Toby, the facilitator of tonight’s session, finally looks up from behind his laptop with a bright smile, the fiddling complete. ‘Ah, got to love PowerPoint, right!’ and all eyes are frontward as the 48-inch screen on the far wall suddenly displays a picture of a missile aimed up at about 45 degrees in front of a pretty sunset.
‘Right – let’s just go round the table – first impressions? Chris?’
Chris, who is probably late forties, greying and could plausibly hail from almost any type of public-sector management role, furrows his brow a little.
‘Ukraine, Putin’s summer ’14 campaign?’
There are a few controlled titters and Toby smiles broadly as we all continue to stare at the image on the screen, considering our ways into the topic.
‘Ha! Yes, not bad, not bad at all. I think this was actually shot near the Kazakh-Russian border, but good call. Any other first impressions? Clare, what do you feel about it?’
Clare is spectacled, reserved seeming, dressed in the mute tones of above-basic-price-range Zara, and grips her biro tightly as she responds.
‘I… I think it’s initially impressive, you’d expect a definite morale boost for the operatives nearby, in the field, they’d respond positively to this…’
‘That’s interesting… Anyone else with an initial reaction? Oh sorry, I meant to put the name up too.’ Toby clicks the presentation and some wording flies in dramatically from both sides of the presentation, written in what I instantly spot to be a little in-joke: Impact font.
Terraviza Corp. M246X CRADDA
Ground-to-Air missile system
I decide to jump in.
‘It looks like the rear launch mounting has been pared back to the absolute minimum – that’s got to mean great fuel efficiency in a large-scale battlefield context.’ Thank you Jane’s Defence Weekly’s occasional series of email explainer videos (and the cable channel where history is weaponry coming to life).
‘That’s great, Harry – so you’re drawn to weapon systems that represent a good long-term ROI, yes?’
‘Absolutely, I think it’s only responsible procurement – you can’t just look at how many city blocks a system can render to ash, after all, and in modern warfare there are so many other competing demands to budget for, it’s got to fit into the overall mix…’
Nice opening salvo – good, solid stuff. That’s probably all I need to say for the next ten minutes. Emily, who’s sat near Tom (who I happen to know was a reasonably respected painter in the late ’80s until all the YBA stuff upended the market for his take on airbrushed irony), shoots me a slightly worried look. It’s possible I’ve forced up the performance requirements a little early. It’s a deft dance, but then the somewhat chunky £150 fee for this session is really rather impressive; was I wrong to prepare a little more than usual?
Toby has produced some large foam board advert mock-ups from under the desk and is holding one up, reading aloud:
‘Right let’s look at some ad copy… “The M246X CRADDA ground-to-air missile system features new Sky-Claw technology, climbing to 1,000 feet in under 2 seconds.”’ Toby radiates resolute neutrality, his manner brimming with the neatly ordered sequentialism that one would presumably need in order to use the pictured weaponry itself. ‘Does that resonate with you, Tom?’
Tom and I have crossed paths twice earlier this year. A round-table discussion about some ill-fated triangular biscuits, and a mindshare session on the future of the Liberal Democrats. He can be good, but he’s a little wayward on occasion in what’s always an exercise in meeting expectations, however circuitously.
There’s a pregnant pause, and then Tom breathes out thoughtfully.
‘I think I’d need to be able to visualise the intended target more literally before the speed would be a killer factor, actually.’ The room tilts its head, chewing down on this observation, which takes two to three seconds to solidify as insightful rather than just something, anything, to say.
‘I think an image of what it’s really capable of destroying is a sort of prerequisite for its speed becoming super-compelling,’ and Tom ends with a flourish, ‘I wouldn’t want to feel I’d bought something that was all sonic boom and no boom-boom.’ It’s peerless stuff, and I’m high-fiving him inwardly as I maintain Harry’s professional serious face, as this is, of course, a matter in deadly earnest.
One mock-up follows another. We opine, we tap our fingers, the hive mind’s actorly congress in full session. Somehow, madly, everybody present is getting their money’s worth. The wrap-up is positive, and some great ideas, really, have been shared – and thanks.
•
We’ve come quite far out to sea these last few months, Harry and I. My mind seems so ready to encompass and improvise. I’m tuned to parallel truisms, voicing personal opinions rapidly and unconsciously crowdsourced from the zeitgeist. Chancy riffs weaponised with inner certainty. It’s one long back-to-back solo for us two; just give me the key.
Perhaps this is what those personal development people are talking about the whole time – you know, pushing your boundaries, taking on new challenges? And maybe Harry will marry Jin-Li – they seem so well suited, those two.
I’m omnidirectional and I like it. Features are not fixed at this time. We can optimise, front-load and beef-up later. It’s more the overall vibe I want you to understand and react to. Two hours well spent, I’d say. Who knows what we’ll think tomorrow.
Managing Expectations
The day we turned it on? God, that’ll remain long in the memory. Of the survivors at least. Countless changes, great and small.
