Perfidious Albion

by Sam Byers

  Bangstrom nodded. ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ said Trina.

  ‘Maybe I could clarify Green’s position,’ said Bangstrom.

  ‘Go right ahead. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘What I want to emphasise here is that at no point during this, er, situation, were you dismissed, and at no point was dismissal threatened. Your pay has remained at full rate while this matter has been investigated. You have been offered appropriate emotional support.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just now.’

  ‘That was my emotional support? Jesus Christ.’

  ‘The idea was only ever to let this blow over. Then, give you a warning, welcome you back, get you some mandatory counselling, work on those violence issues a bit more.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘Well, if nothing else, your tweet violated Green’s hate-speech policy.’

  ‘So why not just get rid of me?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘If what I said on Twitter was so heinous, and it’s been such a PR nightmare for Green, who are already, I should add, in the midst of another, wider PR nightmare, and if you’ve got me bang to rights, why not just let me go?’

  ‘We take the retention of talent very seriously.’

  ‘So you don’t want me going somewhere else?’

  ‘We want to nurture your talent. Which means we have to nurture you.’

  ‘That’s bullshit, Bangstrom. From the day I started here, Green have done exactly fuck all to nurture my talent. Green didn’t give me this job. I took it. Green hasn’t nurtured me. I’ve fought my way into all the opportunities I’ve had, which, while we’re on the subject, have been precious few. And what have I got to show for it? A No-Go room and some quality time with Beatrice? Go fuck yourself. You’re going to sit there and tell me Green feel strongly that they need to nurture and maintain my talents? I’m sorry, Bangstrom, but that is about as believable as you telling me you care about my feelings.’

  ‘I’m deeply hurt by the accusation that I don’t genuinely care about your feelings.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘OK, I’m not. How’s that suit you?’

  ‘How come I wasn’t let go immediately?’

  ‘I’ve just—’

  ‘Look at the situation, Bangstrom. You’ve got the web and mainstream press going batshit. You’re up to your eyeballs in fallout from the Griefer business. Why not just cut me loose?’

  ‘Oh, I see what this is. This is that old floor-three bullshit rearing its ugly little head again. You think if you just ask me the same thing over and over again like a malfunctioning Bream, I’ll just spontaneously break down and give you the answer you want to hear because I’m inherently weak. Well, let me tell you, Trina: The Interrobang cannot be weakened.’

  ‘You’re already weakened.’

  ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong. I mean, go ahead and believe that if you like, but—’

  ‘You want to know why you’re weakened?’

  ‘Oh no, you don’t get me that easily. The minute I say, yes, I’d like to know why I’m weakened, you’ll be like, aha, so you accept that you’re weakened.’

  ‘You’re weakened because you’re not supposed to let me go.’

  ‘Fairly sure my answer regarding your offer of input vis-à-vis my hypothetically weakened state was negative.’

  ‘I should be gone already, but I’m not.’

  ‘Green believe in second chances.’

  ‘No they don’t.’

  ‘You’re right, they don’t. Which is exactly why you should be so grateful they’re offering you one.’

  ‘What do I know?’

  ‘Exactly. What do you know.’

  ‘No, I’m asking. What do I know?’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘You want me to timeline this? I start figuring something out, my fucking internet suddenly goes into meltdown. Green gets all heavy with me from an HR perspective, and basically tosses me to the wolves of public opinion. Suddenly, I’m vulnerable. Then Green, having made a big song and dance about how embarrassing I am, goes on to make a massive show of how eager they are to hang on to me. It doesn’t add up. Unless you look at it the way I’m looking at it, which is to say: I know something. I might not know what I know, but I sure as shit know something. Otherwise, either none of this would have happened, or I would have just been summarily fired. Instead, what we’ve got is Green making me feel scared, then suddenly making me feel safe, which, I don’t know, reads to me as being bullshit, given what I was working on literally minutes before all this kicked off. You see what I’m saying?’

  ‘You’re saying: Green saying you’re both a public embarrassment and at the same time a valued employee seems incongruous, especially given that you haven’t exactly been treated like a valued employee at any time in the time leading up to the current time in which all of this is taking place.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So it occurs to you that you must be valuable in a way that is as yet unclear to you, and you no doubt feel it is somehow, like, your civil right, or something, to know what that value is.’

  ‘So? What do I know?’

  ‘What do you think you might know?’

  ‘I know about The Field.’

  Bangstrom took a long inhalation and sat back in his seat.

  ‘What specifically do you know about The Field?’ he said.

  ‘I know it exists.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I know it’s something you’d rather no-one knew about.’

  ‘So you know that a thing exists, and you know that Green, who are notoriously secretive, would rather people not know it exists. Wow. With that kind of insight, you could crack the case wide open, detective.’

  ‘I know it needs Beatrice. I know Tayz is critical somehow. I know Green shit themselves if anyone so much as mentions it, like Norbiton, for example.’

  ‘Norbiton.’ Bangstrom sniffed dismissively. ‘Guy’s a wreck.’

  ‘Why hasn’t Norbiton been fired?’

