The Prime Minister is electable

"There you are Prime Minister" said the Permanent Secretary, bright and breezy while choking down his horror. The PM was sat alone at a round table in a meeting room. It shifted in its chair to acknowledge the PS, who was standing in the doorway clutching a set of briefs. The Prime Minister smiled. "Is that a new fang?" the Permanent Secretary asked. It was. The Prime Minister extended a limb in a fluid, boneless, indicating where the PS should sit, three seats away it seemed. 

The Prime Minister was a political bioweapon, a politician genetically altered to be permanently electable. No one knew its original name or identity, which was Very Above Top Secret, a category made up for this experiment. The PM's sex had long been indeterminate. These days its shape was pretty malleable too. 

The Permanent Secretary sat carefully. "Why are you here, Prime Minister?" the PS asked in his best concerned voice. "I've been looking all over for you. You've missed two meetings so far this morning."

The Prime Minister shook what was still probably its head. The PS waited. There was a gurgling sound, a voice rose up from within the Prime Minister. "Me... no like... Foreign Secretary... make flavours taste for chicken and Brexit not Brexit anymore" it said and shook it's 'head' once more. It's voice was tinny, echoing and distant.

"Well" said the PS, "you could reshuffle your cabinet, get a new person in at the FCO..."

The Prime Minister made a mournful mooing sound and covered four of its eyes. "Poisoned vector" it said "stand still challenge unable no flavours..." The Prime Minister glowed a little and seemed truly anguished. The Permanent Secretary let it stew in its sadness for a moment, resisting the urge to hug it, before sliding some papers across the table toward the PM.

"I have some news" said the PS, "something you might like to hear..."

"Hamster...?" said the Prime Minister, looking up again, hopeful.

"No, the President hasn't returned your call" said the Permanent Secretary, "but something good has happened. Operation Quantum Orange is underway" he whispered the last part reverently. Tides of muscle shifted up the PM's face:

"Selective violence?"

"Selective violence indeed" said the PS, also smiling. "Our friends in the south have moved into action."

"Query the visage and enumeration of traitors?" asked the Prime Minister as it pawed through the documents.

"Page four" said the Permanent Secretary, "there's a list of them, seven students and one lecturer... from the University of London..." The PM seemed pleased. "I know" said the PS, "it's an interesting place to start. This is all entirely the Friends initiative mind you, though we have agents tracking and gently guiding them if needs be but do not worry Sir... Madam... It, whatever happens your hands are clean." They were. The Prime Minister looked at the Permanent Secretary, beaming with delight. It thrust out its arms, fingers purple and engorged, and grabbed the PS by the shoulders, extended its tongue and licked the PS's face up and down. "Thank you" said the Permanent Secretary, trying not to gag on the slime, "it's much appreciated."

The Prime Minister then let go, sat back in its chair and let off a blubbery howl. "Brexit means Brexit!" It was heard all the way across in Number Eleven where the Chancellor of the Exchequer had hidden himself in the toilet to masturbate over pictures from the BaE Weapons Catalogue. 

The Parliament of House is in session.

Given I'm now properly trying to turn this into a novel this might be the last I post of this (like you're bothered). With "Now..." or whatever it becomes, I'm going to try to make it a series of short episodes written in a pseudo-dramatic style, i.e. with no internal monologue and the minimum direct author intervention. Anyhoo, let's see how this turns out... Also, yes, it's meant to be silly.

"We have to face facts, the Spirit of Fascism has moved..."

"We don't know that" said a Dissenting Voice, "we don't know anything at this at this moment in time and what we do know doesn't make much sense. 

The Original Speaker tried to respond. "It doesn't..." But:

"I mean, why a physics lecture...?"

"It's doesn't have to..."

"Just kids that..." the Dissenting Voice was exasperated. The Chair held up a hand to say enough. The Original Speaker resumed:

"It's doesn't have to make sense, Dave..." He realised his mistake instant. "Sorry..."

The Dissenting Voice sighed. "It's too late now I suppose" he said and shrugged, irritation. His name was Dave, everyone present knew but but his codename was Wrecked Train. 

"We're all friends here..." said another delegate, AKA The One Man Crowd, "comrades..."

"We don't know that" said the Chair, the Disco Bison, stern as a mid-week comedown. He was the oldest and most experienced of the group. He spoke slowly and surely. "There are many, we can be sure, who would like to infiltrate our organisation, and not just the Fuzz." Silence reigned across the table for a moment. The Disco Bison nodded to the Original Speaker, known to the group as The Sheriff, to continue.

"We have to up our game" said The Sheriff.

"Really?" said a woman known as Many Tentacles. She was the long-standing Promotions and Intelligence delegate, practically the Disco Bison's second in command.

