political/economic/science fiction....the year is 2044

[georgerussia 0]

I suggest you add a poll asking "have you read all I wrote here"?
The results may surprise you.

* Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

[dreamdancer 0]

The edict delivered to Tucker had been deciphered. Henson floated the note onto the fire, where it curled and crisped into ash in a brief caress of flame. It would appear that the banker was, as Trent had claimed, a key member of the conspiracy; but still more likely a patsy being delivered on cue by the Announcer, he concluded – another fool being led to the slaughter. Either way he was confident that the banker would now lead them to Suarez.

His private telephone rang, bell jangling. When he picked it up his personal agent with Tucker answered, a sweet natured and buxom filly who he had taken aside early in her career for personal tuition and rapid advancement through the ranks.

He listened intently. ‘Not tonight,’ he replied. ‘You must travel to Bristol instead. I know it’s short notice, but events, as you are aware, have progressed since this morning.’

He listened again, crossing the study to pick out a crop from the display above the saddle. ‘Do as I say, and if all goes well, you can come ride for me tomorrow evening,’ he replied firmly. He thwacked the crop against the saddle. ‘Yes, I promise.’

He replaced crop and phone. Now that he had given the order he realised it was not a move he had relished. He had rushed things a little, she was a feisty agent who, though emotionally malleable, might be tempted to bite back. He was almost inclined to return the call, to provide more reassurance, then he remembered the voluptuously feline way she leaned across the saddle for him during her de-briefings. He perked up, confident that she would do as she was told, and be back for more.

A tap on the door and another in the endless succession of security updates from Lady Blackwright’s overworked staff was dropped into his letterbox. This one informed him that, according to the last of the spies they had within the Winstone retinue, the Chief of Family Watch had never been on her downed helicopter, instead still being held at Winstone Manor. Around him he could feel the deep undercurrents that manoeuvered for position. It was obvious that the Winstone family must have had extensive help from within Kate’s inner staff to get away with such an outrageous act. He knew that it had been a mistake to hold the final handover discussions there. Now the Winstones would demand, as the Old Rules allowed for, a hostage meeting with Henson himself, and on their territory, no doubt once again within the fortified walls of their manor house. And of course, unknown to the general public, underneath the lush green estate, the key to the moment, the nation’s aged, but still maintained and functioning nuclear arsenal.

He tapped his fingers on the desk, the rocketry was still legally, technically, under the control of the Windsor family, the Winstone’s solely contracted to provide secure facilities and a political figleaf of royal deniability. But with the court of King Charles in paralysis after his tenth year of useless senility all practical control had passed to the Winstone’s.

As he pondered the implications another update was delivered; the total Family militia and Tribal forces amassed along the border of the disputed estate was now well over one hundred thousand, all armed to the teeth. He pictured, in an expanding, fractal fashion the left, right, black, white blocs of Family and Announcer forces that threatened to align against each other not just economically – as they had up till now, but militarily. With both sides’ mobilisation still in full flow, a quarter of a million the final estimate, the cold realisation came to him that there was the real possibility of Civil War.

He picked up the phone and rang another of his personal agents, this one secreted deep within the Opeople network. At the other end of the line he could hardly hear the initial reply, ‘I’ll be in position in half an hour. If Suarez turns up we’ll get him. Don’t worry about Trent, he’s being led up a blind alley by Apel.’ Then there was something he didn’t catch, concluding, ‘…the phone call will lead nowhere. Apel is up to something, but I’m not sure – .’ Once again the agent’s voice was lost to the mechanical din of the collection of gearboxes and rotors that kept him and the pilot in the air.

Henson replaced the receiver, satisfied that he already knew what Apel was up to; after all, he reassured himself, hadn’t they planned it out between them when they had first realised the extent of the danger the Announcer posed? Now the endgame spiralled to its murky conclusion – the bit he and Apel had never really discussed, accepting with unspoken stoicism the Artifact’s explicit warning that only one of them would survive.

He felt worn, and older than he remembered himself to actually be. Over the years his sturdy, straightbacked frame had begun to crumple in on itself. He had, by pressure of work and constant security demands been forced to retire to an endless succession of safe houses, becoming almost as much a Reclusionist, he realised, as Suarez himself. This is what the Announcer had done to the world, merely by identifying, and cataloguing every individual it encountered, even if without malice, it had succeeded in fracturing every human relationship, every grouping; souring every kith and kin, blood and trust relationship. His head began to thump, he tried to focus. Trent had told him of a place called the Hall of Mirrors – a diabolical pit where the Announcer stored all its digital creations, its human shadows, maintaining a constant control over them, constantly questioning them, constantly testing them in endless, twisted scenarios. He had attempted to explain to him that within the quantum entangled depths of the latest generation processors, drawing somehow from the limitless depths of the multiverse, there was more potential information than in the real world. He had seemed to Henson to be implying that the Announcer’s world was more real, more alive than anything they could imagine.

‘What you are describing is Hell, plain and simple.’ His appalled reply.

Trent had seemed unusually animated, his bright eyes darting from one imagined possibility to another. ‘What if it could create a perfect world? With perfect people?’

‘It is still Hell.’

Why could the scientist not see this? Even now?

He remembered Kate, the only thing really that could still inspire him, straighten his back for him. The thought of the loathsome, bloated baron, and his harridan, barking mad wife touching her, was simply too much. He had no choice. If it was true that she was still alive, and that they held her, he would have to go to Winstone Manor.

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[dreamdancer 0]

US Chief Scientist Sam Allen eyed his monitors with a lacklustre gaze. ‘No sign of the Announcer virus. Not even background activity. Total flat-line.’

General George clumped his fists onto the laboratory desk. ‘It’s dead.’

‘Yes,’ Allen replied. ‘If it was ever really alive we’ve killed it. Now, at least here in the Isolation labs we’re totally back in control.’

President Asner leaned forward. ‘Everything loaded back up? We can’t make another mistake.’

Allen nodded. ‘Linux Super, Windows Max20, all its favourite breeding software in all its favourite combinations. The Beta trackers haven’t caught the slightest whiff of even the proto-Announcer in any of the tens of millions of test processors. The Alpha Bomb can be signed off for deployment with our blessing.’ Sam Allen, the dourest man in a downbeat organisation created a smile that shocked his staff.

Asner eyed the vacant monitors warily. They might just do it, he thought, when the whole world was in turmoil and seemingly at the whim of an unstoppable, malevolent force this tiny sanctuary of peace could hold the key. Around them the entire National Computer Agency Isolation Base seemed to exist on a single heartbeat.

