2028

by Ken Saunders

  Olivia drained her cup and stood up. She threw off her business jacket and began limbering up her arms. ‘Come on,’ she urged Sam and Jiang, who were still sitting there. ‘Get up.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Let’s have a game of beach volleyball,’ Olivia suggested, kicking off her shoes.

  ...

  The song ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ was still stuck in Fitzwilliams’ head, the musical ghost of disasters past. It had been a relief to retreat to the calm of an observatory. The media had had a feeding frenzy with the story of his young staffer smashing her elbow into the face of a seventy-three-year-old Townsville sound technician, knocking him flat. That wasn’t what had actually happened, but it was one of those stories that stayed in the news all the longer if you tried to explain your way out of it. He had visited the geriatric punker in hospital. Just stitches, fortunately, and possible concussion. With a guy like that, the latter was hard to tell.

  Georgia Lambert had offered her resignation after The Clash incident. Fitzwilliams hadn’t accepted it. How could he hold her responsible? In this campaign, the gods were clearly against them. Besides, it wasn’t a good look to lose two campaign managers during an election.

  Visiting the Australian Astronomical Observatory was not a natural campaign stop. Hardly anyone worked at the observatory and those who did had so many PhDs that the Prime Minister was too intimidated to talk politics with them. One week to the polls. He needed to be out there scrambling for votes and here he was holed up in an observatory. Fortuna Friday. Something big was going to happen on board the International Space Station and that damned Australian Luddite astronaut would be right there in the thick of it. Fitzwilliams had moved, as planned, to this dignified stronghold. Flanked by white coats with PhDs, he’d make a gracious speech about whatever stunt in space the Fortuna Corporation staged. He would be prime ministerial, out-gravitas-ing the reality TV antics of the Ned in Space. He would need to improvise. Again.

  Fortuna Friday wasn’t even Friday in Australia. It was Friday over the eastern seaboard of the United States, the world’s most lucrative advertising market. It was 10 am Saturday in the eastern time zone of Australia.

  The astronomers had put on a little morning tea for the Prime Minister’s visit—little being the operative word. Scientists always went to great lengths to demonstrate how much his funding cuts had bitten into their budgets. The morning tea consisted of instant coffee and a meagre plate of carrot and celery sticks. Their Spartan fare didn’t fool him. If he flung open a few cupboard doors around the place, he was certain he’d find a cappuccino machine and possibly muffins. They were just putting on this no-fat-on-our-budget show for his benefit. God, he could use a proper coffee, he thought, spooning the instant crystals into his cup. He caught one scientist whisking away the plate of celery sticks. They’d only belatedly realised its Luddite connotations. Their intention was to deprive him, not provoke him. He was, after all, still the man with the funding money.

  ‘What do you think the Fortuna Friday event will be?’ he asked an astronomer crunching on a carrot stick.

  ‘They’ve been working on a project called Fortuna Mirror World,’ the astronomer replied. ‘And by they I mean Scott Devonport and Yuri Denisov, the two proper astronauts, not the reality TV contestants. It’s a crystal prismatic mirror structure.’

  Fitzwilliams didn’t understand her further explanation, but he did know Australia was behind in that research area. Crystal prismatics was going to be, among all the other next big things in alternative energy, the next big thing. Fitzwilliams frowned. Only yesterday, he’d announced funding for the refurbishment of a Queensland coal terminal. ‘State-of-the-art,’ he recalled saying.

  It was reassuring, however, to hear this scientist’s disdain for the reality TV astronauts on the space station. ‘Fortuna’s Mirror World will power enormous lasers to transfer energy to photoreceptors on Earth,’ the astronomer continued. It seemed a far cry from Fortuna running shoes, Fitzwilliams thought. ‘They say they’ll use it to bring power to the third world.’

  The astronomers had set up an old plasma television in yet another display of their frugal budget. The head of the Fortuna Corporation appeared on the screen. He began to speak, but his material—‘a future of progress’, ‘secure energy for our children’ etc.—was too much like one of the Prime Minister’s own speeches for Fitzwilliams to concentrate on it. The speech shifted from visionary to showman. ‘An historic event … an event hearkening a new age of prosperity for everyone,’ the CEO announced. Several sports stars flanked him, nodding like backbenchers at his every word. Finally the CEO called over the microphone, ‘Scott? Yuri? Are you ready?’

