Shit. I feel like I have won a competition but I don’t quite understand what the prize is. Is it a holiday? A prison sentence? This is … Well, certainly unprecedented. Why have I been chosen? I don’t understand. I work on the 9 to 12 market, which is very different from teenagers – and I’m not even cool. You definitely have to be cool to work on teenage products. What’s going on?
‘Does anyone want to leave?’ Mac says, seriously. More nervous giggles; but no one moves. Rachel is opening a file of documents on her lap. They look like they might spill onto the floor but she gathers them together at the last moment and blushes slightly.
‘Good,’ Mac says. ‘Now. Some of you might be wondering why there are no people here from the K brand. Well, what can I say? We are looking for a different approach, right now. K is great but at the end of the day it is also just merch – I think that’s the term Georges used. That’s fine, and they do it very well, but it’s not what we want here. You have been selected very carefully for this and we think you all have exactly the right skills for this brief. I ask only a few things from you – apart from a killer product of course! First of all, I would like to keep this project a secret for the time being. Please don’t tell your colleagues about this or discuss it amongst yourselves while they are still here. We know how easily rumours can start, after all. Back at your offices, you will all have auto-responders activated on your PopCo e-mail accounts, which will tell people you have gone away for a while. There won’t be access to e-mail here, I’m afraid.’
Esther swears under her breath. ‘Shit.’
‘Mac,’ someone says, vaguely putting their hand up. ‘What about meetings and deadlines and so on? I’ve got a full diary next week.’
I’ve been wondering the same thing. What about my KidScout pack (which I was actually thinking of renaming KidTracker)? I’m supposed to present roughs in just over a week.
‘Your various team leaders will have been briefed, and everything will be postponed while you complete the assignment here. We’re putting all your deadlines back and rescheduling everything for this. It’s an important project. As far as everyone else in the company is concerned, you are all in the New York office, working with a team there on something relatively boring.’ He clears his throat and looks at us all again. ‘Yes, I’ll admit that this is odd. Why haven’t we planned this to take place in, say, two weeks, once you’ve all had a chance to at least tidy your desks, make it look like you’ve gone away to do something normal, organise the cat-sitter and so on? Well …’ He glances at me and gives me a half-smile. ‘Routine kills creative thought. We all know that. So, we give you two weeks to prepare for this assignment. In the meantime, you anticipate it, think about it, develop ideas about how it’s going to be and then you come here and … Nothing. All your energy would have been spent already. We wanted to give you a jolt; make you think differently. OK – it might not work. Hell, it might be a complete mess. But we decided that this would be the most creative way. And it’s also the quickest, of course, time being a factor here as well. Your old routines are suspended as of now. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you going back to London – or wherever – if you really need to. While you are here you are free to come and go as you like. But there will be a small team who will be available to organise any loose ends back at home if you would like them to, leaving you completely free to explore this problem in the most original ways you can. Seminars and activities start on Monday morning, so you should probably make use of the team if you need anything organised before then.’
Someone else is waving their hand about.
Mac smiles. ‘Yes?’
‘This might be a stupid question but why can’t we tell other people in the company what we’re doing? Why do we have to pretend to be in New York? Not that I mind … it’s just …’
‘No, no,’ Mac says. ‘Fair question. It’s all about morale. Firstly, there are people out there who would feel, frankly, disappointed not to have been chosen for this. We have selected you all in a very particular way, and not everyone would actually understand how or why we did it that way. Someone who has worked on teenage girls’ products for the whole time they have been at PopCo would feel, shall we say, aggrieved that he or she hasn’t been chosen for this. Perhaps he or she would feel it was a mistake, and would send me e-mails about it. Then again, there might be other people who would feel that this is a competition. They may want to enter, again by e-mailing me with their ideas. I could do without all those e-mails! Some other people may simply feel like there’s a party going on, to which they weren’t invited. And I don’t want to upset those people. It’s not a new business theory but it works. Don’t make people feel that they’re not special.’
Rachel gets up, nods to Mac and starts handing out documents. ‘OK,’ Mac says. ‘Now, the packs that Rachel is handing around contain paperwork that needs to be completed now. There are NDAs, new contracts, details of new salaries, terms and conditions and so on. Please sign them and hand them back to her. Anyone who doesn’t want to be involved in this project should probably say so now …?’ No one says anything. ‘Great.’ He sits down on the chair and starts saying something to Georges.
Non Disclosure Agreements? Why? This is becoming a Fort Knox of ideas. I thought all our ideas, thoughts, everything were PopCo’s property anyway. We all have NDA-type clauses written in to our normal contracts. Perhaps they feel they need extra reinforcements for their wall around any ideas we might generate here. I take my pack and start looking through it, still wondering why I’m here. I am not the kind of person you choose for special projects, I’m really not. I do my best to just get on with my life without being noticed, especially after all the odd things that happened when I was a kid. Now it looks like I’m part of a secret again and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
After everything is signed and handed back, Mac starts wrapping things up.
