the time. Paul tried o surreptitiously answer a text withut anyone else seeing. That was odd. Something of note for a later date. Eventually the silence got too much for them, and Catherine cleared her throat.
“Luke, could I have a word, please?”
He wasn’t really willing to move, because Simran had laid across his, Paul’s and Daisy’s laps in lieu of finding a seat. So they just had a discussion where they sat. Not looking at each other. At the same time, they both cut in.
“Luke, I want to –”
“See the thing is, it can’t work. It could never work. People think my self-deprecation is just joking; and even then I’ve earnestly been told to stop doing it by people – but the thing is that I genuinely believe it. So that’s why a relationship would never work. I look too far into the future – short term; we’d probably be mostly fine, but as soon as you look further ahead … you’d get sick of me. I haven’t met anyone that wouldn’t. So I do want us to work – really I do. But it just couldn’t. Not now, anyway. I’m … so sorry.” Luke looked down; I’d never seen the kid so sad before. Catherine just sat there, stunned. Then she slowly got up and hugged him.
“I’m … sorry I asked.”
“… Maybe someday.” I realised Luke was shaking, crying. Wow, this day was an ass-kicker.

Daisy and I were waiting by a reception desk for information on the surgery. Started talking about Parliament and what the atmosphere was like. Daisy had the office for about another week, then her notice period would expire and she’d have to move out.

“Love my office. You never said how great it was!” Such a beacon of positivity.
“Yeah; I thought it was all right. The chairs needed replacing though.”
“Oh yeah, the two; one that folds up as soon as you sit on it, and the other that spins around and around.”
“That’s just the two types of politician. And it only spins around because you’re making it. It’s not magic!”
“Well, I can’t help it, can I?” Joking, still beaming. I forgot where I was when Daisy smiled. It no longer mattered. Especially now. I needed this.
“Has anything else been happening?”
“They let me off to deal with this,” she made a vague gesture and I remembered where I was with a lurch.
“But they like you? They didn’t like Daniel much at all.”
“I think that was because he was unelected. I mean, they don’t ‘like’ me. But they didn’t make me filibuster like Daniel did.”
“You saw it?”
“On the news website. It was beautiful. Especially the wall socket gags.”
“And was there any talk about why he’d done it?”
“The story. He wanted it stopped and didn’t care how. Or that’s what his party said. He wasn’t actually there.”
“It’ll go to the press at the end of the week. I don’t care what he has to say anymore.”
“He’ll sue us, and shoot us. I probably should’ve said those around the other way.”
“Then he can threaten to sue. We aren’t lying and I have a rebuttal if he does.”
“What would that be.”
“It would basically be ‘Fuck off’. You know, the standard.”
“So, we’re doing this.”
“We are, and damn the consequences.”
“Yeah. And if we can get all that done before your notice period times out, then you might not even have to worry about moving out at all.
The receptionist came back to her desk, and told us Daniel was back in the ICU. We could go in, all together. It wasn’t looking good.

The team filtered out after saying their goodbyes, until only me and Raj were left next to Daniel’s bed.
“Guys …” Daniel croaked. “… This is it, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you worry …” Raj was crying, I’d never seen that before. Mind, so was I; so I could’ve been making shit up.
The doctors looked at Jerry, then us, and one of them said; “are you ready?”
Nodded, couldn’t really speak. They pressed some kind of button.
Then a whole lot of the machines bleeped and went off at the same time. Daniel coughed and then settled down a bit, wheezing.
He breathed slowly for about another half hour before it stopped. We couldn’t stay much longer after he died because they needed the room, so me and Raj just huddled outside.
The team came to join us, and we just stood there, not saying anything.

Shhhhh. Be quiet, now. This is not Jerry, it’s Paul; and he doesn’t know I’ve hijacked his post just before it’s uploaded. They’ll find out then I’ll get lynched, but for now … I just feel like you guys should know what happened after I replied to that text.

Went to the bathroom. In a hospital, that’s about the best you can do for privacy without being more dramatic than necessary. Saw a hot nurse, too; but nevermind about that. She probably had too many jumpers on. The original text was still on my phone’s screen. Pulled it out and replied. The text had come from an anonymous number.

Them: Want 2 be in Cabinet?
Me: Who are you?
Them: Want 2 be in Cabinet?
Me: Can you think of a way?
Them: I can help you.
Me: But how can I trust you?
Them: You’ll just have to be patient. Can’t elaborate now.
Me: Stop being a dick. Who are you?
Them: Can’t stop being a dick.
Me: Just tell me who you are.
Them: I already did.

Loud theme music plays as six people sit at desks. There’s a voice with an American accent blaring through some speakers. “Hello and welcome to The Big Issues; with your host …. Richard …. Johnson!” The voice cut out suddenly, leaving the room in total silence.
Crickets chirped in the distance, as Richard walked down a gangplank to his seat in between the two teams.
“… And now let’s meet tonight’s players.” Richard recovered from the frosty welcome quickly, and put on a fake showbiz persona. Or that’s what it looked like, although he was kind of like that all the time, so not really able to tell. Richard started from left to right.
“Our first player this evening – Paul. He isn’t a team captain but he is one hell of a playaaaaaaa.”
The audience laughed at that. I’d forgotten they were even there.
“Next up it’s Raj. As a team captain, he’s fulfilling a dream he’s had since high school – not being picked last.”
More laughter. This would probably get annoying.
“And finally on Raj’s team; it’s Catherine. I saw Paul pass Catherine a note earlier … wonder what it said. She’s leaning as far away from him as she can, so actually I think I do know.”
“And facing them tonight; it’s Simran. I like being able to flirt with two girls easily through the course of the show.”
“Do that and I’ll fucking deck you.” Simran had no time for any shit.
“… ooooookay. And Jerry. I’m not saying Jerry’s not used to getting attention and he won’t be able to cope with being a captain, but at school apparently he thought the cool kids all had access to a walk-in fridge.”
Laughter, although that joke was almost nonsensical.
“And finally tonight, it’s Mike. Sorry, dude, can’t hear you. Need to turn on your –” he stopped, listening into his earpiece. “Oh, apparently that joke’s too basic so I’m not allowed to do it.” There was a pause, then Richard continued, “let’s get started!”
The lights all changed, and the game begun.

“The first round is called ‘what the fuck is happening’. The teams will have thirty seconds to summarise what the fuck’s been happening over the last week.”
“So this is topical?”
“No, it’s being recorded on the beach, so it’s actually tropical.”
Huh. Hadn’t noticed that; or maybe the background had changed. Never mind. But we were definitely on a beach now. Some guy had a beach volleyball balanced on his nose. But, no; it was a coconut. Wait, what? This game wasn’t very consistent. Like a dream …? That would certainly go a reasonable distance to explain how Richard appeared to have grown a full beard and now looked like he’d been outcast for at least a month on a desert island.
Simran went first for Jerry’s team. She stepped forward, to a microphone that had magically appeared in the floor.
“There once was a massive man hunt, for a gun-toting, arrogant cunt. Police showed up late, when he shot my mate; he just thinks he’s pulled a cheap stunt.”
“Limerick? Hard to beat.” Richard was impressed. I almost let myself be impressed by that. Then I didn’t. Because Richard was a dickhead.
“I think I can do better though.” Raj stepped forward.
“A rightward shift in the House […]”
I’ll be honest, I zoned out. Still thinking of ways to remove Richard from his position of power. If I was gonna work with him, I needed a plan. Plan, plan, plan …
The audience loved the rap-battle atmosphere; and this would carry on until each member of the teams had battled. Finally, Richard declared Raj’s limerick the best. Pity I couldn’t remember what it even was.

In between rounds, the game lapsed into banter; “I turned up to a contract law exam naked once.” Richard trying to prove he’s smarter than us all. I mean, he’s fifty. He has experience; why feel like that was necessary?
“You’re naked now, actually.” Raj countered; trying to win the banter match.
“… Fuck. I hadn’t noticed. Let’s just …” Richard ducked under the desk then popped back up. He was now dressed fully in clown attire. I reached across and honked Richard’s nose.
“Anyway, this round’s called ‘Sticking a Knife in the News’. I’ll need a representative from each team.”
Tributes were offered forwards. Simran for Jerry’s team and Raj for the other side.
“Each tribute will attempt to summarise contract law in under a minute. Then the other will try and pick fault. While you do this, I will attempt to knock you down with a wrecking ball.”
Raj went first. “There has to be an offer between the parties that is accepted, in clear terms. And that offer has to be supported by consideration; where one party promises something to the other party as part of the deal, and – whoa dude, not cool, you almost took my head off – a contract can’t be entered into as a result of a misrepresentation or threat. That’s about it – fuck off and stop trying to hit me. Why’s the wrecking ball even a thing?”
“That’s for threatening to publish the story about me in the paper.”
“Oh yes, how much would you pay us to forget about it?”
“We shall discuss it,” Richard turned away from Raj and faced towards me, “later, when we can arrange a proper time.”
Simran countered Raj’s broad summary by specifying that some negotiations are so complicated that there are actually multiple contracts and a clear offer and acceptance of the entire deal can’t be identified. Although she didn’t get any further than that before Richard bowled her over. Needless to say, Raj won the points for his team.

The next round seemed to have special features. Richard’s showmanship increased as he intro’ed it;
“He doesn’t actually work here anymore but he shows up anyway. Daniel.”
There was a loud bang, then Daniel floated down from what I can only describe as the ‘sky’ although I would imagine there was a loft somewhere in the studio’s roof. Everyone was wetting themselves laughing. Or maybe the tide was rising. Then a cannonball plopped into the wooden floor. Well, passed straight through it. Eventually Daniel picked himself up off the floor and removed all the splinters from his head and body; moving to stand off to the side.
“Um, how’s things, Daniel?”
“Not gonna lie, got one hell of a headache. Had it since last week when you shot me, you penis.”
Richard recovered from that … somewhat lacklustre burn. “This round’s all about consequence and how some of us don’t have any.” A slightly robotic sounding ba-dum-tss played through speakers in the studio.
“You will have thirty seconds. In that thirty seconds, you will attempt to eulogise Daniel. Even though he’s not dead because he’s … uhhhhh … standing right there. There will be a bag of knives.” He paused, as the bag appeared on his desk. “If you succeed, try to stick a knife in me. If you fail, I will stick a knife in Daniel. If you’ve just tuned in, we’ve all gone insane.” He paused again, then looked up and continued; “Jerry – you go first.”
“Gosh, um, well, I don’t, um, really know. I guess he’s okay? You should have given me more time to actually write something out I’d be able to think more careful – ”
“And you’re out of time.” Richard grinned cruelly, like an egotistical shark that had just been to the dentist. Or just ‘like an egotistical shark’; which would have sufficed. He walked towards the bag, then groaned.
“There’s only plastic forks in here. I mean seriously, come on guys. Who read the outline for the round and thought ‘you know what will still work? Plastic’. I guess the points go to Jerry because he’s the only one who tried. Life’s not fair sometimes.”
“Is Daniel gonna just stand there? Or can we, umm, talk to him?”
“You can talk. One minute. Go.”
A really loud ticking noise, that suggested all the time pressure in earlier rounds was imagined, broke out in the background.
“What do we do?”
“Well,” said Daniel as his first posthumous word, “you need to make a deal with the story. You have power there. Use it. Hopefully once you use it you’ll be able to get back into Parliament and Daisy should pick up where I left off. They’ll thank you for it eventually, although they might try to kill you first. And …”
“Ten Seconds.” Richard bellowed over the top of Daniel.
“And what?”
“And you have to get used to living without me. I suggest you start …”
The stopwatch went off loudly, and I woke with a start. Without finding out who’d won the panel game. How rude. And it was only 4AM. Getting back to sleep would be tricky even though I was tired. Writing up my post for the blog would kill some time until sunr –

The last bit replayed itself in my head as a new dream. Well, kind of; it was in the office instead of on the studio set and Daniel and I were the only two there.
“And you have to get used to living without me. I suggest you start …”
A low rumbling reverberated around the frozen office landscape.
“No, please …”
“… Now.” Then the world unfroze, and the gun went off.
BANG.
I woke with a start. Daniel! Oh. Right. But …
My phone buzzed again.
RICHARD: Meet in Hamilton on Saturday afternoon. Can start negotiations.
ME: I don’t have the power. Daisy would have to come.
RICHARD: Bring the whole team, see if I care. I just want that story taken out of the media.
ME: I’ll see what I can do.
My phone buzzed a few times after that. But I didn’t reply. Didn’t want him to think I liked him. Basically I intended to treat him the way I typically treat girls. I tried to get back to sleep. Back to that dream. Daniel would know what to do. He always had. But he wasn’t here anymore.

