by Ade Grant
SONS OF YORK
ADE GRANT
Also by Ade Grant
NOVELS
The Mariner
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Seeker
POETRY
Zigglyumph and Other Poems
Copyright © Ade Grant 2014
Ade Grant asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of this work may be reproduced, copied or otherwise redistributed without the express permission of the copyright holder. If you want to reproduce, pass on, or quote any part of this text, please apply to [email protected]
All work contained within is fiction and any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Artwork, used with permission, by Tom Charles For more information about this book, other works and live appearances please visit www.adegrant.com
Table of Contents
Frothbot
Sons of York
About The Author
Interview With The Author
About The Illustrator
About The Mariner
FROTHBOT
In Jocelyn’s opinion, the barista eyed his assortment of maple-glazed muffins, cheese-baked focaccia and toasted pecan cookies a little too ravenously for comfort. A healthy desire for one’s own produce was all well and good, a reassuring stamp of approval in fact, but openly drooling over them spoke a little too much about the financial state of the business itself. The way his eyes swivelled above gaunt cheek-bones hinted to a diet denied of the goods he sold. She willed him to take one, to hell with balancing the books, the business would fold soon anyway.
If he’d been contemplating such reckless indulgence, the plans evaporated as she stepped inside, London fumes following her like hornets, only to be repulsed by the pleasant aroma of coffee-beans and (relatively) fresh-baked bread. The barista tried to look nonchalant at the prospect of her custom, though his right cheek began to twitch. He favoured his left foot in a jubilant little hop as he approached, an enthusiastic spring that landed like a faux-pas.
‘Wha’da can I’ya ge’dya?’ he asked in a rather phoney Italian accent that only added to their mutual discomfit. Already the camera in her contact lens had scanned his face and retrieved a bountiful array of information from his online profiles. The filtered information appeared in her sight: Thomas O’Brian; thirty-two years old; two brothers, one sister; previous residences in Wandsworth, Sheffield and now Newington Green (flat-share); higher education: none; favourite band: The Kinks; number of friends listed: two hundred and thirty-one, number of active friends: thirteen. Jocelyn glanced top-right to select photos and then bottom-right for the holiday sub-category. Immediately her vision was filled with various opaque thumbnails of holiday destinations, all along the English coast.
No Italian connection to speak of.
‘I’m just meeting someone,’ she said and nodded inside.
The coffee-house was designed to cater for the dwindling take-away market, though beyond the long counter it did indeed have a few small tables, all empty except for the man she was there to meet. The barista bowed and motioned her inside with an outstretched arm, another misjudged gesture in an unbroken line of cringe-worthy pleasantries. Jocelyn didn’t blame his desperation; things were tight all over.
Her arrival didn’t elicit much of a response from the man at the back of the cafe who continued to lean back in his chair, staring into space. There had been a time when gazing off, slack-jawed with juddering pupils, would have been perceived as a sign of some psychic disturbance. Not anymore. Now it was all quite common.
He jumped at the sound of her chair scraped along tiles. ‘Jocelyn Peters?’
‘As requested,’ she said and waited for him to finish whatever data-stream he was currently plugged into. Finally he made a definite dual-blink, eyes closing for a fraction longer than what felt natural, before returning to the physical space, his eyes momentarily crossed, unsteady. After a prolonged period of surfing the web using contact-screens, a user was often susceptible to a quick bout of nausea.
‘Jeremy Laughton.’ He shook her hand without standing. ‘Thank you for meeting me. I liked your piece on the Private Member’s Bill.’
‘That’s going back a long way,’ she said as she took a seat, impressed that a political aid would have gone to the trouble of tracking down such an old newspaper article. ‘I don’t get to write things like that anymore,’ she added, a little wistful. ‘I’ve been on international news for quite some time.’
Laughton nodded. If he’d dug up an article almost a decade old, he certainly knew her CV backwards. ‘But technically you do hold the political brief, correct?’
‘Domestic, yes. But there hasn’t been anything to write about for years. Nothing of substance. Not since the election.’
Laughton glanced away and played with the teabag still brewing in his pot. ‘Well,’ he said after a lengthy pause. ‘I think it’s time you had a story.’
With terrible timing, the barista appeared at her side. Jocelyn ordered a latte she didn’t want.
‘Are we on the record or off?’
‘Off,’ he said. ‘An anonymous source close to a senior minister sounds about right. I don’t want my name connected to this. It’s not embarrassing, the information I’m giving you has been approved, it’s just names appearing in print smacks of sloppiness, don’t you agree?’
‘I can see how some might think that.’
‘Would you like to grab some lunch before we begin?’ Laughton gestured towards the counter and the array of tempting cakes, all at exorbitant prices. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make.
‘No, coffee’s fine.’
He shrugged. ‘Where would you like me to start?’
‘How about telling me what department we’re dealing with?’
‘Ah, of course,’ he said. ‘Do-PaPA.’
Jocelyn waited for him to continue, but all she got was a smug smile.
