2028

by Ken Saunders

  With a heave of her shoulders, she crossed the office to his desk. ‘What are you working on?’ she asked.

  He leaned back in his chair, but she could tell he wasn’t relaxed. ‘A computer program,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been working on it with another programmer for a few weeks. Nothing to do with work,’ he added quickly. ‘I’ve been doing it on my own time.’

  The BIU had a peculiar idea of what constituted ‘their own time’ but Olivia let that slide for the moment. ‘You look worried.’

  Jiang sighed. ‘It’s not the sort of program I’m used to and we’ve been asked to alter it.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘The final version has to go off today and I’m—’ he paused ‘—not certain it’ll work as planned.’

  ‘Can’t it be tested?’

  ‘Oh, it’s going to be tested.’ Jiang gave a half-laugh. ‘It’s going to be tested big time.’

  He might as well have rung an alarm bell for her. ‘I think you’d better tell me exactly what this program is for,’ she enunciated slowly.

  ‘You may not want to hear it,’ Jiang cautioned. She caught him shooting a glance at the sofa.

  ‘I’m not going to faint this time!’ she shouted at him.

  Heads turned. All work stopped on the hydroponic kits. Mrs Giardino quietly moved towards the first-aid kit.

  ‘Bear in mind, I’m doing this in my capacity as a private citizen,’ Jiang pointed out, ‘not as an employee of Baxter Lockwood.’

  ‘Just tell me,’ Olivia instructed. ‘I don’t need a preamble.’

  ‘This job I’m doing is for the Luddites,’ Jiang murmured. The now familiar blood-draining-from-her-face look came over Olivia yet again, but he pressed on. ‘I do volunteer work for them. I’ve never changed my name to Ned Ludd, but I’m a member of the Luddite Party.’

  Olivia took this in calmly, a picture of control. The important thing was to establish the immediate priority. ‘Let’s go sit on the sofa,’ she suggested.

  ...

  Olga O’Rourke appearing at his hotel door in Townsville unexpectedly had to be bad news. She was supposed to be in South Australia campaigning in marginal seats. ‘Sorry to intrude, Prime Minister,’ she said, interrupting a mini planning session for the next day’s activities. ‘A matter of some urgency. Not something I wished to discuss on the phone.’ She waited for him to nod his staffers from the room.

  ‘I regret to inform you, Prime Minister,’ Olga said very formally when the others had left the room, ‘that our Play as You Go tax reform policy has already been announced—and not by us.’

  For once there was no YouTube clip to project. This bombshell came in the form of a radio podcast. ‘There are no losers in this tax reform. There are only winners!’ Fitzwilliams heard the radio voice say. ‘In Play as You Go, for every one hundred dollars paid in income tax, a taxpayer will receive one Tax Lotto ticket. Each week, the tax office will draw one ticket to win a million dollars. The more you pay in income tax one year, the better your chances are of winning the next.’

  It was word for word from Alan Chandos’s proposal. ‘Who the hell is this?’ the Prime Minister demanded.

  ‘Her name is Ned Ludd,’ Olga almost groaned. ‘Candidate in Geelong.’

  ‘When was this broadcast?’

  ‘Last Sunday.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I informed?’

  ‘Because,’ Olga replied calmly, ‘I only just discovered it. It was broadcast on Radio National on some show called Money Matters that nobody in Australia listens to. It’s probably on at four am.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘This was an ambush, Prime Minister. They wanted Play as You Go on the record as a Luddite idea, but put it on some obscure radio show for insomniacs. Their hope was that you and Alan Chandos would announce it later this week. Then this Money Matters podcast would have bubbled to the surface and you’d have faced the humiliation of having been caught pilfering Luddite ideas.’

  ‘Pilfering!’

  ‘We have avoided that ambush, Prime Minister—though at the heavy cost of the loss of Alan’s income tax reform. We cannot announce Play as You Go now. The Luddites have raided our—’ she paused to find the right English word ‘—larder and they’ve stolen our best campaign announcement.’