It’s ushered in something of a new era of discovery, too – in fact, our aim had always been focused on solving one big question… and now? Now all the little things we took for granted seem to contain this new, previously unseen physical property: ‘quantum peril’. The location of towns, the weight of water, the possibility of heights, each a little bit broken. It’s heartbreaking really.
In retrospect, the research was both amazingly detailed, rigorous and compelling, and yet also breathtakingly narrow. We probably need a new word for that. It might help to place the whole episode in context for future generations. Assuming there are future generations.
Problem is, you stop seeing some of these theoretical nuances when the equipment gets beyond a certain physical size. People get invested in it, the wiring, the colourful ducts, the sheer amount of lasers. I vaguely recall we gave some of them names early on: Henry, Cressida, Alonzo and so on, you know, to gin up some public enthusiasm during the build phase. It was a different time.
We turned it on at exactly 12.12 GMT+2 on 12 December 2012. Clive Maddings, engineering co-lead, had confided in me that this was a physicists’ in-joke about atomic densities’ behaviour under conditions of near-unknowable pressure. One of those cutely cocky gestures that typically only gets noticed in the New Scientist’s diary column, and possibly a few of the geekier podcasts. It was low on my list of must-disseminates, certainly. Yet somehow this attempt to stick the fundamental building blocks of reality into a long-running maths in-joke came to frame, understandably sourly, the public’s response to the whole affair. Everything from ‘Twelve Reasons Why Science Can’t Be Trusted’ to the more bombastic ‘Hang the Boffins!’, which made dispiritingly regular appearances in the tabloids.
Of course, I’m not blaming the public. Anger born of loss is understandable. Particularly in the immediate aftermath, once it had become clear we’d lost some of the prettiest parts of Switzerland. Those are now what the experts term ‘Z-space’ – dimly comprehensible to humanity as not-really-height, yet somehow ineffably more horrible to deal with than not-width-or-mass.
You told yourself, well, that area wasn’t that densely populated, hillside agriculture was becoming financially untenable anyway… But the nagging sense of guilt was still there, casting peak-like shadows.
(By the way, the Esperanto word for ‘sorry’ is ‘bedaŭras’. We all did a course. It sounds bett
er, doesn’t it? One pictures a homely cottage, its windows illuminated by candlelight.)
The button itself isn’t really the issue. People do love to ask, though. And yes, one of them was red, as it turns out. I suppose that’s an understandable mis-expectation. Blame Hollywood.
No, in reality it’s a series of levers connected to a massive array of switches routed together by virtual cables that exist in a fluctuating power matrix that runs out of the complex and into the… mechanism above. I won’t bore you with the ins and outs – it hardly seems important given where we are now – but yes, of the four master controls one was red, as it happens.
I just thank God that when the original press release went out, to announce that we were… going to turn it on, that we really had all our ducks in a row. I mean, back then there were people who couldn’t see the value in getting bound copies to give out in the room or having the risk assessment professionally typeset. But I told them, ‘No one on this team is going to undermine 27 years of literally weapons-grade scientific endeavour and a budget that could run a medium-size Balkan nation, for the sake of a poorly chosen typeface.’
You have to see a macro-scale scientific endeavour like this in the round. Yes, a lot of it involves advanced mathematics and the precise alignment of lasers more powerful than the sun, deep within the bowels of a concrete building in a place we used to call Bern, but I’ve always maintained science is really about storytelling. Advanced maths, high-power lasers and storytelling. If you haven’t got all three, pulling together, you really don’t have ‘a thing’.
It was a hard sell at the Institute but we eventually got the funding, and the budget was there, no question. Educate, elevate, oxygenate. ‘But must we not also demonstrate mastery of the science of communication?’ I would often ask at the start of meetings. It feels like an empty flourish now.
Creatively, the agency’s concept to have those underprivileged schoolchildren from Chamonix turn it on, was… possibly a symptom of an idea that had got a bit out of hand. Overconfident, I mean overconfident. It got out of hand about 16 minutes later.
But yes, perhaps the team probably should have spent those final few hours rerunning the risk algorithms rather than helping out on a video for that, at the time adorable, song they’d written… about the machine.
Of course, it’s a little too early to say whether the fact that most of the people in the control room, die Kinder included, became a new kind of gelatinous gas only visible in the octaprismic register is actually a bad outcome, per se. I mean they could be having the time of their lives. I’m assured we won’t know until we complete the next round of experiments.
Sadly, those are a way off at the moment, as most of the publicly identifiable scientists have been hunted down for now. That’s those that weren’t immediately thrown into the howling six-dimensional portal that opened up between Avignon and, well – somewhere ‘else’ is our current working assumption. These days a little humility when making large claims comes with what’s left of the territory.
Me? I guess like so many things on this once beautiful planet, I’ve found I’ve had to pivot to a new position. But if a professional marketing qualification is about anything it’s about finding new ways to cast old, or as in this case, perpetually recent, problems.