She sighed. ‘Every department feeds information into the Department of Projection and Policy Analysis, that doesn’t help me much. Care to be a little more specific? Welfare? Defence?’
‘None of them,’ he said. ‘I work with the PaPA itself.’
The barista placed the latte in front of her with a small dish containing three brown sugar shards which, if combined, might just form a cube. Jocelyn dropped one into her foamy drink whilst palming the others.
She frowned, dubious about his claim to be at the very heart of government. ‘So the leak…’
‘Is in direct relation to the PaPA System, yes.’
‘Why have you come to us with this? My paper has been… less than flattering in the past.’
He laughed. ‘Yes, well, most of the press still are. Your kind - journalists -’ he added as if she might have misconstrued his meaning, ‘- like to claim some foresight of their own. A decade ago papers were full of self-righteous predictions of doom and gloom at even the most banal of initiatives. A little trade deal here, a tax hike there, and goddamn, you’d think the whole world had ended.’
‘And that’s why you embarked upon the most expensive public works project in history, was it? To silence a few disgruntled hacks? Why, Mister Laughton, on behalf of my profession, we ‘re deeply flattered.’
‘Oh come now,’ he persisted. ‘You know that isn’t true. The PaPA System is far cheaper than several other departments and ten times as important. The NHS dwarfs it, as does Defence. Plus, we’d never dream of doing anything to gag our friends in the press.’ A hint of lasciviousness presented itself in his smile, to which Jocelyn found herself wondering if he’d had sex with her yet. She tried to remember what it had been like two nights ago when she’d fucked him, but the experience hadn’t left a lasting impression. It was custom
when coming in contact with a person of the appropriate age, to generate a digital sprite of them from the reams and reams of photographic imagery scattered about their profiles. This avatar could then be applied to any of a vast array of sexual scenarios pre-programmed and ready to be projected directly into the eye. Most of the time she’d try an acquaintance once, some like Laughton even before she’d met them in person, and then move on, never to consider them again. Occasionally there’d be a spark, some unknown ingredient that made her want to progress beyond the digital and into the flesh, but whatever that magical element was, Laughton didn’t have it. His body had been decidedly average, or at least as far as the sprite-creation software could deduce from his photos, and even those estimates tended to be on the optimistic side. In reality dicks were never as thick and breasts never as pert as their digital counterparts. Flesh also had the distinct disadvantage of not being able to be turned off.
He mistook her silence for quiet disapproval. ‘I admit the process hasn’t been cheap.’
‘Cheap?’ she exclaimed, incredulous that he could be so blithe. ‘Christ! Budgets have been frozen for eight years to funnel money into this boondoggle of a department. Frozen budgets with a national inflation rate at six percent. Do you know what that’s done to our schools? To our hospitals?’
Laughton nodded along with her complaints as if he shared them and was not at the very heart of the problem. ‘It’s bad, I know, but think of this parliament and its predecessor as a lengthy period of investment. For all that tightening of our belts, we now have a computer system that can simulate our country down to the minutest level. Any policy you can think of can be fed in to see its effect on the economy, social cohesion, international relations, anything; it can all be tested. There’s no need to argue anymore.’
In a sense he was right. Since the PaPA System had booted up there’d been no need for parliamentary debate. If an MP wanted to suggest a course of action for the state, all they need do was jot it down and submit it to the Department of Projection and Policy Analysis who’d then feed it into the machine and watch the results. With short, medium and long term ramifications accurately simulated, the proof of every policy was in the pudding. Resorting to parliamentary rhetoric in such a world seemed about as archaic as waging war upon Bosworth Field.
Of course, there had been those who’d objected. Mostly the dissent had taken place in the first couple of years, distraught claims about the dehumanisation of politics, as if that process hadn’t been going on for decades. It didn’t take much to silence the protestors. From a minister of state to a back-bench pariah, every politician had a litany of policy claims, some sensible, most daft, and all rich pickings for PaPA’s supporters. To smear an opponent, all that was required was to run one of the more reckless recommendations through the system and publish the results. Believe in sanctions against Saudi Arabia, do ya? Well let’s take a look at this then…
Parliament became a ghost town, and yet it was not until the end of that first term, as the general election reared its head, did the wider grumblings begin.
‘You should have given us our vote,’ she said, arms folded and her coffee untouched. ‘A machine shouldn’t decide elections.’
Laughton nodded in grudging agreement. ‘Yes, in hindsight I believe you’re correct. Although I can assure you the result would have been exactly the same. The PaPA is one hundred percent accurate, so going through the actual motions of holding an election is a complete waste of time and resources. Why spend money campaigning and counting votes whilst risking instability in the financial markets, when we can merely ask the PaPA to hold it for us?’
‘Some would call that rigging an election.’
‘Only those without an imagination. Come on Jocelyn,’ he said, a patronising tone to his voice. ‘If we’d rigged it the results would have been way more favourable.’
‘You gained seats. That’s suspicious enough for a sitting government.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Both Labour and Conservatives gained seats, but only a handful and all at the expense of the smaller parties. A quirk of first-past-the-post. As you well know, our vote share -’
‘Predicted vote share.’