‘Please be as creative as you can, people,’ he says. ‘The old ideas can go out of the window because they just don’t work. We want a fresh approach to this problem. There will be no research, as such, just pure design and ideation. And, remember – if you think an idea is just too crazy, you may well be on the right track. Thanks.’ He looks down and then up again. ‘You’re free to go. Don’t forget the PopCo disco over at the Sports Hall. Oh – Esther, could you stay back, please – and you, Hiro.’ Esther doesn’t give us the funny look we expect but instead just says something like I’ll see you later, as we get up to leave. Both Mac and Georges seem to know Esther by her first name. I can’t help wondering exactly what her job is.
As soon as Dan and I are outside we are both like balloons popping.
‘What the fuck?’ Dan says.
‘We’ve been chosen,’ I say, kind of ironically but with a sprinkle of genuine excitement. And then we look at each other in a thrilling-secret way, our eyes reminding us that we just signed forms to promise we wouldn’t talk about this in public.
‘Disco?’ says Dan.
‘I suppose so.’ I feel dazed. ‘But I do want to go to bed early-ish.’
‘So what exactly was all that about, then?’ he asks me in a low voice, as we walk down the path with our torches. ‘Mac’s Weird Idea.’ He is referring to a book from work called Weird Ideas that Work: 11½ Ways to Promote, Manage and Sustain Innovation. The ‘Weird Ideas’ in the book include things like ‘Hire Slow Learners (of the Organizational Code)’, ‘Find Some Happy People and Get Them to Fight’ and ‘Think of Some Ridiculous or Impractical Things to Do, Then Plan to Do Them’. Innovation seems to mean that corporations are pretty much up for anything now, however crazy. Innovation is everybody’s best friend this century: shareholders love it, young bum-fluff managers adore it and even normal staff members quite like dressing up as rabbits for the day, pretending to be blind or being hired despite having no experience at all. The vacuum cleaner company Dyson apparently only hires new graduates. The Sony Playstation was, legend has it, invented by people entirely
new to the world of videogames. I have a suspicion that my own employment at PopCo came about as a result of a Weird Idea. Hire someone who has a strange skill but no experience in the toy industry at all.
I shrug. ‘Don’t ask me. I am genuinely baffled.’
‘Does this mean that we’re special, now?’ Dan asks.
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps.’
Chapter Nine
After spending the minimum time possible at the disco (half an hour), I make some excuses and retire to the dorm, hoping that no one else will return for a while. I tell myself that I am not scared, walking the gravel track up behind the main building. I tell myself that the night is beautiful, with its bats and silence and tiny waxing moon, and that the snuffling in the hedge outside the barn is probably a badger.
The old wooden stairs creak as I walk up them. Again, I make sure that I am not scared by concentrating on their music. It’s all minor chords here: no distinct notes at all. Perhaps minor chords played on wooden stairs aren’t the most soothing thing in the world because I jump like I’ve been injected with adrenaline when I open the door to the dorm and find a scruffy young guy standing by one of the other beds, holding something white in his hand.
‘Shit!’ I say, automatically.
He jumps too. ‘Fuck!’
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘You gave me a shock.’
‘Yeah, you gave me one too,’ he says back.
‘What are you? … I mean …’ I say. I want to directly ask him what he’s doing here but the words don’t seem to come out. Surely he isn’t going to be sleeping here? I’d assumed that the dorms were single sex.
‘Yeah, sorry,’ he says. ‘I came to deliver this, but I don’t know which bed is whose.’ The thing in his now shaking hands is an envelope which he holds up to show me. It has my name on it handwritten in blue ink.
‘That’s me,’ I say, pointing at the name on the front.
‘Oh – great,’ he says, and, after hurriedly giving me the envelope, he leaves.
‘Thanks,’ I say. But he has gone.
I immediately open the envelope. The message is typed. Dear Alice Butler, Please move to Study/Bedroom number 23 in the Main Building as soon as possible. There has been a mistake in the allocation of rooms. Sorry for any inconvenience. If you need any assistance with any matters at all, including those of a personal nature, please get in touch with Helen Forrest on extension 934. The letter isn’t signed by anyone. I don’t understand the extension number. There are no phones here that I’ve seen so far, let alone ones on a PopCo network. Maybe there’s one in my new room, wherever that actually is.
My tobacco pouch is on the bed, where I left it. I reach for it and roll myself a small cigarette which I smoke out of the window, watching a large moth bump against the outside wall-light. Well, it looks like I’m on the move again. Once I have finished my cigarette, and my brain feels more low-frequency and normal, I start re-packing my things.
