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  “No,” said Morag.

  “Oh. If it had been then that would have raised the chances of you dying. A subconscious desire to fulfil the prophecy. Besides, I would question the continued readership of any newspaper or magazine telling said readership that they are going to die.”

  Rod came by the kitchenette and clicked his fingers.

  “Giving you fair warning, the door is open and I’m making a beeline for the best pastries.” He steered Morag away and down the corridor. “We’re doing a thorough check of the Vault contents later this morning, on the off chance that anything else Izzy Wu might have touched would give us a clue.”

  “I’m to be presented for Yo-Morgantus’s approval this morning.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Rod held the meeting room door for Morag.

  “And I think I’m going to die,” she said.

  “Then you’d best tuck in. Seize the day.”

  A tray of Danish pastries sat beside the drinks on the meeting table. At the head of the table stood a flipchart on which someone had written ‘Selling the Apocalypse – think outside the box!’

  “Excellent,” said Rod and crossed out the words ‘outside the box’ on his grid sheet. “Got one before we even start.”

  Morag looked at the peculiar buzzwords and phrases on the sheet Nina had given her. “No one would really say these words,” she said. “Would they?”

  “Now,” said Rod, “some might say that Chad and Leandra are a right pair of Home Counties wazzocks and that any amount of shite pours out of their mouths…”

  “But…” Morag prompted.

  Rod looked at her. “But nothing. Chuck us one of them cinnamon swirls.”

  Apart from Chad and Leandra who led the session, there were five of them there. Nina, Rod, Vivian, Morag and a twinkly-eyed man who smiled easily and was introduced to Morag as the Venerable Silas Adjei.

  “I’m an archdeacon in the Birmingham diocese and the regional inter-faith Venislarn link officer,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “That is a mouthful,” Morag said.

  “Most people make do with Silas,” he said.

  “Okay, team.” Chad clapped his hands together. “We’re all here, we’re all refreshed. Welcome to the dreamnasium. Get ready for a workout.”

  “Fuck me,” whispered Morag in disbelief and then immediately turned to the archdeacon to apologise. Silas smirked silently and shook his head.

  “If you recall last month’s session,” said Leandra, “we talked about how we could view our marketing goals through a grief analogy matrix.”

  Morag scrabbled for a pen and crossed ‘analogy matrix’ off her chart.

  Leandra wrote the letters DABDA down the flipchart. “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance,” she said.

  “And the point is that when we go public with the Venislarn,” said Chad, “we move the population through these stages as quickly as possible.”

  “Find speedy resolution at each stage and then move on, yes,” said Leandra. “But we must have resolution. Can't have people bouncing back and forth, unresolved.”

  “This morning’s session therefore is to get your insider’s perspective on how we use the grief analogy matrix to raise Venislarn brand awareness.”

  “Is this the best way to work out how to go public?” asked Nina.

  “It’s as good approach as any, Nina,” said Chad. “Our current train of thought.”

  “Either get on or get out of the way,” said Leandra.

  “Oh, I’m definitely on the platform, Leandra,” said Nina, deadpan. “But I’m just checking the route before I get on.”

  Leandra nodded approvingly.

  Rod leaned over to Nina and whispered. “You are not allowed to cross them off if you were the one who said it.”

  “Spoilsport,” she whispered back.

  “So,” said Chad, “that day comes. The Venislarn are wheeled out onto the public stage, the ‘absolute horror at the heart of the universe’ —”

  “Oh, the horror, the horror,” said Leandra in a pantomime voice.

  “— is made known to all,” said Chad. “What’s the initial reaction going to be from the populace?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Terror,” ventured Silas. “Abject fear.”

  “Good, good.” Leandra made a note on the flipchart.

  “And excitement,” said Nina.

  “Okay.” Leandra refrained from noting that particular suggestion. “Care to handhold us through that one?”

  “We’ve just been told that the world is going to end at some point,” said Nina. “There will literally be no tomorrow.”

