Jimmy Coates: Blackout

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“Isn’t that a good thing?” Eva asked, terrified that her tiredness and her fear would make her give something away. “Doesn’t it mean that they haven’t found anything illegal or unfair about the election campaign so far?”

“Of course, but what’s the point in me inviting the UN to send a team if they don’t make a big fuss about how fair we’re being? And are you going to ask stupid questions all day?”

“I will if you will,” quipped Eva before she could control her mouth. Miss Bennett glanced back, as shocked as Eva herself. Then, to Eva’s huge relief, Miss Bennett raised an eyebrow and smiled. She was impressed.

“So now…” Eva went on, eager to show that she wasn’t completely off the ball. She quickly flicked through her notebook, consulting her notes. “…now you’ve asked the head of the inspection team to come and oversee everything, and the Prime Minister is meeting him off the plane to introduce him to the press…” She flicked through another few pages, expertly keeping up with Miss Bennett’s rapid march while also reading her own ordered scribblings.

They hurried through a small metal door and the surroundings changed. The bare concrete was gone. Suddenly there was plush red carpet. The walls were covered in ornate golden wallpaper and there was natural daylight. But Eva was used to this. She didn’t even break stride. They’d passed through the secret entrance from NJ7 HQ into the back of Number 10 Downing Street.

“Everybody in the country…” Miss Bennett said, smoothly taking a cup of coffee from a waiting aide. “…everybody in the whole world, in fact – they’ll all know that today’s election is utterly fair. So when we win, our enemies will have no possible comeback.”

They swept through the building, their path lined with civil servants and government officials. Each of them handed Miss Bennett something she needed, or took something she was finished with. Eva noticed several of them couldn’t help bowing their heads.

“Once this election is over, it’s over,” announced Miss Bennett. “The last vestige of old-fashioned democracy dies today.”

Eva was taken aback by the certainty in Miss Bennett’s tone. Finally the front door was held open for them. The brightness of the morning made Eva blink hard, but within seconds another aide held open the back door of a waiting car and they slipped into the black leather interior.

“I’ve been waiting here for ten minutes.” Ian Coates was already in the back seat, but the Jaguar was easily roomy enough to accommodate the three of them.

“I hope you’ve used the time to memorise the speech I wrote for you,” replied Miss Bennett, giving the driver a nod.

“Watch how you talk to me, Miss Bennett,” spluttered Ian Coates, “I’m still Prime Minister. Technically, I still run the country.”

“Yes,” Miss Bennett purred, “but who’s running you?”

The Prime Minister had no response. Eva had seen these tiny battles a hundred times in the last few months, but the result was always the same. Ian Coates might have been Prime Minister, but he was nothing more than Miss Bennett’s puppet.

“Straighten your tie,” Miss Bennett ordered, as if she was talking to a teenager. Ian Coates did as he was told. “And when you get out of the car, remember to smile a little.”

Coates nervously stretched his lips into a hideous grin.

“Less than that,” Miss Bennett sighed, without even looking at him. “You’re British, remember.”

“So nobody knows how he can afford to rent this building?” asked Felix, twisting on the sofa until his knees hooked over the side.

“Get off me,” Jimmy insisted, shoving Felix’s head away from his leg.

“Get a room, lovebirds,” joked Georgie. “And keep quiet.” She pointed at the TV screen to indicate she was trying to listen. The sofa was the only place to sit to watch the TV, so the three of them were closely bunched up together. “Chris is meant to be making a speech. If we’re not allowed to be there ourselves then we can at least watch it on TV.”

Felix and Jimmy were silent for a few seconds before Felix deliberately nudged Jimmy’s thigh with the top of his head.

“That’s it!” Jimmy exclaimed with a laugh. He jumped up and landed with a bump right on Felix’s face. Felix made a big show of wriggling and twisting to escape.

“Aargh!” he cried when he’d finally pulled himself free. He clawed at his own face and staggered round the room. “It’s toxic, super-powered, genetically modified gas… Nooo!”

They all laughed, and Jimmy said, “I bet that’s the first thing you’d put into someone’s programming if you were designing them.”

“No,” Felix replied. “The first thing would be… never having to go to sleep!”

“Never sleeping?” Jimmy chuckled. “You’d be even more hyper than you are now!”

Soon they were distracted by images at the top of a news bulletin on TV. There were shots of a plane landing at Heathrow, then a tall, wiry man in a light-grey suit climbed down to the runway to shake hands with the Prime Minister.

Nobody said a word, but Jimmy could feel the joy draining from the room. He stared at the pictures of Ian Coates, the man he had thought of as his father for the first eleven and a half years of his life. On the screen, he was gripping the visitor’s hand and twisting his face into a horrible, false smile. For a second Jimmy remembered laughing with him, messing around with him – loving him.