Tyre squeal. I really regret letting Hassan drive. It wasn’t even a proper car; the closest we could get was a transit van that Hassan had so far used to nearly take out three parking bollards and seven motorcyclists. I think he had a points system; ten points for cyclists, five points for a bollard and no point for being in Government. Which is a worrying worldview, when you think about it and what we were trying to do. And his music taste was suspect. By which I mean we were listening to a noon news broadcast in which the newsreader called for Richard’s arrest. We’d heard he had holed himself up in a farmhouse while he was in hiding, but the DJ’s didn’t know that.
“If you hear anything about this man, the police will issue a $300 reward.” Then the radio station moved back to DJ’s talking shit. Hassan turned that off; we get enough of that in … real life, apparently.
“You said a council flat, but where exactly?”
“Shush and let me drive,” Hassan snapped in the most hypocritical interjection I’ve ever heard.
It turns out Hassan can’t stay quiet for the two-hour road trip to Hamilton. Mostly because he ran out of interesting things to look at. One would think the road would be interesting enough, but no. Raj, Daisy, Hassan and I were in this car; another followed with the rest of the team. Paul had volunteered to sit in the boot for some reason [EDIT: Oh, that’s why. He didn’t want to talk to anyone and have to explain himself]. Raj used Hamachi to track down Richard’s PC (he’d taken a position in the Government IT department fairly recently; or that’s what he told us, maybe he’d just misappropriated a fucktonne of classified information – he wouldn’t be the first politician to be guilty of that). After about an hour of hitting the computer and screaming at everything in the car to speed up (including the car itself; then Hassan had to explain the concept of a thing called a ‘speed limit’. Raj didn’t understand), he’d found Richard’s PC in a detached house on the outskirts of Hamilton. Possibly a farmhouse. Which matched with information we’d already figured out. #MathematicalProof. #QED.

We arrived there just after lunch, and found a large but abandoned-looking house with an overgrown lawn, in the shadow of four massive oak trees that formed a fence and line blocking the sun.
“Right, so uhh, what now?” Raj had got further through the plan than any of the others so far, and realised that there wasn’t one.
“Well, if we check the house and see if he’s in; that’s what Paul said to check for.”
“Paul? Why don’t we wait for the others to arrive if Paul’s the one calling the shots.”
“The only shot Paul’s ever called is ‘one more vodka, please’. Except without the ‘please’.” Hassan butted in unhelpfully.
“Why don’t we check the house, then wait for the others?”
Raj walked up to the door, knocked really quietly, then stepped back. “Nobody’s in,” he declared.
Then the others pulled up and Raj ran out of excuses. He kicked the door by way of a knock. No response. I saw a window open on the first floor, so I suggested someone lift me up so I could get into the house. Luke was, unsurprisingly, first to offer. Which is fine because he’s not creepy like Paul. He’d been behaving really odd lately; well, they both had. Luke was probably avoiding me, and Paul was just dodgy and probably planning something.
I checked each room in the upper floor and there wasn’t anything. Then I opened the door for the others so they could … I dunno … make a mess everywhere inside? Not sure why I let them in, to be honest.

Now that I’ve pissed you all off with a minor cliffhanger; here’s the rest of the story.

The cops weren’t at all interested when we first reported the story to them. But about halfway through the phone call there was a gunshot in the background. Somehow, they were more interested after that. But I think I speak for the whole team when I say it also scared the living shit out of us.
Turns out we’d missed a room, and I would guess that Richard was inside.
I’d guess that was what had happened because Richard jumped out of a window and fell heavily on to the driveway.

Paul went outside to scrape him up into a bucket.
“We don’t have long,” I could hear Paul saying through the insufficiently think walls, “so just tell me what your plan is, now.”
“The cops are coming. That should mfmfmfmfmfmfmffmfmfmfmfmfmfmff.” I lost them, so I snuck around from the first floor landing to an open window. It wasn’t directly in line.
“So we’ll meet up in the Council building? Why there?”
I didn’t hear the reply so I moved around again to try and hear better. Couldn’t really manage. Although Paul’s relationship with Richard was … really odd. What was the point of it? I mean the absolute best case was that he would be able to pin some other crimes on him or something. There must be a game plan of some sort. Mind, most sports teams don’t have game plans. So maybe not …
Anyway, the conversation continued for a while but I couldn’t hear; it was interrupted by Raj, who started the van in an attempt to leave the house, and placed it in the wrong gear then smashed into the kitchen window.
“OH FUCK.”
The conversation continued after both men looked around briefly.
“Anyway, we need to meet up and hammer out some terms.”
Paul looked around, and saw Mike nearby. He would pass this on to the others. That was his style.
“Oh, shit.” Paul turned grey and spun himself around, away from Richard.
“Why’re you being so coy now for?” Unexpected and slightly sexually aggressive.

Richard had a phone out now and was doing something, although Paul tried to stop him. I think I heard him request an arrest warrant for some teenagers (although we weren’t even teenagers anymore but so what?)
Richard lowered the phone and removed his baseball cap, throwing it from the second floor window as he slunk down the stairs of his safehouse. The police arrived, kitted out in riot gear and belts overloaded with keys, tasers and guns (the keys for if a suspect wanted a vicious unlocking). As the police converged on the house and Richard left through the back door and dived without dignity into a ditch in the back yard, we pulled up out front in two cars and the cops turned their attention (and by that I do largely mean their guns) to face us.
Simran was the first out of a car, so she bore the full force of the interrogation, such as it was.
Basically she got flattened to the ground by a charging riot shield, and kept there by a steel-capped boot. The idiot cop then made the mistake of trying to taser her.
“You’re under arezzzzttztttttttzzzzzzz”. Then he fell over convulsing from electric shocks. Simran wasn’t in much better shape, but she hadn’t been speaking. Raj went white with rage (which, for him, was an achievement).
To his credit, Jerry chose this moment (as the team’s … current token white guy [sorry Daniel]) to step forward and try to explain. The cops stopped and listened to him. Then Richard moved from his camouflaged position and made everyone’s lives easier (and by that I do literally mean solved our current problem for us) by shooting a cop in the head.

Chaos. There were about four shots within two seconds. But we’d already seen somebody innocent get shot for no reason, so we had all dived for cover and lay prone on the cobbles of the driveway outside a relatively expnsive-looking free-standing two-storey townhouse.
Eventually, the cops had fled with cars and sirens and guns and tasers and drama, following after Richard as he snuck through fields and bush in an effort to evade the cops.
But the thing is, we knew where he’d go, even if he didn’t. Because he still had contract negotiations to complete.
He was downgrading, to a smaller house; and we’d meet him there. We couldn’t be exactly sure what his plan was or whether or not he’d actually wanted us to get caught. But by now we knew that he at least had thought about it. So we followed his tacit instructions and waited for half a day, then we’d follow.

A fair amount of hurrying about had taken place by this point, as we settled (as much as can be achieved) in the back of a transit van. Paul sat against one wall, and the rest of us were on the other. Simran would occasionally stick a foot out and kick him in the kneecap. The rest of us couldn’t quite believe it.
“You …”
“I’m just doing what’s best.”
Paul had probably better not spoken. “Best?” Hassan spluttered. “Best? How in the fuck is that the ‘best’ possible thing to do? He KILLED Daniel!”
“I … mean … it seemed like a good idea at the time …”
“Having unprotected sex seems like a ‘good idea at the time’ until you get herpes.” Hassan exploded, the violence of it shaking the van.
“But he can get us back into Parliament …”
“I don’t give a water-coloured fuck what he can do. I want to see his head on a shooting range as a target!”
“Calm down, I have a plan …”
“Yeah! And that plan will maybe get us one seat in Parliament but will almost certainly get him off a murder charge!”
Jerry hadn’t said anything.
Paul noticed.
“Jerry?”
“Could … could you stop the car?” Jerry murmured, almost imperceptible. The car was halted, and Jerry just got out. Couldn’t deal.
“Guys?” Paul stood, exasperated, as the rest of the team followed after Jerry.
“You’d better have one hell of a plan,” was the last thing I said to him before I exited the vehicle, leaving him on his own.

There wasn’t time to stop moving. The cops would surely have heard the gunshots and arrive with reinforcements, and that didn’t even account for the arrest warrants that had been issued for the team. I could hear a siren in the distance, and they seemed to be coming from multiple directions at once. We had to get out of there. Hide for half a day, then meet up with Richard.

Hassan wired up the radio on his phone and seemed to suddenly just … have … the frequency of police radio transmissions. His brother was a cop; that’s what he told us. Although I’d bet there was someone tied up in his basement who knew the channel. We could listen to police radio and stay ahead of them, in theory. In practice, we ran into an unrelated roadblock almost straight away. It was to do with drunk driving, I think. The cops had been there since three in the morning and weren’t really paying attention to anyone that could speak in full sentences. With a brief glance at Daisy’s driver license and a brief round of ‘it wouldn’t be you, would it? You’re so sweet’, the cops moved on.

We parked the van in a park, and sat down under some trees for a bit, just to change the scenery.
At this point, Paul got a text from Richard, and Luke freaked out when a cop car drove past. Wasn’t even on duty, just driving; and Luke still nearly had a heart attack. Dude needs to calm down.
The text from Richard said ‘there’s a dairy I’ve arranged can hide you away. Be careful.’
We moved back to the van and tried to look for the dairy, even though we’d been given no instructions as to where it was.
Hassan had passed the radio to Mike; who was listening with no regard for the outside world. Apparently the roadblock had, in fact, registered that they’d seen us and the cops were relocating to this area. They’d found the house ransacked and those charges were stacked up against us.
We found the dairy just after 3 o’clock when the team was thoroughly demoralised and in need of pointlessly expensive chocolate. Lucky. Expensive as in costing $2,000. By that I mean we paid him off to not report us, because he’d heard about us on the radio as well.
We sat down, then Richard called. He’d made a contract with a staffer in Parliament; “If you make sure I don’t lose my seat in Parliament, I’ll pay you $4,000 for the afternoon’s work.” It wasn’t immediately obvious how this benefitted us, but he explained he would hand the seat over in the event we could negotiate properly. Daisy scrambled to write this down and established that it was binding. As that was basically what would have been discussed in a meeting, we agreed wouldn’t need to stay for a meeting, there was no need to stay in Hamilton. Sadly, the police radio revealed they’d sealed off all exits to the city, so we couldn’t leave.

That was a mistake. Daisy, Mike, Catherine and I were in the first car to get pulled over. The second car wasn’t silly enough to even attempt it, so Paul, Hassan, Raj, Jerry and Luke were still free somewhere in Hamilton. Probably being chased around by the cops while Hassan played the Benny Hill theme.

Some guy in a hood entered our cell as a guard slammed the door behind us. If I’m honest, there wasn’t a lot of room. Richard removed his hood and was immediately mobbed by everyone except Jerry, whom Raj had knocked unconscious so that Richard wouldn’t be murdered.
“Hey hey hey, if I’m dead you won’t get back into Parliament.” That stopped Daisy, Raj, Catherine and Simran. Although Daisy stood in one of the corners of the cell growling like a pissed off terrier.
“Why are you in a cell and calm? Shouldn’t you be on charges for … I dunno … I seem to remember you committed a murder?”
Richard looked thoughtful. “I guess that’s the point. I still have significant control over the cops. I can find you wherever you are. Consequences don’t exist for me.”
“Seeing as we’re here, we should discuss the deal.”
“Oh yeah, I made some progress on that; if I give up my Parliament seat, you guys have to get it. There’s a contract. But you guys will need to turf me out and you won’t be able to do that in prison.”
“Why’d you give us half of what we wanted, but the wrong half? Like a mermaid with a fishy face and human legs. I suppose you do have a fishy face, so it makes sense?”
“And in return for getting the seat in Parliament, you won’t publish that story in the paper.”
“You mean,” Raj pieced together, “that we need to turf you out of your seat to get what we want but you’ve already made a unilateral contract you legally have to deliver on if we turf you out …”
“Well, shit.” Richard looked beaten for about ten seconds. Then he snapped his fingers and a guard opened the cell door for him but none of the others. “The thing is, though, that I can get out and you can’t”.

About an hour later, Mike heard a faint ‘psst’ from outside the cell. Knocking on the door to show the message had been understood, we moved to the edges of the cell. An almighty screeching noise filled the air for about a minute until someone knocked the roof twenty times with a hammer and a large circle fell in. Paul dropped through the hole on a wire, and said “I can take one of you at a time, so who first?”
Slight pause. Then Raj spoke through Paul’s phone. “Nah, I’ll just come around and unlock the door. Dressed as a guard after some casual sex. Then we can land the chopper and get you all on board.”
“Chopper? You rented a chopper? How? We have no money.”
“Casual. Sex. Just trust me.”
The team managed to get out of the cell before the guards’ next round; that same guard being confronted with an empty cell, an open door and some damaged roof, as some guy rose through the hole on a wire. He’d done that all for show. Paul would probably have called the cell ‘roofless’. Richard wasn’t going to like this.

People seem to think the fact that Daniel gatecrashed that conference and made some radical suggestions, then the world just fell apart at the seams. And I really like to think that’s true, so it slightly pains me to be the reason this retraction is being written; or the guy who’s writing it.
Here’s some letters because I don’t wanna write this but I need to look like I’m writing it.

It turns out that voter apathy fucks shit up. Mind you, we knew that; how else would you explain how we’d gotten elected in the first place? It happens every so often in a democracy like this; things stay the same for too long. And when things stay the same, people with higher levels of power can entrench their power, and thus, gain more power. Then people start to notice (or they start to think and create rumours that ‘prove’) that the electoral system is flawed and rigged because there is an elite that acts in its own interest. What people fail to see is that everything acts in its own interest anyway. The question then becomes ‘how rigged am I prepared to let the system get?’

