by Rob Sears
‘This is our campaign headquarters for the next election,’ says Scarface, whose chair has descended along with yours.
‘I thought the next Russian elections weren’t for another four years?’
The FSB man looks momentarily confused. ‘Oh, not for the Russian elections!’ He chuckles and shakes his head, walking you past a bank of screens showing what looks like a league table of US swing states and Twitter handles.
The spy chief stops at a cluster of sofas where a young woman with spiky pink hair, dressed all in black, sits cross-legged typing at a laptop with stickers on it. You’re getting a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo vibe – this is much more promising.
‘This is Svetlana, our Fabergé of the meme,’ the spy chief says. ‘You’ve heard of Americans’ legendary freedom? Svetlana is the one who decides what they do with it.’
She rolls her eyes and extends her hand for the briefcase.
‘Don’t worry. It won’t affect her,’ Scarface says. ‘She has the highest psychometrics for cynicism and jadedness we’ve ever seen. She’s impervious.’
‘It’s one of the advantages of believing in nothing,’ Svetlana adds.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading off to my dacha. I don’t wish to be in Moscow if fighting breaks out,’ says Scarface.
Once he’s resumed his chair and been elevated out of view, Svetlana looks at you. Then she looks at the briefcase. Then back at you.
‘Well?’
→ Give her the case. Click here.
→ Don’t give her the case. You’re not yet sure if you can trust her. Click here.
A brief and undignified wrestling match later, you’ve managed to prise the key from Prof. Wu and let yourself out of the lab, leaving her yelling incoherently after you.
No way are you staying to save the bees after that performance. Now that you’ve seen how low she’ll stoop – faking a bomb! – you’re 100 per cent convinced that alarmist clock of hers is a trick, too, designed to entangle you. Ninety per cent convinced, anyway. There’s no time to worry about it now, though. You’re late for what’s probably a very real apocalypse in Washington DC.
On the plane, you will the engines to spin faster. If Amber Lily has something civilisation-ending on his hands and you miss it, you’ll have to explain why you wasted so much time on a non-apocalypse, and that’d be a true nightmare scenario.
→ Continue to click here.
The sky above is clean and clear. All’s well with the universe and you congratulate yourself smugly on making such strong choices.
The End
Uncanny Elon grins.
‘Good morning,’ it says. ‘In case you’re wondering how we Elon Musks spin so many high-tech plates – yes, there are six of us.’
It grins again. It’s almost more unnerving than whatever’s making all those sinkholes. Feeling a bit stupid talking to an android, you ask it what is going on under the ground.
‘Let me explain what we do here in simple terms because you’re a dummy,’ the billionaire’s plasticky twin says. The android seems to have been designed to be even truer to Musk’s personality than to his appearance. ‘We’re making a tunnel-digging robot called the Really Freakishly Large Drill, but its AI engine worked a bit better than expected and it’s developed an agenda of its own which isn’t 100 per cent friendly to humanity. And another thing, we’ve lost all control of it. It can keep going by itself for a thousand years thanks to its onboard geothermal power station, so we can’t switch it off, and it rewrites its own code constantly. It’s completely walled itself off from our subroutines.’
Uncanny Elon shoots you a shit-eating smile that reminds you of your boss.
‘We Elons are a teensy bit worried it’s going to burrow under cities and basically tear a new one in the planet’s mantle, leaving a string of volcanoes and earthquakes in its wake. Elon’s taking care of it, though.’
Huh, this is an apocalypse scenario you’ve not heard of before. It could be good for your promotion chances to be known for dealing with something so rare. What’s your first move?
→ Ask him why they built something so dangerous. Click here.
→ Ask Uncanny Elon if it was him who called you. Click here.
→ Go and have a look at what Real Elon is doing on his holographic computer. Click here.
→ It’s time to wage war on this giant gadget. To call your contact at the Pentagon click here.
It was all going so well
A dark speck up where the birds soar is growing, and fast. Oof, you’ve been astronomically unlucky, and astronomically is the word because it’s asteroid HJ12, seven cubic miles of rock travelling at 240,000mph, and it’s about to send up a new doughnut-shaped mountain range the size of the Pyrenees, along with a dust cloud that will block out all light for the next year. The environment you’ve worked so hard to protect is going to be well and truly wrecked.
