2028

by Ken Saunders

  ‘I’d like to raise an idea,’ Ned Ludd started, ‘that I hope we can get tri-partisan agreement on.’

  Donna Hargreaves’ eyes narrowed. She always smelled a rat when people started talking of bipartisan agreement. Tripartisan sounded triply suspect.

  What followed was a startling proposal that began with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme but, by the time it was finished, planned to globalise drug research, bypass the multinational pharmaceutical companies and remove all patents on drugs. All pharmaceuticals were to be sold at generic prices plus 3 per cent, saving the government an enormous amount of money. The 3 per cent was to be spent on medical research. All research results were to be made public so that researchers around the world could build on each other’s work. The results of clinical trials were to be globalised so as to keep all nations at the same high standard. It eliminated the market distortion caused by multinational pharmaceutical companies needing a return for heavy investment.

  It also, Hargreaves realised instantly, eliminated the need for multinational pharmaceutical companies. It would be suicide.

  Donna Hargreaves was a nuts-and-bolts fighter. You had to be to keep the Department of Health and Ageing limping along. She was not used to dealing with grand utopian ideas in the midst of trench fighting. ‘Ned,’ she said, conceding the Luddite name—it would make her look more gracious than the unfortunate Jessykah—‘Australia cannot act unilaterally on an idea like that. You’re talking about the whole of international pharmaceutical research, production, distribution, patents, pricing.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Luddite agreed.

  ‘I’m glad you realise that,’ Hargreaves noted.

  ‘Can you both read over this?’ the Luddite asked them, pulling out a hefty document to show to the camera. ‘Then we can work out the details to take before the rest of the world.’

  Was the woman mad? The big pharmaceuticals—Pfizer, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline—would squash them like flies.

  ‘Your idea is simply not practical,’ Hargreaves replied carefully.

  ‘Are you saying you won’t read it?’ Ned Ludd asked.

  ‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t read it,’ Hargreaves fired back in a tangle of negatives.

  ‘I’ll read it,’ piped up Jessykah Underhill, sensing an opening.

  ‘Good.’ Ned beamed. ‘We can revise it together and take it to the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade negotiations in November.’

  The other two candidates clamoured that they had made no such commitment. Who did Ned Ludd think she was, setting such an agenda? Hargreaves was almost relieved when Jessykah Underhill moved the debate on to the recent fiasco at Royal Adelaide Hospital.

  They were nearing the end. Jessykah Underhill had come off the worst but Hargreaves herself had not demolished the Luddite as she had promised.

  ‘I must say,’ Ned Ludd now interjected, ‘I’m surprised neither of you saw fit to wear a stick of celery today. The stick of celery—’ she pointed to her own lapel for the benefit of the cameras ‘—is to raise awareness of Sikorsky syndrome, a debilitating spinal condition that affects one in every nine hundred and forty-three children born in this country.’

  Keeping her features pleasant, Hargreaves merely imagined gritting her teeth. She had a suitcase full of damned ribbons and armbands to wear throughout the campaign. No one had told her about the celery sticks—and it was related to a medical issue!

  ‘Labor stands for first-class paediatric health,’ Jessykah Underhill asserted firmly, ‘and is fully committed to more funding for further research into …’ she hesitated at the term, ‘the disease.’

  When Hargreaves had first started as Minister for Health and was anxious about mastering all she had to master, her senior bureaucrats told her that if ever cornered, she could always rely on the Seven Per Cent Solution. ‘Whatever you are talking about, say it is seven per cent better than it is.’ ‘You mean make it up?’ she queried. ‘No,’ they replied, ‘Say it is seven per cent better and rest assured, we can torture our statistics until we get a confession that it is—but,’ she was warned, ‘don’t go above seven per cent.’

  Hargreaves wasn’t going to apologise for being celery stick-less tonight. ‘In the last two years, federal funding for Sikorsky syndrome has been increased by seven per cent—and that is seven per cent above inflation. That is the commitment of this government.’

  ‘Really?’ Ned Ludd raised her pale eyebrows. ‘I find that quite remarkable—because I made up the disease. There is no Sikorsky syndrome.’