"Enough!" barked the Disco Bison. It was quite a harsh comedown. The office-warehouse reverberated. "Go through the chair" he said to everyone. "We're not here to barney."

"Sometimes" said the Sheriff, resuming, a little bashful, "you have to state the obvious to start with." The One Man Crowd nodded ostentatiously to this. He was seconding the Sheriff's motion. "The Spirit is on the move" said the Sheriff. "Look at the reaction to this attack in the press or on the streets. We've been expecting something like this for months" he said, looking directly at the Wrecked Train, then around the room. "Now it has finally come... what...? Nine people are dead, like you say 'kids.' What's been the reaction? Shrug the shoulders, it's so sad but can't be helped. That's the public response anyway" he shrugged. "Behind closed doors" the Sheriff glanced around meaningfully, "you can bet someone authorised this, someone in power had to" he could sense he was losing the room at this. "I can't prove it, no one can but we must assume it, even if we're wrong. This is big!"

"Are the police involved or have the DoM been brought in?" the Disco Bison asked.

"Sources suggest" said the Many Tentacles, "though I've yet to speak directly to my chief contact I'm pretty sure DCI Lightfoot is on the case." There were sighs and frowns across the table.

"Well" the Sheriff shrugged, "maybe the state has been caught on the hop but that's all the more reason for us to take the fight. If we don't move now we could find the ground disappearing beneath our feet."

"You have a plan I take it?" said the Wrecked Train.

"Of course" said the Sheriff, seemingly no longer embarrassed. He handed out sheets of A4 holdings lists, maps and schematics.

"These are not the full details I take it?" said the Disco Bison.

"Of course not" said the Sheriff. "With your permission though I will take this forward to Ops and Acquisitions to take forward." He ploughed on before any of the delegate could object. "The Parliament of House has been underground for too long. We need to take a space, publicly, a high-profile space that cannot be ignored, there's a non-definitive list of potential targets included but, uh... the point is we need to take a space and hold it for as long as we can. If the Spirit of Fascism wants to take this city we have to take it first. Sure it's going to take a lot, we're going to be calling in all sorts of favours but... if not now... when?"

Seven Eleven Stories - Volume Two

Seven Eleven Stories, Volume 2: “A Very Convenient Christmas” is the reason for the season—your virtual Christmas stocking stuffer package of bittersweet holiday shards. Amber Burke’s black and white film colored candy cane of surrealism, “Transfer,” will dance in your mouth and leave you wondering where you left your belongings. Adam Marks' blood-sausage breakfast of a hootenanny, “A Thousand Flaws,” will have you counting on fingers and toes with a British accent, running out of digits and giving up. Then let Mia Sparrow’s “Bite Me” melt in your mouth and clog your rotten Scrooge heart until it bursts with Christmas spirit and whatever other internal organs remain intact this time of year. 

Now... continued

"How do we know time exists?" asked Professor Kimber. No response. "What is time?" He'd have to explain. "Time is the progress of entropy." He looked away. Wasn't the Alt-Right supposed to be cleverer than this? Professor Kimber paced a little. "You can know time is passing without a clock, without any visual reference at all." He stopped, turned and looked at his subject. "We exist..." he corrected himself, "we have been forced to exist in an impure universe, a motive universe..." His pedagogical instinct kicked in. Professor Kimber dragged a flip-chart across the room and took up a pen. "We are moving from a point of pure, concentrated energy..." He illustrated this with a pristine asterisk. He drew an arrow left to right, "to a point of absolute, undifferentiated, dispersed matter." He showed this using a scatter of infidel dots.

"But" said the Young Man tied to the chair in Kimber's padded laboratory, "if the original state was pure how could it degenerate?"

This was something. "A good question" said Kimber. He put the pen away and started pacing again. "This is why..."

"I mean" the Young Man continued, smiling "don't pictures of the young universe show fluctuations in in background radiation?"

He was smart, this boy, bright, if a little placid. It was almost a shame, Kimber thought, that they sent him along. Still, you needed an Avatar to contact the Spirit. "This is why" said Kimber, "we are at war with the Quantum Marxists and other celebrants of the mongrel reality. This universe is ruled by probability, change and motion. There is no frame of reference. This underpins the dialectic, the source of their heinous theories of tolerance and progress..." the words seeped out of his mouth like acid. Kimber fetched a device, a silver helmet decorated with symbols and with cables and lights protruding. "Our movement will prevail" he said. "We will halt the march of time and entropy, that is why we do what we do" he said, putting the helmet on the Young man's head. "Quantity shall no longer become quality and we shall be titans..." he adjusted a set of dials on a console, halfway across the room. He looked back at the Young Man who seemed suddenly afraid. "Our powers will be unlimited." Kimber smiled a saggy old leer.

The Young Man asked plaintively, "will it hurt?" There was a short pause.

