“Why don’t I introduce you on cam?”
“Oh yeah sure.”
Soon they were both sat in front of a webcam which was above a monitor. Rob could see himself on the latter via the former.
“Hi chat, this is my hubby Rob,” Joseph explained. “He’s also into gaming.”
“Hi!” Rob waved. Chat reacted with hello’s and questions, which they both read. “Is that person called LegaliseGayMarijuana?”
“Yes, everyone has funny names.”
“So, what are you playing?”
“The new Resident Evil,” Joseph explained.
Rob turned to the camera and dead-panned “that’ll put the willies up him,” and then, “can we swear on here?”
“Yes, we’ve got an over eighteen’s setting, hence the game about zombies tearing people’s faces off. You can use innuendo and swears.”
“Oh good. So how many people are watching?”
“A hundred and three.”
“Fucking hell, that feels a lot considering…”
“Yeah, my schedule as a doctor really messes with my schedule as a streamer. Apparently, you need to be consistent and I’m a nightmare, turn up randomly.”
Rob tilted his head as he noticed something. “Why are they calling you daddy?”
“Oh, that’s just something that… happened… organically…”
Both dissolved into laughter. “Okay, back to zombie killing. I’ll watch.”
Joseph took the controller he was using and restarted. Rob watched while reading the chat and adding the odd comment.
“I’m not an expert on zombie games but perhaps don’t get eaten? You do know that’s a gun, and bullets fly out of it, you don’t have to get that close. Is that a vagina with teeth? I wouldn’t know obviously. Right. Go right. Right. You should have gone right.”
“Maybe I wanted to fall down this hole!”
“It’s like dating all over again. Ooh, I think I saw that guy on a dating site.”
“Complete with the rocket for an arm?”
“Well, he was into some crazy shit, that’s why I didn’t meet him. Also, the key to this game is not to die.”
“Not die?”
“Yep.”
“I wouldn’t have worked that out…”
“We should get some sort of bonus for car sharing,” Grayling mused as she drove her and Maruma home.
“That sounds perfectly reasonable in our increasingly eco-conscious world.”
“I like the way you said conscious and not friendly.”
“Well of course,” Maruma replied, “we know we’re destroying the world; we’re just not doing anything abou…”
The radio beeped and Maruma grabbed it. “Yes?”
“16 Cross Street, on your way home, right?” the controller said.
“Yes.”
“Get there now, nine call in, someone’s being attacked.”
The radio was on speaker, and Grayling put her foot down. Within minutes they slammed to a halt in a cul-de-sac of terraced houses, and in front of them was an ambulance and paramedics standing talking to an old man with a dog.
The detectives leaped out and ran over.
“What have we got?” Grayling asked.
“Fuck knows,” a clearly annoyed paramedic replied, “this man called in a sighting, right, two lads breaking into a house and shouting, so we mobilised. We got here first in the ambulance, and we hear screaming right, but we’re banned from going in cos fuck knows what’s in there. We want to go in, don’t worry about that, but I’m not getting suspended for some hero shit. We need you lot to go check it out.”
“Quickly,” a fellow paramedic replied.
“You did the right thing,” Grayling said as she ran to the front door of the target house, the one waved at by the medic. Maruma was right behind her.
They listened, hearing nothing. Both activated their batons, and as they slid into rods they slipped inside.
Going as carefully as they could they moved through the living room, checking behind chairs that no one lurked. Then it was a hallway, with stairs up, and a kitchen, which they ghosted into to find a growing pool of blood spreading over the floor. To one side of it, against the wall, was a black man in dark clothes, his breathing soft and ragged, a hand over what was evidently a gash in his chest. A bloody knife lay beyond him.
The door behind him into the garden was shut.
The temptation to get the medics in was huge, but both constables ran to check the rest of the house before concluding ‘they’ve gone’, and then they called the paramedics in. Soon the medics were on their knees, legs covered in blood, working on the victim.
Another car arrived, more police, with another ambulance right behind. As the four medics worked, the first arrivals briefed Lindleman and Sharma on what they had found.
Until Maruma raised a finger.
“Go on,” Sharma commanded.
“The eyewitness out front saw two men enter. Heard shouting. Stayed there and didn’t see them leave. We searched this house and didn’t find them.”
“Oh F, where are they?” Grayling said looking about, having realised the obvious problem “they didn’t go back out the front.”
“I think I know,” Maruma said, turned and led them into a very crowded kitchen. There is a back entrance, and I think the lock is one of those self-locking kinds. So, if they went out the back door, we wouldn’t see…” Everyone worked round the medics and peered.
“Spot on.”
“So, they ran through the garden, I’ll call,” but Sharma was again halted by a raised finger. “This isn’t school, you can just say stuff.”
“Where are they going to have gone? The back wall has glass atop it, the side walls are surrounded by bean poles, undisturbed bean poles.”
“I see where this is going,” Grayling said, eyeing up the answer. “The shed has a latch open.”
All four detectives turned. “They are hiding in the shed?” Lindleman repeated.
“Yes, yes they might be.” Grayling finished while staring.
