This is The News. It's a series I've worked on over the past year or so, and it is quite long. It's available here, or to download in PDF format if you click the link here. Or, alternatively, it follows on this page. I believe the Table of Contents works.

As a preface to this whatever-you-want-to-call-it, this is a rundown of the writing process of the thing.

July 2011. On an overseas holiday to Fiji, I started thinking about a sitcom idea that we could film at some point later on. As happens with ideas, this one was complete crap. Well, the idea was about 55% solid. The main thing letting it down was the acting talent (or lack thereof) that would perform it (or not). So I drafted a script using some jokes I had assembled from various sources, including but not limited to my own head.

September 2011 (I think). I attempted to film the script I had laid out. No original footage of the project remains, that’s how bad it was. It was at this point I realised we *really* couldn’t act. Up to this point, I’d known it, but this was the first proper opportunity of seeing it in practice. So I edited a bit of it, realised it was quite bad, then scrapped the whole thing, deleting all footage. But keeping the script, I was certain I could make it work in a way that involved less … acting.

Throughout 2012. I redrafted and redrafted my original idea, which had been all along that teenagers have to make a film (or some form of that or other). It had transitioned between sitcom and sketch show more times than an indecisive turntable, and I had continued to dredge up more material from internal and external sources. But I hadn’t found an idea I liked, yet.

February 2013. An idea was suggested that involved a news channel run by teenagers, meant as a satire on news shows and the media industry as a whole. I liked this idea and had enough material to flesh out a script. Well, write. The characters were really 2-dimensional, and the whole thing relied on one-liner delivery. Nevertheless, in my head it worked, so we gave filming it another go.

April 2013. In my head, it worked. In practice … it didn’t entirely fail. But it didn’t entirely succeed either. Because the characters were not strong enough to be empathetic and the acting was not good enough to even close to make the acting empathetic. But it looked quite good, except for minor focus issues. So the $15/person round trip to Mission Bay we did in filming wasn’t completely wasted. It remains, in its 12-minute entirety, on YouTube (as far as I know). Or you can find it here (http://bluelazer.co.nz/server/films/Cinema/thenews.html). And I thought there wasn’t enough material for a second episode.

February 2014. Not only was I wrong, but there was a story to work with the material. Enough for two more 15-minute films. But alas, they would never come. Because of acting and delivery problems that made the things we did for this idea always better in my head, I realised that the best way to create the stories without screwing them up as badly as we had been doing was in text-form. Also, they were faster to write.

May – August 2014. Instead of completing a particularly annoying Maths internal, I decided to start writing, and did so; completing Part One: Professional Incompetence faster than I had thought I would. So I decided that I could, in this format with its decreased reliance on a fast flow of jokes, do a series.

May The thirteen-part series of 1000 (ish) word stories was completed, using not all of the material I had collated over the three-year writing period. So, I decided I’d do more, also because I felt that the ending to this (which went up to Part 13: And Now It’s Six o’Clock) slightly unsatisfying.

December 2014 – February 2015. I followed on with a further 12 stories over that summer (mostly because I was bored). The plotting and continuity in the later parts of these 12 stories is probably the best of the kind that I have done, and as such I am quite proud of it, especially the ending. I also found that almost all of the material had been used. So I stop here, until I get another idea for a series of stories.

April - May 2015. Five more parts. Almost definitely the finish this time. Because I'm out of both ideas and jokes.

June 2015. Edited the whole thing. Some big changes, some small changes.

And that’s 700-words of your time you’ll never see again. Enjoy this. Or don’t. See if I care.
Dylan Thompson
17^th February 2015.

Things got interesting for the media executive when he was hit over the head with a frying pan. Well, they got interesting around him. He just lay there. Unconscious. The boys didn’t really pay too much attention to him, they were too busy worrying about the task at hand. The particular gentleman that had hit the flattened official had a nose that looked like a doorknob and a face that was too big for him. He was Cameron, and he compensated for these facts by growing straight brown hair shoulder length and leaving it loose. He also had reasonably broad shoulders and was of slightly above average height, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with ‘Video games ruined my life. Luckily I have two extra lives’.
“Yeah, he’s been taken care of,” Cameron whispered into an earpiece, “how are things at your end?”
“Well, they’re just fine, but you needn’t whisper”. The reply came through. Cameron jumped as he looked up to see the person supposedly on the other end of his communications device standing in front of him. One of the other team members, Nigel has slightly shorter and thinner than Cameron, had a short mop of black hair and stubble you could use to light a match. His black t-shirt had ‘Nigel No-friends’ stamped across it in football jersey style.
“So how many others are left?” Cameron asked.
“Well I took out my quota, and you did yours, so that just leaves Ravi and Alex -”.
“So we killed them all”. It was Ravi’s voice. Cameron couldn’t yet see him but the mere sound of it set his teeth on edge.
“No, I killed them all, you polished the cutlery. You could’ve cooked the chicken”. Alex. The team leader, and clearly frustrated with everyone’s inherent crapness. They rounded the bend so that Cameron could see them properly. Ravi was shorter than Nigel, and slightly chubbier. He played basketball for no apparent reason; although you wouldn’t notice to look at him (on or off-court) and was holding a frying pan the size of his head with a massive dent in the centre, that he had forgotten to lay down. Alex was similar size to Ravi and red with frustration. It didn’t help that his shirt was green and trousers were brown, so he looked like an angry Christmas tree.
“So … we did it?” Nigel asked.
“Yep,” said Cameron, who was promptly hit over the head by Ravi with his frying pan.
Ravi giggled at the resulting sound, “hehehehehehe that sound’s always funny”, as Cameron clutched his head in pain.

About a week later, the enormity of the task at hand hit them. Alex especially, because he was the one doing all the paperwork. It was like all the clichés you heard of people in class group exercises doing none of the work and leaving it all for one member, except magnified because the team weren’t doing nothing, they were actively making Alex’s job harder. As the days grew longer, or at least in his mind they did, and the pile of paper on the long desk grew larger and more pile-like, Alex continued working on the pitch to station executives. If the pitch was wrong they’d be chucked off the air, and although from what Alex could see this was not a bad thing, he still wanted to maintain control over the thing they had worked so hard for. Or he did anyway. He wrote another word on the document on his screen, then he heard a maniacal laugh from somewhere in the distance.
“What’ve you done now, Nigel?” he asked, not looking forward to hearing the answer.
“You’ll see, you’ll see”, was the only reply. Alex settled back to his work, not anxious for the big reveal of exactly what Nigel had been doing. But he’d asked for this in a way, setting Nigel up as the editor.
Sometime later, Cameron entered with some coffee. Didn’t even offer it. Just sat in the office and drank his own. Rude. Then he got up and with minimal speaking, left. The pitch was nearly done. It would take some kind of a miracle to get a commission.
Ravi laughed hysterically in the distance. “Nigel, that is brilliant”.
“What even has he done?” Alex called from his office.
“Wait for the broadcast. All I’ll say now is, Scam.”
“Scam?”
“S.C.A.M. Special Corporation for Authentic Media.”
“What.” Not a question as such, more a general exclamation.
“You know – it’s funny.”
“Well, all right.”
Alex carried on working. Then the pitch was finished and he submitted it. He strongly suspected they wouldn’t get a commission, but you never know …

Alex had worked non-stop since ten o’clock and was thoroughly frustrated, pissed off and absent-minded. He’d drafted the message many, many times. One draft of the message began with the line; “I tried to write this message sitting down but then they wouldn’t be able to call it stand-up AYOOOOOO”. But then he’d quickly deleted it and replaced it with something else.
But, unconvinced, he changed it again, and again, and again.
Then, at about two o’clock, he started reconsidering the whole situation.
They’d get it wrong, obviously. Because they would; their luck hadn’t been great up to now and every member of the team had been interviewed for some legitimate media job and been rejected in some form or other – Alex for not being in the right place at the right time, Cameron because he’d applied for a job in the dying print medium, Ravi because … well, he’s Ravi, and Nigel, who was actually successful but lost interest and stopped showing up. There was a time he hadn’t even been getting out of bed, Cameron called it ‘The Dark Time’.
In the end, Alex settled on backtracking out of the whole deal, but accidentally hit send too early; sending “To Whom It May Concern; I am afraid –”
Then he panicked properly and had to fix his mess, so he actually ended up requesting a show. He’s still not quite sure how an adamant desire to quit the business manifested itself in an email that resorted to begging for a job.

Let’s take a moment to actually consider the office the team occupied. Well, it was four rooms, joined with a hallway. The studio formed the center of the whole outfit, with Alex’s office (which the team usually met up in), a meeting room and a kitchen and staff break room off of it. These were so arranged such that Alex’s office had a window into the break room and meeting room – which also had windows into each other; connected in a sort of quadrangle. The décor was vaguely 21^st century – modern but not excessively so. An interior designer would presumably have a field day telling anyone who would listen exactly why leather upholstery and steel and plastic fittings didn’t look good. But the meeting room was perhaps at once the most stylish and consistent element of the whole office – this was because Nigel had decent taste; and this was where the team met with its clients (such as there are). The studio was basically a large empty room with heavy curtains. Easy to decorate, even though Ravi had messed it up and the curtains were a dark blue instead of black. There was a water cooler in the break room that Ravi used a lot. Too much, even. Having to go to the toilet in the middle of the ‘you need to wash your hands’ advert they’d done a while back was just ironic.

The team had assembled in Alex’s office. It seemed every time they did that, bad things were just around the corner. This time felt exactly the same as all the other ones before it. So, Alex was a bit panicked. The team sat in the office in silence for about a minute until Cameron began to speak.
“Uh, guys, I got the camera yesterday.”
“Yeah, what did you get?” Alex asked.
Cameron holds up a reasonably light and cheap looking handicam.
Alex looked disappointed. “Oh. Right. So. You want me to ensure this station runs properly using … that.”
“Yeah, that was what I thought, yes.”
“Did you think? That doesn’t seem evident”. Ravi and Nigel did the typical ‘ooh, you gonna take that’ thing.
Then they lapsed back into silence for the next five minutes, where Alex turned back to the pressing business of Facebook, and Cameron moved to look out the window over suburban Auckland (as the view of the centre city is remarkably expansive from a second floor window). Then a phone rang in the office and everyone tuned in to hear what the conversation was. But no-one answered the phone. After panicking and redialling the number, given that they had missed the call, Alex sat back and listened and the others sat back and waited for Alex to tell them what he’d sat back and heard.
He told them after hanging up the phone, “so that call there was a wealthy advertising executive asking us to film a commercial for him, or at least a promotional something to do with their product.”
“So what exactly is the corporate slogan for the station gonna be? What precisely do we actually do here?” Cameron was confused now.
“That’s a fairly good idea for a slogan, actually. And, stuff. We do TV-station things until someone else charters us to do something else. Because how else are we gonna get money. Oh that’s the other thing. The ad guy promised us something like late 5 figures for the ad. This could make or break us.”
“So we wait to meet him and do our thing and hope like buggery we don’t screw anything up?”
“That seems too much to ask, but I take your point.”

The businessman requested to meet them in their office. There was no given reason for this. But nevertheless, the team dressed up for the occasion with Alex and Cameron in semi-formal attire, Nigel not in attendance and Ravi, who came as a witch. The businessman entered and Ravi, in the most faux-formal way he knew how, said; “hi. Welcome to 8 News. Would sir like a tea? Or a coffee? Or a seat? Or a stand? Or a pen? Or a pen-holder? Or a complimentary cupcake? Or a cupcake with the proper cost? Or a –”
“What Sir would like,” said Sir in a posh and nasal voice, “is for you to go a really long way away, really quickly”.
“Um, okay.” Ravi left.
“Right,” said Sir. “Let’s start filming the report. I prepared the script in advance”. Cameron walked around to where Sir was sitting and collected the script; giving him a coffee that it very much seemed had appeared from nowhere as if by magic, and thanking his client at every possible opportunity, even if half of the manners were unwarranted.
The next day, they were ready to begin filming. Well, it was the first day of filming, and everyone was awake. Wide awake, the only kind of awake you get when you realise there’s a whole pile of things needing preparation that have not been prepared. Mostly because the team were not yet ready to film, and therefore running around like headless chickens; a startlingly accurate analogy given the way Ravi runs. Eventually everything was gathered into the company vehicle in a mildly acceptable fashion, and the team could relocate to the location. Or that was the theory, until the car broke down. And then the AA had to be called. But eventually they arrived to the location for filming.
The camera setup took all of an hour, while Ravi stood around and made funny faces for no good reason. When finally the team were ready for filming, Ravi was handed a script and expected to memorise it in five minutes (big mistake). So what ended up happening was Alex read out the report line by line to Ravi, with the camera changing shot after each one. Apparently they make these things look good in editing.
It was, however, at this point that Alex’s job changed, as Sir had a request.
“Um, could you twats please just say the damn lines normally and without any of the ‘reading’ stuff?”
“I don’t actually know. Ravi’s not that good, but normally we can ingenuitate our way out of situations.”
“Ingenuitate?”
“Yes. I made it up. So anyway, we’ll fix it up in editing.”
“But I want just one take”.
“Errrrrrr …”

The interviewing process was well underway, and with Ravi at its helm that meant they were getting absolutely nowhere. Until a particular prospective employee walked in …
The door clicked open. Ravi was adjusting some “paperwork” (crude inappropriate drawings done during the most recent interview). The woman walked purposefully into the room and settled a briefcase on the floor. At the slight click, Ravi looked up and saw a young woman of no more than 20 in a trouser suit standing near a briefcase. He didn’t know what to say.
“Uh, yes. Hi there. I hear the biscuits are extremely good this time of year”, he said gesturing to a packet open on the desk.
“Yes, I reckon they are. And at other times too,” she replied, taking one.
She sat down and Ravi shuffled into what he thought looked a mixture of a more confident and business-like position, and one such as to impress this girl, who for some inexplicable reason, he seemed to fancy. The look he received from the woman told him he looked constipated. She stuck out a hand, and Ravi manoeuvred himself so as to be able to shake it.
“Gemma. Gemma Chan”, she said.
“Okay,” pausing for breath, he began “so what do you think you can bring to the company if we employ you?”
“Well I think I’ll liven the place up a bit”.
Ravi said nothing, but was thinking you sure will. He noticed Alex in the doorway, and waved him in. The door opened, and Alex asked; “any good?”
“Very”, Ravi said. Alex was puzzled by this and left the room, allowing Ravi to carry on the interview.
“Okay, Question two. What would you say if someone in the workplace asked you out?”
“No. That one’s easy. Unless they’re really attractive.”
“So … let’s say I ask you out?”
“No. Just no.”
“Ah.” Ravi sat in awkward silence, until a loud “THERE. THAT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME OF CARDS”, was heard from the next room, at which point Ravi noticed Gemma nearly laughed. Her professional dignity kicked in and she didn’t but it was close. Ravi looked down and placed a tick on the paper, at which point Cameron burst through the door. He was out of breath.
“Alex said to ask if you’d finished the interview?”
“Yeah, we’re done.” Gemma stood up to leave, and Ravi stayed sitting, for reasons unknown (ahem). Alex entered the office again, just as Gemma was leaving, and the door swung shut behind her.
“So you finished the interview, nice.”
“We found our employee,” Ravi said, showing Alex the tick.

Alex sat in his office working out the administrative structure. It wasn’t the most entertaining job in the world to do, but someone had to do it and Ravi had already messed around with the files by drawing skulls on the employment contracts and other sundry defacements on the scripts. He stared at the files for a minute, then heard Ravi in the next room seemingly handling, with exactly the same intent as he had the file structure, a job interview. This very much needed stopping before it somehow escalated into costing the company time and money. So Alex left his office, and moved to enter the next room. Ravi saw him almost straight away.
“Any good?” Alex asked.
“Very,” Ravi’s reply unsettled Alex. So he promptly went as far away from the interview as was humanly possible; he went back to his office to sort out the filing system. Cameron and Nigel were playing a board game in the next room, presumably waiting for a project to export or something.
“THERE. THAT’S HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME OF CARDS”. Cameron’s cry distracted Alex from his work. Well, it gave him an excuse to stop doing work while he went to tell them to shut up. So he did that, and not short of five minutes later found himself back at his desk. He needed to set up the office – as their frenzied takeover of the station had left little time for the petty annoyance that was file organisation. The filing cabinet was literally the whole office with small stacks of papers and random notes all over the room. And Post-it notes stuck to the underside of the TV. But Alex was confident that could wait for another day, and then after that it could wait then wait even more after that. So he went back into the interview room as the interview must have been nearly finished. He went to check, and Cameron had beaten him to it, by about a second.
“Alex asked if you had finished the interview”, Cameron said, out of breath. I had not, Alex thought, but oh well.
“Yeah we’re done”, Gemma said as she exited the room and the door swung shut behind her. Ravi stayed sitting and Alex said, “So you finished the interview, nice.”
“We found our employee,” Ravi said, showing Alex the tick on his piece of paper. “What position was she applying for again?”
“Manager.”
“Oh ...” you could feel the embarrassment emanating from Ravi as he covered his face. Alex didn’t want to know what had happened during the interview. But he sort of did.

Cameron looked left and right in the crowded shopping square. He could see people literally everywhere around him and knew what he had to do. He saw what he was looking for, and bundling the expensive production equipment against his body, ran across the street to where he needed to go. He didn’t even bother a setup he just straight out asked the question, expecting an instant response;
“Can I have a two-scoop ice-cream, please?”

Alex sat in the office, across a table from Gemma. She had been at the office for the first time the day before, so was acquainted and able to begin her work. Also she’d been properly introduced to Cameron. Alex pulled out a phone and dialled Cameron’s number.

Cameron’s phone rang as he sat on a park bench eating his ice-cream, watching people walk past. He answered it. “What, I’m working,” he moaned.
“How the gods have smiled upon me, an employee who works,” Alex’s sarcasm had split walls in the past. “Anyway, stop whatever it is you think you’re doing, and listen to me. You need to film a report in the afternoon, and it needs to be edited by this evening, so not only will you be really pressured today, but Nigel and Gemma will be regularly checking in with you to monitor your progress.”
“I don’t need monitoring, I can do fine on my own”.
“What, so when you accidentally put the red wire in the blue plug and shorted a camera costing us six days of time and two thousand dollars, that was coping, was it?”
“I’m older now, I can do this, I promise.”
“Okay, fine. But you’ll need a hell of a legal team if you mess this up. For one thing they’ll have to be able to prove I didn’t have reason to string you from the power lines by your testicles.”
“Can I go now?”
“Sure. Don’t mess up.”

Alex hung up the phone. Gemma sat back, smiling.
“He’ll mess up”.
“Quick, touch some wood or something before you jinx it”. They laughed for a minute and got back to work.
“So how does this outfit work?”
“You’ve heard most of it already – guy gets task, guy fucks up task, I solve problem, guy gets pan-fried. Rinse and repeat.”
“Oh … and I think the guy who interviewed me tried to ask me out three times in the interview.”
“Really?” the horror was evident in Alex’s expression, “oh god.”
Alex’s phone rang and he answered it.
“You know what I said about not messing up?” Cameron’s voice said, “well, turns out I made that promise too early.”
“What have you done?”
“Put the red wire in the blue socket and shorted the camera, costing us two thousand dollars and six days of time.”
“Cameron, for the absolute love of f –”

Cameron hung up before Alex could finish.

“So, he broke the camera”.
Gemma’s exasperated facepalm told Alex everything he needed to know. “I mean, how can you expect this to be successful if you get staff as crap as that?”
“I don’t. It’ll fall flat on its face at some point in the next year or so. But I figure we may as well enjoy it while we can, because are we ever going to be able to do this again?”
“True, true. But you should get them trained or something. Improve competence in some way”.

Cameron had paced around the square ten times, trailing bits of broken camera as he did this. He couldn’t easily fix the problem, not properly anyway. But he needed the footage. He walked past a man who looked like he’d come out worse off from a front-end collision with a hammer, and asked to borrow his phone. The man was a tourist, and this of course was misunderstood, costing Cameron ten minutes as he took the tourist’s photo in front of one of the shops.

Nigel was assigned to check up on Cameron every hour. He had taken this responsibility seriously, and Facebooked for the last two. When he finally remembered there was something he had meant to do, he sprung up from his chair and knocked it over causing a large crash and Alex to knock on the door asking if everything was okay.
He dialled the number and Cameron picked up.
“What.”
“Have you finished shooting yet?”
“No.”
“Okay. Why not?”
“Well, I would be able to if you weren’t pestering me about not being done shooting so how about you do us all a favour and go away to let me do my job, while you do yours and then maybe we’ll be able to sit around an edited product at some –”
“Okay, geez fine. I’ll leave you to it.” Nigel hung up, slightly baffled.

Cameron put down the phone from Nigel. No sooner had he done this than it rang again. It was Ravi this time.
“Hey, man. Just telling you to remember to get the establishing shot for the report. Without it, Alex’s not gonna like it ….”
“I literally would be doing that right now, if you were not on the phone.”
“Okay, sweet. Also there’s a thing regarding Gem-”
Cameron hung up before Ravi could finish speaking. Then he took the Establishing shot for the report, realised something and called the studio. Gemma answered.
“Hi. Uh, I broke the camera. Any advice on what I should do?”
“Well, what have you done?”
“Okay, in chronological order; broken our camera, stolen a tourist’s phone and recorded the thing I need on that, then got stuck when realising I can’t retrieve it.”
“Okay. Here’s what you do. You pay attention to every word I say.” Gemma then enumerated how to solve the problem and hung up.

“Gaffer tape and string?!” Alex was furious.
“But he needed to fix the camera to shoot the material!” Gemma fired back.
“So he can do that one report, but what about the future?”
“Obviously we get a new camera for that, I am not stupid.”
“Okay, fine. This one’s on you. Let’s see how good you are.”
Alex then left the room.
Gemma looked at the wall for about a minute, then had an idea. She called Cameron back.
“I’m on my way down. I’ve had an idea. Be there in five.”
Gemma arrived at the shopping square about ten minutes later. Cameron was standing off to one side, tapping his watch.
“Five minutes?”
“You aren’t in a position to complain. So shut up and listen. We need the report for today and the one for next week. Except that the one for next week is done, and the one for today is not. So switch them, and who would notice?”
“Not Ravi, that’s for sure.”
“He wouldn’t notice if his head was screwed on backwards. Anyway, then we can do the filming for this report later, once we replace the camera.”
“Are you off now?” Gemma was at equal measure curious and concerned. Alex’s expression passed through confusion and then cleared itself up. “Oh, yeah, sure. Sort of have to … uh …” Then he dashed out of the office.