  ‘We don’t just fire people, Trina. Norbiton became unwell. He’ll be repositioned.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Do … you know where he is?’

  ‘Let’s move on to what you’re offering me.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Your offer. What’s your offer? You don’t want me to leave, so go ahead and make me an offer.’

  ‘You get your job back—’

  ‘I don’t want my job back.’

  ‘OK, Trina. I wanted to do this the friendly way. OK? I wanted us to come out of this, well, not as friends, exactly, but with a certain amount of respect for each other. But you’ve forced my hand. So this is me taking off the friendly face.’

  ‘What’s under the friendly face?’

  ‘Another, considerably less friendly face.’

  ‘OK, hit me.’

  ‘You want to talk about what I’ve got to negotiate with? How about instead, we talk about what you haven’t got to negotiate with? How about we talk about what you’ve got to protect?’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’

  ‘Why would I need to threaten you? You’re already comprehensively under threat. Or did I just hallucinate the last few days of your life?’

  ‘Let’s get to the point.’

  ‘You think you’ve got muscle you can throw around in here? Let me tell you what you’ve got. You’ve got a home you’re going to be evicted from. And before you say it: yes, that is definite, and no, there will not be any point trying to resist it when the time comes. Check out your contract with Downton. Check out their community policy. Check out their right to evict anyone they see as compromising their commitment to a certain kind of neighbourly compatibility. So let’s call that exhibit A: you are essentially fucking homeless. Which brings me to exhibit B: you, in this case, are not just you. You and your whole family are homeless. You need a new place to
live and pronto. You want me to tell you what your accommodation options are without your job? Zero. You think you’re going to get a tenancy based on your girlfriend’s precarious fucking odd-job work? And newsflash, as if that wasn’t enough shit for you, you’re also operating at a fairly eye-popping level of physical endangerment, which, OK, I see you’ve enlisted the help of that whole virtual-harassment-support thing, but let me tell you, they are not going to be an awful lot of help against a bunch of neo-Nazi bother boys who, by the way, hate you more than ever. You know why? Because those freaks can barely even use the internet, hence they are not really susceptible to its schemes. They’re not going to mess around with your online existence. They don’t know how. All they know is that they hate you. Hence: they’re going to kick your door in and beat the shit out of you and your whole family. OK? So that’s, like, what’s in your shopping basket right now. That’s what you’re carrying around while you sit here in front of me and act like you’ve got a whole load of aces up your sleeve. Meanwhile, what have we got here? Oh, look at that, it’s a job offer from Green whereby you get to earn good money, no doubt progress to earning even better money, benefit from the kind of security and protection that only Green can provide and, hey, guess what, take advantage of Green’s tenancy for employees programme, by which I mean, you wind up with a secure place to live. Now, have I missed anything? I mean, stop me if you feel I’ve, like, accidentally ignored some major piece of weaponry in your arsenal.’

  He demonstrated that he’d reached the end of his little soliloquy by folding his arms and cocking his head to one side and eyeballing her as if he was interested less in what she had to say and more in how long it would take her to agree completely with what he’d just said.

  Trina had, of course, prepared herself for this. She had, with Deepa’s help, anatomised her own predicament more than once in much the same way, and, unlike Bangstrom, she had the advantage of being able to see what the situation looked like from the inside, so it wasn’t as if he was telling her anything she didn’t already know. But there was still, she had to admit, something brutal about having the components of her undoing so systematically itemised. It was, she thought, an archetypal Green moment. A brief nod to compassion, then a rapid shift into dispassionate, fact-based coercion when compassion failed. Bangstrom had crunched the data. He’d run the numbers and determined that she was fucked.

  Bangstrom shook his head slightly from side to side in a kind of mockery of sadness and disappointment.

  ‘Take as long as you need,’ he said, his tone making it clear there was no time left for her to take.

  ‘You think I want to fuck Green over?’ said Trina. ‘I mean, seriously. You think I actually, A, want to do that, and, B, want the fallout of doing that on my plate? You know a lot about me, clearly. You’ve got all the data at your fingertips. But here’s something you don’t know: how it feels to work this fucking hard to get somewhere, and still not really get there. I’ve given this everything. You really think my number one priority right now is to burn it all down? To bankrupt my family? To lose my home?’

  ‘Well, your psychological profile does suggest a degree of recklessness, if I’m honest.’

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you? I’ve taken every chance that was ever near enough for me to take, and quite a lot that, let me tell you, looked a long way out of reach. Now, with the biggest chance I’m ever going to get opening up right in front of me, you think I’m just going to walk away from it? Like, OK, you’ve laid out some things there, Bangstrom. Good for you. I mean, nice job on enumerating the various different aspects of my life that are totally shitty right now. But let me enumerate some chunky data for you in return, OK? I know about The Field. I know about Beatrice. I know about Edmundsbury and I know The Griefers are a huge fucking con job. And that alone gives me two very attractive options. Option one: I take my story national. The public exposure protects me from further harm. Edmundsbury goes up in arms. They have a few meetings. They campaign to have you kicked out of town. Option two: I take everything I know and just sashay my way into a prime job with one of your competitors, who then mirrors The Field at a fraction of a cost because they, by stealing your ideas, have incurred exactly zero of your development outlay. And while we’re on the subject, let’s not forget that the software I assume you’re going to refit for The Field is software that I partly fucking designed, and if you think I’m stupid enough not to have built certain insurance policies into the design of that software then you’re even dumber than I always thought you were, which, just for the record, is pretty fucking dumb indeed.’