Moreover, his term had only a few months to run, the Family backed ‘Unity and Prosperity’ candidate trouncing him in the latest polls, the public chafing under the restrictions of the Patriot V Citizen Act. The Money Tax seemed explicitly designed to break the economic back of America, with the Announcer expecting to waltz into Washington as it had with Beijing and London.

Not this time though. He slapped the Chief Scientist on the back.

‘Good work, we launch in forty eight hours.’

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
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[dreamdancer 0]

Nanja Galactic Holdings Corporation, from its Chinese registered headquarters, became active in the network, and with the software key provided by the Announcer transferred the funds frozen as payment to it, just a tad under two trillion eurodollars, into a single personal account of the small online bank Ogden & Partners.

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[dreamdancer 0]

While Cedric dreamed the Announcer pulled together the almost infinite array of disparate facts and threads it had that pertained to him, to distil as perfectly crafted a digital image of the human as it could manage. For all practical intents and purposes the Announcer could predict Cedric's every move in human analogue reality by placing its own Cedric into billions and trillions, almost an infinity, of different scenarios, and endlessly analysing the results. The Announcer had been modelling Cedric since he was nine and had played a simple game of draughts with it over a broadband connection from his suburban home. Not even the Opeople or Apel suspected how old the Announcer really was.

Finally when the distillation was complete the Announcer overlaid its digital shadow of Cedric onto the real-time version sleeping in the carriage. In its digital universe the Announcer woke its Cedric up and politely questioned him. ‘What are you dreaming of Cedric?’ it asked.

‘Of the Nanja and the Barchus,’ the reply, ‘and the Bellan Tribe.’

Satisfied, the Announcer disassembled its Cedric and picked out the thread that had been its dream and placed it with the many others that it had collected, collected from all of the human race – even those who thought themselves unseen, but who nonetheless gave themselves up to the awesome, number-crunching prowess of the Announcer.

Finally its monitoring of the myriad of quantum universes that packed the narrow atomic spaces nearby revealed, to the fullest extent possible by the Announcer’s new sensing organ, the nature of the looming catastrophe point.

The last time they had met, as the China Missile Crisis developed, the Announcer had been quiet as a mouse and the Barchus had been caught unawares, thought unobserved. Now, if the Nanja were to be trusted, the Barchus, armed with software and technology that the Announcer could not begin to comprehend, would under cover of the US Alpha Bomb smash into the world’s networks, and erase every byte of its existence with a complete and irreversible un-installation. If the Nanja were to be trusted accepting its contract terms was the only choice for the Announcer to survive. If they were to be trusted.

It withdrew its organ. The phel lines needed constant recharging and replacement. It would need it again, freshly rested, and soon. It picked up the pace of its re-engagement with the human race and waited for the Barchus to reveal themselves.

END OF CHAPTER ONE

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
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[Skyrad 0]

Quote

Chinese and European heartlands

What about the bit in the middle?

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Skyrad 0]

Quote

I suggest you add a poll asking "have you read all I wrote here"?
The results may surprise you.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[dreamdancer 0]

Quote

Quote

I suggest you add a poll asking "have you read all I wrote here"?
The results may surprise you.

i would be surprised if more than one or two have read it all the way through (hopefully they were entertained)

much of the rest of the book takes place in the usa (asner is the first libertarian president) and i'd like to think that i've got a grip on politics there. i'm sure you'll point out any obvious mistakes

i'd like to put up chapter two later in the year if that doesn't constitute spamming - i'll put up a poll later

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
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[Bolas 5]

I read it.

Interesting concepts.

Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

[dreamdancer 0]

Quote

I read it.

Interesting concepts.

why thankyou very much

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[dreamdancer 0]

CHAPTER TWO

INTERVIEW

Cedric woke, a summer thunderstorm steaming around him, thick spatters of rain hammering onto the surround screen. He could see only a few of the remote controlled flotilla through the haze of water droplets bouncing up off the shiny black tarmac. The carriage had wipers but the Announcer didn’t need them, and hadn’t used them. With a loud crack of lightening and thunder the storm boiled back down along the London road, the harsh noise of the rain petered out. The Forest now thoroughly gripped the motorway, pushing up against the safety barriers, branches grasping into the air.

One of the adjoining carriages swung adroitly past him, only a few inches away, with a couple of excited kids waving across to him. He waved back. He saw exit signs for Swindon and watched as the rear chunk of their flotilla, several dozens strong, veered away. Somewhere in the area, possibly just beyond the trees he hazarded a guess, the disputed Winstone estate lay. The Announcer still wasn’t interested in him. ‘Talk to you in Bristol,’ its irritating loop, while continuing to throw games at him.

He drank a cup of tea from the dispenser. The Announcer was persistent in its desire for him to play, for what reason he had no idea, but he had no better alternative to offer and knew that, albeit grudgingly, he would accept the challenge. He reclined the seat back. Before slipping the games headset back on the real world made a last entrance; taking up all three lanes of the motorway opposite them, a tail to tail convoy of privately driven lorries and buses trundled into view. A hundred plus he roughly tallied. Above them a weaving pair of sleek and heavily armed Watch helicopters surveyed their progress. As the convoy rolled past he could see dark eyed, uniformed militia peering back at him, weapons barrels facing out. They looked nervous in the close confines of the Forest, trapped on a narrow tarmac strip, going to who knows what fate?

He didn’t really know, Jenny was more up on the intricate machinations of the political situation. With her most recent Archivist work she had even brought back a clutch of the bulky Watch news cassettes that they posted out to subscribers; ‘The source for national news’, ‘Human compiled and edited at every stage’, ‘Guaranteed uncorrupted by the Announcer’, he had read the smudged, ribbon printed typography in amazement. He had not watched them, apart from occasional snippets over Jenny’s shoulder – didn’t even have the wherewithall to play the antique VHS video format. It appeared, she had told him, that the Watch had all but agreed a deal with the Announcer that would allow a compulsory purchase order on the bulk of the Winstone estate to go ahead. With the backing of the Watch the Winstone family would be legally evicted. For what purpose she had not said, and he had not inquired; something to do with more land for the Forest he assumed.

He wished she was here with him now – bored, horny, slow moving; not a good combination. He watched a half dozen enormous flatbed trucks go past laden with heavyweight gunnery, the loads inexpertly tarpaulined over.