The machines and wires made odd beeping noises, and a heart-rate monitor sped up slightly as Alex stepped in.
“Dad?”
“Hello?” The man wasn’t looking around. He also wasn’t, in the grand scheme of things, that old. He was, though, in the grand scheme of things, sick.
“Hi, Dad. We did it. I have a TV station now.”
“That was always your dream.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” Alex’s tone made his father look around in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s like a smartass genie that deliberately misinterprets what you actually want. Anyway …”
“Is it any good?”
The silence encompassed the room, and Alex could swear even the machines had stopped (they hadn’t).
“You know, when I met your mother she had her little cousin in a supermarket. So she said hi, and I asked if the kid was hers. She panicked and said no, and that he’d come free with two bottles of wine. Which, it turns out, was sort of true.”

The conversation went on like this for about ten minutes, then Alex said goodbye and left. He had a station to run.

Nigel sat in the edit suite, all on his own. He liked it that way. There was less fuss. Just you and the computer. The downside was, of course, that if he messed up, he was at fault, and could not blame it on anyone else. The report Cameron had finished filming on three different devices required a reasonable amount of editing, and Nigel was dismayed to find out that it also required frequent rendering. Because frequent rendering means wasted time. And wasted time means muck around.
Five hours later, and no work was done. Well, work had been done, and rendering had been done, but no actual editing had taken place. Alex walked in to see Nigel with his head completely submerged in a laptop case.
“Just one moment, I’ll be right --- AAAAAAAAAH”. There was an electric zap sound and Nigel threw the laptop case off of his head where it crashed in to the floor.
“What even –“
“D-don’t ask.”
Alex figured Nigel was doing something shocking (if you’ll pardon the pun). As often was the case with Nigel, he’d find this out later, as part of some grand scheme of things. So Alex left him to it.
What Nigel had designed was a teleprompter.
And he wasn’t gonna stop there, after all, there was nothing else to do.

We shift back to the wedding.
Nigel totally lost the crowd after he tried to start speaking, and it took him five minutes and throwing a fork at Ravi to calm them down. The latter mostly because Ravi kept restarting the group’s laughter. Nigel could see how Ravi would make a good actor. He certainly had style. Nigel’s speech was on a teleprompter of his own devising that he’d got to work, displaying at the back of the room.

Back to the present …
At around half past ten, a girl walked in and Nigel thought he was imagining things.
“Uh. Hi.” Nigel clammed up, which is saying something given his normal mannerisms.
“Yeah, I’m Julie. We met at school, remember?”
“Of course, yes, um, so … do you want a seat or something? Food?”
“No, I’m fine, just working here for the day.”
Nigel went contemplative, and Julie leaned inwards, fully attentive.
“Why would you even do relationships when you can just … not?”
“What if you want the high?”
“Chocolate.”
“Companion?”
“Cat.”
“Cuddles?”
“Cat”
“Anxious and wants to know where you’ve been?”
“Cat.”
“Sexual partner?”
“Ca –” he paused after seeing the shocked look on Julie’s face, but rallied excellently and continued; “– n you please repeat the question?” Nigel had switched to autopilot, and went back there after his temporary hiccup.
“Sexual partner?”
Back on auto-pilot, Nigel raised his right hand, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Silence engulfed the room.
“Anyway, I’m Nigel,” said Nigel. He held out his hand.
“Yeah, I know, we met before. And I won’t shake your hand, because I know where it’s been.”
“Oh.”
Nigel withdrew the hand, then his eyes lit up.
“Hey, d’ya want to help me do a thing?”

Teleprompter Version 1 – Nigel twiddled a wire then pressed the spacebar on his teleprompter unit’s case. A typing bar came up, and he entered the relevant data. Pressing the spacebar again, he heard a faint, robotic “Make Coffee” sound. Then he changed the text it spat out, and pressed the bar again. This, however, was where his plan came unstuck. As instead of repeating this new text like it had been programmed to, the machine warbled “makecoffeemakecoffeemakecoffeemakecoffeemakecoffeemakecoffeemakecoffeemakecoffee” and Nigel had to electrocute himself by unplugging the main wire in the device to turn it off. Result – failure. Alex heard a faint noise from the edit suite, and walked down the hall to investigate it, but Nigel heard footsteps getting louder down the hall, so collected his laptop and dived out the window, meaning Ravi arrived into the room to see a flapping curtain. Then he heard a smash and Nigel yell “Fuck”, and looked down.
“No fair, man,” was his only reply. Boredom = 1, Nigel = 0.
“Well, close,” Julie was oddly supportive. Later on, that might have bothered Nigel.
Not long after this and the pair had returned to the edit suite. There was a second component to the report Nigel was editing that required cutting together so he did that, stopping to add in an explosion sound effect midway through. Then he changed the script to the lead-in piece of the report from “And I’m Ravi Sharma, for 8 News” to “And I’m a huge twat, for 8 news”. Ravi was reading it and he wouldn’t question the script change. Then he played it all back, just to see how the recently re-edited bit sounded. And the explosion played back way louder than expected, causing Cameron to run to the studio, thinking someone had … Nigel was unsure. Boredom = 1, Nigel = 1.
Nigel carried on mucking around, and set several further pranks in motion.
Then the render had finished, so Nigel compiled all the various bits and pieces he had done together into a somewhat cohesive product and hoped it would be good enough.
The time was 3:30, they were airing at 6:00. All was well.
But what if the prompter was done?
Nigel rushed around trying to get the various pieces of his (currently smashed) machine back together and working. He could do it. He could. He could.
He couldn’t. 5:30 and he was nowhere.
The report was due to be aired in 30 minutes.

Julie and Nigel had almost finished, except that the thing wouldn’t work, and they hadn’t finished the broadcast.
“Nigel …” Julie started.
“Start every sentence you address to me with ‘Dear Future Husband’; like that Meghan Trainor song, thank you very much.”
Julie laughed, and Nigel wasn’t sure how this made him feel.
“So, we should get help with this, right?”

When you start an occupation, you always look over your shoulder. Because you’re nervous, because you’re being observed, because you actually like it. But then you settle in to the rhythm, and literally killing people to get to where you got to isn’t such a big thing anymore. Or it is a big thing, but it’s a big thing you’re prepared to not think about just now, because you have bigger fish to fry, because you’re busy doing the job you literally killed people to get. You become consumed by the job, and then the job becomes your life; and your family become people you know, and the people you know become your family. Then you look back and realise what’s happened but you just don’t care anymore. Because you like it the way it is. Because you’re prepared to accept that. And then you find yourself sat in a room doing the job and the people you “killed” start to return … That’s when the job that had become so tedious in its execution reminds you why you “killed” people to get it. That’s when shit gets interesting …

Nigel and Alex sat in the meeting room. The table was long and they sat at either ends. Alex steepled his hands and leant over the table slightly. Business-like. Professional. The two were wearing formal attire. After all, this was a serious occasion. Alex had every confidence that Ravi would have come dressed as a witch again.
“Mr Singh. Please state your full name for the record.” Nigel couldn’t hear so Alex had to shout down the table.
“Nigel Singh. Why do I even have to do this?”
“You let a piece of footage highlighting our incompetence go to air and that isn’t good, although we aren’t – I concede – the most competent bunch, having that fact broadcast is not wise. So your job is … I dunno. I’m just not sure you have one.”
Gemma burst in, panting slightly.
“Uh, I’m sorry, but I had to interrupt. Look at the email,” she passed it over. Alex read it then looked up. Cameron and Ravi were at the door.

Cameron and Ravi were in Alex’s office in his absence, spinning around on the chairs.
“So, who has dibs over Gemma?”
“Well, no-one as yet.”
“So what’s next?”
Gemma walks into the room to get a file from one of the filing cabinets. Scowling at Ravi as she leaves.
“Counting to ten, obviously.”
“Uh boys, come through here for a minute. I just received a real odd email.”
They go to have a look at the email
we’re coming to reclaim our station.
Gemma ran out of the room and into the meeting room. The boys followed afterwards.
“Uh, I’m sorry, but I had to interrupt. Look at the email,” Gemma passed it over to Alex. Alex read it then looked up. Cameron and Ravi were at the door.

Gemma sat in her office, on the computer, restructuring some files. She had found a small file structure on the company hard drive where Ravi had just made files inside files with no actual content. Then her email beeped and she opened it. Then she made a snap decision and collected the rest of the team in the meeting room.
Five people with varying issues, all in one room. What could go wrong?
There had been another email, that’s what. And that could go pretty badly wrong.

The meeting room had a long table in it, and the team sat around this table in such a way that Cameron and Ravi were seated together, opposite Gemma who had her laptop out and headphones on so was not really paying attention to them, despite the fact that Ravi had used the word “Gemma” very loudly at least twice and was doing his damnedest to be noticeable to her by pointing at her every time her name came up in discussion. Either she hadn’t noticed or was ignoring the stupidity. Ravi was unsure either way.
He turned to Cameron.
“We still need to count to ten.”
“Count to ten? What is this?”
Nigel interrupted the meeting he was having with Alex to stare at Ravi for a prolonged and hugely uncomfortable length of time. Then he turned back around.
“So Nigel, you understand that I cannot let that footage air without some form of punishment.”
“Well you could always get Gemma to give me a smack. That’d work,” he said sarcastically.
“No. I already have two of the three idiots that work here vying unsuccessfully for her affections. I don’t need a third.” Alex’s flat and emotionless expression told Nigel he wouldn’t get the expected reaction.
“But seriously how do you intend to ‘punish’ me?”
“I have no idea. But I do think you need some time away from the station. That much I am certain of.”
“If it helps, I did buy a farm.”
“Yes, maybe go there, sort out your life, figure out you’re better than this, leave us and never come back.”
“I get the feeling you want me to leave.”
“SAVE YOURSELF. LEAVE WHILE YOU STILL CAN OR YOU NEEEEEEEVER WILLLLLLL.” Alex dramatically grabbed Nigel’s arm as he said this in a highly exaggerated way. This remark was immediately followed by a loud “ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR-FIVE-SIX-SEVEN-EIGHT-NINE-TEN-DAMMIT” from Cameron and Ravi at the same time, who had stood up for some reason. They then promptly sat back down looking disappointed. This elicited a reaction from Gemma, who removed her headphones and tutted at the boys.
“Guys, I don’t know if you realise but for some odd and unnamed reason I am actually trying to save this station from whoever sent the threatening email.”
“To be fair,” intercut Alex, “it could have been anyone, and it could be a legit warning. We are absolutely horrible at our jobs.”
“Sure, but I wanna be certain. It could be the executives trying to warn us.”
“Well, true,” said Cameron. Ravi and him had stood up again, and were comparing heights. Gemma decided she didn’t want to know.
“What if those execs did decide to come back? That’d be fun.”
“Would it though? Does having to fight for our jobs in a company we took over by force sound fun to you?”
“Yes, it does.” Ravi’s excited tone worried Gemma. So did the fact that the two boys, who were height-identical, sat down in a huff, both yelling “Damn”.
But there was no further time for wondering what exact drug the boys were on, because a postman came through the door and placed an envelope on the desk and left.

TWO WEEKS LATER
The team crashed through the door. Not the stylish crash that you get in spy films. But an awkward tumble that ultimately meant a three-person pile up and the risk of a sexual harassment suit. They had been listening at the door, when it swung abruptly inwards, pulling them all with it, to a meeting between Alex and the executives (complete with bandages still around their heads) negotiating exactly what would be done about the running of the station – or lack of. Alex was annoyed, more annoyed than the team had ever seen him, and the executives were alternatingly patronising and condescending. So it wasn’t going well. And Alex didn’t appreciate the sudden arrivals.
Gemma brushed herself off, getting up off the floor first. Cameron was slower, as he appeared to have gotten an elbow in the eye, and Ravi had a Cameron stuck on top of him, so was off the floor last. The meeting, by this point, had completely grinded (not a pun, thank you very much, the three-person-pile-up had broken apart long ago) to a halt; the exec and Alex were waiting for the team to explain itself.
No explanations came, but Gemma looked up at the executive, turned a weird shade of green and red (at the same time, like an under-ripe capsicum), then ran from the room, and could be heard doing deep breathing in the hallway outside. Ravi just left, without even bothering to try and explain, and ended up tripping over the doormat. Cameron just looked at the two people seated, and said “Well … this is awkward.”
“So, in order,” Alex said to the executive, with a trace of disapproval, “the token female character, the boy who appears to ‘like’ her, and my assistant, who really isn’t any good at his job. There is one other member of the team, which is in hospital due to an unfortunate encounter with a frying pan. So, we’re pretty much a clichéd sitcom.”
“See, the thing is,” the executive said, stopping to rub his head that was presumably itchy because of the bandages, “you need us. But you don’t want us”.
“I DOOOOOOO” yelled Gemma – she was still outside. This resulted in a mild look of confusion from the executive.
“Why is that?” he replied to Gemma. But Cameron had already understood. His hypothesis was further proven to be true, when Ravi walked back into the office and asked Cameron for a word in the corridor.
“What is it?” Cameron asked. He had a fair idea, he just wanted to be sure.
“Damn,” was Ravi’s only reply.

Nigel’s hospital bed had been used for many things over the past few weeks. For one thing, it had a Nigel in it. Right now, Gemma was also perched on a table nearby. Or she was until the executive walked in, then she hyperventilated and fell off.
“Yeah, yeah … so … um,” she said, from on the floor, “the life support doesn’t seem like it’s working so I turned it off then back on again just to check.”
“So, ‘Gemma Chan – competent and professional’ was what the personnel file I was given said,” the exec mused dryly, before continuing “And yet I appear to have walked into an episode of Miranda.”
Gemma picked herself up and squared off with the exec, who was by now standing at the door. He had it half-open, and was not going to stay long for a chat.
“It isn’t my fault that I for some odd and unexplainable reason –”
“Just don’t”. The executive left, the door swinging shut behind him.
The executive had left a DVD on the table, and while Gemma recovered from the embarrassment of that last exchange, she walked over to pick it up.
It was marked “Reports Archive.”
Gemma sat down near Nigel’s bed and opened the DVD player, placing the disc inside. It began to play;
There is an opening shot of a glass door as Cameron walks towards the camera. Cameron doesn’t know the glass door is closed, and carries on walking, crashing straight into it. He staggers back, pulls the handles and the door slides open.
“Glass doors are an item of enormous personal risk to human society”, he says, holding up a piece of card with the words “An 8 News Public Service Announcement scrawled in nearly illegible writing on it.
“Honestly, the number of messages we’ll receive saying things like ‘See you next Fall’, or ‘Have a nice trip?’ is simply astronomical.” He pauses for a second. “Anyway, back to the point of this thing …”
Gemma stops the recording, because she hasn’t even been watching it, hiding her head in shame. She looks across at Nigel, who had been asleep when she entered. He was still sound asleep, and that’s all that mattered. If he’d seen that report, she’d never hear the end of it. She continued the recording, just out of curiosity.
Ravi was mucking around with the camera. It was steadily on a tripod in the 8 News studio; or this could be inferred from the fact that it was steady footage, and was indeed in the 8 News studio.
“Hello, Shameless Claims,” Ravi started with a voice you only hear from humans when they’re high on Helium but pretending not to be, “I tried to clean the wax out of my ears using a match stick wrapped in sandpaper … and now my head’s on fire. Can you help me?”
The recording jumps to a shot of the main lounge. Nigel presses a button on a remote and then a machine, presumably an early prototype of his teleprompter warbles ‘makecoffee makecoffee makecoffee makecoffee makecoffee makecoffee makecoffee makecoffee makecoffee”. Then Nigel stops the device and the recording. It jumps to a presumably illicit recording of Alex and the exec. The exec starts, “Here are the Special Corporation for Authentic Media –”
Alex cuts him off “even our organisation is called SCAM”.
Then Nigel spoke, and Gemma stopped the recording out of shock.
“I’ve always liked that it was called SCAM”.

Steve had left them alone for just over a week. Just enough time for things to start going horribly wrong …

Cameron always arrived at work nice and early. He tended to deal with the important paperwork that had accumulated overnight before Alex arrived an hour later. Because when Alex arrived, there was no further time for clearing the backlog of paperwork, because of the general incompetence of everyone else. Basically Cameron’s job finished at half past eight in the morning and the rest of the day was devoted to ensuring the station didn’t go completely to hell in a handcart. That was Alex’s job description, and thus far between the two of them they had just about managed it. But today was different, Cameron could tell.
Mostly because he felt like he was being watched. As he cycled into the office and locked his bike to a metal drainpipe on the driveway, he could feel the eyes on the back of his neck. Then he checked the post-box, because that was what he did when he arrived every morning. He had become so adept at this particular task he could do it without looking. He felt around in the box and was about 80% sure there was nothing, and due to the nature of the business they ran, that meant there was nothing. The letterbox was either deathly empty or exceedingly full. He felt around and felt nothing. But then he felt some more, and there was indeed a package present.
Grabbing the package, he was startled to find a clear plastic pocket filled with a white powder. He would keep this a secret. It would not affect the business. It could not affect the business.
Nigel arrived to work an hour later. Cameron couldn’t keep his secret any longer, so he told him.
“What do you think I should do?”
“My dad always said you should fight fire with fire.”
“He was a fireman, right?”
“Yeah, but then he got fired.”
“Come on dude, be serious.”
“Well,” said Nigel after consideration, “I have many Chemistry jokes, but they won’t get a good reaction”.
And they laughed it off. In the distance, they heard a toilet flush and Ravi go “dammit, that’s another phone.”
Then Gemma told them about the threatening emails. And they changed their mind-set a bit. Maybe it would be worthwhile to tell the others.

The team assembled in the meeting room on the urgent insistence of Gemma.
She looked worried. Nigel was unsettled by this. Gemma had been reasonably dependable before now.
“So, guys …” Gemma began, her voice somewhat weak.
“The death threats?” Nigel finished. Had Gemma been less stressed, she might have questioned how he knew that. But she didn’t and instead she just nodded.
“Do you know what they might be about? Have you been ordering … ahem … stuff online again?”
“No,” Nigel looked down, ashamed.
“So what are we gonna do?” Ravi asked.
“Typical. Every village has one idiot, but I’ve lucked out and got three. This is what’s going to happen. Alex will go around the city with the package and the info we have about the death threats to try and track it back to its source. If we can’t do that by evening then we’ll set up an evening broadcast and try to clear this mess up before anyone actually dies.” Gemma had laid out the plan. All that remained was to fulfil it.
So Ravi and Cameron set up the studio, well, Cameron set up the studio while Ravi made silly faces at himself in the mirror in one of the dressing rooms. And Alex toured a car around the main square of the city and embarrassed himself and the station in front of well-meaning and non-murderous individuals.
Alex returned with this news thinking all was lost, but Gemma looked at the paper for a prolonged period of time and became convinced the whole thing was a weird kind of code. So Alex trawled the streets again, figuring it out.
Just before six o’clock, Alex returned to the station with no further information. This time, however, there was a white envelope addressed specifically to Cameron.

Specificity was always more threatening and dangerous than generalness.
This remained the case with death threats. Cameron was white as a sheet, which is an oddly appropriate simile as he was hiding in the linen cupboard.
Cameron hadn’t seen Nigel recently. But Ravi was being ‘helpful’ again, so that could explain the absence.
Ravi had been being ‘helpful’ all day, racing around as if he was high on something. Cameron opened the linen cupboard door and saw the white package on the floor, but this time, unlike the first time he had seen it, it was empty. It was six o’clock. Time for humiliation on national TV. And it was Ravi’s go at new reading too … that could not have come at a worse time.
Ravi sat down at the news desk, then promptly stood back up again. He was still acting weird.
Then the cameras were rolling and Ravi was speaking, fast.
“Hello and welcome to an unscheduled broadcast of 8 News. Just to let the relevant people know that we received an unmarked white package –”
“Stop, Ravi.” Alex’s voice was firm. And Ravi acted like a kid and took offense to that – nearly crying.
“You never let me do anything on my own …”
Then he seemed to flick a switch, as Cameron said “look what happened the last time you were left on your own,” holding up the white plastic pocket. For some reason, Ravi found this HILARIOUS.
He doubled over and legitimately could not control himself enough to continue. Then, from that position he leant forward and fell asleep.
Cameron opened the white plastic pocket and sniffed.
“Yes, that’s definitely sugar.”
Nigel had arrived by this time, and was standing off to one side smirking.
“Care to explain,” Cameron was mock-cross.
“Well, okay, fine. I decided to have a bit of fun with you guys.”
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, remember when I was editing that report that required heaps of rendering?”
“You put your name in the obituaries for something fun to do, didn’t you?”
“Pretty much. That’s what always happens when I get bored”.
By this point the three telephone lines the station had were busy with callers, and Alex was sure further investigations would ensue over the next few weeks.
Nigel looked at his phone, saw who was calling. He decided he wouldn’t tell the others the second part of the story. They’d find out soon enough.

Alex’s dad was waiting for his son to come in from work. Well, into the hospital, and the number of times he hadn’t showed up in the last month … but he was busy, and would show up eventually.
When Alex did arrive, the older man was tripping on pain meds, so Alex knew straight away that this conversation would be equally interesting and frustrating.
“It’s windy outside, Dad”.
“Is it Wednesday?”
“No, it’s definitely Thursday.”
“I’m thirsty too, let’s get a drink.” Then the man tried to get up from his bed and Alex gently pushed him back onto the mattress. “What have you been doing?”
Alex carefully considered the answer, “well we had a station, which we couldn’t really manage – then we lost it, then we got it back and now we’ve been receiving anonymous death threats because someone thought we had drugs but we don’t. You?”
“You could’ve said busy. I’ve been stuck here against my will.”
“Dad, that’s kind of irrelevant, they think it’s best for you to be here.”
“Yeah …” he was dejected but accepting. “Look, you better get back …”

The whole team was sat in the reception of a psychiatrist. Gemma was trying to get as close to Steve (the Executive, as Alex still called him) as possible, while Cameron and Ravi were both trying to get as close to Gemma as they could. Essentially, Alex was standing off to one side watching the rest of the outfit huddle together uncomfortably on a two-seater couch. Steve looked thoroughly perplexed and worried by this, as he had not signed up to be ambushed by two guys and a girl. Well, he had, but only unofficially.
Alex nodded to the receptionist, who failed to acknowledge his presence in the slightest.
Alex then said “Hello?” Instead of a reply from the receptionist as he had thought, a computer in the far right corner of the room made a beeping noise and started whirring, as if this noise had woken it up.
“Please state the nature of your ailment.” The voice was robotic. Then again, it had come from a computer. So this was justified.
“We need to see the psychiatrist”, Alex said loudly and clearly, like he was talking to a five year old. Third time lucky.
“Sending request”. The machine made a guttural sound then a disc flew out of a slot and smacked Ravi on the head.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” one of the receptionists at the office had come out from behind her desk, seeing that the automated system was clearly failing to efficiently do its job. This must have happened a lot.
After Ravi had been given a bag of ice and the receptionist had called for the psychiatrist, saying they had arrived, the team found themselves seated in a large and spacious office.
“Wow,” Ravi was awestruck at the size of the room.
“Wow,” Nigel began, and Alex thought it was for the same reason, but then he continued, “That machine was cool”.
The psychiatrist was sat at a large desk in the centre of the room. He had made no movement at all to greet the team as they had entered, and continued to show little or no interest in them as they sat down.
“So,” he said at last, “in 200 words or less, can one of you please explain the circumstances for your visit”.
The executive volunteered himself, and began to tell the story.