  ‘For them to have—’

  ‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ she cut him off. ‘Someone from inside our campaign team leaked Play as You Go to the Luddites. There were not many who knew of its existence—some in the Treasurer’s department, some staffers, some in cabinet, Quentin and Leon. One of us is working for the other side.’ He had never heard Olga sound so cold and determined. ‘Fiona Brennan at ASIO warned us at the start of this campaign that we had a mole within our ranks. Do you remember?’

  Fitzwilliams did remember. The Luddites had known exactly when the election was going to be called. Brennan had warned him! What had he thought about it at the time? He couldn’t recall. He likely put the blame on the indiscreet mouth of his then campaign manager, Lister St John. A mole! No wonder the Luddites were ahead of him no matter which way he turned in this election.

  ‘At the risk of locking the barn door after the horse has … bolted—’ the way Olga hesitated over such colloquial phrases gave Fitzwilliams the impression that she had once memorised an entire list of them ‘—I will search in every cranny until the mole is found.’

  Fitzwilliams smiled, despite the grimness of their situation. ‘You mean “every nook and cranny”.’

  Olga frowned at him, clearly puzzled.

  ‘The phrase in English is “every nook and cranny”,’ he explained.

  ‘I have already checked the nooks,’ she replied. ‘No, trust me, Prime Minister, this one will be found in a cranny.’

  From the fierce look in her eyes, Fitzwilliams didn’t doubt her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  How was it that during a campaign a mall was considered an ideal place to meet and greet people? Fitzwilliams was in this dismal mall to launch the Eradicate Feral Animals Day event and trying not to appear glum. The insipid music, the visual noise, the same shops. He could be in Cairns or Hobart or Fremantle. There was a sense of nowhere-ness about malls that depressed him.

  The relentless growth of the mall’s role in society could potentially consume both church and state, Fitzwilliams sometimes thought. His own government had installed Dr Otto kiosks in malls, blurring the boundary between government services and the retail sector. The well-known retailer Bull’s Eye now routinely had a dedicated wedding venue space on its shop floor where bridal couples could be married surrounded by the gifts from their wedding registry. The church, to his surprise, had not denounced but collaborated, having long wanted a toehold in the malls. You couldn’t stroll through a mall nowadays without bumping into someone in a clerical collar.

  Ultramart had been even more ambitious. There were now six Ultra-hosps in Australia, public/private maternity hospitals combining the best in natal and postnatal care with the widest retail range of infant clothes, toys and baby accessories. The lifetime 10 per cent off the recommended retail price for all Ultra-babes (children born in Ultra-hosps) was an attractive incentive ‘to birth and shop at Ultra-hosp’.

  Even cemeteries were to be attached to malls, seamlessly integrating burials and visiting departed family into the shopping experience. A British chain with the jaunty name of Till You Dropped was rumoured to be opening five of these ‘malloseums’ over the next year. It was considered the ultimate form of capturing customer loyalty. Who could shop at Market Town when Dad was buried at Broadway? The idea made Fitzwilliams shudder.

  Why the Eradicate Feral Animals Day event should be held in a mall was beyond him. Those taking the fight to the cane toads, feral cats and foxes, those mixing the myxomatosis, weren’t doing it in the Stockland shopping centre in Townsville. Yet here he was with some professor, several PR types, and numerous cameras and microphones. The crowd at such things, once they’d taken their selfie with Prime Minister in the background, typically had the attention span of goldfish.
He could announce he was invading Poland and they’d probably all smile and clap.

  ‘What’s involved in this one?’ he asked a staffer, trying not to sound weary.

  ‘This one’s a bit of fun,’ she told him. She had some sort of helmet in her hand with what looked like a plunger attached to it. ‘How well do you do a Dalek voice?’ she asked.

  ...

  ‘You can’t go on the Jim Jarvis Show.’ Renard tried to stare Kate down. She wasn’t an easy stare-down. ‘You’re seventeen years old. He’ll eat you alive.’

  ‘What’s my age got to do with it?’ Kate answered, giving a theatrical teenage sigh. ‘You’re just like the Prime Minister!’

  Jim Jarvis was the worst of the radio shock jocks. Renard had been less nervous about Kate facing off against the Prime Minister. ‘He won’t let you get a word in edgeways. You know why it’s called the Jim Jarvis Show? Because it is about him—not his guests.’