Nature abhors a vacuum. Which explains why all household cleaning devices are man-made. The Prime Minister had announced resignation from Parliament over some expenses scandal. There would be a new leadership race. Probably a hundred metre sprint or something. Seems fishy that the shock resignation of the PM seems to have eroded confidence in the current leadership (mostly because there wasn’t any?) Far too coincidental. Also a cheap exit. I mean, how dare he?

The Prime Minister’s office had one door either side with the name “N Sharma” on. The joke probably was they weren’t at all related, but I suppose at least my OCD was calmed. Knocked on one of the doors, and the other one opened.
“Yes?”
“Nadia Sharma?”
“Oh, yup, that’s me. And you’re … Paul? Your reputation precedes you.”
“All good things, I hope?”
“I have HR on speakerphone in the office.”
The office was essentially a mirror of the PM’s. No, sorry; it had a mirror through which you could faintly see the PM’s.
“You say you can call an emergency vote to re-elect a seat because Richard’s gone on the run? Is there a way that could be us?”
“Well, yes. And that’s what I wanted to discuss ...”
I shut the door, as Nadia started talking.

The team met in a hotel conference room, later that day. We had given up our old offices and hadn’t yet had the time or money or … reason (as we hadn’t actually been elected) to rent new ones.
“What do we need to do to be taken seriously?”
“Become like servants to the people we want to impress, I should think.”
“That would make sense, I guess. But do we still work on publishing the story?”
“Yeah, if we do both at the same time, that should work best.”
“Paul, you be in charge,” Daisy delegated the group into two teams; PR and press. One team (Luke, Raj, Catherine and Daisy) would work on the story and try to get it to the press. The other team (Hassan, Simran, Mike, Jerry and I) would work on the internal politics and try to get the actual seat back without needing the story to be published in the first place. We finished the meeting at that point, then set off to our individual tasks.

[This is Luke. Testing, testing, one, two … Okay.]
The story looks good so far. There’s like five hundred words, and the reality is we’d only need around seven hundred. Daniel’s started this off fairly well by explaining Richard’s continual backdoor dealmaking and backstabbing that made him not a good choice as an MP or a PM (see what I did there …). Luckily, now, we also could add the word MURDERER is big, block, capital letters with an exclamation mark border, because of … Daniel. The team wasn’t functioning at maximum efficiency yet, though. Still felt his loss like a sinkhole in a motorway overpass. But luckily there wasn’t too much work to be done. The story was finished in about an hour, and we sent it off just after 2 o’clock. Hopefully the damage would be done by the end of business today.
[Handing back in three, two, one …]

Saturday 24 September 2016: Every Politician Needs A Good Reason To Do Their Job

On our end, it was slightly more complicated. For one thing, we had to actually move. I mean, can you imagine? Walking? Around Parliament? To get people’s signatures, and talk with people – some of whom thought we’d lost our parents after some weird iteration of a Bring-Your-University-Aged-Child-To-Work Day. But we managed to meet with every third (well, sort of) person.
These meetings didn’t really have a set topic or agenda … they just … happened. In one, Jerry had to clean some 85-year-old MP’s shoes, while Mike was required to wash an ex-banker MP’s windows (and presumably also look into his tax records, but I didn’t ask about that).
After about three hours of this, most of the other staff that had occupied the Parliament building when we arrived had gone home for the evening. Overall, we agreed; we thought we’d been sucessful.
The only question is whether that’s good enough. If the others have done their damn jobs, we should find out before we leave this evening. Which wasn’t, it should be noted, the same as Luke’s estimated ‘before the end of business’ timeframe. That one had passed.

The story hit the papers in time for the 6PM news cycle. We’d taken to sitting in the (now-deserted) Parliament while we waited for the fallout from our story. The TVs in the room were all switched on to the news channels. We’d hear it there first, then MP’s would presumably find us in here. Especially Richard. We were waiting for Richard.

The story broke at 5:30, and the first calls for Richard’s full resignation came an hour later. Richard himself texted me with a simple ‘What the fuck, mate?” just after seven. I didn’t reply, because what did I have to say? But by seven thirty, Richard had gotten impatient, and he called. I would’ve put him on speaker, but I didn’t need to. He just absolutely blasted the speaker on my phone. We arranged a meeting for eight o’clock; a sentence which sounds a lot calmer than it actually was. I believe he used the words ‘spaghetti’ and ‘dick’ in the same sentence. More than once. But I’m not really sure because my phone speaker was dying at a faster rate than consumer law generally accounts for. For some reason.

He arrived at Parliament in time for Simran’s explanation of a new office game. Dishevelled and half asleep, but still angry as hell.
Simran said; “We have a version of snog, marry, kill for Raj, Paul and Mike..”
“I would like the results of this.”
“There’s two kills and one marry.”
“But that’s not how –?”
“I think we’re dead, Raj.”
The whole team straightened up when they saw Richard.
“Right, to business.” Raj led the negotiations.
“You will retract the story from the press and contain the fallout, and in turn I will give you my Parliament seat. Which I will resign from because I kind of have to now, don’t I?”
“How do we know this isn’t a double bluff?”
“Because you can still publish the story if it turns out to be.”
“So do we have a deal?”
“Actually, could we put a pardon clause in; where after you’re out of Parliament, you’re not allowed back in for a while or to contact any of your contacts?”
“But if I don’t wear my contacts, I won’t be able to see?”
He was catching on to our humour, even if this wasn’t necessarily an appropriate time. Then he replied properly.
“I’ll do that when hell freezes over.”
“Oh, good. So, because of climate change, that’ll be in about three weeks.”
“Oh, by the way, what the hell happened at that safehouse?”
“I phoned it in, then escaped through the rear window. That suit still has brown smudges on it.”
“When you gotta go …”
“Oh that’s how you did it …”
“How did you guys escape? The cops never saw you?”
“Chopper. Dramatic as hell.”
“But we do need that clause in the deal.”
“Fine.”
Richard put out his hand.
“Then I guess we have a deal.”
I put out my hand.
“Welcome aboard. Again, I guess.” Then we shook and the deal was done. Although, of course, the details would be finalised in the next business day.

How do people think Heaven works? If you were a recently deceased person would you be watching one person all the time, or everyone you know all the time or do you just get an executive summary of all the people you know? Because there’s some stuff I’ve done that I’d rather he didn’t see.

“Daniel Stevens – a eulogy; [line goes here].”
I wrote by reading aloud first – including the blank line placeholder. It was the only way that really worked. My voice echoed around the empty flat. I’d taken the day off work; the others had only taken the afternoon off for the funeral. Fun-eral, if you’re Hassan. I think he had streamers or something to put up.
They ran around like headless chickens trying to secure the seat in Parliament. The one on wheels that had gone rogue. No, the one they’d been promised by the shadiest person we knew (apart from that one time Paul stood underneath a tree – but he’s shady even on his own).
I was hearing all this through the party’s private groupchat. Setting that up had been a mistake. You’d end up just muting the notifications so you could get work done. Writing a eulogy, for instance.
I’d really like to say I was suffering writer’s block. But that wasn’t it. There was not an absence of ideas – I was having too many. And I couldn’t do justice to any of them. Not a writer. None of us are, don’t know if you’ve noticed.

FRAT had achieved a majority in the House, by now. Daniel would have known what to do. The question is; would we follow his non-existent advice? I probably would’ve. I reached this conclusion while discussing it with Daniel’s urn; a specifically designed replica Magic 8 Ball that would tell me if I made a wrong decision. Hopefully it would share Daniel’s brain, given it was filled with his ashes. I’d carry it around like a psychic, consulting it about thrice a day. Because that was the same, wasn’t it?

I’m sure Daniel had insights about life he hadn’t told us. Must’ve. He’d probably figured out the meaning of life and that was why he had to die. Because God wills it. If there is a God, I want him to beg my forgiveness. How could you, as a powerful, all-seeing deity, look at the world and decide to just … watch as bad things happen. How could you ever decide to just let life happen at all; but especially if you knew there would be suffering and people would die. Daniel basically took this message and enacted it. Stepping in to represent our party in the Cabinet when Daisy was in hospital … knowing instinctively that she would eventually take her rightful place. And lose it again. But he didn’t know that bit.

I stood up and walked around for a bit, lost in thought but none of it articulate enough or … good … enough to be worth writing down. None of it fitting. None of it perfect. None of it complete. Then I tripped over because I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. In my pacing, I walked past the urn, asked it a minor question about storied to include in the eulogy. Got answers I disagreed with and shook again. Then I went back to my desk, and sat down in front of the keyboard. Still had nothing on paper. Nothing. Not a thing. Not a fucking …

They’d done the church up nice. I mean, they hadn’t changed much. It was a church; not like it would’ve been in disrepair or anything. The team had put about equal amounts of effort into making the church look nice and messing around and being silly. By which I mean Simran and Catherine had taken full responsibility for organising the church and Hassan and Paul were attempting to bounce a stress ball off Luke’s shoes. Luke looked like he was slowly building up to a stress induced meltdown. Mind you, it had been a long two weeks.

The service itself ran relatively smoothly enough, but the hearse crashed on the way to the wake venue … so that wasn’t quite so smooth.
Wake highlights; the vicar’s opening remarks began with ‘we’re gathered here today because SOMEONE,’ then he paused and glared at the coffin, ‘didn’t have the decency to stay alive’. Mike or Paul must’ve written that. Hassan camped out by the coffin and for every guest putting flowers on the coffin, Hassan would lean over and whisper ‘shhh don’t wake him’. Raj took a phone call and returned after an hour or so with a photographer, which he justified by saying ‘it’s just like a wedding, right’. At some point I saw a small coffee and scone next to the photo of Daniel on top of his coffin. Raj must’ve done that, so the guy did have a heart. I also saw Mike sitting at a chair crying so hard he was pounding the desk. No, wait. Laughing. Paul must’ve said something.

I tried to talk to everyone at the funeral. Although Hassan was running around with a streamer and some party poppers. Trying to put the fun in …. I’ll just stop.
Couldn’t see Simran though. I had seen her at the church … obviously. She had kept the whole event moving.
So had she arrived here yet? Must be stuck in traffic? Or something? Um, we should alert the police or something.

I got back to my desk just after seven o’clock. Checked everything, like I always did just before I left the office at work. Didn’t expect to find anything … but there was an email. It was from Daniel. Which didn’t make any kind of rational sense. I clicked it. He must’ve written it before he died.

Jerry. I wrote this the night after we worked late trying to plan out what we’d do because Daisy wouldn’t be out of hospital for a while. I kind of realised something; there’ll be pushback from Richard, from other MP’s, from the team as well, sometimes. Just don’t let it drive you insane. We’re not worth that. If it’s too much just leave. Your health is more important than our message, and only people who actually know you will ever tell you that. Any supporters we have will expect us to die for them, because people tend to think they’d be as committed to a cause when they are championing it in ‘real life’ as they are when they can write about it from behind a keyboard. Don’t do that, because you’ll never please them. In my experience the phrase ‘the customer’s always right’ is unbelievably around the wrong way. They’re always wrong, we just can’t tell them that. Not sure that I have any other life advice; I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to offer it even if I did. So. Um. See you tomorrow, I guess.

There was a bleep and I jumped, the spell broken.
Text alert on my computer, from Simran.
Help.
Wait, what?
Then another email came through, with a video link to a live stream (if you’ll pardon the … no no this is NOT the time for that joke). The video showed Simran sitting in a dimly-lit room with a lamp in her face. It was odd, seeing her like this.
My phone went, as well. “Uhhh, chaps …” Hassan’s slightly nasal voice quavered. He’d probably seen the video. Or there was a spider in the corner of his office.
“Let your bosses know,” the unseen cameraman boomed through the terrible speakers on my laptop. “That if you do not respond to this message by giving us a billion dollars in cash and the most prominent positions in the cabinet by noon tomorrow, this girl will die. Pity, she looks quite nice.”
“Prominent position in the cabinet? I can sit your ashes right alongside my wine glasses. Fuck, I’ll make a set of wine glasses from your ashes. Actually good God no I won’t do that.”
The guy had finished speaking, and without skipping a beat, Simran burst out “Raj! Help!” Then she was slapped really rather hard and the video cut out.

Mostly darkness with flashes of white light. She couldn’t see anything. Not the ground in front or behind, or where she was going … who she was with. Like a rollercoaster, but decidedly less fun. She’d been gagged, not that anyone would have heard her screams. She’d think about this part quite a lot later on, after waking up with a cold sweat in the middle of the night … at least she thought it was the night. At least, she thought it was cold sweat. She’d try to figure out where they’d taken her and why when she had time to think. She’d have loads – in her future, that is. She ended up in a dingy, rusty, disgusting room underground somewhere with a single, low-hanging bulb mounted to the roof. The roof, which shook every so often loosening rubble and dust on to the floor. She kept thinking she wished it would fall and suffocate her. It was probably underneath a railway or something.
There were men with balaclavas on. That much she knew for certain. They’d bring her food, if you could call it that, and make sure she hadn’t tried to escape. She hadn’t. Yet. But it had only been two days at the time.