  “You mean figuratively,” said Vivian.

  “I was using the word ‘literally’ figuratively,” said Nina. “So, there are no consequences. We have just been granted complete freedom to do what we like. The world is suddenly ours to trash, like when your mate’s parents are away and she’s decided to throw a house party. Freedom. Excitement.”

  “Terror,” said Silas.

  “Are you putting Nina’s idea down?” asked Chad with a sad face. “Or are you building on it?” he asked with a happy face.

  “I would like to colour Nina’s statement by pointing out that the overwhelming majority of people will be afraid, not only of the Venislarn but of the idiots who think the end of the world is an excuse for a party.”

  “But a likely first response would be….?” Leandra gestured to the first D on the flipchart.

  “Denial!” said Chad.

  “Can we mindscape what that would be like?” said Leandra.

  “People will think it’s a conspiracy,” said Vivian.

  “Revealing the Venislarn will be a conspiracy?” said Silas. “Surely, a conspiracy’s what we have now. Going public would be uncovering the conspiracy.”

  “And people will see it as somehow covering up a greater conspiracy,” Vivian countered.

  “Misdirection,” agreed Rod, reaching for another pastry. “Stage magic. An MP’s sexual indiscretions hit the headlines and cause scandal for the government and, incidentally, at the same time, the government sneaks through some crafty legislation that, I don’t know, legalises child murder or summat.”

  “And I think that would be a good thing,” said Vivian.

  “Child murder?” Morag turned to face Vivian.

  “Allowing the populace to think they are being lied to. I have an ambivalent attitude towards child murder. No, we should allow the people to think it is a lie. We should encourage that very thought. It was how Greg – Vaughn’s predecessor – dealt with major incursions in the city.”

  Morag gave her a questioning look.

  “If there was an incursion within the city that could not be wholly covered up,” Vivian explained, “Greg would have us throw confetti on it. Figuratively,” she said to Nina. “Draw people’s attention to it and, at the same time, embellish the story and the evidence until it becomes utterly ridiculous. Do you recall those people who reported a giant spider in the basement of their flats only for it to turn out to be an abandoned float from the Lord Mayor’s Show?”

  “That was funny,” said Nina.

  “A gestating Dinh’r. You may be aware that back in the nineteen-seventies there was a twenty-foot statue of King Kong in the Bull Ring markets.”

  “I’ve seen pictures,” said Rod.

  “Commissioned, constructed and put in place overnight to explain away sightings of a wandering Kobashi. And as for the Birmingham tornado of 2005…”

  “That was a real tornado,” said Nina.

  “Was it?” said Vivian, leaning back. “Was it really?”

  “Okay, let’s not get into analysis paralysis here,” said Chad. “This train of thought is going places and fast, like the TGV. A Team with Great Vision.”

  “So far we’ve got people who are fearful, disbelieving and possibly excited,” said Leandra. “We need to get the populace all on the same page.”

  Mo
rag crossed out ‘on the same page’.

  “We present them with incontrovertible proof,” said Silas.

  “We put up posters saying ‘You are all going to die. Get over it,’” said Vivian.

  “We get Yo-Morgantus to headline at Glastonbury,” said Nina.

  “Brave ideas but I think we need more value-add,” said Leandra.

  Rod did the world’s most surreptitious fist pump and crossed something off his bingo card.

  “Surely it’s better to have them in denial than the next stage,” said Morag.

  “But anger is a stage we must get through,” said Leandra.

  Rod sniffed. “Maybe, in the end, we need to fight them.”

  “But we have run all the simulations, checked all the calculations,” said Vivian, “and have proven that resistance is truly futile.”

  “There is always hope,” said Silas and moved to take the last Danish on the table.

  Vivian beat him to it. “No, there is not.”

  “Ah, to hell with them,” said Nina. “When that day comes, let’s nuke them ‘til they glow then shoot them in the dark.”

  “And compound the misery of those humans still alive?” said Rod. “Maybe not.”

