End Game

What I want, what I really, really want ...

When Emmy-Lee had spoken earlier to the kids – and she couldn't help but think of them as the kids – they had plied her with questions about Husk's plans. Her response had been to counsel them on the need for secrecy, dropping a few hints but not giving much away, thereby hiding that she had so little to give. Why this façade? It wasn't as if the pair's opinion mattered. She told herself it was to calm them, to stop them from doing anything foolish – something they seemed quite capable of.

They had identified one of Husk's technical people, apparently – a discovery that had left them somewhat over-excited. Natasha Kantorova, a virologist, some sort of medical researcher. Their breathless delivery of this fact suggested it had become the basis of all sorts of wild imaginings, something that hadEmmy-Lee wondering whether even the little she had told them was too much. Emmy-Lee, for her part, was already well aware of the Kantorova woman, of her tied-up blond hair, her high cheek-bones and her tendency to match dark tight-fitting dresses to clingy white blouses. As the only other female of consequence in the building, she couldn't help but notice. Beyond that ... She put this new information aside for later consideration, not knowing what else to do with it.

She had remained in the building after the pair left for the day, had waited as, one by one, the technical staff departed to wherever it was they went at night – they were cloistered somewhere nearby apparently, watched over by the security team, kept safe from the outside world until the moment of Husk's big reveal. And after that?

With a lack of anything else to do, she filled the time pondering this and other questions – trying to decide for herself what she thought of the man, acknowledging as she did so the futility of the effort. They had picnicked together in a park – that constituted the bulk of her exposure to him – an unnatural situation with someone far from natural to begin with. She knew now that her big exclusive was never going to happen – the NDA had seen to that. Why then did she feel this desire to spend more time in his company? Curiosity unfulfilled, she told herself.

A few stragglers were still at their desks when Husk finally appeared, but they soon departed leaving the two of them alone.

"I did the media training you wanted," Emmy-Lee informed her new boss. "It didn't take long. What we need now is a video we can upload. One in which you look earnestly into the camera and tell the world how you plan to ... Um, what was it again that you planned to do? Make the world safe for billionaire-kind by luring the useless nine-tenths of humanity into little boxes where they can while away the hours in cybernetic fantasy-land, rather than milling about outside and making the place look untidy?"

Emmy-Lee would have preferred to steer the conversation in a more personal direction, if only she could find an opening. She settled on a teasing tone as the next best option.

"Something like that, ..." Husk replied, with no suggestion of offense taken, "though I thought I'd hired you to put a slightly different spin on it."

"So that's all it is? Just another capitalist plot to keep the masses docile with shiny consumer trinkets and titillating diversions?"

"You should know. Wasn't that your job prior to this – selling people a peek into a parallel world, one that looks a lot like this one, apart from the lack of dirt and the extraordinary prevalence of beautiful people? There is no need to theorize about conspiracies. The people will happily drug themselves."

"It's not exactly working, though is it? It might have escaped your notice during your self-imposed exile but the peasants are revolting."

To Emmy-Lee's gratification, and for all that he was still spouting a party line, it seemed to be the human Husk who was with her tonight. Not that this blunted her urge to provoke, nor her frustration at it having so little effect.