The Ministry of Love

by O'Mahony, Jason

  “Am going to have to honest here and say this all seems a bit loopy to me. I mean, a tablet that makes you fall in love? ”

  Tredestrian almost leapt from his seat in his enthusiasm to explain.

  “Ah, yes, but you see, it’s not a pill. Well, it is, but it is not just the pill. We have identified a series of chemicals that can duplicate the natural chemical reaction that communicates a sexual attraction within someone. It isn’t that far-fetched Mr. Triscuit. After all, humans create those very same chemicals, like dopamine and oxytocin, everyday. Now supposing you take those chemicals and give them to two people that have already been through a vigorous matching process. They’re compatible socially, economically, in their various interests. Then you add that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’.”

  Triscuit shot a look at the Prime Minister who completed the trio in the office. The look was a classic You-Brought-Me-Here-For-This?

  Fairfax saw that his friend needed more and dunked his chocolate finger into his tea.

  “Tell him about the test subjects, Dr. Tredestrian.”

  Julian nodded.

  “We have twelve test subjects we took from a control group of over 900 possibilities. Full psychological and social testing, identifying using scientific methods their requirements for a life partner. From personality type to social class to sexual preferences to interests and hobbies. What’s most interesting is when we delve into people’s sub-conscious wants. We show them images and measure their heartbeat and perspiration and breathing and brain activity. Everything ranging from attractive men and women to scenes of domesticity, from large-breasted women to well-built men to pictures of couples doing their shopping or washing the dog together. It all creates a collective image of an individual’s sub-conscious wants.”

  Actually, one of the most unexpected results was that our testing revealed that a small number of the test subjects were gay and didn’t even know it themselves.” The young scientist nodded enthusiastically at Triscuit.

  “You turned people gay?”

  The chief of staff didn’t actually care about people’s sexuality, if two blokes wanted to live as man and wife then that was their business. He wasn’t sure the government should be going about the place injecting it into people, all the same.

  “No, no, no, They didn’t realise that they were gay.”

  “I would have thought the mickey up their…”

  “Bill, please. Dr. Tredestrian, carry on.” The PM rolled his eyes at the chief of staff.

  “Sometimes people don’t even know themselves what they want. But we can help them clearly identify those aspirations. Anyway, we whittled it down to twelve people whom we thought were absolutely suited to each other. Then we administered the drug. We call it Cupid-12.”

  “And?” Triscuit asked, just the right side of curious.

  “And it worked. 100% success rate. The test subjects were fully informed, knew they were taking the drug and then sent on a blind date with the pre-selected partner. This was nine months ago, and they’re all still together. Two couples have announced their engagements.”

  Triscuit leapt from his seat. The PM hugged his mug of tea protectively.

  “Now wait a minute! You’re playing God with these peoples’ lives, matching them up and keeping them drugged. Of course they’re still in love, they’re all fucking high!”

  Julian’s eyes lit up.

  “No, you see, that’s the thing! We gradually reduced the dosage, actually replacing it with a harmless placebo months ago. They’re no longer on Cupid-12. I don’t want people addicted to a drug. That would be, well, unethical.”

  “Unethical,” confirmed the PM with another dunk.

  Triscuit calmed down, eyes narrowing. He sat back into his seat.

  “Twelve people out of 900. Isn’t that a very low success rate? Just over 1%?”

  “With 900 people, yes, but that is because we have a very strict matching standard. But if we had the entire single population on it, the rate would be far higher. Bigger pool, more possibilities.”

  “Just how high?” the chief of staff asked.

  Julian tilted his head, his lower lip jutting out.

  “40%?” he suggested.

  “Four in ten? That low?”

  “A four-in-ten chance of meeting your life partner in one week, Bill? Surely better odds than six pints of Tetley and a grope down the Rat and Carrot?” the PM suggested, before pointing at Julian.

  “How many people would you need in a pilot scheme to get up to 40%?”

  “About two million people, Prime Minister. And I have to stress that there is no guarantee that these matches will all last. If variables change…”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Share values can go down as well as up and all that. But how soon and what do you need?”

  “The software is ready, Cupid-12 has been cleared by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence and the National Identity Database can serve as an excellent basis for providing a ready-made collection of necessary data in terms of age, gender and geography. I need two million volunteers. We’ll also need legislation to allow for using the NID ex cetera and to create a government agency to run the whole thing.”

  “Hang on, we’re abolishing the National Identity Database in the second term. We’re the bleedin’ civil liberties party, for fuck’s sake!” Triscuit pointed out, grabbing one of the PM’s chocolate fingers.

  Julian nodded helpfully.

  “As you should. But you could ask people if they wish to stay on it. Make it voluntary, just for the National Love Database.”

  “Yeah, that’ll have to change too. The Ministry of Love!” Triscuit remarked. The PM smiled.

  “What about you, Dr. Tredestrian. What do you get out of this? The software patent? Cupid-12 royalties?”

  Julian shrugged.

  “As you know Prime Minister, I’ve made a lot of money from my R&D work, left me with more than enough cash to keep me going. The research has all been funded by charitable donations and foundations. Let the country have the patents. I just want to make lonely people happy.”