  ‘All systems go, Mr Smallwood,’ came Yuri’s voice.

  ‘Then …’ CEO Smallwood paused. ‘Go for it!’ he shouted, using the famous Fortuna catchphrase.

  The TV image now shifted to the crescent moon over New York. The camera zoomed so that the moon filled the entire screen and a dot of light appeared on its dark section. Slowly the dot grew in size, spreading out, and it began to take the form of a familiar shape.

  ‘Oh no!’ the astronomer next to Fitzwilliams exclaimed, aghast.

  The growing dot had shaped itself into the Fortuna winged running shoe. The Fortuna Corporation logo was illuminated on the surface of the moon! The first act of the new crystal prismatics Mirror World, it now appeared, was not to provide the third world with a much-needed energy source, but to subject the moon to the indignity of product placement.

  Fitzwilliams shook his head. The moon being used to display a corporate logo? What statement he could possibly improvise about such a thing that would sound even vaguely prime ministerial? He simply couldn’t bring himself to be enthusiastic. Fitzwilliams suddenly felt so weary that he was grateful for a sip of his instant coffee.

  ‘They can’t be allowed to do that!’ another astronomer squeaked indignantly.

  At least he was in like-minded company here, Fitzwilliams thought. Perhaps he would increase their funding if re-elected.

  ‘What’s happening now?’ One of them pointed at the screen. The image of the Fortuna logo was dissipating, transforming into something else. ‘What’s that supposed to be? It looks … like a map of the west coast of Australia.’

  It hadn’t been possible to see this coming, Fitzwilliams consoled himself. ‘That,’ he informed them all without bothering to sigh about it, ‘is the logo of the Luddite Party of Australia.’

  He saw their initial amazement and then something he took for pity sweep over their faces. They quickly looked away from him and back at the screen. ‘Here … be … dragons,’ one of them read aloud.

  Fitzwilliams closed his eyes. Australia Post media drones would be waiting outside for a statement.

  ...

  Paula Perkins, the Ned Ludd in space, felt hands grab her by each arm and sweep her weightlessly across the space station. Yuri and Scott pushed her straight into the only truly private section of the station, a former experiment area turned into a makeshift rant room for Get Out of My Space contestants.

  Yuri clicked off all the recording devices in the room. ‘Hand over your Genie phone and any other device,’ he ordered. He frisked her briskly, not trusting her to comply with the demand.

  ‘We know it was you,’ Scott stated. ‘That was a goddamned Luddite symbol. Your goddamned political party. That’s what Mission Control just told us.’

  Paula had known it wouldn’t take them long to find out. She said nothing.

  ‘You don’t mess with the Fortuna logo,’ Yuri hissed at her. ‘Are you ab-fucking-solutely crazy?’

  ‘It’s not said like that, Yuri,’ Scott corrected his cosmonaut colleague. ‘We say abso-fucking-lutely crazy.’

  ‘What?’ Yuri snapped. ‘You mean there’s a grammatical rule about sticking the word fuck inside another word?’

  ‘Well,’ Scott hedged, ‘I’m not sure it’s a rule …’

  ‘Then
what the fuck are you talking about?’ It occurred to Yuri, not for the first time, that he’d been in space with Scott an awfully long time. He turned back to Paula. ‘You’ve jeopardised the mission with your stupid …’ He couldn’t think of an English word to fit. ‘You do know Fortuna Corporation is funding this entire mission? You may have killed the hen that lays the golden egg!’ he frothed.

  ‘It’s a goose that lays golden eggs,’ Scott interjected. ‘Not a hen.’

  Yuri waved his hand. ‘The idea works perfectly well with a hen. Neither animal actually lays golden eggs!’ he pointed out.

  ‘It’s not a concept,’ Scott shot back, ‘it’s a story—and in the story it’s a goose that lays the golden egg.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Paula put in,‘aren’t you supposed to be berating me?’

  ‘I am just trying to improve your English,’ Scott muttered. Sometimes he didn’t know why he bothered with the tetchy Yuri.

  ‘Yeah? Well, how much Russian have you learned while up here?’ Yuri demanded.

  Scott gave him that bewildered look Americans do when someone suggests speaking another language.