So let’s reflect on what we learned the day we turned it on, say I. I’m often called on to provide leadership for those coming up, the recent graduates, the marketing newbies, or even those who’ve literally and unnervingly just winked into existence. I have my stump speech ready. It’s from the same one I used at the trial.
‘What makes us who we are isn’t the towns we build, the symphonies we write, or even the number of dimensions we can readily comprehend without horror. No, what makes us truly us is our ability to translate. Maths into energy, English into German, danger into opportunity, love into understanding. Translators have to create new worlds and we’re creatives, every damn one of us. And guess what? That’s what’s going to get us through the next unquantifiably shaped yet somehow reassuringly horrifying combo of bent time and tentacular verticality that we used to call ‘the future’. The best ideas? They’re not from above. Everything thing we need is right here in this room. Love you guys; now let’s get out there and share the good news.’
Words to Songs from the Album Also Called Not From Above!
Liner notes:
Those identified as morally culpable for this confection would, I assure you, be mortified to think of you reading (and re-reading) the following lines as poetry. They are lyrics, words to songs, musings for melodies, nothing more. In fact, they’re probably best read only under referential circumstances of lyrical confusion – and in that way we can, of course, excuse you while you kiss this guy.
1. Not From…
Not from… a leaflet from the seminary
Not from… a hope for the extraordinary
Not from… documents imaginary
Not from… any hope that we would marry
Not from… wisdom partly planetary
Not from… overconfident vocabulary
Not from… an order from the military
Not from… the fear of being solitary
2. On Peacock Island
When we first hit the sea,
Down on the beach there’s an island in reach, where
We could play kings and queens,
If only for moments rowing our dream boat,
So come give your hand to me,
I promised a fable from the toppest of tables,
Just over this tiny sea,
Our fortunes reborn before the break of the dawn
And if you should, care to follow,
I will promise, an end to sorrow…
We’ll share our ambition, to a regal rhythm
– on Peacock Island
They’ll herald our mission and our dazzling decisions
– on Peacock Island
When I first caught your eye,
The display was all feathers, a heart yet untethered,
When you first caught my eye,
I knew in a moment, desire’s atonement
So help me drag, this boat to save us,
We’ll steal away, don’t call the papers…
We’ll share our ambition, to a regal rhythm
– on Peacock Island
They’ll herald our mission and our dazzling decisions
– on Peacock Island
We’re refining and honing, this Game of Enthroning
– on Peacock Island
The triumph is brewing, in our modern ruin
– on Peacock Island
This island’s too big for one, don’t tell me that you’re leaving, Princess
Together is how we’ll become, history’s master and mistress…
… on Peacock Island1
3. The Greats
I was all set, all to forget, the things love does to you
Who did I think I was kidding?
I read the greats, from morn ’til late, drinking deep from wisdom’s brew
So who was that, set my heart spinning?
But what do I know? I’m just the guy who
Took a tumble underneath your poetry
And when I see you, that blessed shape who
Stirs my thoughts anew to curiosity
I ducked the sting, that deadly thing, with equations deep and dark
Just, for once, could I be colder?
I wrestled with, the endless if, how to live without a heart
Truth be told, with a lack of candour
But what do I know? I’m just the guy who
Took a tumble underneath your poetry
And when I see you, that blessed shape who
Stirs my thoughts anew to curiosity
And when you see me, so deeply reading,
It’ll be your letters not that book I bought
The motivation? This new sensation,
Written there in chapters two to four
/>
If 2+2 was never 4 baby… and the sun sets in the east you say
The theory’s good but not too good to question,
My silence means there’s just too much to say…
Repeat choruses
4. Deleted Scenes
I can still recall the feeling, when the cameras start to roll
A forward-with-the-madness keening, anything is possible
Two thoughts later on the trapeze, I’m not sure what brought us here
If the stunt man phones in poorly, shouldn’t we begin to care?
… Shout! … Cut! I don’t think so
Cashed! Out! I don’t want to
Deleted dreams – all that’s left when we’re through
They won’t use all that they heard, some of it absurd, or just too softly spoken
They won’t have kept all that we did,
the scenes in which we hid, lacking Oscar motion…
… Shout! … Cut! I don’t think so
Cashed! Out! I don’t want to –
Expleted themes left behind on the floor
Shout! … Cut! I don’t think so…
Cashed! Out! I don’t want to
Deleted dreams – all that’s left when we’re through
See I told you for real in the back of a bar, but we were too drunk to remember… The twist at the end of the film was the bit when they pan back and show you she never… I know how this ends…
The message I sent might as well have been lost from the moment the movie had started… They cut to the chase where my grand monologue was supposed to have left your heart melted… I know, how this ends…
… Shout! … Cut! I don’t think so
Cashed! Out! I don’t want to
Deleted dreams – all that’s left when we’re through
Not From Above! Page 10