  “A philanthropist? We should have you stuffed.” Triscuit quipped.

  After bidding farewell to the young doctor, the Prime Minister poured a drink for himself and his chief of staff.

  “What do you think, Bill?”

  “That this is crazy shit, to be honest, but fuck it. We’re going to lose anyway, chief. If we can help a few lonely old souls, why not? Considering that all he really needs is enabling legislation, we could have this thing up and running on a pilot level in a few months.”

  “You know, Bill, it just occurred to me. Some people will still slip through the net.”

  “So?” Triscuit asked, swirling his brandy glass.

  “Well, imagine the effect on your fragile ego, when even the entire resources of the Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on your side and you still can’t get your leg over.”

  Triscuit frowned. Now that would suck.

  • • •

  The Deputy Assistant Commissioner called Switzerland in after Counter Terrorist Command had gone over the BOYZMEAT crime scene. Switzerland waited patiently in the waiting room outside his office which has his full title ‘DAC, High Profile Crimes/Celebrity Investigation Division’ on it. He constantly marvelled at the obsession with re-titling things, as if that somehow that made them more efficient. The renaming of the Special Branch and SO19 as Counter Terrorist Command was a case in point. The National Crime Squad had been re-titled the Serious Organised Crime Office and given the logo of — wait for it — a puma. Someone in the Home Office had obviously gotten a 24 DVD box set for Christmas.

  DAC Richard Likker openly encouraged his fellow officers to call him L-Man after a nickname he was convinced he got in college, although no one ever seemed to recall this being the case. Likker had been put on what had been called the Hyper Fast Track which involved being whipped straight out of the Met’s training college in Hendon and into special
ist operations, where he specialised in Human Resources and Vertical Organisation Integration and managed to avoid the slightest contact with anything as common as arresting criminals.

  He did however display a striking ability to surf the corporate jargoned politically correct wave overwhelming the department and schmoozed easily with the new breed of Home Office Minister to whom a grasp of Vertical Organisation Integration was regarded as a vital skill. When a media savvy officer wise to the need for political flexibility was required to head up the new High Profile Crimes/Celebrity Investigation Division, the L-Man eased into the position like a well lubricated object easing into a well lubricated place that well lubricated things should be going.

  Neither man liked each other.

  Likker didn’t like Switzerland because the man was obsessed with solving crimes, only one of the Met’s 19 Mission and Vision Objective Statements and not even a high one at that. Having said that, what really annoyed Likker was that there were still those in the Met and the Home Office who rated this crime-solving lark, effectively stopped him from transferring Switzerland to something more useful like the Ugandan Lesbian-Jewish Electrician Community Liaison Taskforce.

  For his part, Switzerland didn’t like a man who spent more time deleting the word “man” from documents than he did policing. Not that he was even sexist. Switzerland had no problem with a chairman or chairwoman. But chair? Were we now being ruled by furniture? Or hermaphrodites? As it happened, Switzerland’s brother James was now his sister Linda, something which he had just dealt with and carried on. He hadn’t needed a three-day transsexual orientation course to get over that one either.

  Switzerland had reviewed the BOYZMEAT file prior to the meeting and could see why the Met’s case management system, BOB, had suggested a connection, however tenuous. Technically, celebrities were involved and whilst the boyband had been killed directly, BOB had suggested that the level of planning involved in both deaths hinted at a possible link.

  “I have the Muslim and gay communities on my back over this, Switzerland. I want it resolved promptly,” Likker told him without a welcome. “Most importantly, these people were celebrities which I think you realise means, well, I don’t think I have to say it.”

  Switzerland did need him to say it. He hadn’t a clue what the fool was talking about and his blank stare told the DAC.

  “National security, Switzerland. National. Security.” He declared, tapping his desk with a shockingly well-manicured, possibly clear nail varnished hand.

  “National security. You mean, the use of a bomb? Possible Muslim involvement?” Switzerland asked. Likker darkened.

  “Switzerland, do I have to remind you that this department frowns upon racial, ethnic and religious profiling? The assumption that all extremist Islamists are all Muslim is racist!” Likker thundered.

  Switzerland sighed and pictured that little guesthouse he was going to buy down in Cornwall when he retired. If he could make it to retirement before being killed in an avalanche of Met policy statements defending the rights of heterosexual men to be lesbians.

  The DAC continued.

  “You know damn well the importance of celebrities to this country and its economy. Huge tranches of the media are creating employment reporting what these people do and therefore, attacks on celebrities are attacks on Britain! It’s not like we build cars or planes anymore!”

  DAC Likker then picked up the phone and started trying to make an appointment to have his negative aura energy dispelled, waving Switzerland away. The Detective Chief Inspector let himself out.

  • • •

  It was the chocolate cake that tipped the balance. They had the statistics. They knew who was eating their product. Some were young men bringing it over to their mothers or grannies because it was on sale in service stations and so it was either that, a tree-shaped car freshener with that plastic bit you pull down to release the scent that always comes off too early, or a copy of Razzle, and they were buggered if they were buying two copies. So chocolate cake it was.