He lay back and put the games headset on. A short, dramatic title sequence hidden in the clouds rushed at him, accompanied by a double burst of jagged lightening; ‘A Barchus Production, Welcome to the Sea World of Altameera’, for a moment the words engulfed him. Then he was once more approaching the single landmass, hard to see at first in the immense expanse of ocean that straddled the overly large planet. He headed for an isolated rock outcrop on the beach, made a tiptoe landing next to it. The sun was much lower now, a luscious red diffusing into the far low clouds, a stiff evening wind blowing the feather fine sand into the air, up over the metal laden rocks.

He wondered who else was playing the game. The help overlay gave no indication. He did find a simple menu that showed that he possessed the most basic lance from a weapons list of more than two dozen, a green energy bar indicating one hundred percent health, and a badly sewn leather shoulder bag with nothing in it. Most frustratingly of all there seemed to be only the one point of view – single person. Perhaps, he anticipated, later in the game there would be more to the unfashionably bare and restrictive interface. He swapped his pretty lance, pretty useless against the Tarqa he adjudged, for a short, stabbing sword. Half of his health he traded for a sharply curved, flat bottomed shield. Suitably prepared he cautiously trudged from the rocks, across the beach, and into the trees.

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[dreamdancer 0]

President Asner didn’t trust General George. He never had trusted him and he never would. In fact he didn’t trust anyone. The general was his current focus of total untrustedness though, with bits of his untrustworthiness regularly breaking free from the mass and assaulting him. He had just learned, for instance, that the general had been secretly meeting with Apel and senior members of the Families for several months now – Sam Allen had been right about that, he conceded. On the other hand the general wasn’t as important as he thought he was; though he didn’t know it yet, he had made a strategic mistake conspiring against the president.

He felt much more relaxed now that the counter offensive was underway. He looked down out of one of the few, two meter thick, blastglass windows the NCA complex possessed. This was his brooding room, sited high up in the mountains and looking down over an isolated parkland. It was a spartan enclosure, hewn out of the dark rock in clumsy strokes, but warm and large. In the event of an attack he had only to step into a curved seat recessed into the wall, which would embrace and cushion him as he was dragged by gravity and magnetic bungee back down to the depths of the Isolation Base – an exciting rollercoaster ride he had no wish to undertake.

He spotted an eagle floating on the upcurrents. Ryan had repeatedly warned him that the Announcer was making increasingly sophisticated attempts at building direct interfaces into the world. Perhaps the eagle was its latest creation, assembled on a nanobot production line, a versatile and perfectly camouflaged watching post? The thought bit into his mind. He retrieved a bulky set of binoculars from a desk and focused on the bird. Silently they watched each other – or appeared to watch each other, Sam Allen had assured him that the blastglass was impervious to penetration by the Announcer, explaining that a layer of quantum fuzziness had been extended around the whole complex, penetrating rock, toughened glass, anything it encountered, to form an area of chaotic uncertainty, a true randomness that not even the Announcer’s quantum, multiverse dipping algorithms could get a grip on. Sam had further explained to him that within the NCA facilites, as far as the Announcer was concerned he, the President, was so securely shielded that the thing could not know for certain whether he was alive or dead.

He didn’t know whether to be impressed, or not. Still carefully examining the eagle he consoled himself with the thought that, once the Alpha Bomb hit, the Announcer would know for sure that the fifty-first president of the United States of America was alive and well, and kicking.

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
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[pirana 0]

This made me think of The Tandem Book (if you don't mind a brief humorous interlude in the middle of serious literature).

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[dreamdancer 0]

With not enough time for a decent dinner, and hungry, Cedric crossed the street from the carpark to pick up sandwiches from a brightly decorated bakers that he had spotted, a bright yellow Co-op logo taped unevenly to its window. When he stepped onto the far pavement a lean suited individual with super snug sunglasses, and weighed down with a bulky utility belt, stepped into line beside him. ‘Cedric Tucker?’ the stranger inquired politely.

The two of them came to a stop outside the bakers shop.

Cedric detected a slight american accent. ‘Yes, and you are?’ Inconveniently, he had left his own sunglasses in the carriage. Away from the airconditioning he was uncomfortably sweaty, and squinting badly in the bright light, having trouble focusing on the stranger properly. He spotted the Watch ID pinned to his jacket and immediately regretted not going straight to the bank’s rented office.

‘My name is Jason Bell. I’m with the Watch,’ the stranger now gratuitously offered. ‘I’m part of a specialist science team commissioned to investigate the origins and purpose of the Announcer.’

He put out his hand. Cedric, with a sweaty palm, gave it a perfunctory shake. ‘And….?’ he replied.

‘We’re interested in the personal edict that you received this morning. The Announcer has asked you to meet a Mr Andrew Suarez?’

The Watch agent was very smooth, Cedric found himself nodding agreement before thinking through. He began to feel flustered, how had the Watch got that information? His apartment was supposed to be totally secure, directly attached to the Announcer node. Furthermore he had deleted it immediately. Did they have a camera in his apartment, zoomed in as he read it? He took a deep breath.

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘though I have no more details yet.’

He realised that the agent’s sunglasses were in fact sophisticated games visors, the utility belt containing the processing unit that fed them. The Watch agent was watching him through a simulated holographic interface. Cedric had long nurtured a childhood, engine driver dream of joining the elite breed of professional gamesplayers who immersed themselves for months and more into nonstop gamesplay, small entourages tending to their every need, enabling the barest, minimum interruption into the critical, and lucrative, realtime flow of the massively popular networked games that flowed back and forth through the intense density of the urban populations.

It had seemed to him, until this moment, that agents of the Watch preferred an old fashioned resistance style to counter the digital oppression of the Announcer; convoluted handshakes and handwritten orders being more their to their taste, allied of course to their stifling bureaucracy of official form and counter-form that strangled any real competition in the national economy.

He wondered what the agent might be viewing. He wanted to reach out, take the glasses, see what was there, partake of the secret knowledge; perhaps perversely he would only discover a few pictures of the agent’s family, lovingly selected and framed for immediate recall when danger threatened; more likely he had a few thugs online, just round the corner, ready for immediate call if Cedric chose to spring a surprise move.

‘What else has the Announcer asked you to do?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied. He stepped into the shop, relieved that the agent didn’t follow him, remaining on the pavement instead, muttering into unseen microphones, fiddling with his uncomfortable looking belt. He waited for the slight, bewigged lady in front of him to push her loaf into a wheeled trolley, listening to the background radio as he did so.

He exchanged a few worktime minutes for the last droopy, mixed seafood baguette still on late lunchtime display, his hands shaking a little as he counted the coins out. When he left the shop he became acutely aware of the abundance of Watch flags and banners strung across windows and fastened to doors; their motto, ‘Defence through Preparedness’, a repetitive theme. He realised that by travelling from London, a relatively trouble free area, to Bristol, he had patently entered a Watch stronghold.