  “The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks were a direct response to the Venislarn threat,” said Vivian. “The Berlin Wall wouldn’t have come down if it wasn’t for them.”

  “Berlin Wall. They were, like, an electronic band or something, right?” said Nina.

  “Beg pardon?” said Rod.

  “Like, um, Kraftwerk or the Pet Shop Boys. David Hasselhoff played with them, didn’t he?”

  “There are so many nuggets of purest wrong in what you’ve just said, I don’t know where to start.”

  “I bought you a book on twentieth century history for Christmas,” said Vivian.

  “It’s a book,” said Nina.

  “You could try Wikipedia,” suggested Silas.

  “Pfff. Can’t trust Wikipedia. It’s just stuff written by people.”

  “Point is, people will still want to fight them,” said Rod.

  “Generations of humans have been raised on a diet of cinema in which good triumphs over evil,” said Morag. “Plucky heroes and human ingenuity will win through.”

  “Then Hollywood needs to change,” said Vivian. “Replace idealism with pragmatism.”

  Silas gave her a gently condemning look. “You want to sell defeat and death as virtues?”

  “Absolutely. Write that down, Leandra.”

  “Perhaps you want the media to kick-start a wave of suicides?” said the archdeacon.

  “Ideally,” said Vivian. “Suicide is preferable to being alive when the Soulgate comes.”

  “Killing ourselves is never the solution.”

  “Codswallop. It is the solution to a wide range of problems. What we perhaps do not want is for it to be messy, painful and an inconvenience to others.”

  “Inconvenience?”

  “Last month, a young man threatened to jump off the Paradise Circus walkway. The traffic had to be stopped, which caused tailbacks across half the city. That is an unacceptable inconvenience.”

  “I might be mistaken, Mrs Grey, but you seem to be saying that some people being stuck in traffic is more important than the deep-rooted mental suffering and anguish of the suicidal young man.”

  “Seem nothing. I’m saying it outright. His suffering might be a thousand times that of any driver affected but he was one man. The net suffering of thousands of local commuters was far worse. We need to provide the means for the suicidal to exit this world quickly, quietly and without fuss. I imagine it’s what most of them want.”

  “Euthanasia clinics,” said Morag.

  “Oh, do we need to go to that expense?” said Vivian. “There are plenty of high places that are away from urban areas and which offer a cast iron certainty of death. I think people just need to know about them.”

  “People could review them on TripAdvisor,” said Nina.

  Rod thought on this. “At what point? I mean, you’d have to do it before you actually… You know.”

  “People could do it as a memorial thing. ‘My sister flung herself off Beachy Head and died instantly. No splatter. Five stars.’”

  “This is repugnant,” said Silas.

  “Sorry, Rev,” said Rod.

  Silas held up a hand in acceptance, no offence taken. “I do think we shouldn’t be talking about such final acts when a peaceful solution could yet be reached.”

  “Bargaining,” said Chad, pointing back to the flipchart.

  “The Venislarn are not open to negotiations,” said Vivian.

  “I have spoken to their representatives,” said Silas. “They are rational. They have desires. They can be reasoned with.”

  “Not the true Venislarn,” said Morag. “The elder gods, the deep ones who will consume our world, they are either mindless or beyond our comprehension. The ones we speak to are either their offspring or parasites or… or God knows what. Who did you speak to?”

  “One of the presz’lings.”

  “The equivalent of talking to a flea and thinking you’re talking to the dog.”

  “People have made bargains with the Venislarn,” said Nina.

  “Really?”

  “I know someone – no, I’m not saying who – who has provided services to the Venislarn in exchange for a one hour warning when the Soulgate comes.”

  “What good is an hour?” said Leandra.

  “Long enough to find a gun.”

  “Or a high place that offers a cast iron certainty of death,” agreed Rod.

  “But let’s cast our net wider,” said Chad. “Bargaining with the Venislarn is low-hanging fruit. There are other psychological forms of bargaining.”