“I think you’re right,” Maruma agreed, also convinced the latch on the front was hanging open.
“Alright, let’s psych them out,” Sharma opened the kitchen’s back door. The four detectives fanned into an arc round the shed. It was old and looked like a bad wolf could easily blow it down. If it came to that. “I know you can hear us. I think you can see us. There are four of us and two of you. You can either come out now, and be arrested for attempted murder, or we can call the firearms unit. Now we don’t like doing that because it costs a lot of money, and because they have guns, and if you so much as breath funny while they get you out of this shed, they are legally entitled to shoot you dead. Personally, I’m more worried about the cost, but you might value your safety more. So fucking surrender or you can have a siege where you definitely don’t have the advantage.”
The detectives stood ready to defend each other, wondering what would happen, when the door slowly opened up. A man stepped out, then another, both white men whose football shirts were smeared in blood.
“Hands up! Don’t move any further!” They did as they were told, the cold reality of their crime drilling into their minds. “Okay, lay on the ground, on your stomachs.” Sharma and Lindleman moved forward and cuffed each man, reading them the arrest speech and then checking them for weapons, before Grayling and Maruma joined them and got the prisoners on their feet.
“Okay, you pair got any reasons for this?”
One man spat on the floor and uttered a racist slur. “They should all fuck off back to Africa. Leave this house to me.”
“That’s it? You stabbed him cos he was black?”
“All of them are. Look here, two of you coloureds came after us. You’re all over the place.”
“Well isn’t this going to be a fun interview at the station.”
A paramedic appeared in the doorway and walked over to the group. “DI?” they asked.
“Yes.”
“This is now a murder investigation.”
Rupert Hume was relaxing at home. This meant a bottle of red wine (he only drank beer in public to keep that image going), stripped to just his pants in front of an eighty-inch television. Despite all that preparation, he couldn’t find a movie to watch and had spent five minutes scrolling through potentials.
That was when his phone rang, and he peered over to see the caller, but there was only a number. That meant someone not stored, that also meant someone who wasn’t a friend, but the problem with running for mayor was all sorts of people wanted to speak to him, and furthermore, he had to answer because he really, really wanted to be mayor.
“Hello, St. George,” he replied, slipping into character.
“Hello Mr Hume.”
Rupert nodded to himself. Someone with an actual researcher. “It’s late so what do you want?”
“I’m a representative of a major political party, who operate on the right of the spectrum.”
Hume knew how the world worked. If this was a legit call the operative on the other end wouldn’t give away who they were. Time to test. “And is that party mostly known by their initials?”
“We wish to speak to you Mr Hume.”
Okay, they’d passed that test. “What about?”
“We have an offer for you. With all due respect, while you are a large fish in Morthern, that is a small pond in the world, whereas we are big fish across Britain.”
“You know how to butter me up.”
“That said,” the voice was deep and confidant, the type Hume dreamed he had; he pictured a moustache speaking, “you are a very able operator, and may well soon be mayor. That will place you on the national map. We wish to offer you all the funds you might possibly need in this campaign, in return for your co-operation as mayor to support us, to represent us.”
Hume’s eyes glossed over. He had made waves, and now he’d been noticed. The major parties would finally come to him and ask him for assistance and support, he was rising… but he didn’t need any funds from them, and he didn’t want to be trapped, however he did want an ‘in’ to this greater world, to rise so he could be calling the shots, which meant… “I would be willing to meet and discuss our terms.”
“In that case it will be arranged. Let me check our schedule…”
“And I will check mine. I have a mayoral election to win…”
“Very true.”
Hume was grinning. The establishment had once thought they could use Hitler for their benefit, as their puppet, and look what had happened there. Perhaps he shouldn’t compare himself to Hitler, he thought, and he never would in public, but there was a man who knew how to get things done. As Hume would, when the BBC and other networks were begging him to appear and speak.
Howard Welb sat in front of a screen, a hand to his chin. In front of him was a dump of data he shouldn’t have had access to, the sort of information a rival business would want to protect. But this was the internet and Howard knew people who had skills and liked money, which was why he could see how all his online rivals were doing.
It was worrying reading for Howard, as he had a serious competitor.
The thing was, anyone looking at this data wouldn’t be surprised, and wouldn’t realise why. Howard ran a right-wing website, which slipped through algorithms unintentionally designed to pull people’s views ever more left and right, for ever easier service, for ever greater profit. Howard was seeing revenue rise as right-wing views grew and advertising revenues matched. You might think Howard would thus be pleased he was dominating the right-space.
But he wasn’t, because someone was dominating the left-space. Morthern Anti-Fascists, or MATHS as they branded themselves for some ungodly reason, were aggregating ever more people to them. But this was the thing; Howard wasn’t worried because of the politics of MATHS, he really didn’t give a shit about anti-fascists, just as his heart wasn’t really fascist. What he saw on screen was a zero-sum situation where undecided readers and their associated money were being pulled left and away from him. Pure maths, the struggle of click-hate versus wokenomics, an abstract pursuit of profit which used a system most people thought was the actual point.