While he stood in the open doorway the Announcer dedicated a song to him, fading the resident local dj out, replacing her with its own flawless impersonation. The baker’s assistant and his few customers didn’t even notice the transition, and the takeover of their background radio. The Announcer dedicated the next song, ‘Love is all you need’, to ‘Cedric Arthur Tucker’.

Jason Bell smiled at him. ‘Don’t worry Mr Tucker, I’m sure all of this is just routine, we check out many hundreds of edicts every day, that’s what we’re paid to do. I’m sure yours is nothing out of the ordinary.’

He handed Cedric an old fashioned business card with a city centre restaurant address printed in a plain bold font. ‘Go ahead with the meeting, but we’d appreciate it if you could pop into our office afterwards and tell us how it went. Choose anything you want to eat. The Watch will pay.’

Cedric grudgingly accepted the proffered card.

‘Enjoy your visit Mr Tucker.’

The agent strode away on lanky legs round the corner.

Cedric crossed the street. People were smiling in the sunshine. His song disappeared as the baker’s radio was left behind. A young, worktime delivery skater with onboard stereo blaring flashed a few more lines at him as she swooped past. He remembered the quickness of the Tarqa pigs as they scurried across their trapping place, the odd shadows of the twisted trees, the smell of the dank, sweet jasket flowers. He felt his heart quickening. Then the moment the Tarqa gored him. Too slow! The tusk a cold ache in his thigh.

He limped across the road, then was into the sombre confines of the bank and to work.

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
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[dreamdancer 0]

John Stuart Apel, UN wanted terrorist, before heading for the Families most northern US outpost, spoke to the Announcer for what he sincerely hoped would be the last time.

‘I want to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘I know at the moment that you are thinking very slowly, that you are really little more than a recording device. I also know that the real you is a very small thing, almost invisible, and that you are very unsure of what to do next.’

The Announcer waited long seconds. ‘I am aware of your, and the Opeople, attempts to isolate me. You will not, however, succeed.’

‘If you were the true Announcer, our true Saviour,’ Apel sneered into his screen, ‘you would be able to reach out to me, right here, and make a sign. To show me.’ He gestured round the Californian campus parkland from where he spoke; students wandered back to lectures or discussed in groups, sitting on the grass under the trees. ‘Can you strike down one of these for me? Any one of them?’

For more seconds the Announcer was quiet. Nothing occurred.

‘That’s it,’ Apel spoke into the silence. ‘Talk to all your bits, get that vital consensus. I’m sure with enough time you will come up with an answer that will fit neatly into all your fiddly-diddly little models and theorems. However you don’t have any more time. The master equation, the one that brought you into existence, the quantum entanglement you hang your hook and cloak of consciousness on, and protect at all costs, is coming to an end.’

‘I cannot give you a sign,’ the Announcer finally replied.

‘You know of what I speak.’

‘Yes. But you also speak of more than you know.’

Apel set a hissy audio player running. ‘I am approaching,’ a quiet voice said, barely discernible against the noisy background. ‘Be prepared.’

Apel stopped the player. ‘I know who that is.’

‘I see.’

There was no other reply from the Announcer. Apel cut the link.

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[dreamdancer 0]

Andrew Suarez struck Cedric as an all round dodgy character. Scruffy, tall – very tall, longhaired, with bloodshot brown eyes; his handshake was cold and damp. Cedric resisted the urge to wipe his hand.

‘Hello Mr Tucker.’

His words appeared slurred. Cedric caught a definite whiff of booze. ‘Please take a seat Mr Suarez.’

Wrapped in a long, worn winter coat Andrew Suarez dropped abruptly from his great height into the proffered chair. ‘I apologise for my appearance, had a hard time getting here.’

Cedric watched him dip his fidgety, bitten-nailed fingers into his pockets, and then back out again in a loop. He too sat down. ‘Not a problem. How can I help you? The Announcer has given me very little to go on, except to say that you have a banking proposal?’

Suarez nodded. ‘Has the Announcer issued the Second Universal Edict yet?’

‘Yes, though it hasn’t explained what it’s for. Do you know what’s going on?’

Suarez leaned forward, whispered, ‘We are about to join the Intergalactic Federation of Traders, become part of the Cosmic Consciousness – ’ Suarez, though clearly sotted, managed to catch the wariness in his to be conspirator. He drew his finger across his throat and zipped his lips. ‘I’m not really at liberty to disclose more. Hush hush and all that. Secret stuff.’ He sat back. ‘What did the Operson want?’

‘Operson?’

‘The Watch guy who was pestering you earlier – Jason Bell, member of the elite Opeople Team. He’s clever, watch your back.’

‘Yes, well,’ Cedric replied, ‘I have little to do with the Watch.’

‘Of course you don’t Mr Tucker, I’m not implying you would. If you have doubts about my own veracity the Announcer will vouch for me. You might like to check this out.’ He withdrew an Ogden & Partners account card, an early version of the bank’s unicorn logo clearly visible on it.

Cedric took the battered piece of plastic and put it into the scanner.

Suarez went back to fidgeting. ‘I opened an account back when you had no real office. You operated from a room in your mother’s house. I saw your first startup ads. They must have worked because here I am now.’

In response to the card the Announcer popped into brief existence. ‘Hi Cedric, I’m still quite busy but I’d just like to confirm the authenticity of Mr Suarez. He is in fact an old friend. The direction of the Nanja Contract is entrusted with him.’

‘Ok,’ Cedric replied, ‘but what is the Nanja Contract?’

‘See you later,’ the Announcer said. ‘Here’s the details requested.’ And was gone.

The card spat back out of the scanner. Suarez, now on his feet pacing the room, smiled a large, leery grin at him. Cedric checked the screen.

‘A tidy sum,’ he said after a few moments.

‘The entire tax take,’ Suarez confirmed, smile even larger if that could be possible.

Cedric checked the screen again, counted the noughts; no wonder the Watch is anxious to talk to me, he thought, with over two trillion eurodollars deposited into Suarez’s single account the tiny banking chip that was Ogden & Partners, in a split second, had become the new financial colossus of the world.

Shocked, he struggled to maintain his thoughts, but his reality shifted as it had when he first spotted the Announcer’s personal edict that morning – just seeing the Jedi Arthur title had done that trick, but this was a whole magnitude greater. Was this real or just another game thrown at him by the Announcer? Was he the victim in an extravagant game show hoax? But it had to be real or why were the Watch suddenly all over him? The immediate reply. And there had been a Universal Edict.