  Morag was distracted for a moment, not only by the idea of casting a net to catch low-hanging fruit, but by notions of death. Bannerman had said the Venislarn were coming for her today. Would she be better off finding a quick death for herself before she let them get their claws into her?

  “I’m not going to talk about bargains with God,” said Silas. “I’m not here as a salesman.”

  “But religiousness is going to shoot right up the charts when the Venislarn make themselves known,” said Rod.

  Silas nodded. “One concern is the uncontrollable nature of the religious zealotry we might see.”

  “Apocalyptic cults. Bizarre rituals. Human sacrifice. Naked orgies in the ruins.” There seemed to be a certain enthusiasm in Nina’s voice.

  “Are you sharing my concerns or compiling a wish list?” said Silas.

  Nina treated it as a serious question. “I really don’t see why, if the end of the world is coming, we can’t have a bit of fun. I don’t want the world to end but, since it is, I’m pretty sure I want to enjoy it.”

  “That’s a very irresponsible attitude.”

  “Now, Silas,” said Leandra, “this is a safe idea space. There are good ideas, there are better ideas and there are solid gold spray-on butter ideas. But there are no wrong ideas.”

  “Yes, there are,” he said, not unpleasantly. “There are wrong ideas, immoral ideas and there are stupid ideas.”

  “Of course.” Leandra was less certain. “I just meant in this space…”

  “No,” said Silas, politely but firmly.

  Morag leaned over to Rod and pointed at ‘spray-on butter’ on her bingo sheet with a bewildered look on her face.

  “Leandra loves spray-on butter,” he whispered. “Wishes she’d invented it. Always mentions it.”

  “Okay!” Chad clapped his hands once more. “Let’s get a thought shower down on the page to collate our key suggestions based upon our discussion so far.” He ripped the page off the flipchart.

  “Let’s sell the Venislarn apocalypse to the masses,” said Leandra.

  “Make tentacles sexy,” said Nina.

  “How?” said Morag.

  “Hows can be bridges or barriers,” said Leandra. “How do you thin
k we can make tentacles sexy, Morag?”

  “Do I have to answer that question?”

  “Get Brad or Angelina to get one surgically attached,” said Nina. “Make it a fashion statement.” She picked up her tablet and started browsing.

  “Mass sterilisation,” said Vivian.

  Chad could only stare, surely even Vivian wouldn''t seriously suggest…

  “Whip out the ovaries of every woman of breeding age. We need to get the human population to an absolute minimum before the Soulgate. I should imagine a Tory government could pass laws that make sterilisation a criterion for income support applicants.”

  “Sterilise the poor,” said Chad.

  “Or pay women to have abortions,” said Vivian. “Either would work.”

  “I hope you’re joking, Mrs Grey,” said Silas.

  “I only know one joke,” said Vivian. “This isn’t it.”

  “The idea of encouraging or enforcing the termination of human lives –”

  “Before they’ve begun.”

  “It’s morally abhorrent.”

  “If we have any love for our fellow man, it’s morally imperative, archdeacon. You’re being squeamish, not moral.”

  “Your proposals represent the most superficial form of utilitarianism.”

  “There’s no call for personal insults. Perhaps you would like to explain your moral justification for consigning hundreds of millions of future children to an eternity in hell?”

  Silas raised a finger. “Point of clarification. The Venislarn are not devils. They are not gods. The Soulgate is not hell. Eternity is the province of God.”

  “I think we should just make everyone’s final years, months, whatever as cheery as possible,” said Rod. “Encourage people to live for the now.”

  “YOLO,” said Nina.

  “The Canadian office are so pleased with themselves for coming up with that one,” said Leandra snidely.

  “How about libido-suppressing drugs in the water supply?” suggested Vivian directly to Silas.

  “Better,” he said charitably, “but this covert meddling in people’s lives is still quite unpalatable.”

  “Surely, the whole point is to meddle because people can’t be trusted to do the right thing themselves,” said Morag.

  “Drugs are not the only way to limit population growth,” said Rod.