This is all stuff she told me later on. Wow, it’s dark, isn’t it. Apart from the low-hanging bulb that is. Ahahhahaha-ha-ha. No, you’re quite right. This isn’t the time for jokes.
By midnight the whole team had seen the email and associated video link, then re-assembled outside the meeting room, like a Rubik’s cube where all the sides had to be as different as possible.
I think I was in some kind of shock. Although to be fair, I think we all were, to an extent. They told me I was rocking backwards and forwards slowly. Hassan was seriously considering pushing me over, apparently. I’m not sure he’d grasped the gravity of the situation (something he would inevitably do if he did manage to push me on to the floor).

Daisy went off to one side and took a phone call; to the Opposition’s admin guys, presumably. “We can’t make it,” she’d be saying. “More important things. Please leave the opportunity open for us; we’re still very much interested, just not exactly today.”
They said they didn’t need a physical presence to start the paperwork, and a vote in Parliament would confirm their election anyway. So basically, we didn’t need to do anything and nothing was being asked of us, yet. But they said they understood, and that we would assume the seat when we could.
But, they warned that Parliament would continue operating without us, so to assume the seat as soon as physically possible. Daisy said she understood, and hung up the phone. Then she told me all of this. I’d pass it on to the others after we got Simran back. Because we would get her back.

A single torch beam lit a narrow corridor, as a team of four prepared to break down a door. They weren’t on a mission or anything, someone had just lost the keys to the briefing room. With a powerful kick, Paul broke down the door and embarrassed himself in front of the ten people already sitting in a relatively well-lit room with a long rectangular table in centre-stage. Oh, yeah, and the floor was elevated, like a stage. The guy at the head of the table had the keys next to him. We may as well have just flipping knocked.
“So,” the intelligence guy at the head of the table began, after the four intruders had sat down and stopped ruffling about; “The plan to retrieve Simran is very simple. You’re also … not gonna like it.”
“Oh no.”

Raj hadn’t slept much. Mind you, I’m saying that as if everyone else had managed to sleep fine. Basically we all struggled the way through that security briefing, collectively agreeing to keep all the others awake; which resulted in an obscure version of pass-the-parcel, with a cup of coffee. There was a general discussion of whether we’d all received the original video. I think a General had prepared that speech. Then the security guy droned his way through discussion of how they’d find where Simran was. They’d use drones. Then a member of the team would be sent in as a spy and hopefully they’d lead ‘proper’ backup into the situation. Then SImran would get rescued. Simple, right?

There were already geographical maps of the whole area, so they just needed to find out which building precisely she was in. So they settled on a tried-and-true method; dressing as Jehovah’s witnesses and going door-to-door. We watched this happen on video. By the way, this was the next morning. The meeting had dragged through the night, although it was distinctly possible we’d fallen asleep and thereby missed it. Their door-to-door façade didn’t go particularly well. The well-trained and highly specialised SAS agents we’d employed to do this job proceeded to get coffee thrown at them at the worst case, and doors slammed on them in the best case. One house remained silent. I think the theory was that it was this house that was of interest. The not-Jehovah’s-Witness SAS guys (called Gerard and Butler, apparently – but I suspect that’s just their nicknames) busted down the door and stormed the house. Watching from the screens in the meeting room, the whole team was undeniably awake for this bit.
However, they found nothing of note.
Well, one woman was asleep in one of the rooms. Somehow she hadn’t been woken by helicopters passing overhead, or the guys banging on her door; OR breaking it down, or storming through her house.
“She’s a sleeper agent, I bet you.” Hassan had been awake far, far too long.
“You hate everyone,” he turned on Raj, “what is it you like so much about Simran?”
“I don’t hate all people, it’s just that we wouldn’t lose that much in a nuclear holocaust.”
“Oh, right. You seem to smart for us, anyway.”
“I could’ve been a doctor … but I didn’t go to med school. Decided to be a mathematician. Mistake.”
“Same, but I committed to a life of pain and suffering by testing nine-volt batteries.”
“That’s a real job?”
“It’s possible my cousin just wants to torture me.”
We turned our attention back to the video. Gerard and Butler had given the woman some money. She’d report back if she saw anything new.
A voice came through the TV speakers, louder than any of our caffeine-addled brains were expecting, so we all flinched; prompting odd looks from the experienced Intelligence guys.
“Boss, we got nothing. Send in the chopper to get us.”
One of the guys in suits okayed this request and radioed for a helicopter. Ten minutes later, through Gerard and/or Butler’s eyes, we saw it on the horizon. Five minutes after that Gerard and Butler were aboard. Mission failed.

“So what now?”
We sat like that for about another hour.
“We could probably use the video IP address to track its location which would then give us an idea of her location. Probably not exact.”
“But the older video is hours old. They won’t be at that location anymore because they think that’s what we’re already doing. So we’d have to wait for a new –”
The computer connected to the large TV screen we used for surveillance bleeped. Well, a robotic ‘bleep’ noise blared through the speakers.
“New video?” Raj was extremely hopeful. Almost contagiously so.
“Get ready to analyse the metadata.” The guy in the suit humoured Raj; mostly because he was probably right.
“We have heard you let the authorities know,” Simran’s voice could be heard through the speakers. Loud, but not panicked. Forced calm though. She wanted to scream. How had they been treating her?
“We … would like to remind you, “Simran quavered, “that if you give us the position in Parliament we so desperately want, your hostage will be returned, unharmed. But the longer we wait, the less likely …” Then she faded into a sobbing fit and the video cut out. We sat in silence for about a minute.
“We need to analyse this whole situation carefully. We will get her back,” the suit guy looked at Raj, who had gone back into shock, “but it won’t be immediate. Because erroneous action will mean she dies equally as much as no action will. So we have one move. Zero sum game. The Nash Equilibrium is a careful move after a wait.”
“Nash Equilibrium?”
“Our move when we account for their move.”
“So we’ll wait out the week, then let them know we’re coming …”
“Or at least that we still intend to; before they kill her.”

Been a busy few weeks. Been a busy life, but especially these last few weeks. I personally didn’t know why they waited for so long. It’d be three weeks before we rescued her. Now more than ever, I understood how the Sherlock fandom felt. There wasn’t anything for us, as a team to do. So we pulled the back bench off the back burner and decided to actually do something about it. At roughly the same time, Mike had an idea; we could use Richard to help get Simran back. So the quiet Tuesday we’d planned got thrown roughly through a window, and we scheduled two meetings; one with Richard for 10AM, and one with the Labour admin people for after lunch. Maybe if they were half asleep, they’d let us into the party without realising their mistake.
The team split into three; one third to meet with Richard, one third to meet with the admin people, and one third to process the information from both meetings and deal with it.

First meeting. Richard kept us (Jerry, Mike, Hassan) waiting for two-thirds of the allotted hour-long appointment. Power trip, as was his M.O. He let us into his office but there wasn’t enough seats. So we all just stood around.
Mike broke the silence.
“It’s occurred to us that you have connections …”
“I swear if this is another fucking power socket joke …”
“It’s not. But could you please help us get Simran back?”
“Ah, so they have your attention now and you’ve come to me because you want something? Is that how this works?”
“I don’t see you as a friend; if that’s what you mean. I see you as the murdering bastard that killed my best friend. But you’re of use to us. So you’re still alive.”
“Well, you remember,” Richard said, fairly confident the twenty-year-olds in front of him would not remember, “the deal you signed that said I would leave you alone after the transaction concluded? Call it the you-help-us-then-fuck-off clause.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Yes. See, I can’t help you because you yourselves have legally locked me out of helping.”
“But you know where she is?”
“Well … no. I know who has her. But I don’t know where they are. Somewhere in Wellington, definitely. But beyond that …”
“Well, fucking thanks. You’ve been very helpful.” Mike retorted sarcastically, as he stood up to leave.
“The one thing I would say is that this isn’t over. Even if you do somehow get her back, this is just the beginning.”
“Go back to being an irrelevant old man.” Hassan spat in an unnaturally hostile way, as the team filed out the door.

“And the phone lines are open,” I announced like a radio DJ to Catherine, who was the only other person in the room. The phone rang just after 11. Not strictly early, but probably earlier than expected. I listened to Jerry passionately recount the events of the meeting which I won’t repeat because I don’t need to (see above). He was yelling about the ‘DICKHEAD RICHARD’ so loudly that the phone was nowhere near my ear. Catherine intercut with a … valid point which only made Jerry angrier.
“Technically, any change in a contract can be agreed to by both sides and then the contract would be changed. So the only reason he didn’t vary the contract is because he didn’t want to.”
Jerry sat in stunned, furious silence for a minute, then hung up. He may have punched Hassan. Nobody ever said, so actually that probably didn’t happen.
“I guess you should never give people any power over you. They’ll only use it.”
“Problem is, this is politics. That’s how it works.”
“But the idea is that you get equal power over all people you deal with, though. Not that you give people power over you all the time.”
“But we have to, because we’re young.”
“That’s true, I guess.”
“Speaking of people with power over you, how’s Luke?”
Catherine didn’t answer, and just glared at me.

The other meeting started dead on time.
“Nadia Sharma said she’d spoken to you a while back.”
“Yes, she did. But what do we need to fill in?”
“You just need to fill in a few forms,” the administrator meeting with us was called Colin. He gestured at a thirty-centimetre stack of papers. “It’s worse than it looks,” he said as if that was a good thing. As each of the three of us took a third of the stack for the rest of the team to sign, Colin continued.
“So the unavoidable circumstances have finished?”
“No but we need to do this.”
“Yes. Richard is gaining power. He’s been on charge for too long.”
“I’ve heard versions of that joke before. Must get boring being in politics with the same jokes.”
The meeting carried on with minimal interruption from any of Luke, Daisy or Paul. Just basic details and paper-filling-in. Daisy was allocated an office in the Labour area of the Beehive. Some lower level floor, but that made sense – she was only a back bencher.
“When we saw Nadia, there was another N Sharma on the other side …”
“Her sister Natasha. They do the same job but for opposite sides. Imagine the Christmas dinners …” Colin responded while half-heartedly filling in a form.
“We need some proper admin power on our team.”
“But once you get assimilated into the Party, you won’t be your own team anymore. You’ll be part of our team. So you’re right, in many ways, but you won’t need your own admin. Because we have ours.”
“Aah, assimilation. Now I see why immigrants hate it.”

Never negotiate with terrorists. That was the official Government policy on the issue. And the people I was with were definitely terrorists. They’d left me for a week. And I was probably gonna die here. I mean, I don’t blame them. But I’d always thought I was different.
The cell I was in would maybe be … about three metres square. There was barely room to move, and I was never allowed out. A guard would bring food twice a day. The first few, he’d say how sorry he was. Which I’d probably have been able to manipulate, except that I’d been in shock back then. I’d sort of recovered; but the guard had definitely stopped telling me how sorry he was that they were treating me like shit.

Every day was like this for the time that I was there. There was just nothing going on, nothing happening and nothing to do. But then they pulled me out to the room I’d recorded the videos earlier in the week and set me up to Skype with the team. In another video, but this time they’d kill me straight away if I made a wrong move or the team gave the wrong answers.
There was a little delay with connection which I found worrying. Wasn’t sure if that would mean I’d die. Or not, these guys were just extremists, they weren’t animals? Right? No. I want these fuckers to die in flames. Literal, actual, proper set-on-fire-with-kerosene flames.
But the chat connected, and I heard the voice of the main leader guy that had been in charge all the other times. There was a brief talk amongst the other side, and Raj’s face filled my screen. Not a euphemism.
He didn’t say too much, but he did look like he’d been crying. I wonder what I looked like to him.
Eventually, he got a grip on himself, and asked me a question that I’m sure the balaclava’d fuckfaces thought was the single least productive thing to ask in the situation.
s“Will you … marry me?”
He was making weird … ring finger … gestures. Like sliding his left thumb up and down his right ring finger.
Wait. He’s trying to tell me something.
I nodded, even though I wasn’t precisely sure what he was doing. That seemed an appropriate answer most of the time with Raj. Then my phone chirped loudly, sharply, just as they cut the video. Message received, and they now knew where I was. Again. They could add that to their pile of research.
But that wasn’t even the main thing. They were coming. I had started to think they weren’t. And now they knew where I was. Oh yeah, and I got engaged.

Guys. I think I fucked up. No, this time’s the worst. And that’s saying something given the other times I’ve spoken on here. I just asked a girl to marry me. I mean, why did I do that? And then she said yes. I mean, why did she do that? And I suspect the answer to both questions is ‘because I don’t regret for a single second what I did’. Now I just had to find the woman I’d semi-inadvertently made my wife. Not quite in the way your parents mean when the use the phrase ‘find your soulmate’. I literally had to.