  But the real target market was Janet.

  Janet was 32 years old, a PA or credit controller, single, lonely and getting plump. She watched shows like Grey’s Anatomy and America’s Next Top Model which the chocolate cake people sponsored, because those shows made her feel shit about herself which caused her to do one of three things: 1. go on a low carb/low sugar/low water/high banana/low apricot/high cow’s ear fad diet as recommended by some nonsense book published by their book division, 2. go into a depression and blow her head off with a gun manufactured by their small arms division, or most likely and thankfully 3. drown all her sorrows in a mixture of alcohol, ice cream and chocolate cake. Any which way, they were so knee deep in profit that the underside of their genitalia was regularly caressed by €500 notes. Kissed, even.

  Alexander Fairfax’s plan to boost the self-esteem of the nation, by permitting large numbers of the bovine class to stop grazing on their various products and actually meet people who valued them as human beings went down poorly. Very poorly. Outbreak-of-crabs-at-the-Mother-Superior-of-The-Year-Awards poorly.

  They were not happy and so, like Big Oil and Big Tobacco, Big Cake formed a well funded, well resourced committee headed up by Edgar Rilk, a PR specialist with a reputation for getting things done with the minimum of hassle, legality and not as much as a smidgeon of morality. Put it this way, if the field of public relations was a cow’s arse, Rilk was in it up to his shoulder.

  Originally, he had intended to go into politics himself, using his PR background as a base to get his hands on the fabled levers of political power. He managed to get himself elected a Conservative MP in the heady days of New Labour, when the only people electing Tory MPs were people who thought that not being able to thrash a servant to death was ‘political correctness gone mad’. But as Labour had began to dominate politics, Rilk realised that British politics was now a question of packaging, and the packers were now almost as important as what was actually contained in the packaging.

  Sebastian Spence had been his creation. Big Oil, Tobacco, Guns, Cake, and Offshore Money Hiding In A Big Tax Free Hole all wanted Fairfax out and a more flexible Prime Minister back in, and so Rilk had sought out and pretty much recruited the candidate from Central Casting for them. He had managed the younger man’s insertion into a Tory seat that was so safe that the most left wing candidate in the constituency wanted to bring back Rhodesia and believed that a good hanging never did anyone any harm. He had then manouvered Spence into the party leadership, appealing to the right of the party with Eurosceptic wog bashing. He appealed to the blue rinses with his good looks, subtle flirting and not-so-subtle banging of pathetically grateful constituency association chairwomen.

  Now, however, his creation was in trouble.

  The Fairfax plan was going down well. Scratch that, it was going down very well. All of a sudden the voting cattle were dragging their eyes away from Pop Idol and X Factor and suddenly noticing the Prime Minister again. This wasn’t good.

  Rilk was blunt with Spence. Opposing this in the open wasn’t an option. Telling the lonely to feck off was not a voter winner because as a group they were significant. What was particularly interesting and/or worrying from Rilk’s point of view was that a lot of the lonely had time on their hands, read newspapers, watched Newsnight and most disturbingly — the bastards voted. Having a handsome good looking man who seemed to spend a sizable proportion of his time under Hollyoaks mobile meat tell you that you should remain alone might just not be the strategy of least resistance. No, what was needed here was direct intervention: the scheme needed to be stopped dead, in such a way that the public would blame Fairfax for not delivering. Further research revealed that the entire plan hinged on one man.

  Dr. Julian Tredestrian.

  Rilk pointed at the photograph.

  “Get rid of Dr. Tredestrian, and the National Companionship Agency won’t work, at least, not before the election. Dr. Tredestrian must be dealt with. Term
inally.”

  Rilk had been impressed with the title Triscuit had no doubt poll-tested extensively: The National Companionship Agency. Nice. Not too Orwellian. And with the symbol of two chunky Honey Monster style hands holding each other like two nervous lovers going on their first country stroll, it was all just beautiful. And all in good old patriotic red, white and blue. Alexander Fairfax was making love patriotic, God bless him.

  Smart one, that Triscuit, Rilk thought.

  Spence shifted in his seat. The fact that Rilk said that out loud implicated him, not that he was really that surprised. This was no Nixon/Haldeman relationship. Rilk was in charge and Spence knew it. Rilk held all the cards in this relationship and a few spare packs besides.

  The PR man pressed a button on his desk and a small wiry man with a narrow face in a nicely cut grey suit entered the room. He looked like an accountant who took care of himself.

  “Sebastian, this is Yves Bertrand. Or as EuroPol call him, The Stoat,” Rilk said.

  Rilk had spent a lot of money on finding the right individual and The Stoat was the right candidate. Former French special forces, disciplined, with a reputation of clear kills and delivered objectives. Want an over-hyped celebrity to meet her death in a speeding car? Want a French presidential candidate’s career to seemingly self-destruct in a New York hotel room? The Stoat was your man. The master of the deniable assassination, the murder that would look like a confused tourist with a Hamley’s bag if it was made line up with other murders.