London — Thursday, 15 May 2050 — 9:00am
The conference room had been built to look like the sort of place important decisions were made in, and then the people who worked in it had made enough important decisions to believe it.
It sat on the thirty-first floor of a building that was technically shared with two other production companies, a law firm, and a recruitment agency, although you would not have known this from the lift. The lift opened on the thirty-first floor into a reception area with the company’s wordmark in brushed steel on the back wall and a desk that nobody sat at any more because the entire floor had moved to passive entry two years ago.
The room itself was glass on two sides. One wall looked across the open-plan production floor, where forty-odd desks were arranged into clusters by department and the lights were already on. The other wall looked out at London — the Thames in the middle distance, St Paul’s to the north-west, the BBC complex that commissioned the programme a twenty-minute walk away.
The table was pale wood. Twelve chairs. A display wall at the end, currently showing the episode two running order muted, with each reveal slot blacked out. A side table with coffee in a silver carafe and a tray of pastries that nobody had touched. The assistant who had set them out had left at ten to nine and was now at her desk outside, trying not to watch what was happening through the glass.
The time on the wall was 8:57.
Priya Shastri was standing at the head of the table with her tablet in one hand and a headset in her right ear, listening to somebody in the studio at White City who had a question about a camera position. She was thirty-one, wore a grey blazer over a plain t-shirt, and had the kind of posture that let her stand in a room full of men without sitting down before she had to. She had been deputy producer on the show for four months, since the previous deputy had been fired in this room, through this glass, at approximately eight-forty on a Wednesday morning. She had been in a meeting on the floor below at the time. She had seen it happen.
“No,” she said, into the headset. “No, move it. I don’t care. Move it.”
She muted and looked up as the door opened.
Yara Osei and Daniel Ashworth came in together. Daniel was carrying two coffees. He handed one to Yara without looking at her — the easy gesture of a man who had been handing her coffees for long enough to have stopped noticing he did it — and she took it without looking at him for the same reason.
“Morning,” Yara said, to Priya.
“Morning.”
“Is he here?”
“Not yet.”
Daniel dropped into one of the middle chairs and put his feet up on the next one. The ring on Yara’s left hand caught the overhead lights as she pulled out the chair beside him. Eight weeks old. It was still photographed, occasionally, when she was out. She had stopped noticing that too.
“Ratings in?” Daniel said.
“Any minute.”
“Any minute or actually any minute.”
“Actually any minute.”
“Good.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes. Yara watched him for a second, amused, and then nudged his foot off the chair.
“Up.”
“I’m tired.”
“Up.”
He put his feet down.
Two other production staff came in and took seats at the far end of the table. Then a woman from the scheduling team, talking to someone on her phone, holding up a finger to nobody in particular. Then a man Priya did not know by name who worked in clearance and was, she thought, here for the discussion about tonight’s third reveal. She made a note on her tablet.
Halfway down the table, a man in a grey shirt was already there. He had been there when Priya arrived at ten to. He had a tablet open in front of him and he was looking at it, or past it, and he had not spoken to anyone since he came in. His name was Stephen Hale and he was the lead on the technical team, which was a polite way of saying he was the one who kept the machine working. He had short brown hair going grey at the sides and a face that people found difficult to describe afterwards because there was not very much to describe. He was forty-six. He did not drink the coffee that had been put in front of him.
Priya did not greet him. Nobody did.
The door was pushed open hard enough that it bounced against the stopper.
“Good morning, good morning, good morning. Where’s my genius. Where are my two geniuses. There they are.”
Gerald Mercer came into the room the way weather came into a room. He was sixty-four, broad-shouldered, silver hair cut short, navy suit that had been made for him in Milan on an account someone else paid. His voice carried easily across the open-plan floor outside the glass, and a couple of heads out there half-turned before remembering not to.
He crossed to Daniel and clapped him on the shoulder hard enough that Daniel’s coffee shifted in the cup. He bent and kissed Yara on the cheek without asking, the way he always did.
“Gerald,” Yara said.
“Yara. You look tired.”
“Thanks.”
“You look tired in a glamorous way.”
“Better.”
He moved to the head of the table. Priya, who had been standing there, stepped aside without comment, which was what she did every morning, and took the seat immediately to his right, which was also what she did every morning. One of the junior staff had, at some point in her first week, asked her if she minded. She had not understood the question.