Sunday evening, and the mission was about to begin.
The Mission Impossible theme played in the background. Then Paul’s voice burst through the headset. “Gosh, that’s just my ringtone, sorry about that.”
“Let’s just get this done.”
“Okay, right.” Paul shuffled his notes around to see what the plan was. I heard a crash as he shuffled them so hard they spread all over the floor.
He picked them up, then carried on. “Phase One: Finding the right building. The analysts say it’s in a business district just off SH1. So you’ll be looking most likely for an abandoned warehouse.”
“With a sex dungeon underneath” Mike called out from the sidelines, with mild laughter.
“The writing’s on the wall.”
“Well, that’s kind of the idea when you show up at a place like that where you know you’re gonna get –”
“No, literally.” I’d seen a sign with the directions to a warehouse and carpark like what Paul had described as the necessary location.
“This feels like a shitty spy movie in some ways.”
“More of a heist I’d have thought. You can have your high-functioning anxiety as a superpower if you want, though.”
“I’m not even gonna respond to that.” I replied jokingly. “I said I wouldn’t cry …” I carried on walking, glad of Paul and Mike’s company-not-company.
When outside the building, however, I wasn’t convinced. A massive warehouse loomed before me, with a large carpark out front. Like they’d have visitors. It probably was mostly empty. Like my self-confidence at this moment.
“I’m not sure I’m good enough to rescue her.”
“The self esteem support group meets on Thurs at 9PM. Please use the back door.”
“No, but seriously. I can’t just walk in there.”
“We called you backup. And you’re right – you’ll need to find her first.”
“But … how?”
“This is why I called it a spy movie. You need to dress up. Nevermind the crap you normally wear.”
“Who told you that?”
“Simran.”
“She likes my fashion sense, she said so.”
“She’s probably also told you that you have a big dick. She was lying on both counts, I’m afraid.”
“All right, if you’re so fucking smart,” I growled at the smug bastard on the other end of my earpiece, “then what the fuck am I gonna wear?”

There are some things you say that you just regret. That previous comment was one of them. I ended up in a security guard uniform two sizes too small, with no room for movement and no way to breathe out without popping the seams on my trousers. Note to self: never let Paul pick out a disguise again. It wasn’t even a good disguise, and lasted about thirty seconds before I was captured by a proper guard with a taser. I was unusually keen not to get electrocuted, funny how that happens. He basically interrogated me.
“And you’re here to see your partner?”
“Yes, I need to show her our wedding vows that I finished.”
“Oh?”
“For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. For a bit …. Until I get sick of the fucking sight of you.”
“And you couldn’t wait for her to return before you read out that … delightfulness?”
“You’re talking to me about delightfulness.”
“You’re acting like this is fun. Fun is all well and good but it often comes at a terrible price,” he rapped at the taser I was still keenly aware of.
“Was that a threat, officer?”
“Yes. Stop the backchat or it’ll become a painful reality.”
This discussion continued for a while, until the guy got bored and went to get a coffee. As will become apparent in the next little while, they were not very accustomed to keeping prisoners here, and weren’t yet familiar that an open door made for an ineffective cell. What I mean by that is that I ran out of it just after he did.
Now to find Simran. There would be an area of cells somewhere, or at least a dark and disgusting room somewhere. If I went downwards, looking for a basement …
There was a cell that looked as though someone had been in it recently on what I would assume was the lowest level of the building. This must have been where they had kept her.
… And she wasn’t there. There was a creak behind me, and the cell door I’d so carelessly walked through slammed shut behind me. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.” I addressed the voices in my head. “I have an announcement to make but first you have to promise not to get mad.” Paul and Mike made the promise, then immediately broke it.
I could hear a guy on the other side get out his phone and frantically dial; “She got out but there’s some other –”. Then my backup got to him. I never checked whether the guard was killed or not. Although my backup were SAS guys. So he probably was.

You may think, given what I’d been saying throughout my last post, that I was incapable of doing anything while trapped in the cell. But the fact that the earlier guard always profusely apologised was of use. Meant the people who were keeping me here (the ol’ balaclava’d fuckfaces) probably weren’t used to treating someone like this. Although for their sake I hope they never got girlfriends. Started small, by just asking the guards how they were. I think, at first they were confused by my interest. It’s logical, isn’t it?
Of course you think it’s logical. You know that I want to get out of here, so I want them to help me. Need them to care so that they’ll do it.
So over time I asked them things. Initially, I got no replies but after a week or so the guard would meekly answer my questions. He was a student intern for the FRAT party, so I assume that’s who’s keeping me here; who’d thought politics would be better than this. (Pro Tip: On the basis of the provided evidence I’d say it isn’t).
He wanted to make change in the world. I suggested he go to work at McDonalds (immediately, and leave the door open when you leave). He saw through that.

After another week, he felt comfortable enough to open the door, sit in and chat; for a bit. He was a hardcore socialist. Believed we should go to war on drugs. By which he didn’t mean fight people using drugs, he actually meant we should fight people while using drugs. A bit of a crackpot, but he’d clearly never seen a female before. Or, at least, not one that’s been locked in a basement. A week of sob story and a baseless and unsubstantiated promise of sex in the future was all it took after that. Mind, this had taken two weeks.

Tuesday 11 October 2016: Carefully Considering All Options, Then Making The Wrong Move

“She’s definitely not here,” I murmured into my earpiece. “And that’s not even the bad news …”
“Who are you and what do you want?” I yelled into the empty hallway.
“I’m Paul and I want you to come home,” came the reply from my earpiece.
“No. Paul …”
“It’s the FRAT party, don’t you know that by now? And we want a seat in Cabinet. We’ve told you all this.” A reply floated down the hallway.
“Is there any way I can get out of here?” This time no response.

Simran burst through the door of the meeting room, and every member of the team stopped and stared. For about ten minutes, nobody knew what to do.
“And he didn’t even give me a ring.” Simran broke the silence, which spurred everyone else into action.
“We need to go back for him.”
“We’d better or I’ll be a widow.”
“Do you remember the way back there?”
“Aren’t you going to take me? We could just use GPS.”

Eventually a decision was made. Another earpiece procured and placed in Simran’s ear. She headed back to the prison, but this time with a gun. To rescue Raj. Because that was definitely how a spy film would work.
She arrived just after lunch had been served; with Raj having to explain the situation to a befuddled yet ultimately happy intern. This didn’t stop Raj from lying across the meagre desk in the cell in a seductive manner, as Simran walked in the cell door.
“Hey bab-”. He got no further than that before the table broke and he had to pick himself up.

“Lock her up. Lock her up.” The whole right-hand side of the house were slightly less than happy with Daisy. Last day of Parliament before Christmas, and I wish this was an irregular occurrence.
Richard wrestled his way through the mass of noise. “Guys. Calm down, calm down. It’s not like she’ll be back here next year.”
Some guy from the FRAT party yelled over the top; “I propose an emergency Bill”.
“You still have to pay for the dumplings we went and got last week.” Daisy couldn’t resist yelling.
She said that day had been the worst day of her professional life. Although given this job was basically work experience, that wasn’t too hard. The Speaker took an issue with the backchat and kicked Daisy out. He was no less a part of the rampant cronyism than the rest of the FRATheads.
The door of the House slammed behind Daisy as she was kicked out. Okay. Kicked out of the Cabinet. Just another day at the office.
Daisy found herself still holding her phone.
“So that just happened. I take it you’re doing about the same?”

The team at HQ struggled to cope with the rate of change in this hostage situation.
“And you’re right outside where they’re keeping him.”
Wait. A. Minute. Simran?
“Um,” Hassan grabbed the radio from Paul’s unresisting hand. “Raj?”
“I’m probably gonna die,” came the reply.
“I should probably explain what happened …” Simran tried to talk, but Raj’s captors (can we just say Richard? Yeah, I think so. I mean it *was*. But he might sue us. (And it’s been established we don’t cope too well in legal trials).
“If you want to see Raj again …”
“Nah, I just married the fucker; I think I’m good.” Simran did something and Richard’s voice disappeared from Paul’s headset.
“What’d she do?”
“Probably punched him or something. She’s badass like that.” I cut in from the outside.
“Don’t get too attached dude. She’s Raj’s wife.”
“But what’s gonna happen now?”
“Raj will have a plan. He must do.”

The guy in a balaclava had a gun levelled at Simran. I feel as though he would’ve been able to move the gun to point it at me reasonably easily.
“I don’t like having an enemy I can’t see. Like the political system, huh?” I paused, waiting like a standup comedia for laughter that wouldn’t come. “Take off the balaclava so I can face you before I die.”
I was calmer than I ought to have been. Then the guy took off his face shield; it was Richard! The least surprising reveal ever!
“Give me a reason not to shoot. Or I will.”
“You mean bargain for our lives?”
“Jesus, even at gunpoint you’re infuriating. Five seconds.”
“Okay, um,” Raj recovered quickly, then said “you said you wanted the seat in the house, right? Well, if you let us live you can have it. That would give you an overall majority. Lord knows that isn’t what we actually want, but I’d very much rather not … die, you know?”
Richard considered this. “Fair enough. Because if I killed you, there’d be no way in hell they’d let me have the seat, and that’s just messy.” He lowered the gun and stepped away, as he received a text alert.
“Seems like Daisy’s been kicked out of Parliament for the day. Hard to come back from something like that.” He said with a sly smile. Then he spun on his heel and walked away.
“What did you do that for.” Simran was less than pleased with me. I mean, sure, I’d just shat on the last 18 months’ worth of work. So that’s fair.
“I didn’t think. But hey, we’re getting married so who’s the real winner here?”
“Not me, it turns out.”

Making our way out of Richard’s compound was more straightforward than you’d think. We did get lost in the carpark, though. No idea where it joined the road. But eventually we had time to talk, while briskly walking away down the road and hoping we weren’t being followed.
“Do you have a plan?”
“Plan? To stop Richard? How would we do that?”
“I dunno, that’s why you need a plan.”
“In theory, we need to let him feel like he’s winning in order to trap him. The only problem with that is that we need to let him win.”
“And you don’t want to let him win?”
Raj gestured at the filth matted to Simran’s clothes. “No. I don’t, for some odd reason.”
“And how does your plan work, exactly.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Then this is what we must do …”
He told Simran his plan. She never told anyone else what it was, though. Eventually, the conversation swirled back to the others.
“We need to call the others.”
“Oh shit. Yes, we do. And they’re gonna kill me. Twice.”
Simran procured a phone. “I’ll probably hear what they have to say on the matter. You dial.”
Raj did. “Hey, guys. Do you want the good news, or the bad news?”

Guy Fawkes’ Night. So I guess it’s an appropriate time for considering how we could fix the situations we were finding ourselves in. One such example could possibly have been … I don’t know … blowing them up. Just a possibility I’m suggesting, don’t shoot me. I’m not convinced why it might work, but I have a hazy but important recollection that we might be able to try it. Then I remember the laws around ordering nitroglycerine online. As well as the fact that if we did nothing, we’d have no laws at all to come back to.
But that’s not even the main problem I have with the whole thing; Daisy asked me for a favour, and while I was delivering it, I saw the current state of the Parliament in its unadulterated meanness. Suffice it to say, it made me angry. The kind of anger that has nowhere to go, so I just let it marinate for five hours, then I wrote this. Have to let it out somehow.

Daisy rang me at about half past lunch. She was in Parliament, and needed research done and me to deliver it to her in Parliament. I rushed the research to her as soon as I could, which with traffic in Wellington’s CBD and the fact that a printer low on ink can smell fear (of approaching deadlines), I flung the door into Parliament open at a quarter to afternoon tea. Yeah, it had been that long. At least one of the guards looked at me like I was insane. But I am. So that’s okay.

I made my way through the building of mostly self-respecting individuals who waved and nodded and smiled, then carried their papers and moved on. I have no problem with these people. It’s the actual politicians themselves, and specifically the right-hand side of the House, that draw my ire in this particular occasion. You might, based on how I have built this up, expect an explosive monologue that puts the bigots in their place and solves the world’s problems; both in one hit. This will not happen. You might get some sarcasm for your money. Or maybe just second (or third) hand anger at the situation. In which case I apologise.

I arrived at the Cabinet while Chief Fuckface (a nickname which here refers to the ~~Head of the Arseholes~~ Leader of the Opposition, was speaking in relation to the work they were currently doing;
“What do you mean I’m useless, Daisy? I just introduced a new Bill.” Loud, obnoxious and braggy. He’s exactly the kind of person I wouldn’t mind dying in a fire.
“He's the Minister for finance, innit?” Daisy’d reply was on-point, and got mild laughter from the left hand side. I noticed one guy on the right with a fist in his mouth trying to stop himself. Then he was clubbed over the head by another idiot in a suit, and he stopped anyway. This was the level of politician we were stuck with, at least for the time being. The banter among the FRAT boys (OOOOOOHHHH THAT’S WHY THEY CALLED IT THAT – THEY’RE LIKE PUPPIES BUT UGLIER AND WITH A WORSE UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORD NO!) And it is exactly this understanding of the word no that is my next subject for discussion; because somehow, the discourse had leapfrogged into the locker room. I missed a few lines because of the inherent weirdness of the whole thing.
“That’s what calling a prostitute is though? Just an organised phone a friend line.” I suspect the joke was intended in good taste. But he was still a pig. Mind, pork tastes good, so maybe it all links up.
“If you ask me for $5, and I'm too drunk to say yes or no, it's not okay to then go take $5 out of my purse... Just because I didn't say no.”
The Speaker wasn’t quite sure how to deal with these radical and random changes in thought patterns, so I was able to hand off the research to Daisy and leave in the ensuing chaos. Eventually, he started kicking random MP’s out of Parliament. I could hear from outside, the speaker using his microphone (one would think that was antithetical to a speaker, but eh). A relatively long line of freshly disgraced straight-white-male-send-me-nudes-type MP’s filtered out of Parliament with varying degrees of anger at the inherent unfairness of white people being punished for anything at all ever. Then, the last MP out the door was Richard. And I nearly knocked him out. Except that would have been more than he deserved. He wasn’t focused on me anyway. He was more worried about arguing his points to himself under his breath in a whiny voice and remarking that ‘you people are stupid. Wait till I’m in charge.’ Might have been ominous had it not so clearly been the result of a preschool level tantrum.