  Hargreaves shot a glance at Jessykah Underhill. The shadow minister’s mouth was hanging open. She appeared dumbfounded. Hargreaves sensed that her own face might be presenting the cameras with a very similar expression.

  ...

  Knowing ASIO was following her, Amy Zhao had decided to lead them somewhere they’d find absolutely perplexing. She had joined the local Luddite campaign in her Sydney electorate.

  A Compink Australia agent working inside the Luddite Party would certainly keep ASIO and Fiona Brennan awake at night—which served them right for snooping on her. The drawback for Amy, however, was it meant more work. She’d already had a long day at Compink Australia that had finished with an inordinate amount of dishes. Had there been a party there in the afternoon? If so, she hadn’t been invited.

  She had joined the Luddite Party as her put-upon-data-entry-clerk persona. The Luddites had done no checks to verify anything about her. Their lack of suspicion seemed almost suspicious. There was definitely something going on within the Luddites. Their political candidate in Sydney, the local Ned Ludd, didn’t seem to have any clear political platform and fished around for ideas from his supporters. He always paid for everything in cash, crisp fifty-dollar notes. Somebody had given money to this Luddite in cash; somebody who didn’t want that campaign funding traced.

  Tonight’s meeting was at Low Expectations. Normally the shop was closed on Monday nights, but Kate, a young Luddite activist, worked there. Amy entered and took a seat while Kate was explaining the house rules. People could help themselves to tea, but they had to clean up afterwards. Amy sighed. She could guess where this evening was heading.

  Ned Ludd did the rounds, serving tea. He might not have many political ideas, but he had a friendly smile, Amy thought, and he was good-looking, even smelled nice. Kate, only seventeen years old but the group’s political strategist, did a presentation on her chosen core issue for the Sydney campaign, the national wage, a proposed base income for all Australians. It was an idea that had been around for a while, but no one had ever taken seriously; it was more of a pub conversation than a political platform in Amy’s view. Kate’s proposal was a far-reaching one, completely at odds with political orthodoxy. It had qualities that were—Amy searched her memory—almost communist. But it was a weirdly individualised, entrepreneurial communism. Were they really intending to campaign on that?

  Ned Ludd’s leadership was mild to say the least. He told the rest of the Luddites that he and Kate would campaign on this national wage idea, but they could choose other issues. The man with the Jamaican accent said he liked Kate’s national wage idea, as did the two sisters from Pyrmont. Some Surry Hills post-hipster went off on a tangent about forming an artists’ collective.

  Ned looked over at Amy. ‘What do you want to campaign on?’ he asked.

  What did she want? The questioned flummoxed her. Create headaches for ASIO? Keep Compink Australia running? Get the dishwasher repaired in the staff kitchen? Have a beer with Ned-of-the-nice-smile after the meeting? None of these seemed appropriate. She smiled but said nothing. It was a response typical of her data-entry self.

  ‘You’ve come here in your own time to help with the Luddite campaign,’ Ned prompted her. ‘It is only fair you get to have a say in what we do.’

  She was unused to this kind of attention. ‘Greenhouse gas reduction,’ she managed. Compink Australia had vast interests in renewables.

  A man with a tubercular cough, who was also c
alled Ned Ludd, began dividing up campaign areas and times for people. Amy found herself partnered with Kate, Old Ned and Candidate Ned to work Glebe—giving up both Saturday and Sunday of the coming weekend, she noted wearily.

  The meeting broke up and several Luddites headed off to the pub. Kate, with sudden teenage urgency, remembered she had to meet friends. She tossed the keys to Candidate Ned and asked him to do the locking up and was out the door before he even said he would. Amy started gathering up the mugs.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Candidate Ned told her. He was the only Luddite left. ‘I’ll wash up.’

  Amy stood stock still. She couldn’t recall the last time someone had made that offer. Had anyone ever made that offer to her?

  She felt the gentle brush of his hand as he took the mugs from her. Her skin tingled, and she felt her cheeks go hot. She realised to her dismay that Amy Zhao, data entry clerk, was considering falling in love with this man.