The team were on the verge of turning 8 News into a fiasco. The executive had realised this long before he had been assigned to its supervision, but it never failed to amaze him how close to the line of total collapse the outfit was.
This was particularly obvious on this day, a Thursday, just before six o’clock, when the police knocked on the door.
They asked after a “Cameron” who had been reported by a neighbour as having some drugs. Cameron was dragged out in front of the cops by the ear, and forced to explain himself.
It had been some kind of misunderstanding.
Steve paused in his story, waiting for the psychiatrist to write the whole thing down, and looking across at the team, who (reading from right to left); looked angrily at their shoes cursing the stupidity of the whole thing (Alex and Cameron in equal measure), stared longingly at him while he was talking (Gemma), tried and failed to stifle laughter letting out a sound that can only be described as like a dying whale sneezing (Nigel) and spinning on the office chair and scooting across the floor in the room and paying no attention whatsoever to the narrative (Ravi). Then Steve continued with the story, choosing to ignore the sundry reactions of the team.
“So, long story short, after they’d made sure there were no fugitives in the building and we’d convinced them we were not in possession of a corpse, it became clear to us that there had been a case of mistaken identity, or simply garbled communications.”
“Ha, we know all about garbled communications,” Nigel muttered.
“That’s basically our day job,” Gemma murmured in reply. Then she overbalanced by leaning her head to far forward on her wrist and fell off her chair.
The psychiatrist had stopped looking at the team, as he had been while Steve was recounting the story, and was now writing on his pad. The whole room paused for a second, as if waiting for him to say something. He didn’t and Gemma began to panic, over-compensating for the lack of dialogue by over-talking.
“I mean, it’s not that we’re bad at our jobs –”
“We’re bad at our jobs. That doesn’t mean we don’t want the project to work,” Cameron replied.

The psychiatrist looked up. “That sounds to me like someone with mild clinical depression,” he said, pointing the tip of his pen at Nigel.
“And a taste for mischief.”
“What does mischief taste like?” Ravi wondered aloud.
“Oily.”
“But seriously,” the psychiatrist said, pointing his pen meaningfully at Nigel, “you should come back later and have a proper session.”
“Are you asking me out?”
The psychiatrist didn’t even respond.
“Because even talking things through does help to sort them out or mitigate the negative effects …”
Nigel began to see the merit in this, but had a reputation to protect, so kept his expression impassive; so much so that the psychiatrist thought he’d got nowhere.
“Because that might help to improve your productivity?” he lost confidence in his train of thought and ended what ought to have been a statement as a question.
There was a slight pause, then Alex thought of something.

“It would also help if we could actually focus on the work rather than fawning over different members of the team,” Alex snapped and Gemma looked visibly hurt at this. Then slightly puzzled, “I get you meant me and him,” she said, pointing at Steve, “but who else are you referring to?”
“Ravi and Cameron both.”
“People don’t just decide to fall in love …” Ravi felt the need to defend himself; “and how’d you know, anyway?”
The whole room unanimously chorused “we all know”.

“Well, Ravi and Cameron are all over you,” he said. He looked across at the two aforementioned members of the team, who were hurriedly and, they thought, subtly playing a game of rock-paper-scissors. It ended in a draw and Ravi leaped up, yelling “why must you always do this?”

It was office party season again, but Gemma and Alex weren’t feeling it as they sifted through the hand-delivered pile of complaints and the reviews for the year. In fact, they were positively depressed. This was not helped when Steve entered the room and started trying to flirt with Gemma. Gemma was confused and disappointed by this on the one hand, but at the same time almost tripping over her kneecaps at the prospect.
“So,” Steve said, “If it’s office party season, who will get the office award?”
“Two questions – one, do we have an office award -- and two, what employee reliably contributes positively to the firm? Answers are no, and none – in case you’re wondering”.
“That may well be, but you should consider it, because, and I don’t mean to be rude, but your little outfit here looks from the outside as if a six-year old has tried to press the record button on a camera and it’s fallen on the floor and smashed instead.”
“Well, that makes sense. That’s about Ravi’s mental age and that has actually happened … once.”
Alex paused and coughed, “four times”.
Ravi and Cameron stood by the door as this exchange took place. Ravi’s mouth hung open. Cameron grabbed a tennis ball from nearby and put it in the open crevasse.
“Mhmhhmmmhhhhmmmmhmhhmhmhmmm” Ravi said, then he took the ball out of his mouth, threw it at Cameron’s head (who then lent over trying to remove the Ravi-spit from his locks), and repeated “so is that what they really think?”
“Well, we’ll have to change their minds about us, won’t we?” said Cameron enigmatically, before he swished away. But because he wasn’t wearing a long coat he looked like he was wafting a fart away as he left.
The meeting was called at lunchtime, where the announcement of a party was made official. Then the game was on.

The team gathered around the meeting room desk, but everyone was standing because everyone was on edge. Alex began the meeting by pulling out a baseball cap and putting some pre-prepared names into it.
“Decoration duty,” he declared, dipping his hand into the hat, and pulling out Cameron’s name.
“Catering,” he said, pulling out Ravi’s name and then immediately regretting it. He had seen Ravi’s packed lunches, and didn’t fancy leaving Ravi with total control of a kitchen.
“Also on decorations,” he pulled out Gemma’s name – prompting a relieved sigh from Cameron and Ravi glaring at Alex with such intensity his eyes could have sent laser beams.
“And … last and least, assisting with the catering,” he reached into the hat and scrabbled around, knowing there was only one name in the hat but creating an atmosphere of suspense nevertheless. He pulled out Nigel’s name.
“So this is the deal,” he said, “you guys do the things you’re supposed to do and I score you for them. Winning team plays paper-scissors-rock for the office award. This is ‘My Station Rules’. You have two hours. Go!”
And so it began. Ravi and Nigel went to the supermarket, entirely failed to get the things they had planned and left after a yelling match with a self-service checkout.
Gemma and Cameron started off significantly better – getting all the streamers and balloons within half an hour (Cameron wryly noted Gemma’s abilities in the ‘blowing them up’ department and recorded that for later), but it was at the ‘hanging these up’ stage that they fell down (both the team and the balloons, literally and metaphorically), so that when Nigel and Ravi arrived back from the supermarket, they were still going. So Nigel and Ravi went to the kitchen.

Midway through the face-off (which had not started out that way), the first deal was struck. Nigel and Ravi were in the kitchen trying to separate eggs (which Ravi had slightly misinterpreted and had individually laid them all out), that Nigel left to go to the bathroom. Or that’s what he told Ravi. He actually went into the office, where Gemma and Nigel were hanging streamers, and made two deals – one with each. With Gemma he agreed that if they won, he would attempt to get Ravi and Cameron to stop doing whatever it was they were doing (with regards to the Gemma situation) and with Cameron he agreed that if they were to win he would give him $100. Cameron’s deal worked both ways, Gemma’s did not – in return for winning Nigel asked nothing of her. Then he went back to the kitchen, where Ravi was still working. They had half an hour left.
“So I went to see Alex.”
“About what?”
“Never mind.”
Cameron and Gemma worked in silence. It wasn’t a companionable silence. It was an awkward silence. They had finished hanging the streamers and moved on to balloons, with half an hour left.
Then Gemma left to ‘go to the bathroom’, and no sooner had she done this than Alex came around to check what was going on. Naturally, at that time, Cameron made a deal -- $100 if he were to win. Alex laughed this off, and Cameron realised Gemma was making deals with the other side (well, Ravi because Nigel had already seen them).
And so it carried on like this for the remainder of the time until everyone had deals with everyone, but no-one was completely sure with whom their competition had made deals, and what those deals were.

The actual party started slowly. Steve, for some reason, couldn’t make it, which disappointed Gemma. While this made Cameron and Ravi both rather happy, the team just ended up sat around a dinner table in silence looking at the whatever-it-was Ravi had made and hoping it was edible. But Julie had managed to find the time to gatecrash the event, so Nigel at least was entertained every so often when she leaned over and quietly whispered something to him. There was something going on there. Then she went back to reading her book. Oh yeah, she had brought a book. But she’d also brought a banana, so the two cancelled out. This carried on for a decent twenty minutes, until Alex stood up and said, “So I’ve decided on the winner. But first I’ll give you a rundown of how each team scored points; it started even, as these things probably should, and with Cameron and Gemma arriving with supplies first, this gave them an early one-point lead. However, while Ravi and Nigel were later in arriving, they managed to work more consistently, evening up the scores. Finally, and this is the deciding point, the finished product; the decorating is simple but it works nevertheless, and it is certainly better than whatever this is,” he stopped to prod an unidentified lump of meat as if to prove a point.
“So,” he continued, “Gemma and Cameron win.”
Then he dived back because the whole team became a flurry of action as it became apparent that Cameron was owed $200, by Alex and Nigel (at $100 each), Cameron had dibs at Gemma, Nigel was now hell-bent on ensuring Cameron didn’t have dibs at Gemma, and Gemma didn’t have to go on a date with Ravi, which greatly relieved her.
Alex surveyed the mayhem with a perplexed and slightly disappointed expression, then he looked across at Julie who was similarly perplexed; the two slowly, and in a resigned manner, shrugged at each other. He had expected better. She’d had no idea. Then she returned to her book.

“So, basically it’s been two months and there’s been no noticeable improvement in the running or performance of the station. I mean, come on guys – do you want this to work or not? Normally if you did, there’d have been some kind of improvement, but here we all still are, like a cat waiting for a door to open.”
“But we are waiting for a door to open,” Nigel calmly interjected. This got confused looks from everyone else, and Nigel was required to explain.
“I mean, think about it. No-one thinks we can, so people need to let us do our job and then those expectations will change over time. Open the door …”
“Except that we’ve been allowed to operate for the last four months and nothing’s really changed. So while I do see your point, I don’t actually agree with it”, Alex interjected.
Steve continued, “Which brings me to my next point. Look at the team; Ravi who has the mental capacity of a brick wall, Nigel who casually screws up reports because he gets bored, Cameron who wants the station to be a success but can’t organise the team, Gemma who could actually organise the team if she wasn’t so busy flirting with me – nice shoes by the way,” he paused while Gemma went red and hyperventilated, then continued, “and Alex, who is trying to get everything to work but no-one will listen. That’s this team the way I see it.”
“I’m out,” said Cameron, to everyone’s immediate shock. “Think about it, the team is failing and I have time that I could be using way better elsewhere. So yeah … I think I’m done here.”
He gets up and leaves, Ravi following not long after.
Alex stopped Ravi at the door; “what are you doing?”
“Same as him – I don’t like doing work”.
Alex sighed as the team fell apart and Gemma inched closer to Steve, who inched away from her.
“So,” he said as Ravi slammed the door too hard and it fell off its hinges and Gemma and Steve played a shuffly game of follow the leader, “breaking news, just in.”

“And that’s all for tonight folks. Goodbye.”
The pause following this resulted in complete silence in the studio aside from the steady click of the camera and beep of the red light on the door saying ‘On Air’. Gemma looked down at the script she was reading from and flipped through pages, turning to the front of the document. She continued; “Oh shit, sorry. Hello and welcome to 8 News. Lots of important stuff happened that we’ve decided we won’t show you, so here’s something we prepared earlier.”
She then pulled a laptop out from under the newsroom desk and plugged in some wires.
“I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve never been here before …”
Then a clip took over the monitor and Gemma relaxed because she was no longer live.
“That was … horrible.”
“Yes, it was. Try next time to … err … get it right?” Alex was attempting constructive feedback and failing at it.
The station had been like this for the past week, since Cameron and Ravi’s departure. Steve had been around to offer encouragement to the team before broadcasts, read scripts and just generally flirt with Gemma. Nigel had, for reasons as yet unknown, disappeared. The station was failing worse than it had been previously – if that were even possible.
“I don’t even think this is working. Maybe its best we just pack this up?” Gemma was confused and tired.
“Do you mean you’re done too?” Alex was defeated also – even he had considered stopping the station then after a carefully worded meeting with Steve (“Get your head out of your fucking arse”) he had decided to stick with it.
“Yeah, I’m done,” Gemma said, as she switched off the newsroom lights, leaving Alex in the dark as the door shut behind her. Then Alex cycled through the clips they had to use and found one of Ravi holding up a paper clip and saying to the camera with a straight face “Have a look at this clip”.
Alex sighed. Tomorrow he would try to re-assemble the team.

Ravi woke up early on Monday morning. This was not normal. He was woken up by his doorbell, and Alex was at the door.
“Typical”, Ravi said, as he opened the door.
“So, would you please come back to the station?”
“Why would I? Life’s good here …” Ravi said this gesturing to the room immediately behind him. Pizza boxes and Xbox controllers littered the floor.
“I mean, yeah. But think about it like this – Gemma won’t want to date you if you smell like an elephant’s rear end”.
Somehow, miraculously Ravi had already fully dressed in business attire by the finish of the sentence.
“So, let’s go”.
At the same time, Steve was visiting Gemma, and adopting a slightly different tactic.
“Hi, Gemma. We need you to come back.”
“Look, I do want to work there, but that’s just it. I wanna work there, not have to sort out the problems of my workmates.”
“So there won’t be any issues.”
“Well, okay you have one week to prove it.”
Cameron opened the door to see Alex and Ravi standing on his porch.
“The fuck do you want?” he asked, half asleep.
“We need you to come back.”
“Will Nigel be there? Nigel’s cool, I’ll only go back if he is …”
“Actually that’s our next stop, so I’m assuming you’re in?”
The three boys made their way to Nigel’s house and managed to convince him to come back to the station with little negotiating effort. That was after they’d got him out of bed, which required an insubordinate amount of physical effort. Then the team was back together.

Gemma wasn’t sure what to do. That was the sum total of the situation. Ravi was frozen in shock and Gemma knew she needed to help but was unsure as to what she actually needed to do. In the end, she settled for calling an ambulance. By this time, Ravi had regained focus and moved Cameron out of the middle of the road.
“So what, we just wait?”
“Well, you might but I still think we can try to help him,” Gemma said as she hung up the phone.
“How?”
“I am so gonna regret this,” Gemma muttered as she closed in on the unconscious body of Cameron, and began to perform CPR.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Ravi protested.
“You want him alive, don’t you?” Gemma replied while coming up for air – which made her journey slightly pointless.
“Well yes, but there’s no need for that”.
Gemma was pissed off now, as she continued applying pressure to Cameron’s heart. “You want to help him in some other as-yet-unclear way then do by all means get up off your arse and actually do something for a change-” she gulped and continued CPR.
“I – I never realised you had such a low –” Ravi was hurt by Gemma’s remarks and Nigel stepped in to the conversation. He’d appeared from nowhere
“Don’t be like that man, there’s no time.” He waved at the ambulance which had just come around a corner of the road, which then pulled over and medics piled out, with a stretcher. Gemma was forced away from the body as he was piled on to a stretcher.
The ambulance ride was short, but uncomfortable.
At the hospital, Cameron – who was by doctor’s accounts, simply unconscious – was taken into a ward to rest. Then something went wrong somehow, Gemma was never quite sure, and Cameron needed to be hooked up to a life support system. Perhaps his heart gave up or something.
The doctors stabilised Cameron and then relayed this information to the team waiting in the hallway.
It seemed Cameron was now in a coma, and only time would tell whether or not he would wake up.

Cameron opened his eyes.
He was in the production ‘office’, lying in a hospital bed and taking up the majority of the space in the room, except for the desk. Slowly getting out of bed, he looked around, somewhat confused.
“Either I’m at work, or Heaven looks like a crappy news station”.
“You’re at work”, Alex’s voice could be heard – Cameron looked around and saw him at the doorway.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough. And you might want to put something on over that hospital gown; you look like that woman from Kiss Me Deadly”.
Cameron complied, putting a jacket over the top of the gown.
“Where even were you just now?” he asked Alex.
“Steve’s funeral. He was tragically put in a woodchopper about a week ago. All that was left … was a shoe.”
“Was it like the party you planned years ago?”
“Yeah; only me there. Anyway we have work to do.”
“What work, exactly?” Cameron asked his boss.
“Um, I don’t know – you’ll find something.”
Cameron looked over at his desk where papers had mysteriously appeared as if by magic.
“Did you -?”
“What, put those there? Nah …”
Gemma walked into the office on the phone to a client; “Yeah, I’m the boss now. What do you mean ‘what do you mean?’ We got him out of here. A strange combination of a wrongly sized ruler, a run-in with a drunk traffic cop and a fall from a third-floor window and he went and had a heart attack. Something about stress, he said. But we run much better now …” Ravi follows her in with a mischievous look on his face.
“Breaking News!” He cries and then smashes a vase on the floor, “Broken News!”
Gemma just looks at him like he’s insane for a minute, then rushes over to Cameron and kisses him.
“Are you OK?”
“Uh – wha – what the hell was that?” Cameron recovered from the shock of both preceding events.
Ravi replied, “Well we’ve just sent out the midday broadcast live and planned the evening one, so we were having a break”.
“Okay, that’s one of two,” said Cameron, still mystified.
Nigel appeared at the door and said “Cameron, basically what’s happened is the team is working properly for once, the girl of your dreams is yours and your competition for her is dead”.
“Okay, cool. Wait how did you get there?”
“Magic,” Nigel made a vague occult gesture.
“Ohhhhhhhh. This is all a dream isn’t it?”
“Whatever makes you say that? You could just be very lucky.”
“Well, the work I had to do appeared as if by magic and as you say these things keep happening and that’s just two of the three reasons I think this is a dream.”
“What’s the third?”
“You’re dressed like a nineteen-seventies magician complete with top hat, cane and twirly moustache.”
“Ah yes. That.” Nigel looked down at his outfit. “So. Yes this is all a dream. You got hit by a car and then some complication of some sort happened and now you’re in a coma. Doctors aren’t sure if you’ll …”
“Oh. Well. When I die, I want to go peacefully like my grandfather did – in his sleep. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car.” Cameron said, looking around the room at the team.
“So. Let’s get working.” Even Nigel had caught the ‘work properly’ bug, it seemed.
Cameron took a sip from a spontaneously-appearing glass of water. “Say that again”. So Nigel repeated it and he spat the water out, just as a joke.

“Don’t think I’m happy about this,” Cameron told Ravi.
“As one door opens, another one –” Ravi began to reply, while Cameron slammed the office door in his face. This was just one of the meetings he’d had with Ravi in the last however-long-he’d-been-in-the-dream. Nigel had shown up intermittently in different attire, the magician outfit, a cat costume, dressed as a crucifix – and those were just the memorable ones. By and large, though, the team was working correctly for the first time.
Cameron and Alex had engineered the most successful week of stories that the Special Corporation for Authentic Media (SCAM for short) had ever done, helped by Nigel chipping in meaningfully from the side-lines as opposed to his normal chipping in counter-productively from the side-lines. Ravi had managed to actually focus and not be too much of an idiot over the week as well; which further strengthened the team’s position in the market they were trying to work in.
Then they won the award for Excellence in Broadcasting and were noticed by the wider community. Cameron, of course, thrived because of these, receiving promotions to basically the same job as Alex and being in control of half of the operations. And then there was Gemma all over him too. Cameron couldn’t be happier …

The team stayed beside Cameron’ bed for the week. Well, one at a time they left to keep the station running – but Ravi had been unable to get through his broadcast without crying and Gemma had minimal knowledge of the systems the team operated. Ultimately this meant that the station’s situation became worse than it had ever been and the inevitable cancellation notice drew ever nearer.
“Actually,” Gemma said, “I need to go and see Alex’s dad.”
“What’s wrong with him again?” Ravi had the tact of a wrecking ball on a bowling green.
“I think he has some heart thing. I don’t know if it’s curable …”
“Well, that’s a bit shit.”

The report opened on to a field outside the Beehive. Ravi was standing, holding a large vox-pop mike and using it to speak into.
“So, in the run-up to the election it seems most parties have made mistakes. Well, I say run-up. I mean … okay it’s like at school how you do the long-jump and then about two seconds before the actual jump you look at the bar and think ‘wow, that’ll hurt’ and sort of decide not to jump, but then you carry on because you haven’t fully told your legs to stop and you end up smacking your face on the very bar you said would hurt; yeah, instead of a run-up, it’s a little like that.” He paused, proud with his extended metaphor.
“Get on with it”, Alex tutted from the side-lines, and Ravi straightened up.
“We decided we’d do a decent-length article every day to educate the public, or at least the public that watch us here at the Special Corporation for Authentic Media –”
Cameron cut in from the side line; “All five of them”.
Steve paused the clip. The team were all sitting in the production office.
“So, up to there, it’s sort of okay. I mean there are professionalism errors and whatnot, but nothing I haven’t convinced the executives isn’t an issue in the past. Then we continue …”
He pressed play again, and the clip continued.
Ravi had again gone off-topic.
“I mean there was a time where we ran out of things to do every day, so we ran stories like ‘Breakfast as normal’ in the morning just for something to broadcast. And then we got complaints from the people whose breakfasts were not, in fact, normal – like this one guy who’d woken up to find a man in a balaclava in his kitchen with a sharp knife dicing all his Bran flakes.”
“Cereal killer”, muttered Nigel, off-frame but it could still be heard at a reasonable volume.
“Anyway,” said Ravi, hiding a smile, “we’re going to set off fireworks to start off this daily thing we’re doing”.
Steve stopped the clip.
“Okay,” he said, “this is where we have problems. Because not only do we not have the budget for said fireworks, but you guys are irresponsible at the best of times (and this is clearly not the best of times), but also, you basically caught yourselves setting fire to the houses of parliament on film. So I think it’ll come with little surprise that I am forced to terminate your operations here. The executives were wary of you anyway, what with how you guys handled the station during Cameron’s, erm, absence. But this is –”
“The final match?” Ravi chipped in, and Steve leant over and hit him. Hard.

The team sat there in silence. It was finally over. Then Cameron says, “I think I know how to fix this.”
“Yeah, sure you do, what are you thinking – knock them out with frying pans again? This is serious this time. I really don’t think we can.”
“No, I have a plan,” Cameron was already moving. “Ravi, if you get the executives on the phone and say nothing else to them at all, Steve – I need you to go as far away from Gemma as possible so she can actually work properly. Nigel, I need you to set up the green screen and camera and make sure it all works, and Gemma you should field incoming calls from people with complaints.”
Gemma begins to protest this and Cameron cuts her off, “I know, I know, you don’t like dealing with people. But you have to do this.”
“What will Alex and you be doing?”
“We’ll be as far away from the rest of you as possible, trying to make a sustainable plan for the future.”