Daisy told me later that Parliament was like that most days, although the Speaker didn’t normally step in to kick people out of Parliament like he had.
And that’s just not the kind of thing I want to be involved in. I just hadn’t realized the level of ignorance and stupidity in our Government. I mean, I’m all for stupidity, says the man with a unicycle habit. But stupidity AND ignorance? Colour me disillusioned, then let me out of here. Or at least let me fix the system somehow by meeting with Party executives. Like Nadia. She’d be able to fix this. Although her secretary told me she didn’t want to talk and was ‘sitting at her desk waving; ‘no, no’’. Not very secret, if you ask me.
I think the politics and insults was getting to Daisy. If I were her, I’d consider leaving. It was already getting to me and I’d only been exposed to it for five minutes.

Thursday 1 December 2016: My Faith In The System Is Going The Same Way As The Public’s Faith In Mainstream Media

The media didn’t like the whole turn of events, both at home and abroad. They went with a simple headline; “:\”. This was from the one media outlet that I still trusted to report on whole stories. This is what media bias actually is, and not whatever other people seem to think it means. Media bias doesn’t mean ‘they don’t say things I agree with’ or ‘they have different political views’. While both of those things are definitely factors, they’re not the main concern. The main concern is whether the news outlet is wilfully neglecting readily available information in its reporting of a story. Not a matter of how they’ve interpreted the information they have presented, but as to actually what they present in the first place.
The other point with media bias of course is that it runs both ways. For every publication running left-oriented stories, there is one running right-oriented stories. Bias, or perceived bias, is basically only indicative of how a publication has managed to identify and market itself, because this is the most noticeable way people determine that an outlet is biased. That’s also, based on my earlier thoughts, inconsistent with what I think ‘bias’ is, and what it’s defined as. And certainly how it could possibly be present in the media.

This is the kind of thing that’s annoyed me about politics of late. I’m kind of going off the idea, and I think that’s being done deliberately. Maybe not by Richard, but he’s the one who stands to gain the most. Maybe I’d leave the Party. I’d have much more time that way …

Anyway, this article I read kind of summarised the public’s loss of trust in the media, and how Richard’s used that to swing himself into power, even though he should definitely be in jail for murder. He would do something newsworthy every few days; or at least he’d do something every few days that would get reported on. Then he’d claim the media was ‘biased’ because they reported it.
Well, first of all sweetheart, that’s how the news works. Something happens, it gets reported. Where bias DOES come into it, though, is whether the outlet will riff off the facts of what has happened and add their own thoughts to it. That *would* be bias. Or … reporting the comments he makes while not reporting the fact that there are people that don’t like it. That was also be bias. See. I just did it here. Now, whether or not you wanted to know what I think; you now do. Part of the dishonest, lying, crooked, fake media.
But the more distressing thing about Richard is his lack of variety. Media. Media. Media. Media. That’s what his Twitter account looks like. Oh, the irony. But also, move on. Stop being a broken record. I’d far rather you were a corrupt MP3.

Just before Christmas and it didn’t look like things were improving. Richard had used his blustering about the corrupt media to ensure nobody ever listened to the news anymore. Or they did and thought it was biased. Which it was, to an extent. There’s an equal number of sites with biases turning the other way. The fact that one set of biases is more common isn’t the media’s issue. That’s just advertising. Richard had taken to performing for the public in rallies. Easy to get his message out, he said. But he wouldn’t need a message platform any more, would he? He was already the head of state. Reached the highest level of the hierarchy.
The first issue he attacked was the fact that harmful ideologies were being used against ‘normal’ people. Without defining what either word was supposed to mean. I suppose you could say that it’s like if you were a vegan, you wouldn’t want everyone else to – uh, nevermind.
He had a similar level of control over the House too. Daisy would frequently hold Executive Party Meetings that would basically consist of ‘nah, I couldn’t do anything because I’m a woman’ or ‘One of the new rules they’ve introduced is that you have to … clap your hands if you’re … happy and you know it. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. There’s no point when Richard’s cronies only try and sexually assault you. But then they have to ask your age because that matters but your gender doesn’t; never mind whether you actually consented or not’. Admittedly that last one was long and went off track. Like my dirt road racing career, which ended when I collided with one of the stands at the side of the track. Still paying that one off.
It had been going like this for a while. And you could be forgiven for thinking it was ‘normal’. But this wasn’t normal. Richard hadn’t been elected. Political blogs and pundits (not us, obvs) all disagreed with Richard being leader. Undemocratic. That’s what they said. Protests as well. Richard responded to one of them, once. There was like ten people camping outside Parliament. The nicest, most considerate blockers of the road that I’ve ever met. They stayed there for about a week. Then Richard held a press conference which started by talking about how he was going to put all the Government money into healthcare and cut taxes down to zero. So we all knew he was joking. And he added in to the end of the broadcast that ‘there are some protesters outside of Parliament. About ten or fifteen, and they want me to step down. So okay, will do.’ The papers had a lot to say about that.
The opposition fought hard, though. We’d properly expanded our team to include Steph, who was a really good advocate for any cause you cared to mention. Like phenomenal. Why Mike hadn’t said this at least a year ago confused me. She would have helped, a lot. Oh yeah, they’d been going out for a year. Apparently that was common news.
Nadia and her sister Natasha (the other N Sharma from the opposite side of the PM’s office – so they were related) had also taken up political advisory positions. They’d check in with the We-Are-Centrist-We-Promise Party we’d become part of. It was actually called the Labour Party, not that you’d know from how scattered and disorganised the whole thing was. Maybe if they could sort their shit out and actually have a concrete direction, then maybe they could pull an election and steal the Parliament back from the jaws of a shark. Richard. He’s told me to stop calling him that.

Daisy keeps saying she doesn’t feel overly welcome in Parliament. I mean, we never felt particularly included; the only time Daniel was embraced by a fellow MP it was after he’d been booted out, and he was given a wedgie. This whole situation is worrying. For every time Richard does something a good leader would do, he also retreats further into cronyism and conflicts of interest (or it would be a conflict of interest if he had an attention span. As it stands, it’s just a conflict).

The Parliament had continued to pass risky legislation. But none of it as objectionable as the Power Bill. Deregulation of the labour market meant the end for unions. Fine, and I don’t like when you cry while cutting them. Oh wait, sorry, that’s onions. He also privatised healthcare (which is how we all knew he was joking when he increased healthcare funding in that press conference). He focussed on controlling inflation over attempting to handle both inflation and unemployment in a compromise; so unemployment ballooned out. Rightward shift along the Philips curve, yadda yadda yadda. Rightward shift everywhere. Apparently there was a religious justification for all this. But I never stuck around for it. I googled some of his policy later. It quite closely resembled Thatcherism. So heh. Next thing we’ll be taking milk from children.

Throughout all of this, Raj and Mike kept the group lighthearted with banter and memes (which are fine until they start influencing policy decisions). ‘I’ve no idea what this person’s on, but I’d like some,’ was commonly said of Raj. Everyone liked Raj; especially Simran. Mind you, that was to be expected. They were sort of married. “I hope I slept with you to get that job if I didn’t who the hell was that guy,” I heard her say one time. Raj would look around confused, “we’ve not slept together though …”

Things seemed okay for a little while, but after one Parliamentary session, Daisy looked the most shaken I’d ever seen her. I never watched the Parliamentary debates, mostly because after this I didn’t have much access to the Internet. But Daisy told us all about it, and said we had to leave the country. They’d come for us, she said. We’d need to run.
Richard had stood up and declared that he had a list of enemies of the state. Enemies of him, more like. There was about a hundred items on the list. Some media, maybe twenty. Some civilians, maybe thirty. Then the other half were members of the Cabinet. He decreed that they would be killed at the end of the month. New Year’s resolution, my ass. She freaked out. Screaming and crying and shaking, trying to cram her possessions into a box. We calmed her down, eventually. Only just.

If anything’s ever on the brink of collapse, it looks terrifying. From a Jenga tower, or a drunk on a night out; to the local currency and the attached economy. Not good. And also, not what we’d wanted. Well, maybe Mike had wanted that, just for a laugh. Well, nobody was laughing anymore. Even the newsreaders frequently opened broadcasts with mascara running down their faces. Economic analysis cut itself back to ‘we’re fucked’. All the automated stock market prediction things had charted downwards sloping graphs, and the whole economy braced for impact. This kind of preparation wasn’t at all normal. Indicative of the kind of change that would happen here, maybe.

We sat around our meeting room, taking in the details. It’d be a while before we were back here, if at all. Had to decide what we were all going to do.
“I’ll go and live with Steph. They shouldn’t know who I am, anyway; so I should be safe.” Mike opened up the proceedings.
“Who are you again, and how did you get in here?” Raj replied quickly. Too quickly; he’d probably known about that in advance. “I’m not sure you’d be as safe as you claim; but if you’re confident in your decision, I won’t stop you.”
“I think I’ll become a juggler.” I went next. That Parliament ‘debate’ I’d seen totally put me off. “Somewhere. Probably with family in Southern China.”
“Safe and out of the way. Good plan.” Daisy cut in. “Paul?”
“I was thinking become a professional Stud.”
“You mean those metal things that go in walls to keep them upright?” Confusion from Jerry, mostly because he’d met Paul.
“No, I – nevermind.”
Catherine went next as the closest person to Paul that hadn’t already spoken. “I was thinking visit family in China over the summer. Hopefully we’ll be able to come back after that.”
“Luke?”
“I don’t have any family at all – my parents died in a car accident about five years ago.” This was new information. Maybe we should’ve properly sat down and actually got to know each other. But the stresses of modern life, you know … even while we were at uni together.
Jerry went next. He’d stay here, and try to get ‘in’ with Richard. We’d need someone on the inside to let us know when it was safe to come back. Potentially a valuable source of intel? Might turn out to be useful –
“To Richard and Judy, merry Christmas you pair of twatheads”, Raj read aloud as he wrote a Christmas card to send Richard before he left. Why he even bothered, we’d never know. He was going to go with Daisy and Simran to the UN; not necessarily because he suited the work, but because Simran was going. So he had to. (But secretly he wanted to be in Europe in the Winter). They would stop by Las Vegas on their way (even though it is nowhere near) and get married in the lowest-key ceremony they could. Although they could’ve done it here in the office (that isn’t what I meant), but I think they just wanted to go to America.
And Daisy revealed her plans last. Which I’ve already told you. Champagne glasses were procured from … somewhere. She either had a stash in here or was … magic. She wanted to toast; and it was quickly pointed out she’d brought out the wrong utensil. Maybe a toaster would have been more appropriate.
“Guys, I just wanted to say that the last 18 months have been literally life-changing, and I do hope we see each other again at some point; although I’m not yet sure when that will be. So I guess I just hope you guys all have good lives and make excellent decisions, as opposed to waking up after three drinks in a gutter using an old newspaper as a blanket.”
“One time. That was one time.” Raj had gone through a drinking phase at university.
The toast was completed and the drink finished. But only the one, we had rules on this sort of thing.

After a not insignificant amount of time, the team broke off to pack and book flight tickets and … have more sex. Dammit, Simran. Luke, Catherine and I were the last three.
“Look, I don’t think I’ll get another opportunity for this,” Luke began and I thought he was gonna ask me out. No, wait. Not me.
“I suppose we could give it a try,” Catherine was relatively fast off the mark here, while I slunk down in my chair and pretended not to exist.
“And if I have no family, then I could come and stay with you in China.”
“You could … but maybe book a room or something to start with. I’ll work on my family, then you could maybe stay with us later on. Or something like that, anyway. Problem solved, or at least kind of.
How long it would last, of course; that’s another question.

Monday 26 December 2016: In A Crowd, You Just Blend In; In An X-Ray Machine, You Really Stick Out

We’d all booked flights for Boxing Day because of the crowds of people leaving the country. Or at least the fact that it was peak flying time.

The flights would all leave before lunchtime, I found out after we all sat down in the airport bar, and had prised Catherine and Luke, and Raj and Simran apart. They seemed to have this awkward four-way hug going and we all had better things to be doing, like running for our lives.

I think we all knew it would be our last time seeing each other, at least for a little while. So we mutually agreed, without speaking on the matter, not to discuss it at all. We’d just sit and have a beer together before we get up, board a plane, and never see each other again. In theory.
In practice, Raj and Simran couldn’t be prised apart for more than thirty seconds at a time, even though they weren’t going to different places, and Luke and Catherine snuck off to the bathrooms to have sex. More than once. I mean, seriously? There is such a thing a decency. And it wasn’t like this would last forever.