Mercer looked at the tray of pastries. “Did anyone eat?”
“No.”
“Why do we keep ordering them.”
“Because you ordered them, Gerald.”
“Once. I ordered them once. In 2046.”
“It’s a standing order now.”
“Cancel it.”
“It’s been cancelled three times. They keep coming.”
“Cancel it again.”
“I’ll cancel it again.”
He sat down. He looked across the table at the man in the grey shirt, registered him the way you register a radiator, and looked away.
“Right,” Mercer said. “Let’s go.”
Priya had her mouth open to begin when the door opened again.
The junior who came in was twenty-two. His name was Jamie and he had been at the company for six weeks. He had a tablet in both hands and he was slightly out of breath because he had taken the stairs from the floor below. He stopped just inside the door as if uncertain whether he was allowed to be further in.
“Sorry — sorry — Priya said — the overnight numbers came back and I was told to bring them straight —”
“Go on,” Priya said.
Jamie looked at his tablet as if he was not sure the numbers on it were real. “Um. So. Tuesday’s broadcast has been confirmed by BARB overnight as forty-seven point two million on the UK live figure, plus another eleven point four on catch-up, which takes the combined to —”
“Fifty-eight point six,” Daniel said.
“Fifty-eight point six.”
“That is the biggest debut.”
“It’s the biggest debut in BBC history for a factual series. It’s the biggest debut of the decade for any series. Two major streamers have submitted format bids overnight — I’m not allowed to say which — and the international desk have been taking calls since six a.m.”
There was a beat.
Then Mercer hit the table with the flat of his hand, once, and laughed.
“WHAT did I tell you. What did I tell you. Biggest launch in BBC history. And what did they all say — what did they all say in commissioning, three years ago, when we sat in that room in White City —”
“They said no,” Daniel said, grinning.
“They said no. They said no because they are cowards. And where are those cowards now?”
“Taking meetings.”
“Taking meetings. Asking for meetings. Begging for meetings.”
Yara lifted her coffee. “To cowards.”
“To cowards.”
Daniel drank. Priya drank. The woman from scheduling drank. Jamie, still by the door, did not drink because he did not have anything to drink. Halfway down the table, Stephen Hale lifted his coffee an inch and set it down without drinking.
Mercer pointed at Jamie. “What’s your name.”
“Jamie.”
“Jamie what.”
“Jamie Ford.”
“Jamie Ford. Jamie Ford, you tell whoever sent you up here that I said thank you. You tell them I said it personally. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Go.”
Jamie nodded far too many times and left. The door clicked shut behind him.
Mercer watched him go through the glass.
“Did you see that,” he said, to nobody. “Did you see him. Trembling. You love to see it.”
“You used to be that guy, Gerald,” Daniel said.
“I was never that guy.”
Yara, without looking up from her phone: “He absolutely was that guy.”
“Watch it. Both of you.”
Priya cleared her throat.
“Can we get into the agenda.”
“Go.”
She tapped once on her tablet and the display wall at the end of the room changed from the running order to a blank slate. She nodded halfway down the table.
“Mark. You’re up.”
The man who stood was in his mid-thirties. Navy suit, slightly too large at the shoulders, the kind of suit that someone had bought six years ago when they got the job and had not been promoted since. He had a stack of printed folders in front of him. He began distributing them clockwise round the table. One each.
“This is the seventy-two-hour impact report on the episode one subjects,” he said. “Commissioned Tuesday evening. Compiled by my team overnight. I’ll walk through the top line if —”
“Top line,” Mercer said.
“Yes.”
Mark Lennox opened his own folder. He was the head of the audience and subject impact unit, which was a department that existed on paper and consisted, in practice, of himself and two researchers, one of whom was on maternity leave. He cleared his throat.
“Subject one. The teacher, Lisbon. The Vivaldi identification.”
“Lovely woman,” Yara said. “I flew out to her yesterday.”
Mark nodded. “Overwhelmingly positive reception. Both her school and the Lisbon conservatoire have issued statements. She’s been approached by three Portuguese broadcasters, two of whom I’d describe as reputable. A conservatoire in Porto has offered her an honorary residency. She’s received — um — several hundred marriage proposals, which are being filtered by her school’s administrative office. She appeared on Portuguese national breakfast television yesterday and handled it, in my team’s assessment, with grace. She is, we judge, handling it well.”