  ‘Can we get on with this?’ Paula prodded again.

  Scott refocused on Paula. ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘I copied the laser projection program for Fortuna Friday and sent it to Luddite colleagues in Australia. They modified it and sent it back and I then copied it over the original. Because I have computer access here, I was within the firewall. There was no security to overcome.’

  The explanation had been so succinct and calm, the infuriated astronauts felt cheated. Yuri pointed a finger at her. ‘You’re off the station. I don’t care whether the whole planet votes to keep you on, next eviction, I’m going to read your name out.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Scott echoed. ‘You’re abso—’ an f started to form, but Scott prudently held it back ‘—lutely off,’ he concluded.

  ‘Now get out of here,’ Yuri ordered, ‘while we try to come up with some way to placate the Fortuna Corporation.’

  Paula opened the door, pulled on its frame and glided weightlessly out of the room. Yuri yanked the door shut behind her.

  ‘You got your phone?’ asked Florian, the German GOOMS astronaut. He gestured towards the rant room. The profiles of Yuri and Scott were visible through the window in the rant room door.

  Paula held out her phone. Florian touched it lightly with his. ‘I filmed it,’ Florian said. Paula’s phone made its contented file-transfer beeping noise.

  ‘But it won’t have any sound,’ Paula pointed out.

  ‘Hal 9000.’ Florian grinned.

  ‘I don’t understand the reference,’ Paula said apologetically.

  ‘You’ve never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey?’ Florian was clearly disappointed in her. ‘Put the video clip through a lip-reading program,’ he spelled out.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Fitzwilliams was in the Liberal Party’s Melbourne office for the emergency meeting, with Alan Chandos, Donna Hargreaves and Olga O’Rourke checking in by Skype from different locations across the country. The only people there in person with him were Leon and Quentin, Georgia Lambert and Russ Langdon, who’d driven up from Flinders. Judging by the pixilated image of Chandos, wherever he was in Western Australia, the National Broadband Network had yet to roll through.

  ‘I’ll deal it to you straight,’ Fitzwilliams said when they’d all come on-screen. ‘It’s my assessment we’ve already lost the election.’ There was no murmur of dissent. They were seasoned enough veterans to know it. Only Leon and Quentin looked shocked. ‘We may end up the largest party in parliament, but we’ll have lost so many seats, we’ll have no mandate in the eyes of the public,’ he summed up bleakly. ‘It’s a hung parliament and the Luddites are going to be players in it.’

  ‘That could be something we exploit,’ Georgia Lambert offered. ‘People don’t like hung parliaments. Campaign the final five days on that. Business, stock markets jittery at the thought of Luddites. Superannuation savings at risk. Economic uncertainty.’

  ‘Fear,’ Fitzwilliams commented. ‘Is that all we have to offer?’ He shook his head. ‘If you run a fear campaign out of desperation, as we would be doing now, the electorate can sense it. You’re trying to sell fear, but they know you’re scared yourself. It doesn’t work.’

  ‘You’re right, Prime Minister,’ Georgia admitted. ‘I just thought all options should be on the table.’

  Fitzwilliams turned to his cabinet colleagues on the screens. ‘We’re up against a party that hasn’t paid for any advertising and yet they put their logo on the surface of the moon.’

  ‘And hoodwinked the Fortuna Corporation,’ Alan Chandos put in. ‘Did you see the video of the astronauts conspiring to throw Ned Ludd off the station?’ He chuckled.

  ‘No, Alan, I didn’t.’ Was there anything Chandos didn’t find amusing? ‘They have danced around us the whole election,’ Fitzwilliams resumed with a fresh analogy, ‘landing blow after blow, and about all we can say for ourselves is that we’re still standing. We haven’t laid a glove on them. On top of that, they have someone inside our organisation feeding them information.’ He looked at Olga, who shook her head slightly. Even she had been unable to uncover the mole within their ranks. ‘We’ve been outplayed from start to finish. As for the election on Saturday, all we can rely on are the rusted-on voters for both parties. That’s about thirty per cent for us, twenty per cent for Labor. Thanks to the Luddites, I’d say about fifty per cent of the electorate can be considered swing voters. No incumbent MP is safe. Even someone sitting on a twenty-five per cent margin in their electorate could go down.’