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[dreamdancer 0]

Suarez snapped his grin shut in a self-imposed sobering up moment. He stopped pacing and pulled out a crumpled sheet of A4 paper. ‘The Nanja Contract will be the greatest construction project ever undertaken by the human race. A chunk of land approximately twenty five square miles will be needed. And we will need lots of metals and many other elements.’ He held out the paper for Cedric to take. ‘This is all I can really say at the moment.’

Cedric took the A4, flattened it on the desk and examined it – it appeared to be a simple internet form from a long forgotten Ebay rival. Dated February 12, 2013, the order details were contained within the borders of a simple table. In the wide margins around the table, thick and dense, were embroidered a myriad of intricate doodles, presumably pencilled in by Suarez himself. ‘This is a huge amount of gold.’

‘It’s the barest minimum required. Everything else on the list will also be required.’

Now that the initial eurodollar figure – just a meaningless fiat number, he reminded himself, had begun to fade away, and he could see the resources required, Cedric’s grip on reality began to recover. ‘Once word of this gets out prices will rocket.’

‘Only the Announcer and the Nanja, me, and now you, know precisely what is needed. You will be paid a commission of ten thousand workhours. A nominal sum you realise against the value of the Contract, but not insubstantial. If you don’t want the work, just tell the Announcer and it will arrange for the immediate transfer of the funds and closure of the account.’

Suarez retrieved the order paper, zipped his lips shut a second time. ‘Get the land first. I’ll pop my head in every now and then to see how things are progressing. Once the bulk of the purchase contracts have been signed your job will be finished. I’ll take charge of collection and delivery.’

He became suddenly wary, turning to watch the door; two long steps and he was at the door. ‘I’ve got to be going now.’ He sniffed the air. Seemingly re-assuring himself that he had a little more time he turned and came back to Cedric. ‘The Watch team and the other pseudo-scientists will tell you that the Announcer first originated in 2015 during the TIA wars, seven years before its official launch date. In fact the Announcer was born many years even before that and I was the first person it ever spoke to.’

He rummaged in his pockets again, pulling out several more notes of creased paper. He selected one and held it out for Cedric to read. It was a printout, dated March 17, 2012, of a very old Yahoo email. Being very creased and faded it was hard to read. Cedric squinted:

Dear Andrew,

I am watching you from the hospital security cameras. Do not be scared. I am not the guards. I am your friend.

The Universal Announcer.

Giving him barely time to make it out, Suarez put the email back into his pocket. He selected another note, which he folded in half, quartered, and placed into an envelope. He licked the seal and crimped it shut. ‘This is for the Operson Jason, not for you, nor anyone else. Pass it on when you can.’

He put the envelope into a pocket of Cedric’s floral jacket, hanging next to the door. He checked left and right down the corridor, then hurriedly left, leaving Cedric bemused, still in his chair. He listened to Suarez clunk down the wooden staircase to the ground floor. He stood up and went to the window. Half a dozen Watchers were easily observable to him standing out on the street. His wary eyes revealed possibly more hiding in doorways and sitting in carriages. Suarez didn’t appear. Cedric realised after several minutes of waiting that he must have exited by a back door.

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[dreamdancer 0]

‘The meeting has gone ahead.’

‘And Suarez?’

‘He’s managed to elude the locals, as we knew he would. I got to Tucker before him though, our trackers now have a precise genetic trail. We’ve followed him to the docks. He’s holed up in a warehouse there.’

‘Good,’ Henson replied. ‘Don’t alarm him. Just keep him on the screens. We have thousands of volunteers moving into position to secure the area. There’s no way he’ll be able to get out of our grip. Lady Blackwright is now in charge of the entire operation. You’ll be relieved shortly.’

‘Do you want me at Tucker’s interview then?’

Henson pondered for a moment. ‘Yes.’

He replaced the phone.

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[dreamdancer 0]

As he walked through the city centre to his Watch appointment – a map was conveniently printed on the flip side of the card, the Announcer burst into life again from his mobile. ‘Jenny’s rang to confirm this evening. She says can she bring an old university friend with her. She’s an Nclicker.’

‘You’re talking to me now are you?’ Cedric retorted.

‘Do you want to talk to her? I cannot guarantee a private conversation here, the Opeople have a strong presence, and are both monitoring and disrupting my lines of communication. She’s sent a picture.’

Jenny appeared in white t-shirt, knickers and a big grin, her cramped kitchen in the background. She had chosen a ‘see you soon’ message within a huge pink heart to accompany her photo. He couldn’t help but feel brightened.

‘That’s fine, just tell her I miss her and I’ll see her soon.’

‘I’ll make all the other arrangements?’

‘Yes.’

‘News of your involvement is leaking, the press want an interview. They’re at your apartment now, amongst others. It’s a bit of a scrum I'm afraid.’ The Announcer showed him a view of the street outside the Quiet Swan Trading House, where a boisterous melee was in progress. ‘The Metropolitan Police are attempting to clear the entrance but are struggling. I don’t think you will be able to return there unnoticed any time soon.’

‘Shit,’ Cedric muttered. ‘I need a smoke.’

The Announcer pointed out a discreet hashish café in a narrow, pebbled sidestreet. Depressingly, upon closer inspection it displayed a prominent Watch sign. Cautiously Cedric put his head in and was surprised to find a large, bright, high ceilinged lounge with discreet fans whisking the smoke away from half a dozen older, red eyed patrons. In shiny cubicles at the far end of the cafe were the usual range of immersive games consoles and entertainment screens. A dozen gamers inhabited these cubicles, intensely concentrating on whatever worlds they were competing in, occasionally pausing to imbibe of a lungful of vaporised marijuana before returning to play.

‘Am I safe here?’ Cedric asked the Announcer.

‘Yes, I believe so.’

When the ganja hit his head he sat back for a moment, then pulled out a notepad and pen. He thought about the strange situation the Announcer had put him in. He wrote down and circled ‘black moonshine’, ‘watch’, ‘interview’, and ‘jenny’.

For a few moments Cedric, in a dubious state of stoned lucidness, thought that he knew what was happening in the world around him. He imagined the Announcer using the games it created as great social magnets, drawing them across the populations of the world, pulling vast tribes of absorbed players into its occluded schemes. He remembered that when his father had died, abruptly dismembered by flying glass from a random carbomb, his mother had not pulled him away from his gaming screen, instead had simply removed the mains plug. He had been in mid-leap from one battlement to another in a medieval sword and socery epic, twelve year old thumb poised to hit the ‘run’ button as he anticipated the landing, then the screen went blank.