“Good,” Yara said. “Good, I’m glad.”
“Told you the teachers would land first,” Daniel said.
“Vivaldi in a classroom,” Mercer said. “Couldn’t write it.”
Mark turned the page. “Subject two. The mechanic, Delhi. The Kepler identification.”
“Love him,” Daniel said.
“Similarly positive. Some limited harassment from a small astronomy forum community contesting his signature as a misidentification — we’ve referred that to legal. The Indian state has publicly offered him a consultancy role at the National Observatory, which he has declined, politely. Press interest is sustained but manageable. The family has asked for privacy, which they are not getting, but no one is currently parked outside the house. His wife issued a short statement yesterday asking for time.”
“He didn’t want to do astronomy,” Daniel said. “I love him for that.”
Mercer laughed. It was a genuine laugh. He was, for a moment, almost warm.
“He’s a mechanic,” he said. “He’s a mechanic. He’s got three kids. What does he want with an observatory.”
Mark turned the page.
“Subject three,” he said.
The temperature of the room changed very slightly.
“Subject three,” he said again. “The officer in Warsaw. The Zhukov identification.”
There was a pause.
Mark glanced at Mercer.
“This one’s more complicated.”
“Go on,” Mercer said.
Mark kept his eyes on the page.
“No positive coverage in Poland. Within eight hours of broadcast there were protests outside his home station. Three separate groups organising — the Polish Committee for Historical Memory issued a statement calling for the programme to be suspended; a Polish-Ukrainian solidarity group requested that he be removed from operational duty; and a far-right organisation in the east of the country has begun using his name and image on materials that appear to suggest his identification retroactively validates certain historical — um — revisionist positions. Our legal team has sent them three cease-and-desists overnight. They’re ignoring them.”
He turned the page again.
“The subject himself has been placed on administrative leave by his department, initially for his own safety. His wife and two children were moved to an undisclosed location yesterday afternoon at the recommendation of the Polish state police. He has not spoken publicly. A member of the welfare staff at his police station has — um — made a note regarding his mental state, which I’ve flagged in the appendix. Local reporting suggests he has not eaten since Tuesday. His parish priest has requested in writing that the family be left alone. The family have had to —”
“Christ,” Mercer said. “Well. That’s one.”
Mark stopped reading.
“One out of three isn’t bad,” Daniel said.
“It’s the Zhukov problem,” Yara said. “We knew it would be the Zhukov problem.”
“We flagged it in the risk assessment,” Mercer said. “It was flagged. It was costed. Next.”
Mark was still standing.
He had more in the folder. He had the welfare officer’s note. He had the tracking data on the far-right materials. He had, on the last page, a recommendation from his team that the programme consider offering a formal statement of support, or failing that, a contribution to the security costs the Polish department was now incurring. He had been going to read it.
He looked at the room.
He read the room.
He closed the folder.
“That’s — that’s the top line,” he said.
He sat down.
Yara had been reading her own copy of the report as he spoke, turning pages back and forth, not so much reading as scanning. She looked up now. She smiled. It was a small, pleasant smile.
“Sorry — what was your name. I’m sorry, I know we’ve met, I’m terrible with —”
“Mark. Mark Lennox.”
“Mark. Mark, thank you for this. You did a thorough job. You’re fired. Would you gather your things, please.”
The room went still for one beat. Then it didn’t.
“I’m sorry — I’m sorry, what —”
Daniel had already stood up.
“You heard her. Go.”
“I was — I was asked to —”
“Go, mate. Go. Pack your things. Don’t make this a scene.”
“I — I don’t understand what I’ve —”
“Security’s through the other side of the floor,” Daniel said. “And I will call them. Out.”
Mark stood up.
He looked, for a moment that lasted longer than it should have, at Priya. Priya had her tablet in front of her and her eyes on the tablet and her face arranged in the very specific way that said she was not going to look at him because looking at him would not help either of them. He looked at Mercer. Mercer was watching him with an expression you could, if you were in a generous mood, have called amused. He looked halfway down the table, at the man in the grey shirt, because there was nowhere else left to look. The man in the grey shirt was looking at his tablet. He did not look up.