  Whatever was happening, it showed on her face. ‘Are you all right?’ Ned asked, leaning closer to her.

  She raised her face to look up into his. Seizing her chance, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately on the lips. Amy Zhao, Compink Australia deputy CEO, couldn’t believe what was going on. Who gave that order? she demanded of herself.

  She realised she was being kissed back. Finally, the deputy CEO seized control. She pulled her face away from Ned and stepped back. ‘Ah,’ she said, raising both hands in front of her, ‘please, just forget that I did that.’

  ‘That’s a rather memorable thing to forget,’ Ned observed. It was a sweet, almost gallant reply, she thought … or was that the data entry clerk’s opinion again?

  ‘I—I have to go,’ Amy stuttered and, true to her stammered statement, she fled.

  ...

  She could still feel his kiss on her lips—or, rather, she could still feel the pressure of her lips having kissed him. The hunger in her actions had astonished her. Amy opened the door to her apartment and scurried past her flatmate without saying hello, noticing only that he had used three different teacups while watching something on the internet. She rushed down the corridor to the bathroom.

  The sink had toothpaste on it again. How could someone miss when loading up a toothbrush? Her flatmate must be doing it deliberately. She splashed water on her face, cupping her hands to her nose. Pulling her hands away slowly, she raised her eyes to the mirror.

  The face she saw was an imploring one. While the deputy CEO was satisfied with the intrigue-filled life she led, the data entry clerk staring back at her clearly wanted something more. She held the gaze of the mirror. ‘All right,’ she heaved at last, speaking out aloud as if to confirm the resolution. ‘If we want Ned Ludd …’ she paused to nod at herself, ‘we’ll have him.’

  She got a warm smile in reply.

  ...

  If it ever got out, it would be the end of Baxter Lockwood. For two years, the work of Baxter Lockwood’s Behavioural Insights Unit had been utterly fraudulent, with the BIU only pretending to survey the Australian people on thousands of issues while giving all their customers, including the government of the country, reports based entirely on the predictions of a computer program. Since finding out, Olivia Alcott had decided on only two things. First, this lot (the BIU staff) needed an eye kept on them. Second, no matter how uncomfortable she was with the idea, she needed to keep Nostradamus going until the election was over. Incredibly, during the two years the BIU had been using Nostradamus, Baxter Lockwood’s reputation for PR research excellence had, if anything, risen. This team of hers, packing hydroponic kits, playing indoor beach volleyball and writing fantasy novels, was doing the job better than when they’d actually done the job.

  They’d been surprised when she’d arrived with her takeaway coffee mug, Gargantuan holder and photo of her daughter and dramatically swept a partially completed jigsaw puzzle off a spare BIU desk to claim it as hers. The boss was back!

  Her staff still worked, she discovered, the major difference being it only took them a couple of hours. They interviewed clients to find out what questions they wanted answered, which ranged from how students were responding to the introduction of Work for the Dole TAFE training courses to whether consumers would accept Dental Bomb, a prototype fizzy fluoride pellet for flossing-averse kids. They’d feed those questions into Nostradamus then write up a final report based on Nostradamus’s instant answer. (They’d hold on to the report for two months before sending it off, so that the customer believed the BIU had conducted thorough market surveys.) The rest of the work day was theirs.

  Olivia had the impression that the team regretted not the fraud or their planned embezzlement, but the fact that they’d deceived her. ‘We would’ve told you,’ kindly Mrs Giardino explained, ‘only we thought you’d worry about it.’

  Olivia gazed across at Jiang, sitting in front of his computer. ‘Sam, there’s something I don’t understand. What does Jiang enter into Nostradamus every morning when he arrives?’

  ‘He just keeps Nostradamus current with what’s going on.’ Sam looked up from his Sudoku. ‘The thirty years of survey data we originally entered gave Nostradamus an understanding of how people behave. What Jiang enters each morning lets Nostradamus process any new developments in society. That maintains the program’s predictive abilities.’

  ‘But where’s he getting his data from?’ Olivia asked. ‘And how can Nostradamus deal with anything new—like the Luddite Party, for instance? There is no relevant data for Nostradamus to draw on.’