Eventually, the team was sat in one place and in varying levels of attentiveness, so that Raj could address the group. Simran was acting like there was a great know-all Master Plan that he’d disclose. If there was, I never heard it. He needed to talk quickly because our flights were in less than half an hour and we’d wasted about two hours drinking already. Weren’t drunk though. We’d learnt from last time.
“Step one of my plan: more waffles, and another round of drinks.” Raj, who had over the interim become my PA, paused while the food and drink was ordered. When the drinks arrived, he continued.
“Step two …” he raised his glass.
Then the tannoy went off. “Flight 2020202 is ready for boarding at Gate 8.”
“Yeah. That’s probably for the best. Wouldn’t want a repeat of last time.”
He picked up his carry-on and headed off towards the gate, after downing the beer in one go.
This happened over the course of the next hour, as each member of the team boarded a different flight to a different place. Couldn’t come back, not in the near future. Until I was on my own, waiting for a flight to Geneva.
So I guess the question is, can you fix the world? Or while trying to fix it do you just make it a different version of ‘worse’?
And the answer, I think, goes something like this; “I have a flight to Switzerland in half an hour. And I’m gonna try and find out.”

A platoon of soldiers boarded a military van and left from a base in the dust. They’d been up for about three hours, planning. That was what I’d been briefed on. They headed to a small and remote rocky outcrop that they’d meet the enemy at. To try and talk. Instead of using weapons. Mind, this war had gone beyond weapons by now. Both sides had proved equally capable of bombing the other. The charred chassis of a cargo plane that had been wrecked nearby stood by the base that the platoon had come from as a reminder of their enemy’s power.

A helicopter passes over a military base. Then it stops without landing. Dust is stirred from its slumber by generated wind from the rotors. Then, a shadow of a human breaks off from the shadow of the helicopter, dangling from the shadow of some rope. Eventually, the shadow of the human would attach directly to the leg of said human as they approach then touch the ground. But for now, the human was detached and isolated.
“Hey! Hurry up!” My mental sidetrack was derailed by a UN peacekeeper. Yes, the human was me, and I was dangling from a rope. Why was I even here, I wondered, looking around at the people, all in desert camouflage, that occupied the base. Fulfilling daily routines, or rituals, or planning for future manoeuvres. This was where the magic happened, I briefly thought. Then I stopped myself. Magic? A literal warzone, and my brain would describe this as magical? I guess the whole idea is so far from anything I’d ever do in my life that it might seem magical, even though I in no way understand it.
But I wasn’t really here to understand how war works (which I think was what my brain had gone ‘ooohhh look at this cool thing’ about). No. I was here to understand how the people who fight wars work, and why they even do it in the first place. And I was here to stop it.

I should maybe explain. I joined the UN after leaving New Zealand. Their worst nightmare. I would be back. And by the time I got back, I’d have stopped a fucking war. This one, right now.
Jerry gave me regular updates on what was happening in Parliament, back at home. It was about as bad as would be expected, I think. But not as bad as I’d feared. Raj was … somewhere with Simran. America, maybe? Nadia had fled with us, she’d ended up in India. The others had … not contacted me. I haven’t got anything new to say to them anyway. Not until we can go home. And we will go home. If it takes me all year, I will make sure of that.

I was fitted out with a microphone and headset, and taken in a more closed-in van along the same route the soldiers had gone. We stopped about a kilometre from where the meeting would take place. There were drones in the sky and I was in range, so I could hear and see what was happening. Don’t want to get too close, they said. In case of funny business. It seemed fine though. Calm. Which was nice, I think.
The other side showed up in a similar van. They probably had someone doing an equivalent of my job.

The conversation started off slow, then I realised that was a setting on my headset and I could speed it up.
The two sides started by exchanging banter about how their wives and families were. Then they talked about the weather. No. None of that happened, I’m just being optimistic and making things up.
They talked about a shipment of nuclear weapons that the other side would return to us so that there could be a brief ceasefire. Their leader’s birthday, or something. We agreed, and the weapons were handed over; and the whole negotiation seemed to be going well. Too well. I hadn’t even been needed yet.
But it was slowing down.
“What else do they want?” I supplied urgently into my headset. The negotiator nodded, understood. Then he relayed this. There was an incomprehensible reply that I didn’t hear. Then, from my negotiator; “what was that?”
“What did he say?” Confused, and slightly panicking, I spoke urgently into the headset. My negotiator said something in reply but my sound cut out so I missed it.

Then there was a bang. I heard it with my real ears in the distance. Visual and communication died instantly. They must have set off a bomb of some sort or figured out how to target all the communications simultaneously.

This is what they had meant ‘no funny business’. It seemed like this had not gone to plan.

Snow pooled on the roof outside the office window. I’d made it back to the UN headquarters in Geneva, and waited there on holiday for a week. I had a meeting with an executive relating to the lost shipment of nuclear weapons. That happened, like, a month ago; and the bureaucracy within the UN meant that this mission had bubbled its way through the cogs, wheels and inexplicable rubber bands of the UN hierarchy of Power. Yes, power. That thing that it’s been soidly established that I hate. And we all hate. And we’d all secretly rather wasn’t there.

I digress. This isn’t the time for my rampant existentialism to club you over the head. If you’re still even reading this.

The woman didn’t keep me waiting. We were in Switzerland, and you know what they say about the Swiss. Excellent chocolate, although they’ve scrimped on the bars. Yeah, Toblerone. Still not over that.
“And you were there when the package went missing?” The woman was cold, clinical, and looked at me over the top of her glasses. This woman’s spirit object would probably be a knife.
“Um, yes? But that wasn’t to do with me. That was a guy with a bomb.”
“And you’d be okay with following it around the world? Because it’s moving, and looks set to continue.”
“Follow it like a lovestruck bloodhound? And how do you even know it’s tracking?”
“Every shipment capable of mass destruction is tagged. This is where the stolen shipment currently is.” She pointed at a spot on a map, as it was just leaving the Middle East and heading into Egypt.
“Okay, good. Some final information; How long since you've had sex?"
"That is between me and my internet service provider," I didn’t know how to answer the question.
Then the package disappeared, and the woman had to compose an email. She did so frantically. ‘Hi Jeffrey, I am afraid,’ was all she got through before pressing send by mistake.
So they sent me to Africa, to follow a small box as it sightsaw its way around the world. Africa, as the last known destination. It might not even be there.

Jetting off to Africa with only vague knowledge that what we wanted to find was there in the first place sounds like a mission set for failure. On the plus side, renting a shitty, kind of rusted van. I could make my own low-budget safari. And maybe we’d see some sights.
But the van broke down immediately. And we had no idea straight away where the package even was.

Except that feelings of hopelessness are what I thrived on. The two weeks of aimless wander with Raj and Simran (who had joined back up with us) among wildlife, amazingly beautiful sunsets and mind-blowingly impressive waterfalls are perhaps the best moments of my life. Or at least they’re up there. All while being guided by the UN to try and find those damn nuclear weapons. And yes, I did just call them ‘those damn nuclear weapons’.

We’d play a game not entirely dissimilar to Mastechef every evening, where someone different would be required to assemble a meal complying with a ridiculous and arbitrary challenge yelled out by the others. A meal of oat cakes aubergine and celery and lemons resulting from the challenge ‘something from the first and third shelf of the fridge and the first two things grabbed from the pantry’.

We were told the package had mysteriously popped up at a nearby small settlement. A gated community, with one house that looked to contain inexplicably rich owners. In the middle of the African savannah (and I really can’t stress how isolated this community was), it seemed to positively leap up out of the flatness of the ground. Although maybe that was dehydration and I should get a drink. We couldn’t get into the community, and that was definitely where the weapons had been located. Yes. We were certain. That’s what they told us, and they had been wrong before. But we headed back to civilisation. Needed to get on a plane to leave.
We got to know Nadia too, although she seemed wary of us. Professional, strict with her job and work identity, and that this wouldn’t cross over into her personal. She kept us on track with the politics. Not that we actually wanted to know, most of the time. Raj had a habit of turning around with his fingers in his ears and yelling until she stopped.

Monday 15 May 2017: America’s Less Messed Up Than Where We Came From, And That’s Saying Something

Not gonna lie, it felt good to walk around. We’d rented that piece of crap van in Africa and driven it around like the Top Gear team except one of them’s female. I mean, ew; right?
Apparently America was going through a similar autocratic … issue, at the moment. There was this dynamite reality host (by which I in no way mean someone should blow him up) who had decided that what was needed to fix the country was to get rid of all foreigners. His very own wife, for instance. But yes, it felt good to walk around, although American customs was an interesting experience. Odd thing was, they let us through; the UN must have cleared the visas and whatnot in advance for us. Sometimes I love pointless bureaucracy because it actually helps with situations. As opposed to, for example, getting kicked out of America because we were political refugees from some other state. Apparently, America doesn’t like illegal immigration. Who’d have guessed.

The shipment looked to be heading for a Navy base on the Californian coast. We’d have about a day to intercept and destroy. Inevitably, we wouldn’t manage it and we’d have to continue this enormous game of cat-and-mouse around the world in some other way. The UN phoned us and informed us that a) we were paying for the toll call, b) we had no health insurance (so, you know, don’t die or anything) and c) that they’d cleared our arrival with the naval base staff. One of whom was almost certainly crooked. By which I mean that the sergeant had legs of two different legs so he couldn’t walk straight.

We met him, and he seemed okay. A bit of a wet blanket, but he’d told us about it and we’d bought him a new one as a peace offering. The shipment had arrived overnight, and it had been condoned off, as nobody knew what it was, and why it was there. Or, one person knew exactly the answer to both questions, but wasn’t speaking up.

Sleeping on hard floors is not ideal. So we’d used bags of potatoes to soften the ground, and it hadn’t really worked. Also the rocking wasn’t ideal. Oh, right; we’d stowed away on a ship because who wouldn’t think to do that, right?

So, immediate problems: 1) Food, in that we didn’t have enough; 2) Water, in that we had too much and 3) Comfort, in that we had none whatsoever, and there was no immediate way we could thinking of that would fix the problem. Well, until Raj stumbled across some spare crew uniforms by mistake while he was looking for the toilets. Which he found, after an unfortunate incident with a torch and one of the female crew members.

About a week later, and we’d been coping okay. The team? Oh, I thought you meant the voices in my head. Stolen the spare crew uniforms and used them to integrate so that we didn’t stick out. But not so much that we forgot we weren’t sailors. Raj found out from the captain that the package was headed to Australia, contrary to what the UN had told us; that it was headed to New Zealand. Why the difference? Maybe that its actual destination had been taken over by a dictator. Who liked potatoes, apparently. Dick tater.

We couldn’t do much to pass the time we were on the ocean. When on land, we’d try and get into the cargo hold (and find out where it even was) to intercept the weapons and … remove them? I don’t even know what the actual plan was. Find them was definitely step one. But after that, the whole plan fell apart. Hopefully the weapons wouldn’t fall apart as we moved them. If that’s even what we’re supposed to do.
But anyway, while the cargo ship was … busy being a cargo ship, we’d (being Raj, Simran and I) sit and look out over the ocean and wonder how this had happened. ‘A strict progression of cause to effect and day to the next’ was the explanation Raj gave. Simran probably did a lot more actual work than we did, to stem the boredom and feeling that we couldn’t get anything done here. Especially since we couldn’t even find the cargo we were tracking. But the UN said it was definitely here and that they’d tracked it.

“What do you even think home looks like now?” Simran asked one evening.
“Well, a ship,” Raj said, gesturing around.
“No, but like our actual home.”
“I think it’ll look different to how we left it. I just hope Jerry’s coping.”
“He seems okay, but stressed. He’s managed to impress Richard, I think.”
“Ah yeah. That’s a good start, actually. Does he have a plan of attack?”
“Attack?”
“Yeah, how we’ll attack Richard when we get back.”
“Deal with the weapons first.”
“He’s ordered them, hasn’t he?”
“How do you even order nuclear weapons? On Amazon?”
“You can’t even make that joke; we haven’t been anywhere near Brazil.”
We were sitting around on one of the evenings. Long days on the sea. Nothing to do, that’s probably why. In a kind of circle, with a torch in the middle.
“Guys, I might have found the weapons today. And I think I know how we could get to them from the inside of the ship.” Raj blurted this out, he’d probably been holding onto it for a while.
“Could you take us to it first, just to make sure?”
Wordlessly, he got up and led us through the ship to probably the lowest accessible point, then he stomped on the floor so hard it broke.
“See? Easy.”
“Well, that’s one way to look at it.”
We checked the storage cupboard he’d smashed through to and it certainly looked like we’d found where the weapons. I phoned it through to the UN, they’d have people waiting at the next port. Simran and I headed back up, but Raj was just a little behind. Probably thinking about how to deal with them.

The weapons and Raj. Alone. That would go well. If he doesn’t blow us all up by mistake, I’ll see you guys later.

We had waited like this for about two months, able to pass off as cabin crew because of the spare uniforms we’d picked up and the fact that underqualified shipmen meant that they barely knew each other’s names. Eventually, we saw land. Australia. What? But that just meant more transport. We left the ship fairly easily by acting confident and walking very fast. Okay, running. But we’d still have to get a plane to New Zealand. And that didn’t even factor what the package would do. The UN were certain it was headed to NZ.