Mark picked up his folder. He picked it up with both hands because his hands were shaking.
He walked to the door. He opened it. He went through it. He closed it behind him.
Through the glass wall the room watched him cross the open-plan floor toward the other end of it. He was not running. He was not quite walking either. He was moving in the way a person moved when they had just been handed a piece of information they had not yet processed and their body was covering the ground while their mind tried to catch up.
Nobody on the open-plan floor looked up.
Yara exhaled through her nose.
“Sorry,” she said. “He irritated me.”
Mercer laughed. A full, delighted laugh. He clapped once, loudly, and leaned forward with both elbows on the table.
“There she is. There she is. You know what I love. You know what I love about this room. You two.”
He pointed at Yara. He pointed at Daniel.
“When I met them,” he said, to the rest of the table, “they were in lab coats. They had — what did you have on, Daniel, the first time you came to the pitch, you had — you had patches. On your elbows. Patches. Like a man’s grandfather. And now look at them. LOOK at them.”
“We take after you, sir,” Daniel said, grinning.
Mercer was delighted.
“There it is,” he said. “There’s my return on investment.”
Halfway down the table, Stephen Hale was still looking at his tablet.
Priya cleared her throat.
“Tonight’s running order.”
“Go,” Mercer said.
The display wall changed. The episode two structure came up in full — opening titles, pre-filmed studio package, the first reveal slot, the second reveal slot, the third reveal slot. All three reveal slots were blacked out and replaced with placeholder graphics. The names would come from the machine at transmission, live, to the room and the audience at the same time. That was the format. That was the whole point of it.
“Two headline reveals tonight,” Priya said. “Plus the third.”
“The big two,” Mercer said. “Who are we expecting?”
“The two headline signatures have been locked for a fortnight. Cleopatra VII. And Julius Caesar.”
“Caesar,” Daniel said, grinning.
“Caesar.”
“Oh, I cannot wait for Caesar.”
“The protocol is the same as Tuesday,” Priya said. “ORACLE pulls the identification live in the studio during the broadcast. Nobody in this building sees the name before the room does. Nobody in the room sees the name before the audience does. That’s the format. That is the only way we get to do this at all — the BBC were very clear on that at commissioning and upstairs have been very clear on that ever since.”
“I know how my own programme works, Priya.”
“I’m aware, Gerald.”
“I was making conversation.”
“Yes.”
Daniel was still grinning. “Imagine. Imagine if Caesar turns out to be — I don’t know, some — some plumber in Stoke.”
“Some tax adviser in Basingstoke,” Yara said.
“Julius Caesar in a retail park.”
“I am telling you now,” Mercer said. “If Caesar comes out of that machine as a plumber in Stoke, I am putting him on every front page in Europe. We will sell that. We will sell that in our sleep.”
“Cleopatra,” Daniel said. “Cleopatra’s going to be the one everybody remembers.”
“Cleopatra’s the money,” Mercer said. “Cleopatra is absolutely the money.”
“I hope she’s Italian,” Yara said.
“Why Italian.”
“I don’t know. I want her to be Italian. It feels right.”
“Feels right, she says. Like it’s a vibe.”
“It is a vibe.”
“It is absolutely not a vibe. It’s a subatomic signature.”
“Is it though.”
“Yes.”
“Because it feels quite a lot like a vibe.”
They were laughing. Mercer was laughing. The room was laughing.
Priya did not look at the clock on the wall. She knew what it said.
“And the third slot,” she said.
The laughter dropped away in the specific, practised way the laughter in this room always dropped away when the third slot was mentioned, which was by approximately one-third. Enough to change the temperature. Not enough to kill the mood.
“Don’t,” Mercer said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Don’t even whisper it.”
“Understood.”
“The third one is the one,” Mercer said. “Not the Friday one. Not Christ. That’s tomorrow, and nobody touches that until we’re live. This is the one before the one. The one that keeps them awake. The one that makes them think we might do anything before we actually do.”
Priya said nothing.
“Tonight gives them Caesar and Cleopatra,” Mercer went on. “Then we give them something they weren’t expecting. Something sharp enough to remind them the machine doesn’t care what kind of story they thought they were watching.”
Daniel leaned back, grinning. “The warm-up act.”