"Your sacrifice will be noted" said Kimber. He flipped the master-switch before the Young Man could say anything else. The Spirit was invoked.

A Reality Manager's Work is Never Done

I'm currently in a phase of finishing, altering and recovering stories. This is something I like but I suspect won't stand much of a chance with any anthology or magazine quite soon so enjoy, or don't.

I am merely a psychologist, a professional psychologist with a practice of my own, but when I’m seconded to the Agency That Cannot Be Named¹ I become the Reality Manager. The job of the Agency That Cannot Be Named is to parse world news, political gossip and internet traffic on behalf of the government. Given the amount of information out there, not to mention the urgent, competitive ethos at the Agency, it’s not surprising that a few manias develop every now and then and when they do I am called up.

             Don’t be fooled, these are not petty rows among grey, passive bureaucrats. Not so long ago an agent was working late at a facility in Stanmore when for no good reason he chopped himself into several pieces, threw his body parts into a utility room and locked himself in from the outside. There were no clues as to what happened, aside from the fingerprints and human hair found on the scene, not to mention the security video of five hooded figures hacking the agent to death. It was a mystery.

The Agent had been working on data showing a correlation between global warming and Islamic fundamentalism. This angered not a few in the Agency who had been briefing sources over a number of years that climate change was invented in 1975 by a conspiracy between the Green Party, the London School of Economics and the BBC Natural History Unit. If he found a causal link between the two factors the Agent would have knocked the bottom out of several long-term infiltration projects.

No one could prove anything though, and disbandment or prosecution would be dangerous for morale, not to mention the time and effort it would take developing new identities so the agents could reintegrate into civilian society, so my second job was invented. My role is to alleviate operational manias and if possible reconcile them with reality. I am the Reality Manager. Where there are opposing delusions I have to reconcile them as well.

A good example would be the Case of the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition was a dangerous man, a dark horse. He was made party leader unexpectedly. Despite being a cabinet minister in a previous government his background, his past was dangerously unfactored.

He was the son of a refugee socialist foreigner. He once attended a demonstration where other socialists were present. He was on the record as praising Clement Atlee. Despite having children he was unmarried. All this aroused interest and concern in the Agency. Then came his policy announcements: a modest increase in the minimum wage, utility price freezes, Venezuelan rent controls, Monster Munch to be nationalised, the BBC to be broadcast into every home, bacon sandwiches to be made illegal, bananas to be made straight, a free swan for every asylum seeker, Baa-Baa Green-Sheep as the national anthem and the abolition of slavery.

Two theories arose in the Agency That Cannot Be Named to explain the Case of the Leader of the Opposition:

1. He is a Russian Communist Spy sent forward in time to overthrow British Capitalism.

1. The USSR still exists.

The second ruminescence was easy to grasp: “You can’t trust Ivan,” I remember one particular Agent saying. The agents who followed this line were largely veterans. Operational inertia was at play here. Once you’ve spent half your adult life chasing Russians round Central London it was hard to stop. That said the faction did recruit a number of younger agents, often ambitious but lazy and prematurely nostalgic. The first theory was a bit more complicated however. I spoke to one of its prime movers, Field Agent Andy Bilson (not his real name²). He told me:

“It’s really very simple. What happened to the space race? It got to 1973 then it stalled. Why, because they brought more than just rocks and dust back from the Moon. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity says the faster you travel the slower time passes. The Leader of the Opposition was not born in the 1960s, he was from the 1960s. That’s why the Russians had all those long-duration missions on their space stations, they were creating sleeper cells.”

If Einstein heard this he would be spinning in his grave³. I asked Bilson how he linked this to the Leader of the Opposition? He told me he’d been working recently in Eastern Europe. They were at a top-secret rendition facility when his partner, Agent Fissure, had a Ukrainian taxi-driver, a frustrating hold-out who claimed he knew nothing, in a stress-hold. After ten minutes the taxi-driver started shouting: “Miliband! Miliband!”

Two hours later they had the whole story down. The taxi driver used to be a rocket engineer during the Soviet era. He was busted down for objecting to the prolonged missions, the deleterious effects of microgravity and radiation⁴. That’s why he was a taxi driver and Ed Miliband, a commissar at the laboratory where the taxi driver used to work, real name Eduard Mikoyan⁵, was a Soviet spy.

How to resolve this? One side, the Future Perfect faction, preferred to arrange assassination. Their opponents, the Structuralists, favoured the long-view. If the USSR still existed then it was an institutional, not a personal problem. Preparations were being made for an army coup if the opposition party won⁶.

The arguments were furious. The future of the nation was in the balance after all. Something had to be done. This had to be nipped in the bud before agency staff started breaking windows, cutting brakes or slipping polonium 210 into the coffee machine.