  Bangstrom managed an awkward smile.

  ‘This is what happens when we break our own rules and allow a single individual control over a project instead of breaking it down for the MTs,’ he said. ‘In a way, it’s our bad. But what can I say. There were reasons.’ He shrugged, widened the smile. ‘So where are we, Trina? Stalemate?’

  ‘No, not stalemate. More that I’m going to make you an offer and you have to accept it.’

  Bangstrom laughed. ‘Or what?’

  ‘Or I execute one of my multiple available strategies and you end up fucked every which way.’

  ‘Let’s get to what you want.’

  ‘I want a promotion.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To The Field.’

  Bangstrom laughed.

  ‘You were already working on The Field.’

  ‘I’m not talking about manipulating MTs,’ said Trina. ‘I’m talking about a proper position. I’m talking about access. I’m talking about you rewarding me for my ongoing loyalty when I quite frankly could have already fucked all of you shits over and skipped the country to somewhere warm. That’s what I’m talking about.’

  ‘This isn’t about loyalty, Trina. It’s about efficiency. How does hiring you make the project more efficient?’

  ‘Well, for a start, I can tell you right now one thing you could do to improve efficiency all round.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘You could do something about the as yet not ex-employee you’ve got running round telling everyone what you’re up to and trying to mobilise people against it.’

  Bangstrom rolled his eyes. ‘Norbiton,’ he said.

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Where’s my contract?’

  ‘You’d seriously sell him out like that?’

  ‘What, you think I should show a bit more loyalty to Norbiton?’

  ‘No. I’m just interested in your principles.’

  ‘My principles involve taking care of me and my family. Once that’s done, it’s less about principles and more about ambition. If this is the future, then I want to work on it.’

  ‘Stay here,’ said Bangstrom, standing up. He picked up his ID card from the desk and walked out of the office without saying anything more, leaving Trina alone to mull over the reality of what she was proposing. Something about the alone time in Bangstrom’s office made her feel jittery. What if Bangstrom was summoning security? What if she’d overplayed her hand and now they had what they wanted? All Bangstrom would have to do, she thought, would be to activate security protocol and she wouldn’t even be able to leave the building. She checked her watch. It had been, what, a few minutes since Bangstrom had left? Maybe he had to run it up the chain of command. Maybe, in talking to Bangstrom, she wasn’t really talking to him at all, just through him, to whoever it was who really made the decisions.

  A sheaf of paper in a soft-covered binder landed with a slap on the desk in front of her, making her jump.

  ‘Knock yourself out,’ said Bangstrom, settling himself back into his chair. ‘Pen here if you need one. Electronic copy on request. You know the drill.’

  Trina picked up the document and paged through it. It was a contract, appended with a non-disclosure agreement.

  ‘That’s a permanent contract,’ said Bangstrom. ‘You know how many people dream of seeing one of those? You know h
ow few people actually have one? This takes you off the precipice.’

  Trina began leafing through the contract. The first few pages were standard legal jargon with accompanying explanations. The next section detailed her salary, along with a series of added perks: accommodation, holiday, access to legal advice, private healthcare. After that, there was a long and detailed section setting out the kind of consequences she could expect if she shared any information that she accessed as a result of her work at Green.

  ‘Pretty comprehensive way to buy my silence,’ she said.

  ‘Think of it more as an exclusive purchase of your expertise,’ said Bangstrom.

  ‘What don’t you want to share?’ said Trina.

  Bangstrom laughed drily. ‘Catchy that, isn’t it?’

  ‘You going to tell me who those people are?’

  Bangstrom picked up his pen from the desk and held it out to her.

  ‘That’s privileged information,’ he said.

  ‘Signing this makes me one of the privileged few?’

  Bangstrom shrugged. ‘If you like.’

  Trina took the pen and leafed again through the contents of the contract, her vision blurring out at the edges, her ability to make sense of what she was reading wholly diminished by her attempts to imagine what this moment meant. The phrase signing your life away played like a looping advertising jingle in the background of her brain. When she uncapped the pen her hands were shaking.

  ‘Suddenly struck by the gravity of the moment?’ said Bangstrom.

  ‘Something like that,’ she said.

  Without further thought, she swept her signature across the dotted line, once on the contract and once on the non-disclosure agreement, then passed the document back to Bangstrom.

  ‘Right decision,’ said Bangstrom with a smile that seemed halfway genuine. ‘Good to have you on board, Trina.’

  ‘You sure knocked that contract up quickly,’ said Trina.

  ‘We made drafts of several,’ said Bangstrom. ‘I had a feeling it would be a process of negotiation.’

  ‘I take it I’ll never know what was in the other options?’

  ‘Being shredded as we speak.’