“No,” Mercer said. “The warning shot.”
Priya made a note. “So we keep it blacked out until transmission.”
“Until the machine says it.”
“Understood.”
“No teasers. No hints. No clever little graphics.”
“There aren’t any.”
“Good. Let Caesar and Cleopatra sell the night. The third one changes the room.”
Daniel looked between the two of them, grinning.
“All you on this one, mate?”
“All me.”
“He picked this one personally,” Yara said.
“I did.”
“You magnificent bastard.”
“That’s my boy.”
Priya tapped her tablet and the running order went back to the blank slate.
The room held the moment for a second longer than it needed to. It was the kind of silence the room liked. It was the silence of people who had a secret.
“One more thing before I hand off,” Priya said.
Something in her voice was different. Flatter. A grade more careful.
“We’ve had a note from upstairs.”
Mercer sat forward. The grin was gone.
“When.”
“This morning. Six-fifteen.”
He held out his hand and Priya put the note into it.
It was a single folded sheet of paper. Not an email. Not a printout. Thick, cream-coloured paper. No letterhead. Handwritten in black ink, three or four lines. Nobody in the room but Priya and Mercer had seen what it said.
Mercer read it. His face did not change in any way Priya could have described later.
He read it a second time. He refolded it along the same crease it had come in. He handed it back to her.
“Fine.”
“Sir?”
“I said fine. Move on.”
Priya did not move on immediately. She was looking at him.
“They want confirmation by end of day.”
“They’ll have it.”
Daniel glanced between them.
“What do they want,” he said, lightly.
Mercer did not look at him.
“What they always want, Daniel. For us to do our jobs.”
Daniel opened his mouth and then didn’t. Yara, who had been about to say something, reached for her coffee instead.
On the table, Mercer’s phone vibrated once. He glanced at it, just long enough to see who it was. He turned it face-down without picking it up.
Priya took the note and slid it into the back of her tablet case. The tablet case had a small leather pocket on the inside. She did not look at the note as she put it in. She did not look at Mercer.
Mercer sat for a moment longer, then visibly — physically, as a gesture — shook himself.
“Right,” he said. The grin was coming back. “Where were we.”
“ORACLE,” Priya said.
“ORACLE. Where’s my tech team.”
Halfway down the table, the man in the grey shirt lifted his head.
“Here, Gerald.”
“Stephen. How’s my machine.”
Stephen Hale’s face did the small, professionally pleasant thing it did when he was being addressed by someone who had not looked at him for forty minutes.
“It needs some adjusting for tonight,” he said. “Two of the cross-reference parameters drifted very slightly under load on Tuesday — it’s within tolerance, but I’d like to bring it back to centre before the broadcast. I’ll have it ready.”
“When.”
“Six.”
“Six-thirty. I want it in the studio at six-thirty.”
“Six-thirty is fine.”
“Don’t make me come looking.”
“I won’t.”
Mercer nodded once and turned back to the table. The conversation had taken fifteen seconds. The temperature in the room, which had dropped during the note-from-upstairs exchange, had come back up during it.
Daniel, beside Yara, was grinning about something else.
“Do you ever think about that Question Time clip,” he said, low, to her.
“Which bit.”
“The acronym bit.”
“Oh God.”
“Marcus asking what it stood for —”
“And you sighing —”
“I did not sigh —”
“Daniel. You sighed.”
“Fine, I sighed. And I said — what did I say.”
“You said it was chosen by our head of engineering who felt strongly about it and whom nobody wanted to argue with.”
“And Marcus said is she here tonight —”
“And you said she is not, but she’ll be watching.”
“She’ll be watching.”
They were both laughing. Yara put her forehead against Daniel’s shoulder for a second because she was laughing too hard to sit up properly.
“I still don’t know why I said she,” Daniel said.
“You panicked.”
“I didn’t panic. I just — I wasn’t thinking. I was thinking about the machine.”
“You panicked.”
“I was under pressure.”
“You were sitting in a chair, Daniel.”
“It was a lot of chairs.”
“That clip has seventeen million views.”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen.”
“God.”
They were looking at each other in the way they had looked at each other on the sofa that first night at the studio, eight weeks ago, when the world had not yet decided who they were.
Across the table, Stephen Hale was smiling.