Nigel was in the studio, mucking around with the green screen and camera, and using After Effects to edit the material. “And the final story of tonight; a group of teenage boys mysteriously murdered all employees at the local media centre, and police want to know – hang on. Umm, [shuffles his papers] that’s all for tonight on 8 News.”
He pauses and a thought occurs to him. “Oh, but before we go, entering our ‘Who killed the employees of TV 8’ competition is really simple. All you have to do is email a four-digit code to the head of BCB 8 Drama, who will then forward a copy of the code to me, and simultaneously send you a second entry form which can be used to get priority so we may place you in the draw. What’s the big prize? Who knows?” He pauses again to tap his nose knowingly. “You’ll have to wait and see.” Shuffling his papers, he closes off, “that’s all for tonight. Goodbye.”
He stops.
“Yeah, all works.”

Ravi had the executives on the phone, and Gemma was bored because the other phone wasn’t ringing. So he decided to go for broke – it wasn’t like he’d ever see her again after this if she said no.
He spoke hurriedly, nervous. “I umm... heard you umm... like coffee. I was umm... wondering if we could umm... go and get some?”
“Sorry, what?” Gemma had barely understood any of this.
“Forget it. Why would I even bother doing this?”
Ravi walks away, with his head in his hands. Gemma calls after him, and he turns back around.
“Ravi.”
“What?”
“You did just ask me out, right?”
“And look how that turned out for you...”
“I’ll let you know.”

Cameron and Alex had planned out the future – Cameron had told Alex what had happened in the coma. Cameron was just getting a celebratory coffee when he ran into Steve.
“So, what’s up?” Cameron was wary of Steve due to the whole Gemma thing.
“Not much,” Cameron didn’t normally talk to Steve, so he was also wary of Cameron.
“Look, were you thinking of asking Gemma out before this whole thing goes tits up?”
“Yeah I thought I would. You?”
“Probably. Well okay, that’s three of us, because Ravi probably will as well.”
“So, let the best man win.”
“Or all men lose, that is a possibility,” Cameron replied.
“I might’ve already said something to her – I must have. She’s all over me.”
“Well, it is possible. You’d remember something like that though?”
“I definitely said something to her … I may not have opened my mouth, used words, or anything but I did say it.”
Cameron was confused by this. Luckily, Ravi came over and distracted him.
“I asked her out,” Ravi was slightly confused at the fact he’d actually done it, “so what do I do, just be myself?”
“Just be yourself? Oh god no, don’t do that.”

In the two hours that followed, the attack plan of the team came together nicely, and a pitch was put forward to the executives. Gemma was asked out thrice by Cameron, Ravi, and Steve – all of whom were told the same thing.
Then the team received a reply from the executives that ran something along the lines of “No. Go away.” After all of this and just before packing up their stuff, the team all found themselves in the office.
“So, can we play the Game?” Ravi was bored as happened if he sat still for more than a minute.
“No.” Cameron cut over Ravi straight away.
“No?”
“Yes, no.”
“Yes, No?”
No – yes.”
“Yes?”
“No.”
“I’m so confused,” Ravi said, and the team relapsed into silence. During this exchange, Gemma had walked out of the room and talked to Alex.
“All three of the other guys asked me out.”
“Oh. Not Nigel, I presume. And what are you thinking of doing?”
“I don’t know – I need your help.”
“Honestly, I think you should do what you think. Because look at us, Nigel and Ravi can’t do their jobs to save their lives. That might actually be an interesting tactic to try …”
“So how should I let them know?”
The game in the office had stopped and the boys looked up to see Gemma and Alex talking. Craning to hear what was being said, the silence became even more silent as Gemma got her phone out and dialled a number. Then all three of the phones went off.

SIX MONTHS LATER
Alex and Cameron had acquired a small studio above a bar. That was pointless, really; no time of total silence, ever. And the one time a person had been flung through the roof while they were in mid-broadcast. That had been awkward. They ran a satirical YouTube channel that got almost no hits. Maintained it almost out of a sense of duty – hanging on to what they’d lost. They were talking about the current geo-political climate, and the ‘proper’ climate. “And we have an expert’s advice on what to do as global warming dries up our water sources. We cross to him now.”
The expert showed up on a screen. “Thank you.”
“So, what should the public do about the decreasing amount of water in New Zealand lakes and pools?” Cameron’s first question stumped the expert.
“Well –”
“Thanks for the advice.” Then he cut off the interview at exactly the wrong time, to give their viewers front-row seats to what happened next.
 The lighting rig shuddered due to a particularly violent pub quiz downstairs. After falling off its perch and smashing on the ground, Cameron’s patience with the temperamental situation was at an end; “no, that’s it,” he said tersely, “I’m done. I quit”. And he walked out of the studio, slamming the door behind him, leaving Alex slack-jawed and unsure what to do, with a camera still rolling and a mess to clean up.
“Uh, sorry about this guys”, he said to the camera, even though he’d be able to edit that whole bit out, “but I think we’ll stop there for now. I only hope to see you again in the future.”
He got up and walked over to switch the camera off, standing in silent confusion looking at his empty and slightly messy studio, wondering what to do now. He switched on the TV, checking the late-breaking news.

Ravi was on summer break from Drama school, working most days in a fast food chain. He thought that was what the first question on the Drama exam should have been; “What exactly made you want to work in McDonalds?” He figured he may as well get used to it, he’d probably be doing it on and off for the rest of his life. The station closing down had emptied his life completely – and while Drama School had partially refilled it, there was still an emptiness.
He sat in an apartment in the city, watching all the cars go by and feeling slightly nostalgic and regretful. The TV was on and the 10 o’clock news was playing, not that Ravi was focussed on that.

The river was an unnatural shade of green. Gemma wondered if she took her hairclip out and threw it at the water, whether it would bounce off. She noted an approximate hex code for the shade of green (#42a34e) that she would use in a square on her blog later. She also took a picture, but she probably wouldn’t use it. She’d done five posts in the last week, mind you, she was good at this job. She’d done it before in a proper news station. Well, they’d messed almost everything up at almost every opportunity but it had sort of worked for the time that it had been active. She certainly had some good memories, and missed it now it was gone. She saw a news car following a police car, which then both stopped. A policeman got out and gave some sort of statement to camera. She supposed she’d find out what statement had been given later on. She packed up her gear and walked back to her flat.

“You need to take a minute to fill out this survey,” Nigel approached a guy in a suit with a clipboard.
He wasn’t having it at all. “You, young man, need to take a minute and fetch it.” Then he threw the board over his shoulder. This is what his life had been like since taking the job as a runner at the local ‘proper’ station.
Nigel’s legs were sore. They had been sore for the last month, ever since taking this job. He kind of hated Julie for getting him it, but then again sometimes he saw her around the office. Sometimes he liked to sneak in here after hours and just sit on the concrete studio floor working in After Effects. He liked the size of the room and the way it was lit when the big lights were turned off. Atmospheric, casting huge shadows against the far wall from the windows looking into the corridor. But most of the time he ran around on errands from the producers of the news show he was working on – making sure the anchors were ready, making sure there were no technical difficulties, getting the producer a coffee. An unusually specific coffee. Then making sure everything was cleared and the lights were off at the end of a show. Not his specialty, which was editing and visual effects. He’d get there eventually, he supposed. But for now, he just had to run his legs off, and remember a better time … then he snapped out of it. Apparently there was a story that he was needed for. Immediately. On location.

The assignment in question seemed fairly risky. Because it involved, in increasing order of dangerous-ness, a terrorist, a bomb, and live reporting on national TV. At this point, Nigel was stressed, and this was just the beginning. The report they had received said that a bomb would go off in a carpark outside the Houses of Parliament. Sort of like Guy Fawkes, but not really because there would be no deaths. Nigel didn’t see the point if there’d be no deaths. He guessed it was some kind of demonstration. For what, nobody knows. The last political rally Nigel had been to had been a charitable race set up by the Labour party. That race had ended with seven deaths and five burning buildings, but as the press officer at the time had said, no-one could be held responsible for those. Just one of life’s little mysteries. Nigel had just finished attaching (attacking) a microphone to its associated boom stick when he looked up and saw Gemma standing a reasonable distance away on her phone. Then he saw a reporter ready to record, so he turned his attention back to the report, which went without incident for two minutes until Ravi walked through the frame absent-mindedly. After tripping Ravi up, Nigel finished the report and saw Alex and Cameron.
They were standing an equal distance from Gemma on the other side, writing down stuff in a notepad. Nigel called to Gemma, having the unintended consequence of drawing Ravi; who had picked himself up, Alex and Cameron over as well. The whole team had gathered before the awkward conversation began.

“So how’s it going?”
“Well, it’s been better,” said Gemma.
“So, we’re reporting a terror threat right?” Cameron asked.
“… Yeah?” Gemma was suspicious at Cameron’s line of questioning.
“Okay, so question; when terrorists feed their little children, do they use the airplane method of ‘open wide’ while making airplane noises? Or do they just smash it into their faces?” Cameron could barely keep a straight face.
This pissed Gemma off. “There is a situation of enormous danger, and you guys are thinking up cheap jokes?”
“Yes.” Cameron was resolute. “Also it doesn’t matter whether the jokes are cheap or not because the concept of currency exchange …”
“Stop.” Alex knew where the boundaries were, and that Cameron was currently standing a decent pole-vault with a jet engine over the ‘acceptable’ line.
There was awkward silence for about ten seconds, while Cameron looked and felt like a plum. Then Nigel’s phone went off and he answered it. Swearing under his breath, he began to pack up his equipment.
“What’s up?” Gemma and Alex asked simultaneously when Nigel put the phone down.
“The bomb went off outside the houses of parliament”.
“Hahahaha we blew them up first,” Ravi hadn’t quite caught on to the gravity of the situation.
“But … that’s across town.” Cameron looked beaten at a game that had not yet started.
“Okay then,” Nigel said, “I propose a race. This race has two components – get the best story possible, and get to the location as quickly as possible and without looking like an idiot. I need to prove to Julie that -”.
“Julie? Bitch one is she? Which – I, I, I mean which.” Gemma must’ve had a negative impression.
“Negative impression, huh? Are you jealous?” Nigel was as close to flirting as he’d ever come.
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes. But she really is a total –“
“All right, calm down. I think she’s nice. Funny. Sweet. I mean, she’s a good friend.”
“I can hear wedding bells. But I mean seriously she brought a book. A book. A. Book. To a party.” Still not impressed.
“Antisocial doesn’t equal bitch. It’s because you and her are similar, isn’t it?”
“On what fucking planet --? You know what, nevermind. Just try not to look stupid.” Gemma gave up and moved on.
“Impossible for Cameron or Ravi,” Gemma said, who then got the evils from the team’s two resident ‘idiots’.

The race began immediately, and with Nigel tripping up Ravi again. Alex and Cameron had the largest advantage, as Ravi was on the floor, Nigel had to pack up his equipment, and Gemma had to finish her notes first, such was her perfectionism. The journey across town was reasonably uneventful, except that Alex and Cameron were stuck in traffic, which Ravi had created by ploughing into a lamppost. Upon arriving at the scene, Gemma was in the lead and Nigel not far behind; but when setting up his equipment took him time, Gemma was convincingly in the lead. She set to work interviewing the people nearby, and attempting to get information – although she largely failed to do so. When Alex and Cameron arrived, they began similar interviews. Ravi’s introduction to the post had taken him out of the race. Alex and Cameron’s interviews meant that most of the witnesses were offended and unwilling to talk further to news reporters; and they were no better or worse off. Nigel faced a similar fate, so the team called an impasse; except for Ravi, who was clearly last.

Then Nigel received some news from his supervisors. If he could get the best story, compared to other news outlets, he could get a promotion. So the team decide to pull together to help him get the job.
“Okay, so you get the cameras all set up and do the lead-in and whatnot.” Alex took charge immediately.
“But it’s live, so …”
“… it’s have to be someone that looks alive, and not like they’ve been rotting for two years.” Nigel had changed in the six months and was no longer concerned with your feelings. (Well, even less than before, which had been small. That was an achievement). Even though the team was helping him.
So they set to work. Alex made sure everything stayed on the rails (surprisingly accurate, because they carried out an interview on a train at some point), Gemma made sure the audience would like it and clapped Ravi across the face at least once (take [unspecified number] for the team), Ravi did the performances although he was distracted by about twenty things before even taking his first step, Nigel kept the tech up and running (literally when a magpie stole one of the SD cards). Cameron did basic editing and before the close of business hours, the report was done.

“So, gents”, said Nigel. His voice echoed through the empty studio, well empty except for a stone statue. The lights still hadn’t been switched on, so the unusual lighting he liked was the current lighting of the room.
“So gents, this is where we’d work if we get the job.”
“You’re saying this like it’s a sure thing.” Ever the sceptic, Gemma needed to make sure they didn’t get carried away.
“Sure, but if I do get it, then I’ll try and let them give you guys jobs as well.”
“And if you don’t …” Cameron began.
“Don’t?”
“Let’s just say my therapist once told me that I have this obsession with seeking revenge… we’ll see about that”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“So now we wait.”
There was a pause for about five minutes. Then Ravi said, “Seriously guys, what do you think of me?”
Nigel was first to reply; “There’s only two things I don’t like about you – your face.”
Then Ravi sulked for the next hour, and after another five-minute pause, Gemma spoke.
“How about I put on some music?”
“The last time you put on music, it was like we were at a funeral. You might as well have called the disc ‘Now that’s what I Call Mourning’. Your music taste is … questionable.”
“Well, I’m putting my foot down,” Gemma said as she got up and locked the door. “You are now hostages and you will listen to my music.”
Then the others left the room through the back door while Gemma went to put on the aforementioned whale-noise-like sounds.
“… Guys? Anyone?” But Gemma’s voice echoed through the now-empty room.

It turns out a five-seat car driving up to Auckland from Hamilton for eight hours is rather uncomfortable. For a start, Ravi had a scrabble board out across the back seat. And the budget was expected any day now, so the tension was palpable.
They had just stopped for fuel – but would have to stop again just after entering Auckland because the car was small, which posed its own set of problems. The scrabble board, for instance. Right now, Ravi and Cameron were playing; Ravi because he wanted to, and Cameron because he had no choice.
“Oh, look I’ve got one,” Ravi said, as he prepared the letters. Then he casually said, “this car’s very saxqith”.
“Saxqith?” Cameron asked, suspicious.
“Cramped, claustrophobic”.
Cameron gave Ravi a look that said ‘you don’t fucking say’, which of course Ravi entirely failed to notice, while also saying “Ravi you can’t just make up words to fit the seven letters you have left. If you’re gonna play, then play properly, otherwise shut up and read the script. I know you’re going to drama school now, but you’re really not that good at acting.”
Ravi looked hurt as he sullenly placed the word ‘six’ down, and got a triple word score.
“At least I’m learning from my past mistakes – where are you with Gemma?”
Nigel cut in from the front seat; “Never in the same room, even though her and Steve have broken up. He’s like a scared little girl. Which is funny, because if I were Gemma being chatted up by Cameron …”
Cameron stopped Nigel’s interjection with a palm to the back of the head.
Alex was browsing Facebook and alternating that with the bank website, waiting for his budget and beginning to get a little cheesed off with the noise; “could you all just shut up and be quiet and stop talking?”
“YES THAT’S IT, TALKING” Cameron yelled as he placed ‘talking’ down on the scrabble board, edging out Ravi on the score board.
“Okay fine. So gents, how much longer?” Ravi was curious. A curious Ravi was a dangerous Ravi; you were allowed to use force to stop him. A warning system hadn’t worked.
“About another hour, but then we have to stop for fuel. We could play a game …”
“We already are.” Cameron gestured at the scrabble board he was playing against his will.
“No I mean another-‘nother game,” Alex said. “I was thinking ‘things they say in Hamilton’.”
“What about ‘things they say about Hamilton?” Cameron mused.
“So then it’s ‘ARGH WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU GO THERE’ as the only acceptable answer?”
“True, true. I vote awkward silence and Scrabble.”

The freedom of non-local reporting was intoxicating for the team. They especially enjoyed the freedom of having a road trip with no Gemma. Although, they had done a full technical briefing before they left. Well, they’d tried. Ravi had ended up with a fly swat in one hand and the camera in the other – using the wrong one to swat a fly and accidentally smashing it into the wall. Then Nigel had pointed out the fuel budget was missing a zero and Gemma entirely misjudged both the audience and the quality of product the team were providing. But Gemma had let them go, on the proviso she could vet what they had taken upon their return.
Despite having shot the report on a Windows Phone (other phones are available) and editing in the car on the way back up North, the team were on track, barely.
Then the renewed sense of optimism and purpose felt by the team was completely and entirely crushed when the car broke down.
Then they were sat by the side of the road waiting for the AA.
So they started to talk, mostly about Gemma.
“So, when you two were after Gemma; did you actually … you know, want her?” Nigel asked Cameron.
“I think it was just kinda something to do, really. Although my standards are so low that I’d say yes to a brick wall if it asked.”
“But for that to happen, you just need to yell ‘will you go out with me?’ at a brick wall.”
“So if that ever happens, I’ll be set.” He paused, then; “Nigel, why did you get this station set up again? We left it not entirely badly last time …”
“Because life was boring without it. Even though we were shit … it was something. And it has improved, for one we’re getting a budget and paid this time.”
Alex and Ravi cut in at the same time, “there’s the truck”. And sure enough, there it was. Then the reasonable forward pace it had built up – stopped. Alex ran to check it out, and the truck had broken down. “Well that fills me with confidence,” he said.

Nigel pressed the export button and then sat back, impressed. The team gathered around to see what the report had looked like.
The camera panned out from behind a tree to show Ravi shuffling some papers in his hand in a field. Then he spoke.
“Auckland house pricing has risen to the point that first-home buyers are having to move out of the city, and even to other cities to buy land. I mean seriously, why else would you go to Hamilton?”
“To give someone a really good fu –” Cameron cut in from the side-lines.
“Yeah, well I suppose there is that. But they invented archive rooms in law firms for a reason, didn’t they?”
“Ravi, carry on with the report, you’re making us look shit.”
“Well, ex-cuse me, Mister Hypocrite,” Ravi was mock-annoyed, with an exasperated look that Cameron entirely failed to see. Then he continued, “Foreign house prices have gone in similar directions, so, over to our foreign correspondent; DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?”
Alex sighed. “I suppose that’s good enough, by our standards, and on no budget. I mean, we are kind of getting paid for this – doing the open to a story and then some jokes.” They carried on driving in silence for the next five minutes, then were back at the studio.
On the way back, Nigel received an email about a competition they could enter, so he looked it up; it was a half hour film concerning some kind of sustainability. They could probably do that; it closed in about two months so that was ample time. In theory. Although Ravi would probably find a way to mess it up. Touch wood.

The team were cautious on entering the building. Cautious, as in careful to preserve their own life, rather than ensure the safety of the whole team. As it were, they entered separately and cautiously, like sheep navigating a minefield. Nigel had a baseball bat, although it looked as though the property was unoccupied. That being said, Ravi looked as though he had a brain until he opened his mouth. So it pays to be sure.
“Nigel, did you finish the export of the ad? It needs to go out at 6 o’clock tonight.” Alex started speaking before walking through the front door. Then he did, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The team’s property was strewn all across the floor of the room – and presumably all the other rooms too – like the toys of a child who’d just had a top-tier temper tantrum. It was immediately obvious the report would not go out at 6 o’clock. So they figured there’d be no programme that evening, and after a short and slightly confusing phone call to their bosses (who claimed they’d already arranged back-up viewing), they set to work tidying up.
For a while the team worked like a well-oiled sandshoe, in that they did the job they were meant for in a slightly better fashion than they would normally have done for slightly longer than they would have done it.
Then the sun went down. This is roughly the point at which all prior plans went out the proverbial window. And the reason for this is simple; the team started hearing noises. Not over the top noises, like a dog barking, the skid of car tyres on the road, or cats fighting; but small noises – creaks here or there. The odd scratch outside. Muffled voices.
It was going to be a long night, and Alex couldn’t decide whether he was glad they’d stayed to keep the studio safe after it had been robbed, or wishing they were all at home in bed.
It was going to be a long night, he thought as the sun dropped below the studio’s perimeter fence, plunging them into darkness.

“How does this sound?” Ravi read from a script he had been working on, “economic news … we’re all fucked”.
“Bit blunt, but it does summarise it rather well,” Gemma said, while thoughtfully twiddling with a pen.
Nigel spoke, “We need some dinner or something, otherwise we won’t survive the night.”
He got the phone and rang through the order, "who's speaking please?” The voice at the other end said “You are." Then Nigel decided to stop messing about and placed the order. It would be ready in twenty minutes. Ravi went out to get it, after losing a lively game of ‘not bitch’ where he was also hit with a chair. Then Ravi was gone and Cameron spoke; “I play guitar, why do people not like me?”
“I thought you were gonna do the fingering a minor gag”, Alex replied.
“But seriously …”
But he never received an answer because there was a particularly loud creak accompanied by movement outside and a scratch at the door. Gemma screamed, and Cameron turned white. Well, whiter.
Then the noise stopped for a while, so Nigel spoke.
“You can sound like an expert on anything if you say it with enough confidence.”
“Yeah? How’d you know that?” Gemma replied.
“I got a degree in basic psychology from AUT.”
“Did you?”
“No. See, I told you it was easy.”
Then Nigel took over the script Ravi had been working on-and-off on over the last week, and the rest of the team settled into silence.
“Hey, Alex,” Ravi was curious about something.
“What?”
“You know when Julie was an intern? Did you know Nigel and her would –” he stopped after receiving a stony glare from Nigel then decided in the interest of public information to carry on.
“Did you know they’d … have a thing?”
“A thing?” Nigel interrupted.
“Well, ok. How’s the sex?”
“Sex? I’d no idea that was on the table.”
“Table, chair, bench … I won’t restrict you …”
“This script is shit. By the way. Just saying.” Nigel had the last laugh, as Ravi was hurt by this.
Then the phone rang and Alex answered. It was his dad.
“Oh, hi … yes … what’d they say … oh, right. Is that what they’re thinking? Fine, fine, fine; no need to get smart; I know they’d only have told you it if that was what they were thinking it. Okay. See you later in the week, yeah? Right, bye.” He hung up.
“Was that your dad?” Ravi asked, while shifting on the couch and jumping at the resulting noise.