He forced away the emotion. Instead, he shifted his attention to his sister next to him. The man on screen really was her father, as far as they knew. Jimmy knew her feelings were as painful and complicated as his own, and he wanted to say something. He opened his mouth, but nothing came to his lips and his tongue felt dry.

The TV report cut away from the Prime Minister and went back to the wiry man, showing snippets of his speech. The caption on the screen read ‘Dr Newton Longville – UN Election Inspector’. Beneath it was a scrolling message that announced, ‘Chief UN Inspector welcomed by PM to monitor today’s election.’

“My team will make sure there is no intimidation at the polls,” declared Dr Longville in a melodious American accent. In close-up he was much older than Jimmy had first thought. His nose was bony and crooked. “The ballot will be carried out under strict observation,” he went on, “using state-of-the-art technology known as HERMES – the Higher Echelon Remote Monitoring Election System.”

“HERMES?” said Felix. “Sounds like some kind of disease.”

The UN man’s grey eyes stared into the TV camera, not blinking. “The design, manufacture and testing of every component has been overseen by UN engineers in controlled conditions. I’m certain that every voter will enjoy using the secure touch-screen kiosks that are currently being installed at polling stations around the country. The votes will be sent digitally, but securely, to the central hub in a secure location near Milton Keynes, where they will be counted by the HERMES mainframe computer.”

“He looks like some kind of robot,” said Georgie.

“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Jimmy asked, leaning towards the TV as if lies would give off a scent. Inside, his programming was rumbling, suppressing another wave of pain, but at the same time making him throb with suspicion. “Do you think NJ7 will control his team? Or him? Have they already rigged the vote?”

Before anybody could answer, the news cut to the next item – and there was Christopher Viggo. His head was held high and his presence seemed to fill the screen.

“Look!” Felix exclaimed, pointing at the very edge of the picture. “It’s your mum!” Helen Coates and Saffron Walden were standing among Viggo’s supporters, listening to his speech.

“I’ve travelled thousands of kilometres around Britain,” the man said. “I’ve heard millions of voices: in person, in letters and in messages on the internet. Every one of those voices – your voices – is telling me that change must come.”

“He shouldn’t admit that he hears voices,” Felix cut in.

“Shh,” said Georgie. “I want to hear this!”

“Those voices,” Viggo went on, “tell me that you no longer want to listen to your doubts and fears, but to your greatest hopes and aspirations!”

He was building to a climax, and so was the response from the crowd, but the report cut back to the studio, where three women were droning on.

“What about the rest of his speech?!” Georgie complained. “How is that fair? He can’t win an election if they won’t even show his speeches on the news.”

“They showed a bit of it,” Jimmy replied. “That’s better than it used to be. And at least they admitted that he made a speech – they even called him ‘the opposition leader’ instead of ‘enemy of the state’ or ‘traitor’.”

Georgie grabbed the remote control from Jimmy’s knee and switched off the TV in frustration.

“We didn’t see anything,” she said.

“He was wearing a new tie,” mumbled Felix.

“You say the most random things sometimes,” said Georgie with an exasperated sigh.

“It’s not random,” Felix replied. “I was just thinking…”

“What?”

“Somebody must have paid for that tie.” He pushed himself off the floor. “And we still don’t know who.”

(#ulink_d4f213b5-53ae-51da-a8a4-213be325b3b6)

There was no great fanfare to the start of the election. Felix realised that he’d been wrong to expect it. He’d never witnessed an election before. The last election in Britain had come before he was born. But he knew there’d been a time not too long ago when elections were routine events. They must have had them all the time, he thought to himself. What a hassle.

He turned up the collar of his duffel coat and hunched his shoulders against the wind.

“Vote Viggo,” he said automatically, thrusting a leaflet into a woman’s hands as she walked past, into the school hall behind them. Felix imagined school halls all over the country similarly transformed into polling stations.

“Efficiency. Stability. Security!” Felix read aloud from one of the government posters in a mock-serious voice. He went on, waggling a finger in the air, “Insanity. Stupidity. Toxicity, and a nice cuppa tea!”

“Shh!” said Georgie, with a smile.

Felix let his thoughts stray to whether the hall of his own school was also being used for the election, then he wondered whether he’d ever be going back there. He would never have admitted it out loud, but he missed some things about school life – the security, the friends, the football… his parents telling him to do his homework.

Viggo and Saffron had left Felix and Georgie to handle this location on their own, while Viggo travelled round to as many other places as he could to gather last-minute support. Every vote counts, he’d said over and over to them.

Felix peeked round the doorway into the hall. A couple of armed policemen stood chatting to a young woman with identity tags who was obviously in charge of running this polling station.

“Hey, you can’t go in there!” Georgie whispered.