  ‘What do you want us to do, Prime Minister?’ Hargreaves asked.

  ‘If we’ve lost, let’s not throw any more money away. I don’t intend to hand over a party with completely empty coffers to the next leader.’ Fitzwilliams noted that none of his pragmatic colleagues protested his predicted demise. He would have appreciated at least a stifled objection. ‘Pull as many ads as you can, Georgia. For the rest of the cabinet, it’s sauve qui peut time.’

  ‘You’d better give them that instruction in English, Prime Minister,’ Langdon recommended. ‘Your cabinet isn’t …’

  … capable of understanding much, was what Langdon had left unsaid, Fitzwilliams knew. ‘I’ll tell the cabinet to fall back on their own electorates, save their own seats,’ he declared. ‘Those who survive, survive. Next, I want each of you to draw up a list of our top backbenchers. The ones who have talent, the ones with potential. If we’re going to be reduced to a rump in a hung parliament, we’re going to need backbenchers who can tie their own shoelaces without lobbyists doing it for them. I’m making it my mission to hold on to as many of those seats as we can.’ His plan for the last week of the campaign was to rescue the best of his backbench. He’d visit each of their electorates. He was going to fight tooth and nail to save the part of his caucus worth saving.

  There was silence, but a silence of consent.

  ‘Prime Minister,’ Donna Hargreaves said, ‘I think you should know Damian Boswell contacted me.’

  Boswell? Hadn’t he sent his former leadership rival and now ambassador to Russia off to tour the port facilities in Archangel?

  ‘He’s resigning as ambassador and coming back. He wanted to know how I would lean if he tilted for the leadership.’

  ‘Senses blood in the water,’ Alan Chandos commented, for once without his customary levity.

  ‘It’s a nasty, ruthless world you people live in, if you don’t mind my saying so, Prime Minister.’ Quentin couldn’t stop himself from speaking up. ‘I mean, you’re campaigning your guts out and he …’

  Fitzwilliams found the bodyguard’s indignation touching. ‘Ours is a ruthless, unsentimental profession,’ he agreed. ‘Quentin, you’re much better off being a bodyguard and dealing with terrorists, madmen and jokers with cream pies.’ He turned back to the screens. ‘In the last week, we’ll mobilise the core and traditional alli
es such as the Free Drivers Movement.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Prime Minister,’ Chandos said. ‘The Free Drivers attacked the Queen last night.’

  Fitzwilliams squinted at Chandos’s screen, uncomprehending. The Queen had just turned a hundred and two years old. No one, not even Robespierre, would attack her at this point.

  ‘Alan is making a joke, Prime Minister,’ Langdon clarified. ‘Last night, the head of the Free Drivers Movement smashed his car into a statue of Queen Victoria. Driving under the influence and he’d disconnected the Autocar system that would have prevented the accident.’

  ‘But a car driven by a motorist can’t be started unless the Autocar safety system is on.’

  ‘And there is an illegal device out there to circumvent that nowadays, or so I learned this morning.’

  The Prime Minister sighed. ‘So what’s that … two, three criminal charges? Driving under the influence, speeding undoubtedly, disconnecting Autocar.’

  ‘Manslaughter—if he’d rammed anyone other than good Queen Vic,’ Chandos contributed.

  Georgia Lambert stepped into the void left by their erstwhile ally’s implosion. ‘Before we head out, everyone remember today is World Try Not to Kill Anyone Today Day. The slogan is Make Murder History. Go for photo ops with police, detectives, social workers.’

  ‘Don’t we try to avoid killing anyone on most days?’ Chandos asked.

  ‘Yes, but today we’re focused on it. It would look good if Australia had a clean sheet.’

  ‘I’ll avoid visiting the Free Drivers leader in hospital then,’ Fitzwilliams muttered.

  ...

  Fiona Brennan felt she already knew the shop. Low Expectations was just as Renard’s reports had described it. ‘I know who you are,’ the owner said gruffly from behind his counter.

  ‘It’s not a state secret,’ the ASIO chief replied.

  ‘I want you to know that it’s not my custom to rent out the top floor for special private meetings.’ The owner had actually been flattered by the ASIO director’s request to use his premises, but his near decade in the hospitality industry had made him inexperienced at extending any.