  ‘I can handle Jim Jarvis,’ Kate declared. ‘He’s been dead for five years!’

  ‘Don’t let that detail mislead you,’ Renard warned. Kate was the one invited on to the show, not Renard. He knew he didn’t have the final say in the matter. ‘It’s a school day tomorrow,’ he tried. ‘You’ll miss some of your morning classes.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Ned.’

  ‘I know, I’m worse than your parents.’ Renard heaved a sigh. ‘It can get really nasty on that show.’

  ‘As Luddites, we talk to everyone,’ Kate lectured him. Ned’s concern was somewhat sweet, she supposed, but in that exasperating, parental way that needed to be quashed. She hadn’t been surprised by the invitation; she might not be a candidate, but since the debate Kate had become one of the emerging stars of Luddism.

  The 2RT listenership was not a priority. Most of them were so old that Kate presumed half of them would die on their way to the polling station. Something else had motivated her to appear on the Jim Jarvis Show. ‘What does “paraphernalia” mean?’ she asked. ‘I think I know, but I need to make sure.’

  Renard waved a hand. ‘Equipment … apparatus … stuff. Like “chemistry lab paraphernalia”. Why? What’s this about?’

  Kate smiled. ‘Because I found this in my bag when I got home from school yesterday. No idea how it got there.’ She pulled the letter from her pocket and handed it to him. ‘It’s from head office.’

  The letter instructed Kate to agree to appear on the Jim Jarvis Show, to speak about her national wage proposal and … Kate watched Ned’s eyebrows arch as he read.

  ‘Why would they want you to say that?’

  The letter instructed:

  … in your opening remarks use the two words ‘Transylvania paraphernalia’ in that order with no words in between. Enunciate them clearly.—Ned Ludd

  ‘It’s just chemistry,’ Kate said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The class I’ll miss tomorrow morning.’

  ...

  The doorbell rang. Aggie grabbed her helmet. With the leaders’ debate done and dusted, it had been great to get back on to the cycling campaign trail in Melbourne. Her collaborator on the programming task had rechecked their final version and sent it off. Now her campaign in Wills called to her on a glorious day for cycling.

  Aggie swung open the door and her face fell. ‘What’s wrong?’

  The Veronicae were on her doorstep, helmetless, in business attire, one wearing a skirt.

  ‘We have a new strategy for the final week,’ one of them replied. They came into her living room and sat down.

  ‘Aren’t we biking today?’ Aggie asked, still by the door. It was too perfect a day to waste inside discussing strategy.

  ‘We both think the campaign needs a broader approach,’ one of them began.

  Aggie didn’t understand. ‘We’ve been campaigning all over greater Melbourne. We can’t feasibly go much further afield than that.’ A swing to Geelong might be manageable, she thought, about eighty kilometres each way.

  ‘Ned,’ a Veronica said gently, ‘your campaign is too focused on bicycle issues.’

  ‘You need to talk about other issues—like you did at the debate,’ the other added.

  They were both giving her their encouraging look, the same look they’d used at the start of the campaign when she’d been struggling up a hill.

  ‘It’s just,’ a Veronica continued, ‘if you’re going to be prime minister, we can’t only be about bike lanes.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ the other broke in hastily. ‘Some of that was probably our fault.’

  Aggie let the enormity of that comment go by to the keeper. ‘No,’ she clarified, ‘I meant I’m sorry as in I’m sorry, did you just say prime minister?’

  ‘Well, yes, obviously,’ a Veronica answered. ‘You’re the leader of the Luddites.’

  Aggie looked at them dumbfounded. ‘But the Luddite Party doesn’t emphasise a leader.’

  The two Veronicas exchanged a glance. ‘And you’re the Luddite leader who has been emphasising that to the Australian people,’ one replied. They’d known what she was going to say, Aggie realised.

  The Veronicae were now aiming for an outright Luddite victory nationally. The best way to achieve that, they insisted, was to take advantage of the national profile Aggie had created.

  ‘I contacted Dragonbreath yesterday,’ one said with a grin, ‘and they’ve sold twenty thousand of those posters. They’re up everywhere.’