Running at the door didn’t help. And it gave Alex a sore back. Well, the door didn’t close. But it didn’t open any further. Alex was thinking fast – well, reacting instinctively and therefore not thinking at all. He saw a medium sized boom stick. He whacked the door with it, and heard a faint ‘ow’ from the other side. But then the stick broke and the intruder forced his way in …

Gemma and the rest of the team weren’t faring much better. They had run into their respective guard zones and were frantically ensuring the integrity of the rooms. Needless to say, this was failing. Gemma had the most success; having locked the windows in the studio and drawn the big thick curtains that made it pitch black. That would be hard to get through. It also made it impossible for Gemma to see, as she tripped over a rogue tripod on her way back to the light switch. But after a particularly interesting experience with one of the legs, she had secured the studio.

Ravi had less luck, mostly due to the fact that his job was to roam the hallways and bathrooms and secure all of it. But he figured out the only outside-facing room of that lot was the bathroom, and securing that was easy as there was only a relatively small window above the toilet that he didn’t think a man could get through. Then he picked up his walkie talkie and jokingly said; “the bathrooms are secured ma’am and we await further orders.” He clicked off and saluted at nothing.

Nigel had no work to do at all, or so he thought. Alex’s office had no external walls. So Nigel did what Nigel did best; wasted time until the shit hit the fan, and even more after that.

Cameron had secured the window in the edit suite, but was on edge, and with a stick. Then he noticed the door was still open and ran to slam it. Gemma screamed from the studio.

“Would you like me to put the kettle on?” Alex attempted humour, and by and large failed. The man who entered looked as though his father was a brick wall and his mother was unfortunate by way of looks. Fortunately, he was wearing a balaclava.
“So … what’s up?”
“Like hell I’d tell you that.” His voice even sounded like an avalanche.
“The fact is … the police are on their way here, so you may as well.”
“Yeah, nah. You didn’t call the police. Your outfit has a hashtag ‘#TeamAlex’ and is absolutely useless, so you didn’t call the cops.”
“So what would you have me do?”
“Kiss my shoes or just surrender? Also; your female employee – I’d ride that like a stolen bike”.
“Don’t remind me. That was six months of company time I’ll never see again.”
“So you and her …?”
“Good lord no. But two employees …”
During this conversation they had been slowly moving backwards, they reached the door, and Alex picked up his walkie talkie.
“Hey, guys,” Alex said into the walkie-talkie, “I’ve lost the foyer”. Channel 8; 0. Intruders; 1.

Cameron was in the edit suite and about 70% sure all was well. Then Alex’s communication came through, so Cameron braced himself against the door to secure the room. This backfired when an intruder opened the door from the outside and knocked Cameron out. Channel 8; 0. Intruders; 2.

Nigel hadn’t been paying attention at all. He’d been on Facebook, in fact. Convinced he was safe in Alex’s office. So he wasn’t expecting a balaclava’d intruder to knock him out and tie him up against the desk chair. The only communication he sent through was “yeah everything seems secure; oh fuc-” Channel 8; 0. Intruders; 3.

Ravi found himself in the toilet when a hand reached through the small window and grabbed his head. Then Ravi’s head was smacked against the window until the glass cracked and the assailant climbed through, looping Ravi around his shoulders in a fireman’s lift. Channel 8; 0. Intruders; 4.

Located in the studio, Gemma was on guard when Alex’s walkie talkie went dead. Then she heard scratching at the window. Finding a cricket bat randomly lying around, she prepared to give her assailant the surprise of his life. Then he opened the window from the outside, but immediately proved he wasn’t as impressive as he could be by falling clumsily through. He had minimal time to dust himself off before Gemma swung the bat, fair play be damned. Then she tied him up against the radiator, which has a whole set of accompanying jokes.
“The studio is secured”.
Channel 8; 1. Intruders; 4.

Gemma was conflicted. She knew there was no real place for her in the firm, as she’d always be knocking heads with Alex for control. But on the other hand, these people had given her a job. Sure, because not one but two of the guys had fancied her, but you take what you can get, while simultaneously telling the two somewhat undesirable gentlemen where to shove their affection. And where not to shove it, under any circumstances.
Then Alex called. He was cool, Gemma thought. He’d never fancied her. Or at least been good about hiding it. There was a meeting, apparently they had a job. A job that absolutely mustn’t go wrong. Gemma loved those. They never went to plan.
So the team assembled, like a puzzle that actively disliked the thought of being put together, in Alex’s office.
“An on-the-side job came through yesterday evening after we all went home. We need to do exactly what we normally do in a day, but without time to edit. So everything in one take and done properly with no messing up. And we have to be able to prove it. Do you guys think, if we waited for the rest of the day to write it all up and learn the stuff, that we could do that?”
“Have we managed to do any of the other jobs you set us over the last year or so?” Gemma interjected
“Well, sometimes. Not a lot.”
“Like the time that cat food heist went horribly wrong, and the armed defenders’ squad was called. Or the other time where Ravi got the laziness award, but couldn’t be bothered to collect it.” Nigel added his two cents, and got a funny look from Alex wondering why he still had a two-cent piece in his wallet.
So they wrote and rehearsed. And rehearsed. And re-wrote. And re-rehearsed. And re-re-wrote. And so on. Until later that evening, they had a functional script and everyone knew what they were doing. But no one cared anymore. They prepared the equipment and devised a way of proving they were in fact doing what they said they were doing. Nigel called it a ‘camera’. Then they recorded everything and wrote it all down. Alex checked the tapes, and there weren’t any mistakes.
They set it to air overnight and then left for the evening.

The next morning, the team arrived to a bulging email inbox. Or it would be bulging, if it had a physical presence. Many of these emails were complaint emails. From the more sophisticated “what are you guys thinking?” to the “the fuck is this shit?” end of the spectrum.
Alex was confused. The report had been exactly as specified, and gone out with little trouble, as proven by the record of transmission. Gemma received a text from the bosses at the station, saying she would need to find the team members who were responsible for the mess-up, and then they’d most likely be fired (from a cannon at 50 kilometres an hour).
So Gemma began the interviews straight away, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Ravi categorically denied doing anything other than following the provided script, while Nigel avoided the questions when prompted, instead electing to point out that his animal-shaped biscuits had a label that said ‘do not eat if the seal is broken’. Gemma filed Nigel’s unwillingness to answer the questions in her ‘let’s come back to that’ file. Although security tape footage showed Nigel at the edit desk for no more than twenty minutes; the approximate time it would take to import, stitch together and export the video. So Gemma could be about 60% sure he hadn’t done it. (But not more, because he had done this sort of thing in the past. Nigel had been introduced to the concept of being serious about a year ago, and had taken to it like a goose being told to cook a gourmet meal). Alex wouldn’t have done it, and she couldn’t have (she would have remembered, unless she’d been roofied but then a) why hadn’t the boys done other less forgivable things to her and b) she wouldn’t have even then because she would have been unable to move).

The lawsuit was serious. A slander suit for the content of the video, from the owners of a whiskey firm. At least in as far as Gemma could work out. It looked like a proper lawsuit from a law firm, not one of those fake ones you sometimes get from ‘Nigerian Princes’ that look like a four year old sat on a keyboard and printed the result.
So the team were summoned to court and assigned a legal counsel. He was a nice chap, not much past 30 and with sandy brown hair and a permanently surprised expression that looked like he’d just seen a shark in the water (read: absolutely terrified expression. He was probably new to this …) He set down the case files a little too heavily on the table, making a loud bang and then skidding across the table and over the other side, to make a satisfying splat as they hit the floor and scattered. He was here to brief them before the trial.
“So, my name’s Jeff,” he said, without laughing at his own joke. “You need to stick to the facts of the case and not get drawn into emotion too much. So far as I can see, the facts are that none of you did it. They will want to know who did. So they may bend those facts a bit, although I’ll try and stop that from happening.”
Then he questioned them each in turn. And took them to the courtroom. But all the preparation they had done was for nothing, as the judge simply gave an outline of the case, and then requested the offending clip be shown, for the record. There was no jury, it was likely this would be settled out of court, anyway.
The clip was played;
Open to Ravi standing in the TV 8 studio, holding a script and a vox pop microphone. He began to speak.
“This is a public service announcement about whiskey,” he said while trying not to laugh because Nigel was probably pulling a face off-camera or something. He takes a swig of the whiskey and spits it, “good lord that’s horrible. It’s like that board game that’s rules actually state ‘the Game is over either when a player collects all cheeses, or when Daddy has a tantrum and kicks the board across the room’. Where was I? Oh yeah. A thing happened about some stuff that did a thing and stuff. That is all. Back to the studio.
The clip stopped, and the judge looked vaguely confused. “Why did you file a lawsuit over that?” he said to the opposing counsel, who then panicked and came up with a poorly thought-out response.
Nigel sarcastically whispered to Alex, “this would be a good legal comedy show – Jeff Sod’s in ‘Sod’s Law’. It’d be brilliant.”
“Maybe. It could be like this one guy that makes deliberately bad choices that somehow turn out well.”

The next day, the team met up at their lawyer’s firm. This was to do depositions that would form the basis of the case when it transferred to the courtroom the next day. So, naturally, gathering the team in the conference room took some time, with Ravi distracted by a cat outside the building, Gemma distracted by the building itself, and Nigel entirely failing to show up on time. To be fair, the building was worth looking (and so, to be completely precise, was the cat), with a large and ultra-modern reception/lobby area where Jeff met them. He then led them through the steel, wood and just general overall glitz that was their offices into the conference room; a room that made the reception area look like a slum in a large city. For one thing, Gemma was nearly swallowed by the foam on the chair she sat down on. Which was annoying, because she soon had to try and get back out of it, to go off and do case research.
No sooner had she done this than Jeff began the depositions; electing to start with Cameron.
He admitted to faintly hearing a phone call that may (or may not) have been relevant between two members of the team. Both Ravi and Nigel, in their testimony that followed, stuck to their stories.
Then Ravi piped up; “can I ask a question?”
“Yes, what?” Jeff waited.
And waited.
Still nothing.
Nope.
Jeff motioned Ravi to continue.
“No, that was it.”
So, anyway, the best you can hope to get as a settlement –”
“is a nice house in the suburbs. But Auckland house prices …” Nigel had showed up by now, and this interruption earned little more than a shake off the head from all involved.
Then Jeff admitted he would be unable to attend court the next day.

The team panicked. Not a subtle panic by the guy who has perhaps-but-maybe-not-after-all left his keys at home, but the full-on panic of a high-school student that has yet to sort out their life priorities and thinks forgetting there was a test today is a big deal. By once again resorting to a lively round of ‘Not Bitch’ that resulted in at least one stapler being chucked out the window, Ravi was elected as lawyer. And because the word of Not Bitch is final, they didn’t move to change that.
In court, things went roughly as expected.
The judge asked for a plea, and Ravi (entirely unsure of what was going on), just blurted “guilty”, then “just let us off, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease.” Then regretted that decision. So the judge allowed each side to make their cases, and when it was Ravi’s turn, he began getting testimonies with Nigel.

Gemma, who had (at least for the moment) skipped court to research the case, had figured out the phone call was between Alex and some businessman. Then she thought about that for a minute. If he testified … that could be trouble, big trouble. So she raced back to court while texting Nigel to stall.

“… and then we left for the evening to let the broadcast play out.” Nigel continued, as he received a text. He looked down before he continued his testimony. “Now, let’s think about that for a minute …”

Gemma had told Nigel to stall, and he would probably need to for some time. Due to Sod’s Law, the Auckland public transport system was at a standstill.

So they had one day to sort out their problems. Everyone involved knew that a court decision would shut down the station, but no-one was particularly prepared to address it. And because they had just one day to find out who this businessman was, why he was suing them, and stop him, as well as finding out who had committed the crime and how they had done it – Ravi took the opportunity to have a nap. And Alex came clean about the email.
“That was the guy who hired us asking us to do that job. He later called me and said some weird stuff, like that he’d need to collect the tapes pre-broadcast. I convinced him not to, and to just record it from the TV. Then I never heard from him again.
Then the executives got in touch through a phone call in which they said they’d shut down the station if they lost the court case, and Alex pretended he wasn’t listening and that the line was dodgy, even though he just crinkled paper in front of the receiver and banged the phone on his desk. But after the it’s-a-bad-line-on-my-end-oh-what-a-terrible-shame-i-can’t-hear-you-byeeeeeee of the phone call, the writing was very much on the wall. Both literally and figuratively because it turned out there had been graffiti over the last week.
Alex showed the team the email, and set Cameron and Ravi; who wasn’t in the best mood after being woken up, on to the task of arranging a meeting with the businessman. Then Alex arranged the papers on his desk (because bad organisation got you nowhere), and saw Gemma’s resignation letter on the top of his paper pile. She must have put it there recently.

To their great credit, Cameron and Ravi at least tried to be professional. Although the person who answered the call was bombarded with puns until the passed the phone on to someone else. Basically it started at; ‘I’m Richard Dawkins. Thank you, good night, and God Bless. Shit.’ And went to ‘I’ve called the SWAT team; that should sort the fly problem.’ Eventually, however Cameron found himself talking to the right person and arranging a meeting for later that afternoon.
Meanwhile, Gemma had been called in to Alex’s office to discuss her leaving, if she was leaving.
“Is there anything I can say that’ll make you stay?”
“I don’t think so. You could promise that there’d be no stories like “Breakfast as Usual” we broadcast on a slow news day a few years back. Or try to actually do the jobs properly, is that too much to ask?”
“Yes, I think so. I mean, Ravi once printed a script at size 200 font, after being asked to print a picture sized 200px and a script. So, yes. I think that isn’t going to happen. Have you definitely made up your mind?”
“Not definitely, but I’m pretty sure, especially now.”
“So let me know in a week.”
“You never know, I might walk out before then.”

Julie showed up to work nice and early, and Gemma went red and her whole face tensed with anger when she saw.
“We’re going to be working with that bitch?”
“Ugh. Her. We’re probably in this mess because she couldn’t keep her bitch mouth shut.” It turned out the feelings were mutual and all that was needed here was a referee.
“So, anyway, Alex,” Gemma moved on, “what did you actually say?”
So they wrote the whole thing down and panicked. Gemma and Julie sorted through the testimony trying to manipulate it so it might make them look good. The whole meeting room table was covered in files. About midway through, Gemma looked up and said; “You’d look a lot better if you didn’t wear glasses.”
“Yeah well you’d look a lot better if I wasn’t wearing my glasses either, bye.” Then Julie walked briskly out of the room.
Gemma followed; “and what’s happening between you and Nigel, huh?”
“Happening? What do you mean?” She didn’t even flinch.
Then Alex walked around the corner, “who started the talk of sex lives?”
Both girls made the same movement but Julie was faster and Gemma only did it in response; “It was her, she started it.”
“Well, okay. Let me know how it goes …” Alex wandered off, disinterested.
“Bitch.”
“Bitch.”
Then they headed in opposite directions.

The executive (turns out they sent Steve, Gemma’s ex) met them in their offices. Which may well have been a mistake. Because their client met them there at the same time.
Alex started the meeting by alternating questions to the two people which in hindsight he probably should have met independently.
And then he remembered something.
The businessman had a posh and nasal voice and seemed oddly familiar. Then he stuck out a hand as Alex said “and what may I call you?”
“Sir. Call me Sir”.
Oh, yeah that’s right. That guy.
“What do you want?” Ravi had remembered him, and obviously decided he didn’t like him very much.
“Okay, stop the hostility. I can explain.”
Everyone was surprised. They were all expecting an angry lecture and now looked like a fifteen year old that had driven through a fence and then been told ‘don’t worry, we didn’t want it anyway’.
“Does the basis for the case even make sense to you?” he asked in a patronising tone, which was at least fair because none of the team knew what was going on. “Did it never make sense to you how none of you could possibly or would possibly have done it?”
And then Alex and Gemma began to understand at the same time.
“So you got a key somehow and snuck in to swap the key?”
“Well yes.” Sir stopped, to let the drama of that remark settle in, although there wasn’t particularly much drama there in the first place, so the silence became a tad awkward.
“Well,” Steve was the first to move, “thanks for wasting all our time, Sir”. And he left.
Then the team stared angrily for the next ten minutes and the man felt uncomfortable breaking the angry stalemate that had formed. Then Gemma said, “so there must be a point to why you did all this.”
Sir replied, “yes, that is why I came here today. I have a serious job for you and needed to see if you coped well under pressure. It seems that, at least in the short term, you can. So this is the job. In a month, there is a local election somewhere up North and they want live coverage on a network, but none of the majors will do it. So I want you guys to. Basically that’s it.”
“And that’s worth a whole court case?”
“Well yeah. Oops. Hadn’t properly thought it through.”
“So, remind us to ask you what we had to do in a month then we’ll do it,” Nigel cut in.
“How does that work?” Cameron was confused.
“Easy. If you ask him what he reminded you to do, then he’ll tell you what he reminded you to do, and so remind himself to do it in a position that he can, meaning that you won’t have to do the thing he asked you to do in the first place.”
“Riiiiiiight. Why don’t I just write it in the calendar?”

The police station was darkly lit so huge shadows were cast across the walls by the single lamp sitting in the middle of the table. The whole team were being interviewed, one at a time. Lightning struck and a faint cackle of a witch could be heard in the distance. No, it couldn’t. But that was how it felt.
“So, tell me in simple terms exactly what happened.” The policeman interviewing Alex began.
“It started when a rival TV station got in touch. They wanted to meet us and eventually it was decided that I’d go”.

Alex received the email from a girl called Helena who worked at the other broadcast network, requesting a meeting. He didn’t tell the others about it at all.

Gemma was being interviewed by the policeman. “He told us about it after he realised what she wanted. He wanted to know what we thought …”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT.”
“Oh, come on it can’t be that bad, can it?” Alex was on the back foot here, he hadn’t expected this level of backlash from the whole team.
“Look, we just can’t let you do this. What if it goes wrong?” Gemma was the voice of reason in this particular case, although everyone except Alex had been against the idea, just less articulate about it.

Cameron spoke to the police officer slowly and carefully. “He must’ve done it anyway. We wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t. I don’t know any more than that, though.”

Alex met the girl at a coffee shop somewhere in the City. It was expensive, but going on the company card. That’s the best sort of first date; let your workplace pick up the bill. She was his sort of person, too. In control, sophisticated. Or the sort of person he liked to think he was.

Nigel had his head in his hands. He probably had work to not quite be doing. “So we all met her; well, except Cameron, he wasn’t in.”

“Guys, this is Helena.”
“Yeah, cool. Nice to meet you.”
The way Alex and Helena were standing made Nigel uneasy. Then there was an awkward silence, so Nigel said “should I go and stick my head in the oven?”
“We’ll need you in a few minutes.”
“Microwave, then.” And he left.

Ravi wasn’t really paying attention. Which was funny, because the policeman wasn’t either. “Then, after Nigel left, Helena wanted to know our secrets of success.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Alex almost spat out his water.
“You guys do realise your channel is quite successful … apparently people like watching idiots mucking around.”
“Certainly explains the popularity of Top Gear. So what exactly are you asking?”
“You give me your secrets and you can have ours.”
There was a faint ‘ding’ noise somewhere in the distance.

“So I figured out a way we could do the trade, so it was ensured that we both got what we wanted.” Alex continued his interview.

“BUT IT’S A CRIME.” Gemma was livid. Alex guessed this was probably the final straw that broke/is breaking the camel’s (although he’d never call her that to her face) back.
“Well okay, it’s not like we’re going to get caught and what of we learn a lot from her? It’s not like she’ll learn anything from us!” Alex was also exasperated now.
“All the more reason she’d turn us in afterwards! It’s like fake rape accusations by women that are disappointed.”

“But he went ahead with it anyway, around the time of the monthly office ‘do’.” Nigel laughed at the memory – his own private joke.

“Do come in,” Alex said to Helena, who was standing apprehensively at the door of the studio that had been decorated with balloons. Well, balloon. You couldn’t waste money on these things.
Nigel, Cameron and Ravi were all crowded around the door.
“Don’t you guys have stuff to be getting?” Alex asked, and they went off. No sooner had they done this then Alex moved a desk chair and a few tripods to block off the door, and beckoned Helena to sit down. Then he pulled two cans of V from a nearby drawer and opened them with a nonchalant flick of his wrist. Then his can exploded over his shirt.
“Well,” he said, looking down at the mess, “cheers.” He passed the can over.
“Look, Alex,” Helena said, “I fancy you, at least I think I do. Never really done this … sort of thing.”
“So if all this works out, you’re saying we could …” he didn’t finish his question. He didn’t need to.
“Yeah. If it works out. But if it doesn’t then …” She didn’t finish her statement. Her slightly threatening tone made the finish of the sentence clear.

Nigel was being interviewed. “I would think that she hung him up with duct tape, if you like. Made sure that his case against her wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”
“By doing what?”
“Cutting off his legs. Metaphorically, of course.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, she could do many things. With Alex, asking him out is probably enough. That would certainly explain why he did it.”
“He did it? You don’t know it was him”.
Nigel said nothing, but a glint in his eyes told that he knew more than he was letting on.

“So I don’t know what to do.” Alex was conflicted, and had chosen Nigel as his moral compass.
“What you need is someone who could plausibly have got their secrets and be framed for the crime, but who wouldn’t lose too much from being fired.”
Gemma chose this precise moment to walk in and rather loudly announce “I’ve made up my mind. I’ll leave in a month.” She placed her official resignation letter on the desk.
Then two things happened at once; Cameron and Ravi, who had heard this, looked at each other in surprise, and Alex and Nigel looked at each other as if all their problems had been solved. Because, in fairness, they had.

Gemma was fed up with answering questions, but she carried on anyway. “Then I noticed something was wrong and began to investigate. Alex noticed, but I covered my tracks pretty well, I think.”

Gemma looked through Alex’s computer to try and figure it out. But then the man himself walked in and she panicked.
But recovered.
“What’re you doing?”
“Typing up the meeting with the executives from this morning.”
“Gist?”
“Program is shit, go back to the zoo.”
“Ah, yes. That meeting.” Then he moved on.
Cameron and Ravi leaned back around from the door in a conspiratorial manner.

“So,” Alex’s interview continued, “I decided against it. Gemma must have stolen their secrets – that’s the only explanation.”
“Well, someone else may have done it. So no.”
“Cameron and Ravi are the kind of people that use our cameras as fly swats, so I think that unlikely, and Nigel wouldn’t do that; he doesn’t care enough about the station.”

“The effing camera won’t effing go for the effing shoot this effing morning.” Nigel was pissed off.
“Here, I’ll fix it,” Ravi took the camera, while Alex wondered aloud, “Is that wise?”
“Yeah, but that was just once. He’d only be able to break it if he literally dropped –”
There was a massive smash sound in the distance, followed by a loud “oops” from Ravi.
“Too bad Ravi’s just a massive idiot. That’s not covered by the extended warranty.” Alex to Nigel, in low tones.
Then Gemma came in. Cross. “You guys need to tell me what’s going on.”