  ‘Why not ask the man himself?’ Sam said with an indulgent smile. Olivia felt the team had a growing tendency to treat her as though she was the person at a very enjoyable party who was spending her time fretting that there was no healthy food available.

  Jiang looked puzzled when she put the question to him. ‘I just tell Nostradamus what’s been going on.’ Though standards had slipped at the BIU in the two-year interregnum between Olivia’s visits, Jiang’s workstation was immaculate. A tiny, curious-looking figurine stood blue-tacked atop his computer screen.

  ‘How do you know what to enter each morning? How do you judge what developments are significant?’

  ‘I just put in what I think needs putting in,’ he said with a shrug.

  Olivia paled. Subjective data. No one in PR had worked with subjective data for forty years.‘You mean your hunch?’ she squeaked as quietly as she could.

  Jiang appeared to contemplate something. ‘Nostradamus is more … complicated than we described it. It has purposes that go beyond predicting consumer or voter response.’

  Olivia could tell Jiang was concerned that further explanation would distress her. He was obviously about to tell her something quite appalling. In a nineteenth-century novel, Olivia would have been able to faint her way out of the scene. They would have carried her off to the nearest sofa and plied her with smelling salts and fussed over her until all was well. But that Austenesque escape was not available to a CEO in the twenty-first century. ‘What other purposes?’ she ground out reluctantly.

  ‘You may not want to hear it,’ Jiang cautioned.

  ‘I’m certain I don’t want to hear it!’ she snapped. ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘In certain circumstances, Nostradamus can work as a kind of …’ he searched for a term, ‘lobbyist. It can persuade the government to do certain things.’

  ‘How’s that possible?’

  ‘It’s a different type of lobbying,’ Jiang admitted. ‘In traditional lobbying, the lobbyist promises something to the politicians. It may be jobs in the electorate. It may be money for the party. They wine and dine—’

  ‘I know how lobbying works!’ Olivia hissed. ‘What does Nostradamus do?’

  Jiang thought a moment. ‘Remember that pro bono job you sent us? The citizens group, the environmental anti-coal activists who wanted the lignite power plant in Victoria shut down?’

  Olivia certainly remembered it. It had been an example of Baxter Lockwood giving
back to the community.

  ‘We interviewed them,’ Jiang explained, ‘found out what they had in mind, and wrote up a recommended action plan for them to win over public support.’ What he was describing was all routine. ‘Then,’ Jiang continued—he was clearly getting to the crux of it—‘we sent the government a report saying that the anti-lignite movement had significant public support, that the replacement of the power plant with renewables would be hugely popular and would make people think the government was on top of things.’

  ‘How did Nostradamus know that?’

  ‘Well …’ Jiang seemed to hedge. ‘It didn’t. We write that part up ourselves. We tell the government something bad will happen if they do this and something good will happen if they do that. They almost always choose “that”. It’s lobbying, but without having to bribe them.’

  He actually expected her to think this was clever, she realised. Jiang was calling it ‘lobbying’, but it was outright deception. He might seem totally amiable, but Olivia was increasingly aware he was completely unscrupulously amiable. If he was deceiving the government that paid Baxter Lockwood so handsomely, it was likely he was deceiving her as well. ‘That figurine,’ she said, indicating the tiny figure atop Jiang’s computer screen.

  ‘What about it?’ Jiang asked, surprised by the change of topic.

  ‘That’s Loki, isn’t it?’

  Sam scoffed. ‘That’s not Loki,’ he said, chuckling. ‘It doesn’t look anything like Taron Egerton!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘Taron Egerton. The actor who played Loki in the Avengers 2024 reboot.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Taron bloody Egerton!’

  ‘Well, it’s not Tom Hiddleston from the original Thor.’

  ‘Sam,’ she queried, ‘do you have any other setting besides per-ma-nerd?’ She turned back to Jiang. ‘That figurine is Loki—the trickster.’ Olivia shot a glance at Sam. ‘From Norse mythology, not from some children’s comic book made into a billion-dollar movie,’ she clarified. Olivia levelled a finger at Jiang. ‘You’re not telling me the whole story.’