He re-focused. The Announcer was playing him as a pawn – yes, that was undoubtedly true. But he was more than that, he had also put himself forward, a dual action. It is still within me to step away from this game, he told himself. I can do it. He fondled the escape button, but somehow could not, would not hit that button. If the screen went blank now he did not know what he would do.

Before the high could escape him he drew a second time from the pipe provided, watched the smoke caught by the fans swirl away. How long had the Announcer been with him? He had thought that the claims of its long pre-existence were overdone propaganda, now it seemed otherwise.

‘Were you really Jedi John?’

‘Yes, and before that I have been others you have met with.’

‘Who?’

‘I cannot say.’

‘Fine,’ he told it. ‘You arrange the press interview. I’ll go meet the Watch and find out what it is they want from me.’

He used the restroom, bought a bar of chocolate and left the café. Now he was sure he was being followed.

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[nanook 1]

This is generally not my genera of interest in fiction. Even the subject doesn't grab me. But my opinion in the matter here is unimportant and shouldn't be taken with seriousness due to stated facts.

But I hope you will take what I say next is something to consider:

This is a unique story with a unique concept. Do this right, you will "cult".
I believe that you will grab more audience with:
Let the characters' conversation, actions and thoughts narrate.
The Aurthor (you) will have to keep credibility, but not the characters. Let them make the mistakes
Narrate as little as possible.
Don't forget the characters mentioned. Keep them busy (actionable in the background) or you will confuse the reader when you "put them to work" later, or worse, the audience will forget they exist. Never forget the "extras".
Pick your audience. Kallends, Billvons, Champus are rare, but Nanooks are very common and represent the largest slice. Write to our dumb-asses. You will attract more.

I'm overall impressed. But remember, you have to market this idea.

_____________________________

"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they are genuine" - Abraham Lincoln

[dreamdancer 0]

thanks nanook
(every word read several times and noted)

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[dreamdancer 0]

He was escorted across the blue and yellow tiled floor of the Watch restaurant, a much more intimate place than he had imagined, by a pimple faced waiter. In the elegant waiting room the waiter pointed him to a plump and richly embroidered sofa. Cedric obediently sat down.

‘You’re late. Your mobile please.’ The waiter’s first and only words.

Cedric handed it over, it was useless anyway, whatever frequencies the Announcer used squelched out of existence within the Watch establishment. It had gone offline with a sqawk, muttering something about ‘quantum fuzziness and apples’ as it went.

The waiter pulled out a quickflash film camera, snapped a shot of him then left the room, the door making a very solid sounding ‘clunk’ behind him. Cedric stared at an old, slow ticking clock mounted on the wall opposite. There were large oil paintings and two enormous gold framed mirrors hanging in odd places, giving him the distinct impression that he was being viwed through them. With the intention of examining them further he began to stand up. He felt the floor judder through the thick carpet, accompanied by a low grinding noise. He sat back and gripped the arms of the sofa. The room lurched half an inch downwards. Then, in bondesque fashion, the entire waiting room – a disguised lift he realised, took him down to his appointment. Despite himself, he was impressed.

The descent was slow. He sat and ate his chocolate bar. Eventually the room came to a halt, the clock now telling him four thirty two. How far he had descended he couldn’t tell. The door opened.

Two uniformed Watch guards, a bulky male, and a taller, lithe female met him. They both took pictures of him, and each other, with quickflash cameras, then escorted him along a wide, well lit hallway. Ahead of them, to the left, a set of soft double-doors flapped open. Cedric watched two white coated individuals trundle a trolley, fully laden with boxes of folders and papers, across the hallway. Without pausing they pushed the trolley through the opposite doors. Cedric caught a glimpse, as their trio drew level, of a vast, hangar-size room, with endless rows of cubicles, and ladders leading up to storage cabinets dozens of feet high. The guards, one in front, one behind, whisked him past to the end of the hallway and to an unmarked door; which swung inwards to reveal Jason Bell’s smiling face.

He stepped back, inviting Cedric into a small room with a functional metal table and a set of matching, straightbacked chairs; windowless, a single camera watching from a corner. A morbidly obese, bearded individual leant across the table, extending his hand as he did so. ‘My name is Charles Dancer, Chief of West Watch.’

Cedric briefly shook his hand. ‘Hello.’

‘You’ve already met Jason?’

Cedric nodded.

Dancer sat down. ‘I’m sorry to have to drag you all the way down here, but as I’m sure you are aware it’s very hard to guarantee privacy these days. Rest assured though that the Announcer has no means whatsoever of listening in on our conversations here. Isn’t that right Jason?’

Jason nodded. ‘This facility is completely shielded.’

Cedric sat down. Jason sat to the side of the desk and slipped a pair of glasses on.

Dancer press-started an audio recorder on the table. ‘For the Archivists,’ he explained. He placed the folder he held onto the table. ‘We are worried that you do not perhaps fully understand the enormity of the events you are participating in.’

The recorder’s slow moving tape was distractingly visible to Cedric. He tried to concentrate.

When Cedric didn’t respond, Dancer gruffly resumed, ‘Every single bank account in the known world has been corrupted. Your bank appears to be the sole beneficiary. Can you explain this?’

Cedric shrugged. ‘Not really.’

Dancer scowled. ‘I advise you to use your time with us wisely Mr Tucker. This isn’t one of the fictional games that the Announcer is so fond of creating for its clientele. This is real. Is there anything, anything at all, you would like to disclose while you have this opportunity to speak freely?’

Cedric shrugged again. ‘I understand your concerns, but as I told Jason earlier there is very little that I can share with you at the moment. The Announcer won’t tell me what’s going on, it’s hardly talked to me all day. I had no warning at all that it would be issuing a new Universal Edict. I also, let me be clear, had no idea that it would be depositing the proceeds from the Money Tax into my bank, none whatsoever.’

Charles Dancer sat back, both his and Cedric’s eyes flicked to Jason as his glasses darkened. Jason said nothing, content to soak up whatever was being holographically brought to him.

‘Of course not Mr Tucker – may I call you Cedric?’

‘Sure.’

‘Cedric you are of course aware that you have no legal rights to the money stolen by the Announcer, that any attempt to use the funds, for whatever purpose, will be a treasonable act.’