  It was a poster of Aggie speaking outside parliament on the day she’d called the election. Incredibly, considering she had been nude at the time, the poster was a tasteful shot of her head and shoulders with just a hint of cleavage. Vote Luddite! it urged, the V being two celery sticks. The poster’s distribution had nothing to do with the Luddite Party; two freelance photo journalists had sold the image to Dragonbreath Posters, which was now selling them across the country.

  The Veronicae outlined their revised campaign strategy. Aggie was to appear in key electorates alongside local Luddite candidates. The campaigning would be similar to what they had done so far: meet with people, listen to what they said, raise a few ideas. The difference was no bicycles. Aggie must be seen to be more than a single-issue candidate.

  They handed her an itinerary from an automated travel agency. It had her crisscrossing the country. Adelaide, Brisbane, Launceston, Cairns, Perth, Brisbane again, returning to Melbourne on the eve of the election. It made no geographic sense.

  The Veronicae read the look in her eyes. ‘We know you’re financing your campaign entirely yourself.’ Aggie had given them control of her $3000 campaign budget. Their only expenses so far had been the hotel along the Canberra trek and getting Aggie’s bicycle tuned up. ‘Sorry about the two red-eye-special flights.’

  They were going to make her prime minister on the cheap, it seemed. ‘We don’t know which electorates are winnable,’ they explained, ‘so we just went with whatever seat sales Jetstar and Virgin had on offer and some new airline called Howzat!’ The airline actually had an exclamation mark in its company name, Aggie noted.

  Aggie was to be greeted by Bicyclism Australia members in each city she was scheduled to visit. They weren’t to saddle up though. She was to meet with P&C committees, public sector workers, local business precincts, whatever they could rustle up. She would go it alone without them. The Veronicae were to stay campaigning in Wills to ensure she won her seat for parliament.

  ‘Why are you looking so glum?’ Veronica asked.

  It felt odd to say it to them. ‘I was enjoying the cycling,’ Aggie replied meekly.

  ‘We’ll organise one last big bike rally for you when you get back to Melbourne,’ a Veronica promised indulgently. ‘On the Yarra on the eve of the election. How’s that?’

  For a moment, Aggie thought she was talking about the new airline. ‘All right,’ she agreed. A big rally on the Yarra would be a fun finale. The airline itinerary had her leaving Melbourne this afternoon. ‘I’ll pack my things,’ sh
e said.

  ‘We didn’t pay for any checked luggage,’ Veronica pointed out. ‘You can manage a few changes of clothes on seven kilos of carry-on, can’t you?’

  ...

  The electorate of Herbert, centred on Townsville, was held by Garry Templeton, a solid backbencher, reliable, uncomplaining. Prime Minister Fitzwilliams had been happy to help his campaign. The Free Drivers Movement speaker had gone on too long, but Templeton had done a splendid introduction for the Prime Minister.

  Although nothing bad had happened yet as a result of the Eradicate Feral Animals Day event, Georgia Lambert still felt sick about it. Next election, she would vet these worthy-cause days extra assiduously. Fitzwilliams had forced himself to be a good sport, donned the Dalek helmet thing with the prong and done a surprisingly decent ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’ She would kill whoever at Eradicate Feral Animals Day had come up with that idea. No doubt the Labor Party’s advertising firm was already cutting it into a new commercial.

  What will the next three years have in store for us if the Fitzwilliams Liberals are re-elected? the voiceover would say.

  Medicare?

  [Cut to Prime Minister] ‘Exterminate!’

  Education?

  ‘Exterminate!’

  The fair go? The Aussie dream?

  ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’

  She could write it for them—or, rather, the bloody idiots at Eradicate Feral Animals Day had written it for them.

  She’d never seen such a campaign for mishaps, yet the Prime Minister was soldiering on without complaint. He was on the outdoor stage now delivering a speech to support the local member. Fitzwilliams thrived on this—

  ‘Oh shit!’ came the voice of a staffer.

  Georgia turned. It never paid to ignore that exclamation. ‘What is it?’

  The staffer was staring at her Genie phone and had both earphones in. ‘Oh shit!’ she exclaimed again.

  Georgia Lambert yanked an earphone out. ‘What’s the matter?’