Howard looked at these figures and pondered. He didn’t have the awareness to think an actual right-wing politician might launch a campaign to capture the heads of the people moving left, because he instead sought out more direct and practical solutions. The sort of weapons which didn’t need words.
Howard pulled up a web browser and began to log into an encrypted email account. He didn’t use this one much, and he knew nothing was really that encrypted on the web, but it would suffice to send a message. The details of the MATHS websites, and those of its writers, a time span, and an offer of a sum to be paid in bitcoins. What a wonderful invention they were, tulips for paedophiles, a money launderer’s dream. He sent the email and waited.
The reply was almost instant. A phone call would have taken longer, and Howard opened the email to find approval of the sum offered and that the hacking and destruction of the MATHS websites would begin as soon as the bitcoin arrived.
Which it did, three minutes later.
Howard sat back and smiled. You didn’t need to massage people gently away from a rival’s website when you could reach out and have it burned down; internet arson facilitated by layer upon layer of networks open to abuse. How had humanity taken the world’s greatest communication system and redesigned it without anyone realising! It was like a Bond villain had actually won.
“CPS have agreed to prosecute, we have another one nailed!” Sharma said as she flopped onto the sofa in the Bunker. Everyone knew that the job wasn’t done, that everything would have to be prepared for court (including their own statements), but just for now the people responsible were found, locked up and the case solved.
It wasn’t just Sharma who was slumped. Lindleman was on his chair but he looked far from the mood to wheel it about, while Grayling and Maruma were at their desks but both leaning almost at forty-five degrees.
“So, we solved a murder. Woo,” Rob said lifelessly, “I guess we go for a celebratory meal.”
“Yeah.”
No one moved.
“So, it’s not just me who isn’t in the mood then?” Sharma noted.
“No,” they all said.
Grayling put her hands to her eyes and rubbed. “You know what it feels like?”
“Tell.”
“It feels like Morthern is dividing into factions. This election is making it worse. The web is pushing it, it feels like everyone is being driven to extremes and we’re the people dealing with it.”
“I get that too,” Maruma replied to Grayling, “I get a very real sense that the friction between these groups is producing more violence, more deaths, and we’re just chasing around after them, mopping up.”
“Mopping up…” Sharma echoed, “yes that’s what it feels like. We’re not being proactive; we’re just chasing the actions of others. And I don’t like it one bit.”
There was a pause as they all thought. Morthern felt like a vortex and they were all getting pulled into it. The ‘black hole’ of the Bunker.
“I agree,” Lindleman said sadly. “The whole place is going to shit cos of these lunatics and we can’t even arrest them for anything. I mean what really is the point of us when we can see the world falling apart but can’t do anything about it? We just have to wait for it to happen!”
There was a knock on the door. There didn’t have to be, but DCI Wick did so before gently walking in. “Alright, you all look worn out.”
“We’re fine sir,” Sharma replied, refusing to give any sign of weakness to anyone.
“Yes, you say that,” Wick began, “but it’s all across your faces. You’re fraying, so I want you all to go home and relax, have a break. And I mean it, no police work. Chill, relax.”
“Maruma has a games test coming up,” Grayling offered.
“Yes, you two prepare for t
hat.”
“Oh, no, it’s his…”
“Yes, we will,” Maruma confirmed.
“And you two, be with your families.”
“Yes sir,” Sharma replied, as she slowly stood up. “The restaurant will miss us at the moment.”
“Yeah, I mean in the sense it absolutely won’t miss us in any way, yes it will.”
“Thanks, Rob,” Sharma replied sarcastically.
“Maybe we could get a rum dispenser,” Rob asked, “yunno, an optic, that would definitely help with evenings, and then a taxi to take us home?”
“I think that would be an HR issue,” Wick said laughing warmly.
“Yeah, I guess it would. Oh well, you know what I’m doing when I get home!”
“Hello there,” said a smartly dressed woman to the receptionist of the Morthern Star, “I’d like to speak to Mr Stremp please.”
The receptionist looked up and saw both the woman and a man equally professional, both standing looking around the office.
“Mr Stremp isn’t working in an official capacity at the moment. He is running for mayor.”
“But he’s in the building?” the new arrivals said with the confidence of people who knew one hundred percent that he was.
“What is it about?” the receptionist checked.
“We wish to discuss St. George.”
“I’ll ring him straight away.”
Which was why, a few minutes later, the couple were being marched into Stremp’s actual office, which he just so happened to be sat in.
“Hello,” he said forcing himself to be polite. “I hear you’d like to see me.”
The couple assumed their positions, stood with backs straight and slightly apart. “We’d like to talk about St. George,” one said.
“Specifically, your coverage of him.”
Stremp smiled. He was going to destroy these fascist apologists who’d dared come to his very office to pick a fight with him.
“We want you to stop covering him,” the woman said.
Stremp’s mind made a hard stop. They what? “Explain.” Really, explain! He had not anticipated this.
“We are members of Morthern’s anti-fascist community, and we are campaigning for St. George to be de-platformed. It is simply unacceptable that all the press do is simply repeat whatever he says, spreading his words of hate and derision.”
Gilded Hate Machine Page 18