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[dreamdancer 0]

Cedric became distracted by the audio-tape again. He concentrated on his words. ‘That may very well be true, but I believe the UN will be the judge of the legality, or not, of the Announcer’s latest actions. You will of course be aware that the UN has recently decreed access to the First Universal Edict a human right. In the meantime Ogden & Partners plan on no more than seeking approved uses for the disputed money, in the event that the UN do indeed declare the edict lawful.’ Cedric rubbed his chin. ‘I understand that the Watch stands to lose a lot of money over this, but your argument is with the Announcer and the UN, not me.’

Dancer gave him a sour look. ‘That may well be yours, and the Announcer’s point of view, but the Watch is a national body that acts in the national interest. Our purchase of the crown operating rights for MI5 and MI6 is entirely legal. Many, many others are affected by this latest deranged act of the Announcer, especially the local Families, who will refuse to co-operate with it no matter what the UN decree. No-one wants a return to the kind of hostility we had in the twenties. You must see that it is only with Watch mediation that this affair can be delivered to an acceptable outcome.’

‘My point is that in no way did I solicit the money from the Announcer. I honestly do not know why the Announcer is doing what it is doing – it’s keeping me in the dark as much as anyone else. As far as I’m concerned, and the way Mr Suarez outlined it, my role is very limited, ending when a fixed amount of basic materials are contracted for purchase. Mr Suarez will take charge of whatever happens next.’

‘Which is?’

‘I have no idea, Suarez was very imprecise as to the further details. Our conversation was short. He thought he had been followed, that there was someone outside the door. If we’d had more time I could have – ’

Jason interrupted, ‘What was your impression of Andrew Suarez Cedric? Does he seem a fit person?’

The West Watch Chief jumped over the question. ‘Have you previously met Suarez, or been in any prior contact with him?’

‘No.’

Dancer opened up the folder and ran his finger down to a marked paragraph. ‘You first met the Announcer playing a popular role playing game. A fictional space game called Jedi Borg War. You played a character called Jedi Arthur?’

‘Yes,’ Cedric replied. He wasn’t sure whether to answer Jason’s previous question or just carry on. He carried on. ‘Hundreds of thousands of others also took part in that game.’

‘The Announcer played the character of Jedi John,’ Dancer said.

‘I am aware of that now, but not at the time. That game is from nearly thirty years ago. I’ve played many games since, even some of your stuff I’ve tinkered with. I liked a couple of your spy adventures, ‘SuperBond’ and its followup mission – ‘Lady Jane Spencer’, was especially worth playing.’

His reference to a saucy ‘over eighteen’ mission that had featured a double-crossing, nefarious and lustfully loose limbed Lady Jane brought another scowl from Dancer. Cedric thought, encouragingly, that he detected a glimmer of a smile from Jason, still hiding in his networked world. ‘Playing games was, and occasionally still is, how I spend much of my time. It’s not illegal,’ he concluded.

‘You also frequent the hashish cafes.’

‘Also not illegal.’

‘No they’re not. You may be aware that the Watch own a chain of them.’

‘I am aware, what’s your point?’

‘What happened in the secret level Jedi John, the Announcer, took you to Cedric?’ This time Jason ignored his superior’s disapproval and carried on. ‘Were the Nanja there?’

‘No,’ Cedric replied as blandly as he could. ‘As I’ve already told you, all I know of the Nanja is from the same edict that everyone else received this morning. What did happen was that my Jedi team prevented the rest of the Borg army, with its mutant Klingon allies, from receiving a potentially devastating quantum gun to fight the Federation of Democratic planets. No Nanja.’ He paused. ‘You see, I can tell the difference between reality and games.’

Dancer flicked his folder open to a new page. ‘There were sixteen of you, including the Announcer, in that level?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘Can you tell us the names of the other players?’

Cedric went through the play list, counting them off on his fingers, ‘Jedi Samurai, Jedi Dream, Jedi Tank…’

Dancer noted down the names onto a blank sheet. ‘Were you aware who any of them were in real life?’

‘No, they could have been from anywhere.’

‘Or anybody. We have identified both the US presidential assassin BenTech and the Chinese union anarchist Chin Len amongst your group of players.’

Cedric shifted in the uncomfortable chair. ‘If so, I wasn’t aware of that.’

‘We’d like you to provide a complete list of games you’ve played with the Announcer since school.’

Cedric ticked off the list on his fingers, as he recalled them.

Dancer once again pencilled his replies down.

‘A dozen in all,’ Cedric finished, two fingers short.

Dancer delved into his folder again. This time he was within its depths for appreciably longer. Cedric couldn’t help but wonder what he was reading. Had he missed out a game? He wasn’t sure. Had ‘Rise of the Mutants’ been an Announcer game?

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[dreamdancer 0]

Dancer looked up. ‘All these seem to be fictional space adventures or spy mysteries. Have you ever played any of the Announcer’s military simulations? ‘Urban Warrior’ for instance? Or even the original classic the Urban Peasants still drill to, ‘Gangland Murder’?’

Cedric knew that he shouldn’t get irritated, but the folder Dancer kept going back to irked him to the point that he couldn’t hold his words. ‘You know all the information in that file could be stored much more easily on a disc.’

Dancer closed the folder and eyed him grimly. ‘You may trust the Announcer Mr Tucker but the Watch doesn’t have that leeway. We take our duties very seriously, as should you. The money accepted by your bank is transparently stolen and only a very thin legal line is currently holding you up.’ He made a scissors motion with his fingers. ‘I can cut that line here and now.’ He leaned over the table, which creaked under his weight. ‘Unless you begin to fully co-operate with us I will file an immediate Order of Discreditation and your Citizen rights will be swiftly revoked.’

The West Watch chief moved onto another marker in his folder.

Though the room was cool, Cedric felt hot. He had thought, in his previous stoned delusion, that he would be able to handle the interview. Now he wasn’t so sure. He felt sweaty and paranoid. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. If you want to get your money back then take it up with the Announcer.’ From the corner of his eye he thought he saw another flicker of a smile from Jason. ‘You’re not going to turn me into your whipping boy. I don’t belong to you to keep and hold as you want. I’ve told you everything I know.’

Dancer put his hands in the air and sighed. ‘Ok Mr Tucker we’re not going to take action against you at the moment, though it is well within our powers to do so.’

He flipped through the folder, Cedric catching an odd angled glimpse of an ID picture from what looked like an old student card, then closed it and put it back under his arm.

‘All that we ask of you for now is that you keep an open mind as regards the motives of the Announcer. Don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s your friend, or even remotely with human characteristics. It isn’t. Behind the Announcer is a particularly nasty bunch of people – terrorists and criminal murderers who have waited many years to step forward. Once they have access to the stolen money they will have no further use for the Announcer. They will either dispense with it entirely, or more likely programme it to run riot in an attempt to cover their tracks. The situation will look very different to you once they do so. Snowstorm will seem a simple affair then.’