In the dark, the Main Building feels like a place you’d get to after trekking through a bandit-ridden forest on an RPG. Approaching it from behind (rather than through the main entrance, or the Great Hall entrance), it seems like a drawing from Dan’s notebook, hazy with orange wall-lights and moth-shadows. There should definitely be flute and fiddle music here, I think, and the drunken clink of goblets held by goblins and elves. It is, however, silent. After walking through a stone arch, I can see a large rectangle of well-tended grass directly in front of me, to the left and the right of which are two residential wings, each containing what seem to be several little rooms. A few are illuminated, although I can see no people. Just as I am prepared to get completely lost, I see a small sign which says Study/Bedrooms 26–51, and has an arrow pointing around to my left. I turn my head to the right and find a similar sign pointing to rooms 1–25. This is where I need to be.
I walk on stone through a covered passage, with the grass on my left, as I count off the rooms on my right. Would people once have had sword-fights on this grass? It’s easy to imagine, although I can’t visualise corpses or blood, just people facing one another at dawn. Anyway, up one flight of stone stairs, through a small corridor with soft carpet and art on the walls, and then back on myself down another slim corridor and I am there. Room 23. There is an envelope on the door with my name on it. It contains the key, with which I unlock the door and go inside. Oh my God. This is more like it. The room has a polished, slightly uneven oak floor, a sloping, oak-beamed ceiling, and is furnished almost entirely with antiques: an old writing bureau with a little key (which immediately makes me think, Great, I can lock away my things, until I remember how easy it is to pick those things), a four-poster double bed, a little oak bookcase with a glass door on the front, and a comfortable-looking armchair. The room also has an en-suite bathroom containing a heavy-looking white enamel bathtub and a small sink and toilet. I feel a bit grubby so I immediately wash my hands and then dry them on a small white cotton towel. There is a little wooden mirrored cabinet above the sink, which I open. I expect it to be empty but find it instead full of expensive cosmetic and bath products, many in mauve glass bottles: seaweed and arnica bath soak; rosemary shampoo; seaweed shampoo, orange flower water, and quite a few other things. There are also delicate bars of French soap, two natural sponges, a new wooden hairbrush, nail-clippers, and a huge packet of condoms. For some reason this last find makes me blush and I leave the bathroom.
Back in the bedroom, I notice that the bookshelves actually contain books. There are many ideation and marketing titles (of course), a large dictionary, a bible and rather a lot of fiction that looks like it would appeal to teenage girls. So I am here because of Mac’s Weird Idea. But why wasn’t I here in this room in the first place? And why am I even part of Mac’s crazy project? I still have no idea at all. But seeing this room answers Dan’s question, anyway. Yes: for whatever reason, being singled out for this means we are special.
What I want to do right now is take a long bath, and then roll around luxuriating on the four-poster bed. What I actually do is take the dictionary out of the bookcase and walk over to the writing bureau. I unlock it with the little brass-coloured key and find – of course – that it is packed with expensive stationary. After packing away the complimentary stuff in one of the drawers, I take my notebook and pen out of my bag, place them on the desk, and sit down. The notebook is the type I always use – narrow-ruled in faded-looking pale blue – and the pen is my favourite of the many small fountain pens I own. I can’t really write with anything else. There is a little lamp which I switch on. I quickly write half of a lame-ish To Do list (1. Organise cat-sitter), ready to stick over the top of what I am doing if anyone comes along. Then I take out the PopCo With Compliments slip from my pocket and lay it on the desk.
XYCGKNCJYCJZSDSPPAGHDFTCRIVXU
Time to make sense of this. Ignoring persistent thoughts like Who sent me this? And also the fact that I want to sleep so badly my eyes are watering, I start trying to pick out patterns. It takes me about ten minutes to pretty much confirm my original, intuitive theory that this isn’t a simple mono-alphabetic substitution. So I am going to go down the Vigenère route and see what happens.
Patterns. You’d see more patterns in a longer piece of text, that’s for sure. Still, I can see a couple of interesting factors here, and I start making some initial notes in my notebook.
Mono-alphabetic ciphers have been in existence, in various forms, for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In these ciphers, each letter from the plaintext alphabet is replaced with another letter from a corresponding cipher alphabet. ‘A’ might be written as P, and ‘b’ might be written as S, for example. Each letter in the alphabet will have a corresponding letter which will always stand for it in the cipher. It is called ‘mono’-alphabetic because there is only one cipher alphabet. I remember having this explained to me when I was a child and suggesting that it would be ‘easy-peasy’ to crack any of these sorts of ciphers. The Caesar shift, yes: that is easy-peasy. All you do is
work out how many places the alphabet has been ‘shifted’ and you’ve done it. But if the cipher alphabet is sufficiently randomised then it does get a bit trickier. In fact, if you think of the cipher alphabet as a key, then the Caesar shift cipher has twenty-five possible keys (as there are basically only twenty-five ways of shifting the alphabet without actually rearranging it). However, if the cipher alphabet (a basic English twenty-six-letter alphabet) can be rearranged in any way, there would, as my grandfather once pointed out to me, be 403,291,461,126,605,635,584,000,000 potential keys to find, this figure being the factorial value of twenty-six (rather cutely written down by mathematicians as 26! and proving that they also have a thing for exclamation marks, just like the toy industry).
PopCo Page 10