“And that brings you pretty much up to date. After that, the other station filed charges. Then we were called here.” Alex’s interview. Near the end.
“So, let’s sort out the chronology of events here, just to see if I have it down right.” The policeman was checking his facts and probably bored off his face. It didn’t help that he was scooting around in his office chair while talking.
“All right,” replied Alex. “First, we received an email.”
“Yup.”
“Then she wanted to meet me, then the team.”
“Yup, and yup.”
“Stop interrupting. Then she asked for our secrets, then she said she fancied me. Then I gave her our secrets which is insider trading if anyone had a problem with that, but on our side we don’t. Then she gave us her secrets, which IS a problem.”
“Okay.”
“So Gemma gave out our secrets and received theirs.”
“So Gemma’s at fault here?”
“That’s about right, yes.”

Gemma walked in to the hospital because Alex couldn’t make it. The room was slightly lighter than it had been before.
“Hey, um sir? Alex’s dad? Um, yeah, hi. I’m Gemma. I work with Alex.”
“Oh yes, hi. I was expecting Alex … you don’t know where he is, do you?”
“Something came up, so he sent second-best,” she said, gesturing to herself.
“Is it really as bad as he says it is?”
“Not really anymore, but it used to be. Julie’s just started working as an intern, so the workload’s calmed down a bit.”
“Julie? Did she used to report for TV7?”
“I think so. Why?”
“There was some scandal or something. I should tell Alex next time he’s here.”
“I’ll pass it on. At least the life is interesting. It’s like we’re in some sort of sitcom.”
“I miss the days when my life was interesting,” the older man said, shifting in the bed and looking nostaligic (if that’s even possible), “when you could get up whenever you liked and anything you did that day would be interesting. After you turn thirty, it’s just work-sleep-work-sleep-work-die. And by that I don’t mean you die at work – but that can happen sometimes if you work as an accountant and someone decides to buy a combine harvester.”
“Wh-what?”
“And then you settle in to the monotony of debits and credits.”
“Yeah, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”
“No – I’m stuck here. Hey, could you turn up the morphine?”
Gemma did so, and soon after Alex’s dad was tripping.
“It’s funny how you can live vicariously through other people sometimes,” the older man said, then; “Tell Alex that I –” Then he stopped and Gemma waited for him to continue. And waited.
Then a nurse came in, and asked Gemma to leave; apparently he’d died.

Sometime later, Alex met with Gemma, where she was officially fired. For some reason the charges had been dropped on that condition.
Cameron and Ravi stood outside Alex’s office listening in through the door, and they heard all of this. Then Ravi got a bloody nose when Gemma opened the door on her way out.
“So, do you want to go out sometime?” Even with a bloody nose, Ravi had no tact.
“As I’ve said, I’ll let you know.”
Cameron interjected, “that’s not very close to a date.” Then he laughed.
“Closer than you’ll ever get, you swine.” Gemma threw the contents of a glass of water at Cameron, then swished out of the room, closing the door gracefully behind her. Cameron looked very confused by this last conversation, but Ravi changed the topic.
Holding his nose to stop the bleeding, Ravi said to Cameron; “Alex’s unfit to lead the station, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, I would. But who would replace him?”
“Who indeed,” Ravi said, tapping his nose knowingly, “ouch, fuck.” The bleeding started again.

Let’s imagine for a moment that the camera of the mind’s eye is focussed on the wedding venue, and all the chaos that includes.
Had Ravi got his way there’d have been a food fight by now, but no. Nigel had been told by more than one person to keep the event civilised.
The whole team including all relevant hangers-on were present. This event could not go wrong.
Which, of course, meant that it would, as soon as Nigel started speaking. So he tried again. He couldn’t let down the people who were getting married. This was their wedding day. He looked for Julie’s face in the audience, then tried to begin speaking. No-one was listening, but he started talking …
Nigel thought quietly, so as not to offend anyone, why’d it have to be them?

Shift back to the present day.
Ravi and Cameron had it all carefully planned out. They’d gather intelligence for a while; by bugging the station in Auckland and then placing five strategic ‘bugs’ which were cicada shells with webcams in) in discreet locations in the workstation in the village; which had a long and unpronounceable name.
Eventually they had set up base for what was thought to be a two-week election campaign and coverage. Suffice it to say, the town was boring, and the team were suffering because of it. This was evident in a number of ways; the team had spent all of the second day of coverage – where literally nothing happened at all – in the studio attempting to record a weather report blooper in which the green screen falls off the wall. And failing, mostly because that way it wasted more time. There was nothing to report – the election was running smoothly, debates were on Friday and there wasn’t any scandal to speak of.
The drive to the place had been similar to the group’s previous road trip; games and jokes. The game’ fake road signs’ had filled the time rather neatly, with Nigel’s ‘if you can taste the sign, you’ve crashed’, and Alex’s ‘You are now 200 meters beyond the junction that your piece-of-shit sat-nav is telling you you're approaching now’ being particular highlights.
Then they arrived and found that the building they’d rented needed tidying up. So Nigel did it.
“Oh, he’s using a vacuum cleaner now?” Cameron was being smart, but Nigel had a reply, “I was using it to suck the life out of the room. But you’re here now, so I can stop.”

A week later, and Alex was on the phone, to Helena. Well, Helena’s answer machine. Ravi and Cameron were listening through the door using a glass to amplify the sound. Every so often they would move and whack heads accidentally.
“So,” Cameron said, in minute-long intervals, “how are we gonna do this?”
“I don’t really know, but he needs to be gone before we’re back home.”
“So, would we just tell the executives about bad practise?”
Cameron was confused as to what this would achieve. “They’d just blame us and it’d backfire. We need a way that we’d be able to control the station.”
“So … what?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Alex was still on the phone, and making a somewhat awkward phone call to Helena’s automated receptionists (i.e. answer machine).
“Helena, it’s Alex here, and this might be a stupid question but do you like music? No, I mean do you want to go to a concert? I mean of course you do, but do you want to see it with me? Oh I give up. You get the idea. I’m asking you out to a thing, just y’know. Let me know or something. Or don’t. I’ll be emigrating to a South Pacific island at the end of the day. So …”
“This reminds me of you asking Gemma out,” Cameron said.
Then the candidate of the election screwed something up. Well, someone. But there was a fiasco, anyhow. And they reported it, and tried not to make it worse; in which they by and large succeeded. But the candidate still had problems with the team’s faintly mocking and satirical tone. But the greater majority of the team was not really paying attention to this or the campaign, because the greater attention was, as always, on the overthrow of the station. Cameron was editing the footage of some election coverage for broadcast in the afternoon, while Ravi was attempting to sneak around like a spy to gather intel. He only ended up getting weird looks from almost everyone in the village and a constipation prescription from the doctor. So Cameron called Ravi to see progress.
“Dude, have you found anything?”
“Well, no. But I have got some lovely new tablets if you want one …”
“What?”
“Never mind. Oh but I did hear something –”
Then Alex and Nigel walked past, deep in conversation and going the other way. Ravi heard the word ‘Gemma’ used multiple times. Dropping the phone, he went after the two, in an attempt to glean this gossip. Unfortunately, this had the side-effect of leaving Cameron hanging.
“Ravi? Where have you gone? Hello?” He spoke desperately into a phone to a person that was no longer there. “Ravi, you hare-brained fu –” he started, then hung up the line.

Gemma experienced the eruption first-hand because she hadn’t left the city. First there was an almighty rumble and a cloud of smoke, then the smoke just didn’t stop. Then the ash cut off air travel and confined the city to their homes. She didn’t know too much more than that, but apparently the ash was high enough that by mid-afternoon the whole of the North Island had been blanketed. She’d been paying attention to the coverage of some Northland election, when the newsroom did something stupid and she heard a familiar voice (Cameron’s) go “for fuck’s sake, Ravi”. Then the reception went blocky and, after a time, cut out altogether.
In an unusual way, she missed them, but then she remembered why she’d left. Even though she could’ve set up the print division and had a proper job. But she didn’t want to work there anymore. Oh, well; she wasn’t sure what she wanted, exactly. She sat back in her lounge and listened to the patter pf ash on the roof and eventual groaning and creaking, and hoped like hell it would hold up.

The team started the morning peacefully. Then by about lunchtime, the ash began to be visible over the horizon.
Cameron held a meeting that Alex, unsurprisingly, was not in attendance for.
“So, gents. We don’t have a lot of time to get our shit sorted and get back to the City, before the ash gets here, and means we can’t move around”.
“Why would we go back to the city?”
“All our stuff’s there, and people will be wondering if we’re alive.”
“Really? Give me a decent shovel and a clean shot and I can fix that.” The team saw Alex standing in the doorway.
“What are you here for?”
“My stuff. I’m certainly not here to help you. Pity the station’s the Special Corporation for Authentic Media. Should be something with the anagram C-U-N-T-S.” Tense, as you would expect.
“Ouch, man.”
“Not my fucking fault. You sacked me for fuck-knows reason and you expect me to be civil and help you to do your jobs. Well, I’m sorry, but I tried that and the three of you are simply beyond help, especially mine. So I’ll get my stuff and leave, then care less what happens to you people and whether or not you get back to the City.” Alex left, slamming the door. Then there was a stunned silence for twenty seconds, until Ravi got out his phone to ring Gemma.

The nerve of it. They wanted her back. It was as if they had no recollection of what they’d done, and how she’d been humiliated. She wouldn’t go back and she told them that. Nigel had been the lucky caller, so she’d had no troubles telling him where to stick his questions. If it had been Ravi or Cameron, she may have been a little guiltier about the fallout of being rude to them. But it wasn’t so she didn’t care.

Air travel had, by the evening, been cut off because of the ash. Also by this time, Ravi’s innate paranoia and panic had set in. He was pacing around, ranting.
“I only need to make 34, then I’ve beaten Jesus at living,” he said. Cameron was quick to point out that this would occur 16 years in the future. At which point Ravi just stopped talking and carried on pacing at a faster rate.

Alex’s phone rang. It was the hospital. Given the slightly twisted narrative logic in this story, we already know what it’s about. So we’ll leave Alex to think; process the information, among other things.
After some time, Alex realised he needed the team. To get home, mostly. He didn’t want to spend any more time with them than he had to. But he was stuck here if he didn’t. So he packed up his stuff, not that it had been unpacked from its transfer from the station basecamp, and went back across to ask for a lift.
“Could you guys possibly give me a lift back to Auckland?” There was an awkward silence. “Of course you could,” Alex answered his own question because they weren’t going to.
“Why would we help you?” Cameron was hostile and to be fair, he had a right to be. Nigel hadn’t been the brunt of Alex’s earlier rant and Ravi wasn’t paying attention because he was pacing around muttering about life insurance.
“Sure,” Nigel said, earning an evil glance from Cameron, and grateful nod from Alex.
“Why would you do that?” Cameron asked, as if he’d forgotten what Alex had done for them.
So Nigel said why. “Because, like it or not, we need him to run this. And he’s no good to us here, is he?”

So they set off in a car; which was risky, but desperate times call for desperate measures. It turned out they couldn’t leave after all, and were waved back by an unfortunate policeman getting buried in ash on a roadside. They convened in the team’s headquarters.
In general, Alex seemed preoccupied. Nigel wouldn’t quite have called him sad, he knew sad too well.
“So what do we do now?” Ravi asked, while Alex was taking a drink. He stopped, and with one smooth move, emptied the glass over Ravi’s head. Then was told to grow up by Nigel, which is almost ironic.
“Look guys. We don’t have to forgive each other just yet and I do think there are solid reasons to be pissed off, but could we at least stop being childish until we get out of this thing?”
Then Alex, Ravi and Cameron all grumbled responses that could be construed as “ok, fine.” But Nigel couldn’t be sure. Then Ravi called Gemma back, on loudspeaker.

Gemma was on the phone already to the journalist.
“It turns out, as a journalist,” Gemma was saying to the politician, “we need access to the city and you need us to have whatever we need because we decide how you’re seen by the public. So if you want to win the campaign you’ll get us out of the town up north and back into the city. Because believe me, we can fuck you up. Clear?” Then she hung up the phone. And Ravi called.

She said she would come back to the station. She said that, if the station survived, they could make a print division. She also screwed up slightly, and let it slip she ‘wouldn’t say no’ to either Cameron or Ravi if they asked her out. Then both Cameron and Ravi asked her out at the same time. Like, exactly the same time. To the word. So she had to say no to them both, at least for the time being. So she laid the phone down with a slight smile.

The ash had cut off all telephone and broadcast communications except radio, and the team didn’t possess a radio. Then the town started rationing food, and, by their strict definition, Ravi didn’t count as a person. He couldn’t work out what that definition was, then Nigel told him he’d taken his name off the list as a practical joke. Which backfired, because it couldn’t be put back on. It seemed the rest of the North Island was rationing its food in this manner, and other restrictions (to ‘improve public wellbeing’) were going to be imposed before the end of the week. Because of the added stress, Alex became the de facto leader of the station again, and they recorded a short and by-and-large reassuring message for the public; Ravi telling them to stay inside and keep to the rations, and that everything would be OK. This didn’t quite come across, because he seemed to be about to cry.
The team met up in their offices, as they often did, and decided the only way to leave the town would be to ‘fake’ a medical emergency. But then Gemma pointed out it wouldn’t work. A lively game of ‘not bitch’ ensued, in which Ravi’s leg was broken by a stray piece of doorframe. Without needing the ‘accident’ cover story (because, as it turned out, it was completely true) the team tried to get help. Eventually, they were notified that a helicopter would arrive in about two hours, if the ash kept low. Nigel singlehandedly edited and exported the messages in under twenty minutes, a new personal best (his previous had been measured in days). It was almost like he was committing to the station more. Almost, because then he turned around and ‘accidentally’ threw his packing list out the window, where it was immediately buried. The helicopter arrived, and was branded with the politician’s campaign logo. The team were confused by that.

In the air, and with all their stuff, the team finally had time to relax and ask the important questions.
“Ravi, do you know how we can monitor what’s going on in Auckland when we land?”
“Well, no. But I do still have a few of these,” he pulls out a few webcam-infested cicada shells that he’d used for bugging the station.
“That’s really clever. But also annoying that you did it. And then it’s clever. But a bit annoying. But mostly clever. Well done, Ravi”.
“Is this it for the station?” Nigel asked while on his laptop doing God knows what.
“Yes, I would think so. Delete all reports from the D Drive, we only have one more show.”
Nigel looked up in a pissed off manner from his screen, where he was editing explosions into some old footage.
“Whatever you say,” he sulked.
They looked down at the city, and couldn’t see much because a thick blanket of ash covered the ground, and made the roads highly risky and unstable for cars. The smoke around the whole city was beginning to clear and show the extent of the damage. Especially to the Harbour Bridge, which had collapsed. Then a phone rang, which shouldn’t have been possible. It was Gemma; she was put on loudspeaker.
“In dystopia films, you know how you always wonder why the rest of the world’s doing nothing about it.” Gemma asked the question idly, although she earned everyone’s attention because they had not, in fact, ever thought that.
“No, what do you mean?” Cameron. Unsure whether his concern was genuine or faked to impress her.
“It’s just that we know why. The rest of the world doesn’t care, not really.”
“Oh.” Then they neared landing, and Ravi piped up.
“Oh but before we go, entering our “Who killed the employees of TV 8” competition is really simple. All you have to do is email a four-digit code to the head of BCB 8 Drama, who will then forward a copy of the code to me, and simultaneously send you a second entry form which can be used to get priority so we may place you in the draw. What’s the big prize? Who knows?” He tapped his nose in a knowing fashion. “You’ll have to wait and see”. Aimed at the pilot, Cameron supposed.

Then Nigel’s phone rang. It was Julie.
“Where are you guys?”
“Honey, calm down. We’ll be back in town soon.” This language was thoroughly perplexing to all the others.
“Stop patronising me. Actually you know what …” she trailed off and then a tinny rendition of Taylor Swift’s ‘We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together” played like holding music until Nigel decided she wasn’t going to stop.
“So are you actually dating her or not?” Cameron had heard the whole thing.
“I don’t know.” Lapsed into silence.

The helicopter landed, and Nigel was the first to move and get out of the awkward situation.
“See you all back at the station,” Nigel said, as he unclipped his seatbelt.
“Gemma, in case we don’t make it back,” Ravi paused, unsure, then continued, “I think I love you.”
Gemma didn’t respond because they’d landed, and she’d hung up. She could deal with that later. She met them at the runway although there was no time to talk.

Seeing the damage to Auckland City, the team realised they would have to broadcast genuine disaster messages. Ravi began working on the script immediately, which began with the joke; “Hello and welcome to 8 News, we say what we like because what does it matter?” Then the helicopter landed and the team filed out quickly, to head back to the station. But Alex had a better idea, so he stayed to talk to the pilot. The team were all running the two blocks from where the chopper had landed back to the station, except Gemma who had taken all the gear and conned a young gentleman out of his car using a snog-and-flash combo.

Cameron saw a building that looked set to collapse, and some of the workers milling around concernedly outside said there was still a person inside, and that the building would likely fall down in five minutes unless they were rescued. There was movement inside the building and the person could see outside, meaning Cameron could also see them. It was Helena, and just as this registered a hail of bricks and mortar collapsed in the doorway of the building. Cameron would later liken the situation to Schrodinger’s Cat – where he was unsure whether Helena was alive or dead. So he made a life decision, in that he took his life in his hands, and began trying to help Helena out of the rubble.
Two minutes. There wasn’t much time.

On her route back to the studio, Gemma took her eyes off the road for a minute and a minor pothole made her veer off the centre of the road, and then hopelessly close to the edge of a 10-meter chasm that had been created. Two wheels over and the car looked to be stable, but Gemma was in the driver’s seat. So the weight distribution could, at any minute, tip and send her plunging to her death.

Ravi and Nigel had been faster than anyone else, and arrived back first. They had prepared the report and were waiting for it to broadcast, while simultaneously packing up their stuff to leave. It was unlikely they’d ever come back here after this. Then they noticed two things; a loud bang on the roof meant that ash dislodged and blocked the doorway, sealing them inside; and Ravi looked to where he’d left the camera, and it wasn’t there.

An image abruptly cuts into the otherwise empty broadcast station. It is Ravi’s face, which is perhaps not the best of beginnings. Then he speaks, urgently, and panicked.
“Hello, everyone,” he says, looking over his shoulder off-camera. He seems to get some form of assent, then he continues, “I don’t have a lot of time. You need to stay in your homes if possible, and try to keep calm and hydrated. Because there are some people that have travelled unnecessarily, and are suffering for it.”
Gemma is still in her car teetering over the edge of the chasm, Alex and Steve brace for impact in the helicopter mid-spiral, and Cameron dons a hard-hat readying himself to help Helena.
“We’ll do what we can to help you, but more or less you’re on your own. Good luck.” The image disappears.
Gemma decides on a plan of action, Cameron begins to dig, and Alex and Steve hit the ground tail-first, with an almighty bang.

If their lives had a title sequence, this is where it would go.

Alex and Steve felt the impact. There would have been no way possible not to feel it. However, due to their low altitude and the angle of impact, they got off reasonably lightly, with bruises and the like but nothing else serious. Stumbling out of the wreckage, they then slowly hobble their way along the road back to the station.
Gemma made a decision. She unbuckled her seatbelt and began to move out of the driver’s seat by standing on it and climbing over the back. Had she stood on the carpet, the car would’ve tipped; as it was the whole thing wobbled like a panicky bank robber’s conscience. But she’d made it, for want of a better term, into the back seat. Using a tripod to smash the window of the car door, she got out and called for some help. A passing white van (driven by a nice old woman doing a furniture delivery) picked her (and all the gear) up about ten minutes later, and they headed to the station.
Cameron figured out very early on that it wouldn’t be easy to move the rocks and rescue Helena without collapsing the building. With Helena’s assumed help from the other side, Cameron began chipping away at rocks, stopping after every blow from his axe to wait for the creaks in the now-unstable building to subside (which may not have been the best practise, but Cameron didn’t care). After about half an hour of hitting rocks, Helena could be pulled through. No sooner had she been pulled through than the front half of the building collapsed; she must have nudged a rock on her way through, Cameron wasn’t sure. She had, much like Alex and Steve, scrapes and bruises but nothing serious. They set off towards the station together, with Cameron keeping his hard hat on because it could be useful.
While the other were all fighting for their lives, Nigel and Ravi were bored. Well, the report was still being transferred to the system for broadcast, and they’d lost the camera. To pass the time, Ravi had gone full-on Sherlock Holmes. Meanwhile, Nigel was taking run-ups at the door to dislodge the ash, and stopping for breath after every run.
“So if we had it over there, and you’re looking at me like you know something, then you’ve done something with it,” Ravi murmured, walking over to Nigel. “What have you done?”
“Oh,” Nigel was laughing, “I’ve done nothing.” He took another run, made a satisfying crash sound against the door, and hurt his ribcage, but other than that did absolutely nothing.
“Then what? You must know where it is.”
“I know exactly where it is, but you just need to look.” BANG. “OUCH”. Collided with the door.
“WHERE IS IT?”
“Under your chair.”
“Oh.”
Nigel took another run up. The door made a slightly hollow cracking noise and then split in half, showering Nigel with splinters and ash – some of which was unfortunate enough to land in his mouth. “Well, that’s it open,” Nigel said dryly.
It had smashed in its fall, and was therefore useless. Then a fax came in with a job on it, and they realised that they’d have to use camera phones for the job (not for the first time). They also realised that in the current situation, the job was be exceeding complicated and difficult. They needed to film disaster messages on location in the city, and take them to Sir’s house on Waiheke Island.
“Yeah, that’ll be hard,” Nigel was thinking aloud, “I mean we’ll be able to use the trains for a bit, and the busses for a bit, and probably a ferry or something, I’m not sure. Nothing for the whole journey though. But I suppose the first step is getting in contact with the others to let them know.
So he rang Julie, because; priorities.
She was fine and relieved that they were too. Other than that, nothing worth reporting. Then they set off with no idea of where the others are.

Luckily, they saw Gemma relatively soon after setting off. Or, more accurately, Gemma saw them and pulled over, startling them because all they saw was a white van approaching. Nigel and Ravi filled her in on the task they had been passed down.
“So we have to get to Waiheke island in a day with the completed messages, and won’t be able to use any one method of transport for a long stretch of time.”
“So we have to use transport, but without … using transport?”
“Pretty much. And we were thinking head loosely to the port, stopping at the Sky Tower to film.”
“Yeah, that should work, it’s all pretty much in a straight line from here to there. And the journey shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
Nigel and Ravi looked at her, and she remembered the ‘no transport’ thing. “Oh …”
“So how do we get in contact with the others?”
“Shouting might work, to be honest”.