It was too late to point out this was a likely Department of Misinformation ruse gone too far. That would just escalate matters, full on inter-agency war. Instead, after several months shuttling between factions⁷, I managed to broker a compromise solution, accepting that Russia’s natural elevation⁸ and multiple time zones would likely cause some temporal distortion that could lead either to the USSR still existing or Ed Miliband/Eduard Mikoyan being thrown forward in time to 2010 and accidentally made the leader of the Labour Party. We eventually all agreed would be better not to prejudge the result of the election but instead activate agents within the opposition party, the media and the International Space Station to monitor the situation. Both factions agreed to de-escalate their respective plots. There was even a little document, a form signed by both sides. We called it the Canteen Covenant.

That was six years ago. Of course it all went out the window when Labour lost the 2015 election. Now we have a new Leader of the Opposition who actually is a socialist, and the faction fights broke out again. I could tell you all about the manias I have to deal with now but then I’d have to erase your memory with a magnetic brain-wipe and, trust me, you wouldn’t want that. A reality manager’s work is never done.

...

1 You know the one I mean though. It’s based in the big building we all work in on Vauxhall round-a-about that doesn’t have a postcode or photo on Google Maps.

2 It is his real name.

3 If his brain hadn’t been preserved in a secret laboratory under the Pentagon

4 Apparently, due to some property of coronal mass ejections, a few cosmonauts developed counter revolutionary superpowers, I asked what powers but Bilson did not elaborate on this to me.

5 Not his real name.

6 With Prince Harry elevated to King, Nigel Farage as Prime Minister, Jeremy Clarkson Director General of the BBC and Gary Barlow as Head of Entertainment at Butlins Death Camps.

7 Literally, the rival groups occupied opposite ends of the canteen at lunchtimes, refusing to speak to each other and occasionally flicking food at each other.

8 I made that bit up. Russia is in fact mostly swamp and grassland.

A senior researcher explains visual dissociation

The best actors don’t act, they believe. They don’t act as if they’re a boxer, gangster or drug addicted saxophonist, they believe they are a boxer, gangster or drug addicted saxophonist. The same goes for undercover agents.

The most difficult jobs require deep, prolonged cover. There are those who are able to maintain an identity for years on end, but everyone has their limits. Even after the completion of the case there is a tendency for agents to go off the rails. Untreated, 63% of all undercover Field Agents require some sort of counselling and/or early retirement, which, as you can imagine, is a tremendous burden to the Department.

The solution is Visual Dissociation. Like all great inventions it’s really very simple. It works along the same likes as Verbal Dissociation. This is something you may well have tried. If you look at a word for long enough, perhaps repeat it out loud or in your mind, the chain of letters will begin to dissociate from the sound and the meaning attached. For a short while the word becomes completely unfamiliar.

Can this be repeated with other signs and signifiers? The answer is yes. Research has shown it is possible to erase someone’s identity through prolonged exposure to images of their face. This is true of the face, not the body. Though people feel like they occupy their body, it is the face that functions as the avatar. The meaning of a person is channeled through their face. Put it another way, no one could pick out their elbow in a line up.

The process of visual dissociation can be hurried along by mind-altering drugs though they are not necessary. Either way you start by exposing the subject to pictures of their face, pictures they know and have seen before. Begin slowly but prolong the process, both the amount of time the subject spends on each photograph and the length of the session.. After 24-36 hours the subject is usually develops a profound ambivalence towards their image, some even begin dissociating at this point.

Unless the subject is fully free of their moorings the next step is to start the dissociation. The subject is shown pictures of themselves inserted into scenarios they know unrealistic or impossible. When the subject questions this they are told, emphatically if needs be, that the scenario depicted happened and is real. The scenes depicted gradually change from neutral and mundane to embarrassing, upsetting, compromising, obscene and horrific. The subject is eventually repelled by their former identity and become ready to assume a new one. The process of deconstruction and rebuilding can again take up to another 24-36 hours.

The total process cannot go much longer than three full days. Visual Dissociation has a 60-66% success rate. Any longer and the odds of permanent psychosis shorten dramatically. Any longer than 96 hours and the subject is guaranteed to break down irreparably, requiring termination. Visual Dissociation is still a top secret process, for this reason it is not advised for existing agents willing to go undercover. It is best used on recent recruits, particularly Category D. 

Trump hits the phones

"Sir..."

"What is it Jeeves?"

"You rang the wrong China."

"What'd you mean 'the wrong China?'"

"There's two Chinas."

"How can there be two Chinas?"

"Sir, there's one in Taiwan."

"And which one do I nuke?"

"Neither, Sir..."

"So who did we nuke in '45?"

"The Japanese, Sir..."

"What, and they were the Germans, right?"

"No, Sir..."

"Jeez, this is confusing, and who are you?"

"I'm the Mailman, Sir..."