It was a small smile. It was the smile of a man who had heard a joke he did not find particularly funny but who was not going to be the person who did not smile at it. He was not looking at them. He was looking at his tablet, which he had just closed.
Priya, at the head of the table, saw it. She did not know why she saw it. She had been reaching for the agenda and her eye had gone the wrong way. She registered it — the closed tablet, the small smile, the stillness of him — and then she looked back down at her own screen.
“Right,” she said. “Shall we —”
“Wait.”
Mercer was holding up a hand.
The hand had been in motion toward his coffee and had stopped halfway there. He was looking at nothing in particular — at the middle distance — with the specific expression of a man who had just had an idea.
“The two good ones,” he said.
Priya looked up.
“Sorry?”
“The teacher and the mechanic. The good ones. I want them on the sofa tonight. Before the reveals. Live interview. Both of them. Yara and Daniel do it together. Twelve minutes. Burying the Warsaw story under two human beings the entire country will fall in love with inside a minute.”
There was a pause.
“Gerald,” Priya said, “the teacher is in Lisbon. The mechanic is in Delhi.”
“I’m aware.”
“The broadcast is in twelve hours.”
“I’m aware.”
Priya looked at him.
He looked at her.
“Fine,” she said.
“Good.”
“Anything else.”
“Daniel on the sofa. Yara on the sofa. Nothing pre-recorded. Live, at the top, before we open the machine.”
“Fine.”
“Read-out by eleven.”
“Fine.”
“Go.”
He was already standing.
“Beautiful meeting. Beautiful. Six-thirty, Stephen.”
“Six-thirty.”
“Priya, eleven.”
“Yes.”
“Daniel, Yara, I will see you at White City at three.”
“Three.”
“We are going to make the best piece of television the British fucking public has ever seen.”
“Yes, Gerald.”
“Tonight. Biggest audience of the week.”
“Never going to embarrass ourselves, boss,” Daniel said.
“Never.”
Mercer was already at the door. He pulled it open. He stopped halfway through. He pointed at Hale without turning round.
“Six-thirty.”
“Six-thirty,” Hale said.
The door closed behind him.
The room held its breath for two seconds after he left. Then the air came back in.
The woman from scheduling let out a long exhalation. The man from clearance, who had said nothing in the entire meeting, shook his head once and started gathering his things. Daniel put his feet back up on the chair. Yara leaned sideways against him and closed her eyes.
“He’s going to kill me,” Priya said, to no one.
“He’s going to kill all of us,” Daniel said.
“He’s going to kill you last,” Yara said, into Daniel’s shoulder. “He likes you.”
“He likes you more.”
“He likes me different.”
They were laughing again. They were laughing the way they had laughed about the Question Time clip. It was the laughter of two people who had decided, some time in the last eight weeks, that they were going to enjoy this.
Priya did not laugh. She was already on her headset. She was already asking whoever was on the other end of it to get her the India desk, now, and to wake somebody in Lisbon. She was doing it in the specific calm voice of a person who had been asked to do impossible things before and had done them, and who understood that the alternative to doing this one was being fired through the glass at half past eight on a Wednesday morning while the rest of the floor did not look up.
Halfway down the table, Stephen Hale stood up.
He closed the tablet he had already closed. He put it into a soft grey case. He zipped the case. He picked up the coffee that had been put in front of him, which was now cold, and he looked at it as if he was not sure what it was, and then he carried it with him to the door.
He left the conference room without speaking to anyone.
Yara, her head still on Daniel’s shoulder, said, “Bye, Stephen.”
He did not hear her. Or he did not stop.
Through the glass wall, Priya watched him — even while she was saying yes, Delhi, now, I don’t care who’s awake into her headset — walk across the open-plan floor towards the lifts. She watched him pass the desk where Mark Lennox was standing in a coat, with a cardboard box, lifting things out of a drawer and into the box in the careful orderly way people did this when they wanted to make sure they did not forget anything. Mark looked up as Hale went past. Their eyes met. Hale did not slow down. Mark did not say anything.
Hale reached the lift. He pressed the button. He waited.
The lift doors opened. He stepped in.
The doors closed.
In the conference room, Daniel was already talking about what he was going to wear.
ns216.73.217.69da2
and then Add to home screen.