Alex and Steve received a call from a payphone a short while later. Then they had their instructions and set off on the quest across the city.
“I’m not being nosy, but what are we actually doing?” Steve asked.
“I don’t think you’re nosy and we’re going to Waiheke. Gemma, Cameron and Nigel need to film some stuff and they’ll meet us there.”
“If you don’t think I’m nosy, then why’d you write that in your diary?”
“So, better start walking.” They set off.

Cameron and Helena had just begun walking back to the station, and Helena was exhausted from her near-death experience.
“So what happens once we get there?” She was already thinking ahead. Cameron could see why Alex had picked her.
“I don’t know, but we’ll be able to think of something as a team when we get there.”
“And to get there we, what? Catch a ride?”
“No.”
“What then?”
At this point, Cameron’s phone goes off, with a rather loud and tinny rendition of The Proclaimers’ “I Would Walk 500 Miles”. Cameron silences the device, looking apologetically at Helena. “Sorry, my ringtone.” Then he took the call, it was Alex, giving him the instructions. He hung up, and they changed course, heading to the port. Then his phone went again, this time it was Gemma saying the exact same thing.

Nigel, Ravi and Gemma had begun a walk, and quickly realised it wasn’t going to quick, or easy.
“Look, Gemma, what I said …” Ravi began, addressing his earlier ‘I love you’.
“Ravi, don’t. We can properly discuss it later. Look, I wouldn’t say no, but there are Cameron’s feelings too  ...”
“Okay,” Ravi huffed, thoroughly put out.
Then Nigel said, “We should play a game to pass the time.”
“Scrabble?” Ravi perked up and Gemma just rolled her eyes, while Nigel looked suspiciously at Ravi.
“Oh I just had an idea,” Gemma said, “We could ride horses.”
“HORSES?” Ravi and Nigel were outraged by even the suggestion.

Alex and Steve had walked a bit, and stopped to rest.
“Did you go out with Gemma just to get back at Ravi and Cameron?”
“Well, no. What do I have to get back at them for? Prove I’m better than them, yes.”
“Ah.” Then Alex looked around. “Hey, we could take a train, or at least try.”
“It wouldn’t get us all the way but it’s worth a shot.”

“Hey, we could ride bikes to get there faster.” Helena’s suggestion. Which had a few issues. She was fitter and female. This combo meant she would be less uncomfortable over long distances, and Cameron saw this straight away, so he dismissed the idea and they kept walking.
“What are you thinking of doing once this is all over?”
“I’ll stay where I am, there’s no problems I can see. Why?”
“I’m thinking of leaving. There’s no place for me there anymore.”
“What do you mean, of course there is.”
“Well, yeah I have a job there, but I’ve always felt a bit tacked-on.”
Helena stopped his existential crisis in its tracks, with an abrupt, “anyway, we have to keep moving. Shake a leg.”
Then she looked at Cameron who was shaking his leg, and rolled her eyes.
“You boys …” Then she thought of something. “You know that I wanted out of the station. I had resigned; I don’t really know why I’m still here to be honest.”
“Oh, we thought that was just Alex framing you.”
There was a pause, then Cameron said, “you know his dad died, right?”
“Yeah. I was there. He was happy. I’ll tell Alex someday.”

“What kind of idiot looks at a train station after a volcanic eruption and thinks, yeah why not?” Alex was furious at Steve for letting him get his hopes up.
“So what do we do now?”
“We have to walk, there’s no other way.”
They started walking and Steve said, “do you think Ravi will end up with Gemma? Actually why don’t we call him?”
So they rang Ravi, who only just managed to answer the phone from atop his own personal rodeo.
“What?”
“Just seeing how you’re going,” Steve said smugly.
“Oh, you disgust me,” Ravi replied curtly and then he hung up.
“Yes, we did.” Steve replied to a phone call that was no longer there while laughing rather hard.

It turned out biking over thoroughly uneven ground was a recipe for disaster, as Cameron found out and Helena pretended to understand and tried not to laugh. In their journey they passed a wild horse. Well, it wasn’t wild as such, it just wasn’t conforming to society’s notion of what a horse should be. Okay, fine, the fence had fallen down. Actually there were three …
They carried on going with little more incident than Cameron yelling ‘ow’ every few minutes.

Gemma, Ravi and Nigel saw the horses too, about ten minutes later. And they stopped for about five minutes with Gemma nodding meaningfully over her shoulder and Ravi not understanding the noon-verbal communication. When he did finally turn around, his brow creased with disgust.
“No, I won’t do it”.

Alex and Steve set off and had made it about a kilometre when three horses in a V formation rocketed past them and Alex could clearly hear Ravi’s voice going “MY HORSE HAS NO BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKES. HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”. Obviously he didn’t help, but he did almost fall over in a fit of laughter.

Gemma and Nigel had mastered the art of equine dressage (which is essentially what it was) reasonably quickly. Ravi, however, had initially found himself on a horse that could not stop, but soon found himself on a stubborn beast unwilling to start. “My horse has broken down”. Then after a particularly strenuous tug on the reins, the horse began moving in the wrong direction, looking to Gemma and Nigel like he had his shoes on backwards. So they abandoned it, after letting the owner know first, of course, and Ravi rode with Gemma.

Alex and Steve were still walking and passing the time.
“I spy with my little eye,” said Alex, “something beginning with r”.
“Road?” Steve answered
“No.”
“Umm, this is hard. Is it ‘road’ by any chance?”
“No, it isn’t road.”
“So what is it then?”
“Redundancy, never a good way to tell bad news is there?”
“You’re making me redundant?”
“Not as such, but it’s only a matter of time. Think about it.”
Then a bird landed on Steve’s shoulder and he exaggeratedly waved a tick at the bird, which then flew out of his hand and smashed a nearby car window.
“Oops.”

On the horse, Ravi and Gemma could talk.
“So did I miss anything,” Gemma yelled back to Ravi.
“There was a thing that happened, and then stuff and then a thing and stuff. That’s all really.”
“That was … helpful … I guess?”
“Look Gemma, what are your feelings about me? Could we give it a go?”
“I guess we could. May as well, what’s the worst that can happen?”
“Explosions, death and hot coffee everywhere?”
“Well. I guess we’ll see, when things get back to normal.”
Two bikes passed them and they could hear Cameron yelling “ow, ow, ow, ow” as the bikes faded into the horizon.

Then the three groups met up at the port, and Cameron was immensely relieved not to have to cycle any more. But there were only three spots left on the only ferry brave enough to cross the water, so Cameron, Helena, Steve and Alex had to find another way across – with Steve and Alex electing for a kayak, and Cameron and Helena choosing to Jet Ski.

On the other side of the water, the seven could talk properly.
“Look, Gemma, I’m sorry about setting you up for the insider trading. But we did manage to get the charges reversed.” Alex started.
“I’m not actually mad at you for that,” Gemma replied, “I’m mad at that bitch,” she pointed at Helena, “for setting it up.”
“So would you work for us again?”
“To set up a newspaper, sure. I never felt there was enough room for me the way we were.”
“And you sorted out the … thing … with Ravi?”
“Yeah, that’s sorted.”
“So. That’s all our shit sorted, should we drop this bastard film off?”
“And all without me having to write any fake obituaries, too.” Nigel interjected as they walked.

They arrived at the house just before sundown, so that they could stand out on Sir’s illustrious balcony and watch the sun go down. Anyone that wasn’t either a) extremely exhausted or b) a hardened cynic would have called it romantic. Unluckily for the great Cupid in the sky, the team were all knackered, so the romance of the situation was lost on them.
“So what now?” Cameron asked, while looking over the water at the thoroughly damaged city. The haze caused by the ash had subsided just enough that a faint skyline could be seen. It was quite pretty actually, and Gemma took a photo of it to use as her desktop background.
“So, we all go back to our old jobs?” Alex switched to admin mode.
“Except that we form a print division?”
“Of course. The Special Corporation for Authentic Media lives on. Or S.C.A.M for short.”
“Actually, I’m not going to.” Cameron said this quietly and it was almost missed by the team.
“What do you mean? You’d be a good leader,” Steve this time.
“Exactly, and there’s only one leader spot, isn’t there?”
“So you could work with me, get a promotion of sorts.”
“Really? Would you do that?”
“Sure.”
Then the team saw no reason to stick around, so they made back to the shoreline. But someone was waiting for them there. It was a guy, barely older than the team, who looked as though his brain had trickled out through his ears.
“A while back, we gave you some drugs. What. You. Done. With Our Drugs.” He said in clear yet dim-witted-sounding English. Cameron knew what the guy was referring to but looked at Nigel confused.
“I thought that was sugar?”
“Oh, fuck.” Then Nigel ran away, as did the rest of the team. And the thug pulled a gun, although Cameron would have thought he wasn’t sober enough to. Although the sheer amount of physical evidence to the contrary meant that Cameron didn’t make that assumption.
“Give. Us.” The thug wheezed.
Cameron hesitated, which was excuse enough for the thug, who shot him, then staggered away down the waterfront and into a particularly deep hole some kid must’ve dug during the day. Deep enough that he couldn’t climb out.

Cameron didn’t feel the shot although he heard it and was staring down the barrel of the gun. He stood for twenty seconds in total confusion.
“This is normal, is it?”
YES. Cameron hadn’t heard the voice, as such. It was just sort of … there. It also appeared to come from everywhere at once. IT IS NORMAL TO FEEL NO PAIN IN THE INSTANT OF DEATH.
“So I’m dead?”
YES. The same word in the same way. Then something tapped him on the shoulder and Cameron leapt about forty centimetres in the air. Then he quickly spun around and beheld a skeletal ‘man’ in black robes with a scythe. As you would expect.
“So what now?”
FOR THE LAST HEADLINE YOU’LL EVER DO, Death intoned, I WOULD RECOMMEND SOMETHING LIKE ‘NEWS JUST IN, EATING PLASTIC APPLES DOES NOT KEEP THE DOCTOR AWAY’.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Cameron said.
WELL, said Death, IF IT HELPS, YOU CAN MOVE ON WHENEVER YOU LIKE.
“So, this is a dream?”
PERHAPS. BUT EITHER WAY, THE FACT REMAINS, YOU ARE DEAD.
“Well,” Cameron said, finding that he had no feelings as he looked around at his own murder scene and feeling nothing whatsoever, “there’s nothing for me here, is there?”
IT CERTAINLY IS RATHER … GRAVE LOOKING. HA HA HA HA. Death laughing had an odd and robotic sound to it. Then he sobered up. SO, ONWARDS?
“Yes, I think so,” Cameron said.
WELL, OKAY, Death said. GROOVY. He grimaced. I’LL NEVER SAY THAT AGAIN. Then he swung the scythe and Cameron wasn’t there anymore.

The team heard the shot and came running, but Cameron was already dead. Over the following week, they sorted out his stuff and sent it back to his family, then attended the funeral (fun-eral, as Ravi liked to call it when he blasted one of those streamers in someone’s face).

TWO MONTHS LATER.
Nigel hadn’t left the studio. Someone to water the plants, that’s what they’d said. Then he heard the rustling and thought nothing of it. You always heard rustling in the middle of the night (although that could’ve been to do with the owl in the rafters). Then he started to feel a breeze on his face, but couldn’t explain it. He wrote it down, and then printed out another card, addressing it to Gemma, he’d take it to the post office before he went home. Then he straightened the collar on his jacket. It was cold in here.

At a parallel time somewhere else entirely, Alex was being shot at. Mind you, that’s what happens when you decide to report in a warzone. So he was, as you might expect, armed. He wielded the gun like you see in those first-person shooters, and smacked himself in the face every time he turned a sharp corner. He was only here on business though, and had thankfully not had to use the weapon (yet, although if Ravi walked through the door, he wouldn’t tempt fate).

Gemma received her unmarked card at the worst possible time (for her). She suspected what it was for, but wasn’t totally sure. But the main reason this was the worst time probably had something to do with the interrogation chamber and lamp in her face. She knew why she was here, but couldn’t do anything to help (this is always the case in these situations). Something had happened about a year ago that cost a diplomat about $15, and Gemma had been sent on an espionage mission to get the full story. And she would, if she survived …

All four team members received unmarked cards in the mail. They headed back to Auckland, Gemma with a slight limp and heavy conscience. Tying those men up underneath the running shower had seemed such a good idea at the time.

Cameron looked out a window in the Afterlife. He was about ten floors up a skyscraper that seemed to go on forever (it kind of did), and wondered what would happen to him. Then he turned, and beheld Death in his traditional Grim Reaper form. Fact is, Death’s appearance worked like a desktop background in that he changed it every thousand years when he got bored with it (he’d been a burlesque dancer once – that wasn’t a sight you’d forget). The voice of Death surrounded him and reverberated off the walls
HOW’S IT HANGING HA HA HA – OH WAIT, YOU WEREN’T HUNG. DAMN, THE JOKE DOESN’T WORK.
“Yeah, it’s fine, just a bit boring is all.”
Death looked put out. Or as put out as a skull in a black cloak can look. WELL FINE THEN, he ‘said’ huffily then sulked off into a corner in a somewhat joking fashion.
“Wait a minute, what did you want?”
SO HE WANTS MY ADVICE NOW, Death mused in what he probably thought was a murmur, but came out at around the same volume as his normal voice, WELL I WAS GONNA TALK TO YOU ABOUT YOUR FUTURE.
“Oh, really, that’d be cool. When do I start?”
WHY, DO YOU HAVE SOMEWHERE TO BE HA HA HA, Death intoned sarcastically. You could hear the pause between each ‘HA’ making his laugh seem disingenuous. It wasn’t, as far as Alex could tell.
“Well no. But admin, you know?”
ADMIN? AH YES, THAT. Death mused and Alex heard a monumental crash from somewhere far in the distance. I TOLD MY AIDES NOT TO STACK THE PAPERS LIKE THAT, IT MEANS I HAVE TO LOOK AT THEM WHILE TIDYING THEM UP …
“Maybe that’s the point, getting you to do it?”
WELL THEY’RE BASTARDS THEN, I GUESS. I’D HANG THE LOT OF THEM, BUT …
Cameron laughed. “Yeah, I guess. So, tell me; what’s your plan?”
WELL, HOW’D YOU LIKE TO BE A GHOST?
“Sounds cool – I’d be able to haunt people, right?”
WELL SORT OF, YOU HAVE TO STAY NEAR WHERE YOU DIED, OR IN AN OBJECT THAT WAS NEARBY.
“Which gives me the choice of …”
A TEN METER RADIUS AROUND YOUR DEATH SPOT AND ANY CLOTHING ON ANY OF THE PEOPLE WHO SURVIVED IN YOUR TEAM; BECAUSE THEY WERE NEARBY, OR OF COURSE YOUR KILLER, ALTHOUGH MOST PEOPLE CHOOSE NOT TO GO THERE.
“Nigel’s jacket … ?”

It is at this point that the ‘past’ we have been looking at and the ‘future’ we’ve been looking from collide.

Having two receptions at the same time presented a number of issues.
A fork tinkled against a glass and the noise-level in the room subsided gradually, although Nigel was sure he heard a conversation about the fact that these particular guests didn’t like Gemma or Ravi very much. He suspected they knew; or at least that Gemma did. Ravi, as a general rule, only cared about something if it was able to be chased around a room at high speeds for an hour or more. That had been a fun evening with the laser pointer.
The ambience faded slowly into silence, and Nigel felt obliged to begin speaking.
“If you take one thing away from this speech, could it be your litter; we’ve had a real problem …”
He paused, then continued. “Yeah, so I’ve known these two fuck-knuckles for a long time,” he said, gesturing towards the two grooms that were sitting next to each other on the long table, their respective brides on either side of them. “Let’s start at last night …”

The invisible camera in the mind’s eye pans away from Nigel’s speech, as focus swims out and then back in to reveal the team in their studio as Nigel places a leaflet on the table.
“Stag do.” Nigel said this as if it answered all relevant questions, even though he was dealing directly with Ravi (he had no idea how the human brain worked; but in Ravi’s case, Nigel suspected there was a rubber band involved).

Alex hated parties, and people, and alcohol. Nigel had taken them to a bar – something of a doomsday scenario. Although, pleasingly, it didn’t look as though either of the other two were enjoying themselves either. Ravi probably wished Nigel and Alex would go away and leave him to pull girls on his own, while Nigel wished something would happen, as he’d gotten up especially for this and right now it was a waste. Needless to say, none of them had been particularly lucky with girls, and viewed the opposite gender either as total equals that did not warrant inappropriate behaviour in any way, or like a completely foreign species that they really did not know how to deal with.

Then something did in fact happen. But none of the trio was expecting it. A female approached them, as if she liked the look of someone in the party. Nigel, elated, pointed out Alex as being a worthy specimen, and then as an afterthought did the same gestures concerning Ravi – who had also excitedly jumped up and started waving in a massively over-the-top way. The female was confused by this. She, instead of paying any kind of attention to the gesturing and embarrassing behaviour, approached Nigel and introduced herself. She was Kate, and thought Nigel was cute (they still haven’t let that go).

Cameron was glad of his choice. Nigel was wearing his jacket, meaning Cameron had a front-row seat to all the gloriously awkward action.
HOW’S IT GOING?
Cameron didn’t even turn around, he just replied, “Yeah, they’re on a stag night. Double wedding, I think …”
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Cameron laughed, as Death clicked away into the distance. He couldn’t tell whether Death had been legit.

“I wish Cameron had been here to see this,” Nigel said, as his fringe fell over his eyes and Cameron fixed it for him, causing a mild look of confusion before the thought was dismissed.
“Yeah … he would be on the floor laughing at how shit we are at this game.” Cameron was disappointed the Afterlife didn’t come with emotions. Because he definitely would’ve found this funny.
“Funny, you get so used to someone not being around, then things like this happen and you miss them and wish they were.” Nigel had lost his earlier sense of mischievous-ness, and he just sounded nostalgic, wistful and sad.
“I don’t think so, you just get better at blocking out the fact they’re gone …” Ravi had a similar tone.
Now Cameron really regretted not having feelings. Or maybe that was a relief. He might have cried. Then another girl approached Nigel, leaving the other two looking defeated and crestfallen, which snapped all of the four of them out of the varying states of reflectiveness.

Let the mind’s eye swing back to the wedding reception hall, and Nigel’s speech.
“So the clubbing was unflattering. But we ended up back at the studio, which was perhaps not the best thing to do while we were totally buggered.

It turned out that being over eighteen and in a bar is a bad combo. Or at least it was in this case. The trio ended up back in the studio at about eleven o’clock at night thoroughly smashed. Eventually they played hide and seek (or a massively corrupted version of it). There was a lot of tripping, falling and staggering around with large amounts of volume, making the game easy. Except that everyone else was drunk as well. So the game consisted of hiding in the same places, then holding minor and inconsequential conversations with the person who was ‘finding’ instead of … being found. Then the one time that Ravi was the only one still in the game, and he joined the search for himself.

Cameron looked down on the scenes of drunken hide-and-seek and the team absolutely dying with laughter because Ravi had caused a three-person pile-up. He wished he had feelings. He wished he was involved. He wanted to be alive. He was angry, or as close as he could be in the circumstances, and had begun to realise that haunting wasn’t as much fun as it had at first seemed.

Nigel carried on his speech, and the audience were thoroughly enjoying the sarcastic yet slightly monotonic voice that he had adopted. “I found this out mostly through the news and second-hand gossip, but at least one of the weddings nearly didn’t happen at all …

Fade out and then in to a kitchen. Helena is washing some dishes in the sink, while Alex dries. The TV is on, set to Helena’s station; TV7.
“You would never have thought we met after you blackmailed me …”
“Well, I never had to, did I?” Helena washed a plate with a rather large amount of vigour and the top of the scrubbing brush came off.
Then a somewhat edgy silence ensued, to be broken by …

Helena couldn’t give a straight answer and escape the situation without pissing Alex off. So she turned to the dishes and washed them in silence, letting the TV news dig her a deeper hole to climb out of at a later date.
“So yeah, that’s all from us here at TV7, and you can thank one of our producers for the change in format. Next up on TV7, it’s ‘Good Evening’”. Then the camera panned away and focus blurred in time to cheesy music.
“No but explain,” Alex was annoyed but not yet at ‘bounce-off-the-roof’ level. “Explain to me how that guy found out the secret of TV8.”
“Well he just explained it himself – I told him.”
“Right.” Alex’s tone was one of frustration.
“Right,” Helena’s was not.

Nigel was still speaking at the wedding, stopping to look around the hall for people’s reactions to this most recent development. He could see about a hundred people all-up, which wasn’t a bad turnout, seated in groups of six or seven to limit the awkward conversation that happens when someone is stuck with another guest they don’t especially like or can’t really be bothered talking to. Which Nigel had planned for because he had a large amount of experience; and yet he’d still failed. Ravi’s family occupied about a quarter of the total guests at the thing, and approximately every five people or so weren’t talking to any of twenty others because of various elements of ‘he said this, she said that then someone threw a chair’ that had taken place at previous gatherings. His was a family in which you needed only one sane and independent person there; a referee.
Looking back down, he continued; “it didn’t help that we were preparing a report for a competition, and there was a TV7 one in direct conflict.”

The team met in Alex’s office. It had been a long time since they had met there; this was especially obvious in the team’s work log which … had stuff in it. Actual, proper, completed jobs. It might almost have been said they were ‘doing well’.
“Did we all get the footage needed for the report?”
“Yeah, but how’s it going to be cut together?”
“Like a broadcast; story then an intro into the next one then that, then an intro, and so on.”
“Ah, so our normal then?” Ravi piped up and got stern looks from everyone; “NO. Not like that, Ravi. Properly.”
“Helena’s done a thing which may be a problem, but it means that this has to be better than anything we’ve ever done before, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t piss me about on this project, thank you very much now go and do the work you need to do to finish this project on time.” Alex was stressed and short-tempered.
“What’d she do – ?” Ravi hadn’t noticed the shortness of Alex’s voice and kept pushing.
“Later. Now GO.” Ravi ran.

Nigel and Julie were having an in-depth discussion about linguistics at her desk.
“… and I’ll just forward you the link when I get back to my desk.”
“Sure beans.”
“If there’s a ‘sure beans’ why isn’t there a ‘certain soup’?”
“Doesn’t rhyme.”
“Neither does ‘sure beans’?”
“Yes it does.”
“Explain.”
“No. Oh and I hear you got chatted up in the stag night.”
“How-how’s you hear that?”
“Ravi and his big mouth talking rubbish. It’s not true, is it?” She was calm; too calm. Even Nigel had the presenc of mind to be scared.
“It’s true, yes.”
And thus they ‘broke up’. Not that they’d ever really been dating at all. And over the next few days both parties would act as though they weren’t desperate for the other party to apologise but would inadvertently show their true feelings in subtle ways; Julie checking her phone every five minutes and ‘answering’ it when the doorbell rang; and Nigel would consider calling but ultimately decide against it – every ten minutes, without fail.