‘- our vote share went down. And in the same downward trend that we’ve seen for the last six elections. Nothing suspicious about it.’
‘Still, you had no right. The people should be consulted, no matter how predictable their opinion.’
‘Yes, we did miss a trick there. If we’d held the election and proved that PaPA’s simulation was correct we’d have done away with elections forever. As it stands we’ll have to go through the same arguments all over again next time around.’
Jocelyn tapped her teeth as he talked. Arranged down the right side of her vision was a list of folders, each containing sub-categories of information sorted in real-time by their relevance to the conversation. She didn’t need to access them, any old hack knew the stagnant political scene all too well, let alone a journalist of her calibre.
‘I think the country would be a lot more forgiving if we saw some of these policies put into action,’ she said. ‘It’s been eight years and other than this dubious election result not a single piece of legislation has been passed. You’re not a sitting parliament, you’re a sleeping one! I mean… fucking hell, Laughton, is Westminster aware of the crisis we’re facing? People on average incomes can’t afford food. They just can’t!’
‘What can I say? Global prices are beyond absurd. This is a problem affecting the whole western world. We do not have the industry capable of producing the food we need; we’re a big-brain-low-grain economy.’ He looked to her as if this was answer enough, but crumpled in the face of her contempt. ‘Alright, alright. We’re working on it. Numerous initiatives processed by the PaPA System have seen food prices drop by up to sixty-three percent.’
‘Sixty three? Implement them, then!’
Laughton looked genuinely aghast at the suggestion. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Our department is running every conceivable reasonable policy, plus plenty of unreasonable ones too. We don’t just run a simulation of an income tax threshold at thirty percent, but twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven. And then we move on to the decimals: twenty-eight point three, twenty-seven point six. Now, without risk to the state, we can try every possible tax option, and we’re not going to rush into the first one that offers a favourable outcome. What if there is a better one just around the corner? Why waste time implementing the lesser?’
Jocelyn frowned. It was the same argument they’d trotted out in the first year. And the next. And for the six that followed. A country slowly rotting whilst the government played its games.
As they spoke, her latte hummed, the small frothbot within swallowing in air and shitting out foam. Whenever Jocelyn took a sip the small robot would dive down and cling to the inner bottom of the mug like a barnacle. Once set down, it would merrily resume its duty: maintaining two point three centimetres of foam. Posh youngsters made a game of trying to catch the frothbot with their spoon, and in moments of boredom Jocelyn had tried herself, but the damn things were swift and once suckered onto the ceramic there was no pulling them loose. Reportedly, it was so they’d survive even the most turbulent of dishwashers, but Jocelyn found there was something oddly sentient about the little robots. Rumour was that if you broke a frothbot’s cup, it couldn’t be transferred into another. The robot would refuse, heartbroken, mourning the loss like a Scottish terrier.
‘So how close are we to seeing this new tax code?’
‘Very,’ he said, leaning close and obviously excited to share the news. ‘It’s actually a fascinating process. We have worked through the entire tax rainbow, and you know what we’ve found? There are ‘dark’ and ‘sweet’ zones.’
‘Dark and sweet,’ she repeated.
‘Yes.’
‘Not, ‘dark and light’? Or ‘sweet and bitter’?’
‘We’re not baking a fucking cake, these are just labels.�
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Jocelyn smiled, enjoying herself at his expense. ‘As you say.’
‘So anyway,’ he continued, a little cross, ‘we get these sweet zones that pop up, tax rates that encourage the maximum in both growth and revenue. Sometimes these zones are predictable, like at the height of a bell-curve, other times they come completely out of the blue. I’m talking the slightest adjustment and – bang – suddenly we’re looking at growth spurt of two, three points.’
‘And the dark zones?’
Laughton blew out the side of his cheek. ‘Those are pretty scary. If you’d seen what I have, you’d never trust a human government again. I’ve literally seen society implode through a combination of a steep hike in council tax and a ban on imported beef. Seriously, people are crazy. Politics is all about navigating through a maze of powder-kegs with a giant flaming torch sticking out your arse.’
‘That can’t be true.’
‘I swear, it is. Now granted, these dark zones are rare, but not as rare as you’d think. Nor are they solely limited to the policy extremes. An economy is a horrendously complex beast, the sheer volume of variables at play! There’s a corporation tax dark zone that we have come within a whisker of in the past, a breath away from anarchy and we never knew it.’
‘And that one would be? Off the record…’
‘Ha! Not likely,’ he said, shuddering at the thought. ‘If people knew how close we’d come to total collapse, there’d be a panic.’
She slumped back into her seat, disappointed at being denied the punch-line of an anecdote that’d go down a storm at the Christmas party. ‘So you’re still looking for the sweetest of zones?’
‘Yes, but sometimes those zones shift. You fix on one, and then after a period of time it changes to another. That’s why we tried oscillating tax codes, random spots of relief, sporadic incentives, a spiralling corkscrew of credits. And you know what, it seems to work. Unbelievable.’