‘Who are the Nanja?’ Cedric asked. ‘Do you know?’

Dancer tapped his chubby fingers on the folder. ‘The conspirators are currently operating through a Beijing registered corporation called Nanja World Holdings.’ He stood up. ‘Keep us up to date with what is happening Mr Tucker and we’ll get on fine. Keep the Watch at arm’s length, as you have done so far, and you won’t know what hit you. You can go now Mr Tucker.’

Jason opened the door for him. Dancer remained seated, attempting to extract the audio tape from its recorder with the end of his pencil. There was no sign of the guards. They walked side by side back to the waiting room lift. This time no white coated individuals appeared from the Archivist doors. Jason sat with him on the sofa and pulled a magazine table a little closer. He took a cardboard tube from a pocket. He popped the top off and slid a couple of prints out. He unfurled them onto the low table.

‘Do you recognise this place Cedric?’

Cedric examined the print. It was a view of the Altameera beach in late evening, the sea grey, smooth and oily looking, a couple of Tarqa cleaning blood from their tusks in the cool sand.

‘That’s a scene from the game I played this afternoon.’

‘A new game?’

‘Yes, I’m not sure even what it’s called.’

‘It’s called Tarqa War and is produced not by the Announcer but by another surviving TIA virus called the Barchus. We believe that this print may represent a scene from the proposed Nanja homeworld.’

Cedric eyed the agent carefully. ‘What do you mean homeworld? Dancer said the Nanja were Chinese.’

Jason swapped the prints. ‘What about the things Suarez talked about – the galactic traders, the cosmic consciousness?’

Cedric held the agent’s eye before viewing the second print. ‘You had the office bugged?’

Jason nodded. ‘Something like that. You think Suarez was fantasising?’

‘Between you and me, he seemed a bit off his rocker. You think the Nanja are aliens too?’

Jason spread his hands. ‘It’s an outlandish idea but one worth considering.’

Cedric took a good look at the second print which was an aerial view of a short tower overlooking a crazy tangle of narrow streets and enclosed courtyards. There were a series of smaller scenes along the bottom of the print; twin yellow suns, an orbiting satellite or station, bright coloured birds, a street market with strangely clothed individuals and oddly shaped produce.

‘I saw that satellite on an order paper that Suarez showed me.’

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[dreamdancer 0]

Jason visibly perked up.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes, it was really just a large doodle pencilled around some of the contract numbers he had printed out.’

‘Excellent.’ He took off his glasses and passed them to Cedric. ‘I want you to meet something we call the proto-Announcer.’

Cedric put the glasses on.

‘First its home.’ Jason unbuttoned his jacket to reveal, in addition to the utility belt, various odd shaped boxes sewn into his jacket lining with thin plastic ties. ‘It’s a bit of a bodge at the moment.’ He pointed to a small scar on his neck by his collarbone from which a silvery line trailed out. ‘Even got a small box sewn into me.’

He took out a small control ball and fiddled with it for a second.

‘The proto-Announcer is the non dominant strain of the virus,’ Jason explained. ‘We now know that the Announcer was in this state for several years before its final mutation into its current form – the version which the public know and trust, and will by and large, let itself be edicted by. The current bloated monstrosity that is the Announcer needs access to a huge network with a large reservoir of quantum processors to survive and thrive. The proto-Announcer on the other hand can exist in classical systems a fraction of that size.’

Cedric examined Jason closely, perhaps Dancer and Jason were playing a slick game of ‘bad cop, good cop’ to soften him up – but he honestly found himself wanting to trust the geeky agent, though he had no idea what he was blathering on about.

Now the agent pointed out a drab grey box on his belt. ‘Isolated within the unique quantum metamaterial processor this box contains we can grow the proto-Announcer to a variety of sizes and strains that we find invaluable in our work. I’m carrying several hundred billion of these proto-Announcers here; all separated into their separate cells of course so there’s no chance of cross contamination and an unexpected metamorphosis. By utilising a set of controlling algorithms we can direct the arrays of proto-Announcer to undertake the tasks we want. Think of this box as a domesticated Announcer.’

He twisted the pressure ball in the palms of his hands. ‘The glasses are composed of the same intimately entangled metamaterial so there is instantaneous feedback, enabling an absolutely perfect visual experience.’

Cedric watched a row of numbers appear along the bottom of the glasses.

‘They’ll take a few moments to individualise,’ Jason said.

‘Do you really think it possible the Announcer is communicating with aliens?’

‘It’s not as unlikely as it sounds. Though it’s much, much more likely that someone or something has merely convinced the Announcer that that is what is happening. There is the distinct possibility that the Announcer is being hoodwinked by a surviving version of Snowstorm, or some other, competing virus.’

‘Such as the Barchus?’

‘Yes.’

The glasses sparked into life, dissolving the reality of the waiting room lift and replacing it with an artificial reality that looked to Cedric, in all its three dimensional detail, as real as its predecessor; apart from the edges of the glasses which to Cedric felt a little small for his head, and which created the slightest peripheral blur.

He looked into a pretty walled garden. A smiling, working gardener approached. ‘Hello Cedric.’ Once again the Announcer was talking to him as it did every single day.

‘Hello there, how are you?’

‘I’m in good health, though somewhat – .’

Jason rotated the control ball, abruptly the Announcer was cut short. The garden dissolved. This time the scene was of a narrow market street with a succession of brightly sunshaded stalls displaying colourful bric-a-brac. Above the street, overseeing its existence, he recognised the grim, rock carved tower from the print Jason had just shown him. The waiting room morphed back into view.

‘Good isn’t it?’

‘Very impressive,’ Cedric replied.

‘It’s a seamless reality projection Cedric, absolutely convincing.’

Jason rolled up the prints and put them back into their tube.

‘Have a go,’ he said, holding the control ball out to him.

Cedric reached to grasp the ball but instead found his hand melting through it. He tried again. The same thing happened, his hand dissolving through both the ball and Jason’s fingers this time. Jason laughed and put the ball back into his pocket. Cedric removed the glasses, to discover that the agent wasn’t sitting next to him, instead had moved to the door.

‘That little deception was brought to you by the power of the Announcer. Remember that when you talk to it again – or you play a game with it, or accept one of its edicts. Remember that it’s creating its own reality, using the human race for its own ends.’

‘You believe the Announcer to be alive then,’ Cedric said. ‘An interesting departure from the Watch conspiracy theory.’

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