Cameron sat on the bed. Well, hovered slightly above. To the untrained eye, it may perhaps have looked as though he were sitting in Nigel’s lap. But he wasn’t, or at least that was what he liked to think. Every so often, Nigel’s focus would wander, and Cameron would slap him gently to bring him back. This worked, after the standard ten-second ‘wonder-what-the-heck-just-flicked-me’ moment.

“I might write some more for my story,” Gemma said, in full outfit. The team, minus Julie, were in Alex’s office.
“Oh yeah? What would that be? Someone bugging the station?” Ravi replied sarcastically.
“That reminds me,” Alex reached into a drawer and pulled out a cicada shell, and threw it at Ravi. There was a hollow clunk noise as it hit his forehead; the camera must have still been inside it. Then another, then another, then another.
“If I’m wearing this outfit and have my camera, people tend to take me seriously as a journalist – there’s no point investigating if you’re in the wrong clothes, people don’t notice you and they need to for the whole thing to … work.
“Work?” Ravi was confused by the argument she’d put forward.
“That thing you never quite have time to actually do.”
“Also,” Nigel said, turning slightly around, doing something and then turning back again, “I have a good headline.”
“I don’t think a photograph of a thick line across your forehead in marker will suffice as the lead of a story.”
“You don’t know our viewership.”
“Yeah, I do, there’s about five, who all seem to live in la-la land.”

Cameron was sure he was in la-la land, and equally sure that he didn’t have TV8 reception. He was sure of the latter point because he’d tried, and the former point because there was an octopus in a hat sitting against the door (well, not quite but … oh go away). The octopus was called Bob. He could speak proper English, too. Pull focus and then back in, to show the wedding reception venue.

Nigel’s speech continued, as the sun began to set, streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of the hall and blinding Nigel.
Cameron sat in an empty chair on one of the tables, and just listened, although the man sitting next to him had absentmindedly put his hand on the chair and right through Alex’s imaginary groin area, making him very uncomfortable.
“Here’s a joke, here’s a joke,” Nigel nattered excitedly, and the whole venue knew roughly what was coming. The collective facepalm could be heard through the walls. “What do you call a relationship with no real future?”
There was silence, as the whole room readied their rotten tomatoes.
“A marriage.” Nigel finished, and then he quickly sat down to avoid the barrage of the aforementioned fruit; although in doing so, he put himself in Alex and Ravi’s direct line of fire and got a slap from both sides.

Cameron’s daily chat with Death was ongoing.
ARE YOU STILL FINDING IT BORING HERE?
“Yeah, a bit. But you know … it has its moments.”
I KNEW A GUY WHO HAUNTED A JACKET THAT WENT TO A THEMEPARK WITH A MANIC DEPRESSIVE. HE DESCRIBED THAT AS AN EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER. Death's deadpan humour hadn't failed him yet.
“Yeah. So. What are you going to be doing today?”
ME? OH, I HAVE A WEDDING TO GO TO.

It was of course at around this point, that Nigel’s speech took a turn for the weird.
“Malaties, malaties, malaties, malaties. Well, that’s the formalities over with”. He didn’t even smile at his own joke.
Gemma leaned across to a guest that had decided fancy dress was the way to go, and had come as the Grim Reaper. She apologised for the jokes.
NOT TO WORRY, said the guest, although Gemma was about eighty percent certain his mouth hadn’t moved, I’M ONLY HERE FOR THE DANCING.
“Huh,” she answered quietly, “I leave weddings early to avoid it.”
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.
“Now, I’m feeling calm and collected, and by that I mean I’m not nervous, and I got a lift here.” Nigel’s speech continued, with no discernible drop in quality.
“I’m sure you’ve all heard the theory that people look like their pets – you, sir, have you got a llama?” Pause. No laughter. “I always say that to the person sitting there.” Pause. Nigel looked back at Gemma and mouths ‘but he does look like that though’.
“Now, let me tell you something I didn’t realise -- the word mortar has two meanings as I discovered when the house I built blew itself up.” He paused, as you do; got nothing for his joke; as only HE can do; then carried on without losing any momentum, as only an idiot would do. “So this guy asked me, ‘Does every sentence have to contain a vegetable?’ and I replied ‘Not necesscelery.’ Come on.”
Then he changed tact, because his current method wasn’t working, he said, “Anyway, Ravi’s inherent weirdness was obvious even as recently as his own wedding ceremony …

Pan out, focus blurs, and then clears to show a church with people in. Because an unattended wedding is an affront to tradition, style, and the production budget. The ceremonies by-and-large, went as planned, except for one bit at the beginning where Helena mixed up the genders of her parents, thinking for a moment that her mother would walk her down the aisle. She recovered with the line; “mum, dad, it’s all relative”. This is a favourable result, given that Gemma’s car broke down and it looked as though she wouldn’t make it, so Ravi started singing to entertain the audience that is captive in all but name; “Waiting … can sometimes be … lots of fun … … … … … but not always”. This last line was delivered as Gemma reached the bottom of the aisle. The rest of the ceremony went without incident, except where Alex put Helena’s ring on the wrong finger. And the bit at the end where the two grooms left the church to the tune of the Death march from Star Wars.

Crossfade back to the speech, with Nigel continuing his onslaught of shit puns.
“Cameron used to live with his parents but he got kicked out – turns out he couldn’t camp between the headstones.” There was a slightly shocked groan as way of reaction to this line. But this deterred Nigel not at all. He noticed a woman sitting down about halfway down the room.
“Have you just arrived? I’m nothing if not thorough … I’ll start again.”
The whole room vibrated with the volume of the “NO” that followed, mostly because Death joined in. Ravi leaned across to face Death, and wished he hadn’t, but then he asked; “why are you here?”
BECAUSE I GOT ATTACHED TO THE PEOPLE. MY FAULT I SUPPOSE, TALKING TO CAMERON.
“Cameron? You mean, the Cameron? Our Cameron?
YES. HE’S NICE ENOUGH.
“We miss him.”
NATURAL ENOUGH I SUPPOSE.

Then Alex saw journalists outside, and the focus of his attention shifted to getting out without being seen, at the end of the speech. Some time later, Nigel finished speaking, and the team gathered to think their exit through.
“So, what would it be? Just going through the door – no. The back door, they’d get us. Thing is, it’s their move now, and if we –”
“Their move?”
“Yeah, this is like an RTS game, and we have to get out of here. So if you go around the back …”
He disclosed an exit strategy for after the finish of the thing.
Then he stopped worrying about it.

“The last time I saw you was about a year ago – tell me why you decided to come back,” the psychiatrist asked. He had been pleasantly surprised that only Nigel had showed up. But that meant a reduced rate …
“I couldn’t really be bothered to get up this morning.”
“Why not? Anything specific that’s happened that would cause this, do you think?”
“Well I’m not sure; I mean our lives just got a fair amount more complicated but other than that I can’t think of anything.
“Tell me the whole story.”
“It started when Helena got kidnapped …”

Chaos. It could only be described as total pandemonium. People were everywhere. Made it hard for the team to get out of the reception. And that was just in the venue. Then there was a solid sea of journalists outside. After about three concussed journalists and many other ‘accidental’ knockings-over, the team had cleared the journalist barrier and split off into two cars. Then spontaneously decided to race.
Consequently, this next section should be viewed like a segment of a Fast and Furious film, with all associated music and narrowing of the field of view.
“Just drive,” Nigel said, then Ravi pressed the wrong pedal and drove backwards into Alex’s car so that the airbags went off.
Ravi still managed to pull out first (please don’t), although after a kilometre long stretch of motorway, Alex’s car had overtaken.
“Damn, we’re losing him – car numberplate EZ1234,” Nigel was trying to be like a policeman in a car chase and Ravi wasn’t having it.
“I’m driving; shush.” Ravi’s response achieved the desired result because of sheer shock value.
Alex saw Ravi about to overtake and increased his speed marginally.
From about this point, things took a turn for the worse.
Because Ravi didn’t notice, still turned and caused minor scratching and a dent to Alex’s car; who then proceeded to make obscene gestures. But the teams did arrive intact and conscious.
It was after this arrival that Alex smacked Ravi out, ending the arrived-and-conscious streak.

Helena gave up yelling after the fourth hour. Then she looked around the cell. It was basically a prison cell; white walls and a steel door with a slot. She’d been given food about an hour ago. So she started planning a way out; although in a weird and twisted way, being in a cell kind of made up for framing Gemma for the insider trading. But she planned anyway, just in case. She’d use her steel cutlery to wedge the door open the next time a guard came in; and he’d have to get knocked out or killed, also using the cutlery. Then she’d run. And hopefully not get recaptured. Even though she had no idea where she was.
“Don’t think of escaping,” Julie’s voice could be heard through the door.
“Why’d you kidnap me?”
“Well, my boss wanted me to. And not only that; we’ve had secret meetings where I told all your secrets. The station is over, and you know it.”
“Your boss? And secret meetings; that sounds dodgy.”
“You met him, I think. You covered his election campaign and he hated you.”
“Oh, him. But also I’m not sure what Nigel would say about all this.”
“I know what he would be like; he’d think it was pretty cool I think. I think. Right?”
“You really like him – can’t see why but okay.”
“I would think you’ll see why soonish.” She knew something Gemma didn’t.

The team sat in the meeting room on their computers.
“If I look at her phone’s GPS, then we should be able to isolate its position. Then work out an optimal route to get there and get her back.” Nigel took the lead.
“Yeah, sure; looking it up now. Actually, what was it again? Fuck, the computer’s frozen.”
“Ugh, Frozen’s horrible.” Nobody laughed. Then Nigel continued on a different track; “Hey guys; the doors were unlocked when we arrived. That’s not a problem, is it? It’s not like people wandered in and recorded whatever random crap was on their minds. Is it?”
“I’ll just go check while I look up the phone.” Nigel moved and the power cable got caught, making his computer fall t the floor with a clatter. He picked it up and got a minor shock reconnecting the charge cable.
Nigel went to check, wobbling slightly and sparking on contact with the ground. It turned out Julie had in fact let random people in.

Nigel continued his story to the psychiatrist.
“So, then what happened?”
“Shush, I’m getting to that bit. Anyway, in the tapes there was this one guy that just stared blankly at the camera for five minutes.”
“Are you sure that wasn’t Ravi?”
“It’s possible I suppose. But probably not, eh …”
“So, the story.”
“You know your interruption is the only reason I stopped telling the story was because you interrupted. Anyway …”
And Nigel continued the story while the psychiatrist sipped tea.

Helena knew Alex was on his way. She suspected Julie knew that too. Even so, she prepared herself to knock the guard out.

The plan wasn’t necessarily straightforward. In fact, it was the most complicated plan they’d ever come up with. In fact, it was basically guaranteed that it would go wrong.
And it was when Nigel was dressed as a security guard that he realised this.
Ravi had stayed at the station because he was in a helpful mood. And a Ravi in a helpful mood was actually worse than having no Ravi at all. So they’d given him a dictionary to read and he hadn’t yet figured it out.

Helena had nothing to do. If not for the inherent stress and anxiety of the whole situation, she would be bored.
And the first thing she heard about the rescue was when Alex, Gemma and Nigel were thrown in to the cell at the same time.
So Julie decided to get in on the fun.
“Um, hi.” Gemma almost threw Helena’s fork at Julie.
“You do realise I only kidnapped you because that’s what my boss wants.”
“We’ve been through this.” Helena interjected.
“Shut up; not talking to you.” Julie disregarded Helena with a flick of the wrist.
“Yeah; now that you mention it, Alex’s dad said something to that effect a while back,” Gemma started and wished she hadn’t because she realised she’d have to explain.
“You saw my dad?”
“Before he died, yeah.”
“You were … there?” Alex was shocked; not something Gemma had seen too many times before. Only once; when Ravi had accidentally broadcast a Skype conversation. A team meeting, no less.
“Yeah. He was happy. Well, high. Tripping on pain meds.”
“Th – thanks. Look, I’m sorry about the whole insider trading thing …”
Had the rest of the team not been present, Alex may well have hugged Gemma. But they were, so she didn’t think too much more about it.
“Anyway, my boss wanted to know your secrets.” Julie cut over Gemma, and Alex went back to sulking.
“I don’t appreciate the betrayal.” Alex was sulking; as close to sitting in the corner as you could get in the cell.
“I personally thought it was pretty cool.” Nigel’s standards of loyalty were clearly different to other people’s.
Then Gemma had an idea; “hey Julie, could we have water?”
“Yeah, sure.” Julie was surprised at the lack of backlash. She left and made the mistake of leaving the door open.
“RUN.” Gemma led the charge out the door.

The chase was not necessarily a short one. Well, it wasn’t really a chase, either. Although, bystanders certainly would have found it hilarious. Three men with suits and two women in long white dresses running down a street in a particularly striking fashion. An untrained eye could be forgiven for thinking it was a wedding party. So, as it turns out, could a trained eye; as it was in fact, a wedding party. They arrived back at the station after an hour-long walk looking over their shoulders to see if they were being followed.
They weren’t. They’d got away.
Then Alex got a text.
The CEO of TV7 wanted a final challenge; to see which of the two channels was best once and for all. A final broadcast at six o’clock that evening that would mimic the style of the other network.

Ravi was standing behind the TV8 newsdesk, drawing attention to the fact that while he was wearing a dinner jacket over his shirt, he was not in fact wearing trousers.
“Good evening and welcome to TV8 News. I am … bored. In leading news, I think I’m in love.”
“Doesn’t take you much, does it? That checkout girl telling you to keep warm when it was frosty kept you going for a week.” Nigel chipped in from the sidelines; he just couldn’t help it.
“Anyway, back to serious news …
And it carried on like this for the next five minutes, then crosscut between the footage that had been recorded to the tapes when the door had been left open. Ravi would try to link the stories; which became very awkward when he linked a story about children and a story about sex.
And then a sketch where Nigel tried to ask Julie out and suggested Countdown as a date destination. (NOTE: Countdown is, generally speaking, not a valid date destination. Except if you’re courting a bargain basement prostitute. “You can count on us to keep prices down”. Wait, that’s not Countdown; it’s Warehouse Stationery).
Eventually it stopped. At half an hour long. Hopefully the audience of seven would find it funny.

Nigel and the psychiatrist had almost finished talking.
“So that’s almost all of it.”
“And what would you have me do about it?”
“Well, you yourself said that I seem to have mild clinical depression, so what do you think?”
“Well, I think,” said the psychiatrist, “that you needed to talk your issues through with someone. And that was me. And I think that’s all you need. So you could always come for another session if you need it. But,” he said, reaching into a drawer, “here is an antidepressant; enough for a week – which I don’t think you need even that.”
Nigel took the packet and finished the story; he’d started, after all.

The final showdown.
Nigel and Ravi had a plan. It was exactly the same plan from opposite sides of the issue. Time would tell if it would work.
Alex and the Julie’s boss were to meet up in a field. And they did.
“So.” The CEO said, coldness evident in his voice.
“Hey, you’re that guy.”
“Yes, I’m ‘That Guy’, my name’s Sam, no thanks for asking.”
“So, we’ve done the thing. Let’s just get this done so we can all fuck off.”
Then both their phones rang at the same time, and they both said the exact same sequence of replies at exactly the same time; “Hi, yes. Your name is Spartacus? You’ll deliver the tapes? Well, okay but – right. Fine. Bye.”
They looked at each other, very confused, for about a minute.
“You got called by a Spartacus as well? For exactly the same thing?”
“Well.” Sam broke the spell. “The time for pleasantries is over.” He checked his phone for any updates on their export. Alex did the same.

Sam looked at his phone again, then back up at Alex, who was doing much the same.
Nigel texted. The TV8 film was ready. Alex prepared himself to call Gemma and send the order though.
Sam had already got his phone in his hand and had begun to dial the number.
Alex allowed Gemma to broadcast the TV8 report.
Alex needed to do something, and quickly. His heart fell as Sam raised the phone to his lips and said ‘hey –”

IS THAT THE END?
NOT YET!

Alex kicked Sam in the shins. This distracted Sam for just long enough that Alex could approve the transmission and allow Gemma to lead into the tape in the studio; then broadcast it.
“You’ve lost, Sam. Give it up now.”
“Well, maybe. Okay, fine. Fact is I have better things to do anyway. Maybe I was wrong and we can both exist in the market.”
“You do realise collusion is illegal, right?”
“Anyway,” Ravi said, and this was never a good sign; “we’ve been doing other crap today as well – rescuing Helena from the kidnappers, hacking, car chases, letting people wander into our studio and just record stuff …”
“And the randomised floodings.” Nigel interjected at the wrong time.
“What about having the airwaves back?” Alex tried to steer this trainwreck back on course.
“Sam already said you can’t.” Gemma tried stating the obvious.
“Trust me, honey; the word wasn’t ‘can’t’.” Ravi had figured it out.

Sometime later, and news of the broadcasts came through. “TV 7 won. Even after the cheating.”
Gemma was angry and Alex was the closest punching bag in range. She slapped him. “Wha – what was that for? Why’d you slap me?”
“Sorry, honey; you’re just the closest in range.”
“Come on, why’d you slap me?”
“Twice.”
“Once?” Alex asked, and then Gemma slapped him again.
“Don’t argue.”
Then the weird-meter broke, when Ravi and Nigel walked into the general vicinity. Ravi’s phone was on speaker.
“I’m Spartacus.”
“No, I’m Spartacus.”
“No. On the phone this morning, I was Spartacus.”
“That was me – remember being a temporary security guard?”
“But a guy called Spartacus arranged to deliver the tapes.”
“That was me.”
“That was me.”
“Then who – oh fuck.” Sam paled and phoned his PA.
But seriously, I’m Spartacus. And then the fistfight between Nigel and Ravi started, and Sam could do little more than stand back and say, very quietly; “you people are fucking insane.”

IS IT OVER YET?
NOPE!

And it was; the mockumentary won several awards and minor fame for the team. Ravi’s press interviews were always interesting – in one, Ravi held a sign with the word “reality” on it and let it go, claiming that he had always had a loose grip on reality. In another, though, he pretended the reporter (who was wearing camo trousers) was invisible throughout.

By and large, the team ran successfully, and (especially when compared to their beginnings) it seemed the bull had found the china shop, walked in carefully and bought a teaset.

Cameron and Death were talking.
IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO MOVE ON.
“To what? The Afterworld Proper?”
YES. WELL, YOU CAN IF YOU WANT. YOU COULD CARRY ON HAUNTING IF YOU WANT.
“I think I will; at least for now.”
OKAY. I’LL CHECK IN WITH YOU IN FIFTY YEARS OR SO.
“Fifty years … that’s quite a while …”
YES. BUT I HAVE OTHER MORE INPORTANT SHIT TO DO.
“Fair enough,” Cameron sighed, “see you then.”
The Grim Reaper disappeared without so much as a goodbye, and Cameron sighed. The next fifty years stretched out before him like a rubber band in a toffee machine.

And then the story finished. Not in the cheesy, vignette-looking-into-the-setting-sun way, but the ‘well, folks, that’s kind of it, really’ way. Because the ending wasn’t necessarily neat and tidy, and not everyone ended up permanently and irrevocably happy because of it – it was just … there. You can’t, when it comes to stories, guarantee happy endings; you can only guarantee an ending with the trust that the various situations involved therein will work themselves out for better or for worse. And the ending associated with these characters goes something like this;

Gemma and Ravi went on a honeymoon around the country for six months (although Cameron stacked them up with reports for that time period, so they never *really* stopped working … but given TV8’s past form in terms of procrastination – they hardly noticed they were still doing stuff. Ravi better recreated his proposal on the top of a mountain in the sunset; which was nice, except for a minor incident involving a bull and being blinded by the sun. Ravi is now perhaps the most level-headed and reasonable member of the team (and staunchly denies being anything else – as if he’s just forgotten the first eighteen years of his life). He expects to live happily ever after, although this is mostly due to a botched attempt at fortune-reading where the psychic (a diminuitive leaf-reader on the run from the cops; a small Medium at large) told him random crap to stop the stupid questions.
He’ll probably end up in a Psychiatrist’s office one day, demanding for a refund at a computer system that doesn’t work and occasionally ducking to avoid getting hit on the head by rogue small, circular objects. And Gemma will play the so-called ‘straight man’ to this occasional eccentricity, looking in an exasperated fashion towards a camera that isn’t there like she’s on the Office. Both are expected to continue their jobs at TV8. Both are reasonably famous.

Alex and Helena, similarly, are expected to remain on-track. Helena found that the popularity of the station, coupled with the newfound maturity of the team, meant they could manage themselves; and therefore made Steve redundant. So she offered him a job doing a similar thing for TV7 – which he gratefully accepted. Steve’s resignation speech to the team started with the line; “I won’t be doing this job much longer – I fear I’ll wind up an old man, and he’ll attack me.”
Alex continues his no-nonsense approach to running TV8, remarking to Ravi on one specific Monday morning; “If you’re looking for sympathy, it’s in the dictionary between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis’”. And the money is well-managed, mostly because Alex is still training to be an investment banker in his spare time.

Nigel, meanwhile, still does work for TV8, but from a peaceful and isolated island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, sipping some form of cocktail while looking out into the sunset (the same sunset, incidentally, as has already been discussed multiple times) and patting himself on the back for his life choices. With Julie (who resigned her position as intern), because why not? What he, of course, doesn’t know (while being faintly aware of it at the same time) is that even now, while his old and battered jacket that has been mislaid in transit to the island, is in a box and midway through the lengthy process of being returned to him, there is a ghost attached to that jacket, that has yet to pack up his meagre possessions and move onwards into the Afterlife. Much as Death may berate him for this, Cameron quite enjoys the ocean air (and optional extra of being trapped in a box so that people can be scared when they open it). Nigel is expected therefore, to remain in self-imposed quarantine and (for want of a better term) happy. Cameron hasn’t decided what the future holds (given that there is quite a lot of it for him, he’s in no rush), and is almost literally ‘between jobs’ at the moment.

So we close, as might reasonably be expected, looking at the three couples and a ghost; looking at Gemma and Ravi frantically try to keep the station from being snowed under with work and fanmail, Alex and Helena working collusively (which is technically illegal – don’t they ever learn; at least Alex didn’t suggest a corporate merger and the opportunity to ‘get my hands on your assets’). And Nigel and Julie mostly sit on the beach and stare into the middle-distance, wondering precisely what happened. Until every Christmas where the team meets up and discusses the year with those they haven’t seen, before sitting through the only-slightly-awkward Christmas dinner. Gemma and Julie appear, by and large, to have made up, after suggestion from Nigel that there was ‘no time like the Christmas present – Christmas present ahahaha hah”.