Except that it had to stop short because nothing would enter. They were technically allowed to, but avoided it because it just wasn’t worth it. Lack of trade policy or something, Richard had been hacking away at the establishment and removed a load-bearing wall by mistake. Even Jerry phoned us to let us know of the disastrous effect on the country that we’d grown up in. He didn’t go into much detail because of data roaming rates. But it was bad. The UN arrived at NZ when we landed in Australia, and couldn’t be bothered to wait for the actual shipment to arrive. Comedy of errors. So useless sometimes.

Eventually, we found a plane that would take us across the Tasman for a sum of money. All of our money. But the guy was nice enough so I guess that was something. We’d leave in a week, and arrive home almost eight months after leaving.

There’s something about seeing the New Zealand coastline. Well, for us it’s the New Zealand coastline. Depends where you’re from, I guess. A sense of longing to be able to go home and stay there. So close, and we couldn’t get there. Not really. No idea why the shipment was headed here. Who would want it? We’d been following the dratted thing for eight months now. I just wanted this whole thing to be over. Not to settle somewhere or have to run from conflict. To have the conflict resolved and the team back together. I wonder how they’re all doing, but I don’t want to be annoying so I guess this is as good as we’ll get for now.

The pilot in the plane we’d chartered (one of the only planes that would take us into New Zealand at all – this is the reason why the shipment had stopped short) was trying to be entertaining. He was sort of okay, I guess. Did all the right jokes; or at least the jokes you’d expect him to do. Said he’d taken a two week crash course. Pointed out that the ATC couldn’t understand his accent so takeoff would be a little delayed. At least I think he was joking. Is possible I misread the situation. Halfway through the flight the intercom came alive and the pilot said, fairly loudly, “what does this button do?”
Way to instil confidence.

The actual flight passed without incident, and after landing we were rushed out one of the rear emergency exits and into a waiting van, where we were requested to lie facedown in the boot with a sheet over us. Secrecy. They must have been really worried for our safety.

The van drove for a while and stopped outside Parliament. We were piled out and snuck through a back door. Back in the right place but it still felt wrong. At least we didn’t recognise anyone. Richard had systematically gutted the Government system and replaced anyone who disagreed with him. So most of the people that used to work here no longer did. Which was bad for us. We’d got about halfway up a fire escape headed to the PM’s (sorry, Richard’s – I mean dickhead’s) office when a security guard coming the other way stopped us and pulled a gun. I know I was meant to be terrified for my life, but all I could think was ‘don’t fall over, don’t fall over, don’t fall over’.
There was about ten seconds’ worth of silence, then the guard boomed “WELL?”
No idea how to respond. Would ‘we’re here in response to a nuclear war threat you ordered’ work? So we said nothing for a further thirty seconds, just looking at our feet. Then, from behind us;
“They’re with me, Alan.”
Jerry. Wearing a full suit. Now, that’s new. The guard retreated back down the stairs.

Jerry led us the rest of the way to Richard’s office. But he wasn’t there. ‘In hiding, back after the apocalypse’ was a sign on his door.
“Oh, I know …” Jerry then took the lift down to ‘Basement 3’. Which was below Basements 1 and 2, if you need convincing of how far below the ground we found ourselves.
Richard was there, as we suspected. In an arm chair with his back to us, stroking a cat. He turned in his chair.
“Jerry, nice of you to show up,” he began, almost happy to see Jerry, “oh what the fuck do you want?” Changed in mid-sentence to wishing we were dead.
“We saw you ordered some nuclear weapons from the Amazon. If you have received this message in error …” Raj began talking robotically, until Simran slugged him in the stomach, and he shut up.
“Not even from the Amazon, although they did go through there. You’d have to have been determined to follow it to get this far.”
“Well, we are.”
“I assume you came here for some other reason than to brag about the fact that you got here.”
“Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t.”
“I need to legitimise my leadership somehow, and who needs the Middle East anymore. Oil’s on the way out anyway. Or in theory. President Trump may borrow from his The Apprentice playbook and return to using coal – ‘you’re fired’ and so on – but that’s a step back if you ask me.”
“Yikes, even Richard thinks that’s backwards,” Raj mumbled.

By now, the outside world knew something was going on at Parliament. They’d begun to assemble outside.
Raj was trying to think of a plan, while Daisy tried; with her somewhat limited negotiating skills, to derail the most hell-bent maniac she’d ever had to deal with.
“Think of all the damage you’ll do and the lives you ruin. Is it worth it?”
The questions carried on like this for about ten minutes. Something in Richard snapped, because he drew a gun and levelled it at Simran.
“You people will let me press the damn button, or I swear to God, she will die.”
“Raj, do you have a plan?” Simran asked tearfully as Richard nudged the cold tip of his revolver (not a euphemism, I swear) against Simran’s temple. Raj looked across helplessly, and shook his head.
“Let me press the button, or she dies.”
The world went into standby mode, as they waited for a signal. Any signal. All the news stations were reporting live now.
The media got their signal as the rocket fired into the air.
Richard looked across at Raj.
“Fuck, I didn’t sign up for this.”
“You literally ordered the weapons. Shut the fuck up. And you’re the closest thing to an evil dictator we’ve ever had, so yes, you fucking did sign up for this.”

The rocket continued upwards. Straight up. Because that was supposed to happen. Richard didn’t even bother to check where the projectile was headed. Which was good, because his ego had a similar trajectory, and actually checking the progress of the launch might give him pause.
Give him pause, and the media. Not the university students that were confronting him. The university students were enormously relieved, given they no longer had a gun pointed at them. And it turns out, Raj had a plan.

“It’s been a while,” Richard declared; talking about his love life, I think. No, he’s talking about the nuclear warhead he’d just launched.
Raj looked up. “Well, yes. I was part of my plan all along. And yes, I may have made a few miscalculations along the way; it definitely wasn’t supposed to get this … bad. But you played exactly how I thought you were gonna play.”
Richard stopped doing what he was doing. I don’t even know what that was. Raj kept talking.
“I understand why you did the victory lap around the world, but it really did expose a whole lot of security problems. Like leaving it on a ship basically unattended for three months. I’m not saying we did this, but if we were to find them and remove the uranium to get it safely destroyed later, then we’d be able to do it in the resulting time. If you plan your invasion of the nutcases far enough ahead, for instance, a security team can agree to let things happen as long as they reach my specific endgame. When did this team meet? When you kidnapped one of my friends. So the weapons would launch, do nothing and come back down, to be retrieved from the ocean by people who actually know what they’re doing. Nice try, fuckface.”
“How long have you been planning this?” Richard seemed hideously piteous in defeat.
“Since I met you. I always thought it would come to something like this, but the level of fuckage is astonishing. We needed to get you here in this way, after the sorts of things that you’ve been doing for the last year or so. That way if you died, nobody would care. Because they may act like they support you – if you held a gun to their head.”
“Kill me?”
“Correct.”
At this point, Richard remembered the gun he’d put down on the arm of his seat, just as Raj moved much quicker than the older man, and shot him without thinking.
“Yeah. Pretty much.” Raj said as he lowered the gun, and stopped Richard’s lifeless body from making an undignified squishing noise on the floor.

Unfortunately, things weren’t much better in Parliament.
“And you were okay with allowing them to launch a nuclear warhead into … somewhere?” The Speaker demanded.
There wasn’t even a response from anyone on the right-hand side of the Cabinet. Typical. First instance of a problem and they fold up. War broke out, but with balls of paper rather than metal projectiles.
Somehow it spilled out on to the streets. The whole city went mental. Riots, and fires. This was exactly what we had protested against in the 70s. A ship had sunk because we’d been against what our Government had just done.
Explain that.
Because I can’t.
Why had we let our politicians be okay with this?
How could we let our politicians be okay with this?
The answer is simple and clear, from the people of Wellington. We can’t and we shan’t. Burn the place to the ground.

Sunday 24 December 2017: The Men Fuck Up The World, Then Fuck Right Off So Women Have To Fix It

Billboards. We’ve been here before. A long time ago. Almost a whole election cycle ago. Actually, it would be a whole cycle. But a fuckload had happened since then.
The whole city had gone into shutdown. First, the Government folded up like a lawn chair. Then, the public transport network blocked like an artery. And finally, the whole city clouded up like a brain that’s been in lectures all day.
No more information would go in. No. More. Information.
No busses. No EFTPOS. No laws, no order, no drive thru. See, even at total dystopic meltdown, there’s still time for jokes.

The campaigning period felt like a year of repetition. But it wasn’t; only a month was spent on it. And at least the team tried to be funny, and warm, and interesting as we did it. Tried. They still couldn’t shake the feeling, as I arranged meetings with printers and hammered nails into boards, that I shouldn’t be the person doing this. Nobody should have to do this. The system should not have failed us as much as it had.

At one point, I stood hammering a billboard into the ground and I saw a small group of people clustered outside a shop. Well, it is before Christmas, I thought. But something happened and a fight broke out. And my first reaction wasn’t to try and stop it. It was simply to think ‘oh yeah, another riot’.
Because by this point there’d been many riots. Or maybe it’s just the same ones that keep going and going and going. Three months [and a half, at the time of posting] had passed since the Defeat of Richard. And there hadn’t been a single day when riots or damage or lawlessness hadn’t been in the news.
We needed a system, and we needed it soon. If there wasn’t one in place, people would get used to the idea that there was no system at all, and then where would we be? Queued outside a supermarket for bread, watching a fight for entertainment, probably. It doesn’t bode well. But I have faith that humanity can pull itself back together. Just as soon as I can sort out the Government. And everything else that needs doing. Because I’m the only person right now who seems to care.

I wasn’t quite sure what the message of this blog would be, when we reached the end of it. Or, indeed, where that end would even be. But it turns out what we’re trying to say, as a team, with this is that the answer to the question ’what’s the worst that can happen?’ is “here’s a numbered list …’, and that the world doesn’t owe you anything, and that no matter what you do end up achieving you’ll just make matters worse. The saddest thing is that I genuinely thought to say ‘at least we have each other’ but we don’t even have that; they’ve all scattered across the globe. I’m saying that like I blame them, and I don’t. Having your lives threatened tends to invoke a fight or flight response. Or something.

But what now? Oh yeah, and I have to let the others know it’s safe to come back. Because it is now. I mean the whole system’s been gutted and is vulnerable, but in the ‘we can rebuild it’ way, rather than the ‘too big and confident, and needs to calm down’ way it was before. This is a good thing. I hope. The system will be stronger and less able to be exploited, in the long term. But in the short term, what are we left with?

Okay, let’s break it down, mostly because this’ll help me write a list of things I need to reform;
1) Need a new Government. I did the base work for that one, but the jury’s still out on whether it’ll work. Literally, there’s a judicial review for this sort of thing …
2) Need to pick a Cabinet. From Target, or something, for my house. Oh! And the political Cabinet as well, but nevermind about that.
3) Restoring faith and confidence in the currency and media. This one’s gonna take a few years to achieve. I’ll need to undo all the negative perceptions of the public relating to both institutions … somehow. Then I’ll need to make sure what we replace any of it with is positive and constructive. So I’ll appoint a builder as the Head of the Reserve Bank.
No, I won’t do that.

So I sit here, looking at a shellshocked, damaged and blank slate of a society. I’d have to rebuild it, but the fact it’s been left in this kind of a mess in the first place is saddening and disappoints me more than any other event; certainly in my lifetime. Mind you, I think that’s a fairly standard reaction. And I wouldn’t want anyone else to be in charge of rebuilding it. They’d just do it wrong. Then I’d have to fix it, AGAIN.

Anyway, that’s it from me, and us. I have some letters to write. Or emails or whatever. I’m secretly a 75 year old. Yeah, it’s been 2 and a half years and I’ve aged about twenty times that. Or at least that’s what it feels like.

Just Another University Party Series Archive

Chapter 1: Thinking

Chapter 2: Drinking

Chapter 3: Sweeping For Scandals

Chapter 4: Raking Up Ideas

Chapter 5: Campaign Day Zero

Chapter 6: Campaign Day One

Chapter 7: It’s A Sign

Chapter 8: It’s A Mistake

Chapter 9: Ruin The Tapes

Chapter 10: Break The Bank

Chapter 11: Autocracy

Chapter 12: Bureaucracy

Chapter 13: Democracy

Chapter 14: Five Days In Wellington

Chapter 15: The House Fool

Chapter 16: The House Speaker

Chapter 17: Owning Land

Chapter 18: Owning Up

Chapter 19: Get Out

Chapter 20: Stay Out

Chapter 21: Four Seconds After A Gunshot

Chapter 22: Bed (Part 1)

Chapter 23: Bed (Part 2)

Chapter 24: Hitting Things By Accident With A Van

Chapter 25: Hitting Things On Purpose With A Hammer

Chapter 26: Become a Back Scratcher

Chapter 27: Become a Back Bencher

Chapter 28: Three Skype Calls In A Fortnight

Chapter 29: Two Months Worth of Backwards Progress

Chapter 30: One Year of Frantic Running