Felix waved away her concern. “I’m just looking.”

Past the policemen was a registration table, piled high with papers, and beyond that Felix could see the school gym. Lined up in rows up and down the length of the hall were dozens of voting machines. Each one was a touch-screen kiosk that looked to Felix like it could have dispensed train tickets or lottery tickets.

Strange way to choose a government, he thought, imagining how great it would be if instead of having to pick one of the choices the machine gave you, you could go on the internet and select anybody in the world to be Prime Minister.

Felix watched the woman he’d given the leaflet to. At the moment she was the only voter in the hall. She bent forward so close to the screen on her kiosk that her forehead almost pressed against the name at the top of the machine. Every kiosk bore slanted silver letters saying HERMES.

After a few seconds, the woman tapped her finger against the screen, gave a firm nod, as if the machine could see her, and marched back out of the hall. Felix kept his eyes on her, searching for some clue about who she’d voted for. The woman’s face was completely blank until she passed Felix, when she briefly glanced at him and gave a quick smile. Felix drew in a sharp breath. Did that mean…?

“Hey, Felix!” Georgie whispered. Felix turned to see a gaggle of people arriving. Georgie moved towards them and forced leaflets into their hands. “Vote Viggo!” she said. “End the oppression of Neo-democracy! Vote for freedom! Put control of the country back in the hands of the people!”

From then on, they were busy all day as a constant stream of people arrived to register their votes. Some of the voters smiled at Georgie and Felix, some ignored them completely, while a few tried to shoo them away.

“Vote Viggo!” Felix recited to the ones Georgie had missed.

“Be more cheerful,” Georgie whispered. “Every vote counts!”

“How many times do I have to hear…?” Felix stopped complaining, ready to give the most cheerful greeting of all time to his next ‘customer’. “Good morrow, fine gentleman!” he exclaimed in his brightest, squeakiest voice. “Top of the morning to you!”

“Felix!” Georgie gasped. “What are you doing?”

Felix waved a leaflet above his head, dancing an odd jig that involved twirling his wrists and clicking his heels.

“Happy voting!” he declared to the bemused man hurrying past him. “Place your finger in a voting nature on the button for Signor Viggo, the finest gentleman in the whole of old Eng-er-land!”

The man hunched his shoulders and scurried to the registration table, while Felix and Georgie burst out laughing.

“You can’t do that!” Georgie protested, her giggles telling a different story.

“Votes might win an election,” Felix said grandly, “but make people laugh and you rule the world.”

Georgie shook her head in despair.

“If you had me at every polling station all over the country,” said Felix, “we’d win this, no problem.”

“Or we’d all get put in a loony bin.”

“That, my friend,” Felix replied, grandly, “is entirely possible.”

Jimmy stalked in front of the giant window on the top floor of Viggo’s headquarters, glimpsing London through the gaps in the blind. The vertical slats were beginning to feel like iron bars. He’d watched the lights come on as the afternoon faded into evening, and now the darkness seemed stronger than the illumination, as if it was creeping across the whole city, smothering the place completely.

Two copies of The Times lay on the sofa behind him, folded open to the puzzles. There was no message yet from Eva. It was too soon, and he knew that, but he’d still used the puzzles to find the message board and checked for messages every hour. It was as if his body relished the new element to his routine.

A message would come eventually. Jimmy had confidence in Eva. The only question was whether it would come too late. Despite his desperate attempts to find a doctor, and his near-obsession with learning about the effects of radiation, he had to admit he had no idea what it was doing to him.

All he had to go on was what he could see and what he could feel. His head was pounding and his muscles felt weaker than he’d ever known them to be. He flexed his fingers instinctively but closed his eyes, forcing himself not to examine them again. The blue stain made him feel like he’d dipped his hands in pure terror and couldn’t wash it away.

Now it was all he could see, as if the radiation gripped his brain and shifted every image into the shape of death. There was no comfort in the blackness. Yet Jimmy had been alone with the shadows all day, and now late into the night. He was the only one who was still being actively pursued by NJ7. Even standing this close to the window was a risk – if the Government had the building under observation, which was almost certain, Jimmy knew that advanced imaging techniques might pick out his silhouette and enable them to identify him.

I’ll be ready for them, he heard himself thinking. A rush of adrenalin fizzed through his body. But was it adrenalin, or his programming eager for action? Jimmy pictured millions of tiny tigers charging through his blood, with his body as nothing but a giant cage.

A flash made Jimmy open his eyes. Something had reflected off the window of a passing vehicle, and even with his eyes closed his retina was so sensitive he’d been aware of the change. At the very edge of the room, his back to the wall, Jimmy peeked out of the window, down to the street.

Lights. At the front of the building, right by the main gate, was a TV news van. Whatever they were filming was obscured by the trees and the top of the security fence.