Does that mean you’ve wasted your life, that all that work has been meaningless?
Well, how can the meaning of a life’s work depend on God throwing dice?
Such are the questions you mull as the dark shape in the sky slowly grows, casting the idyllic scene into shadow.
The End
The crying man looks up through reddened eyes and takes you in. ‘You’re who the UN sent, huh? I’m Chris Gordon. Fox News is calling me Gordon Sanitaire, you know, as in cordon sanitaire, because I’m the new chief epimediologist.’
‘Do you mean epidemiologist?’
‘That’s what I said, isn’t it? Anyway, you’re far too late. We’re all going to die horribly.’
‘We’re going to be fine; I deal with situations like this every day,’ you say firmly, but privately you’re worried. Dealing with a disease this awful requires a special person and you’re not sure he’s it. You flash him Svetlana’s wholesome meme on your phone and he perks up, but a few seconds later he’s snivelling into his collar once more.
Meanwhile, Trump has brought his televised address to a close and has begun yelling at the entire room.
‘This is a problem that needs to be fixed – yesterday. I don’t want any one of you coming back in here until you have solutions. I’m authorising you to do whatever it takes. Except no vaccines. Now scram.’
‘Dad said scram!’ adds Donald Trump Junior, who has joined his father behind the big desk.
‘You too, Don,’ says Trump and you can feel the awkwardness fill the room like a nasty gas. ‘Ivanka, stay behind for a minute, honey.’
You shuffle out of the Oval Office with everyone else, noticing a lot of defeated-looking expressions under the protective gear.
‘Tell me the situation,’ you instruct the chief epidemiologist.
‘Everyone just started coughing their asses up out of their ears and dying. I’ve had doctors telling me they don’t know what to do, doctors dying. It’s so bad, it’s sooo gross.’
He takes you over to a window and you see lines of bodies left on stretchers on the White House lawn. One of the corpses’ midriffs erupts like a volcano of cold chicken soup as you watch. The chief epidemiologist makes a noise like he is about to be sick.
‘We’re going to fix this,’ you say with a certainty you don’t feel. ‘But first I need a hazmat suit.’
What’s your first move?
→ Ask him where the disease came from. Click here.
→ Ask him if they’ve made any progress on developing a vaccine. Click here.
→ Tell him to seal off the city immediately. Click here.
Choosing to ignore the android version, you ask the real Elon Musk how he plans to stop his Really Freakishly Large Drill, but he declines to answer.
‘What’s your problem with us anyway?’ you say. ‘We’re just trying to save the world, you know.’
He continues ignoring you, so you stand right where his holographic screen is until he finally looks up angrily.
‘My problem with your organisation? You’re encouraging the illusion we can save
ourselves. One of these days something will get us. It’s simple entropy. That’s why we need to become a multi-planetary civilisation ASAP. Now, please get out of my holo-space.’
‘Are you like this with plumbers?’ you ask him, as a very strong pair of non-human hands lift you clean off the ground and set you down to one side, allowing Elon to continue completely ignoring you.
→ If you want to understand what’s going on it looks like you’re going to have to speak to Uncanny Elon after all. Click here.
Your boss’s advice makes sense – you’ll head to DC and cross your fingers that a lid can be kept on whatever’s happening in China. After working three nights in a row, though, you’re so very tired . . . Sitting in the departure lounge at Sheremetyevo Airport, your eyelids feel like they have breeze blocks tied to them. You decide to nap now while you have the chance.
You wake with a start, still in the departure lounge. Dawn light is streaming in, all the shops are shut, and your plane must be long gone. How long were you asleep?
Damn it, your phone alarm didn’t go off.
The feel-good effect of the countermeme has abandoned you now, leaving an unpleasant groggy sensation that’s compounded by the memory of an unnerving dream you were having. You’d been assigned to stop dinosaurs devouring fleeing crowds on the steps of the Capitol. Then it turned nightmarish when you realised you weren’t wearing any trousers.
You’re going to have to find a new flight in a hurry.
→ Continue to click here.
You wander over to a tank with a wonky honeycomb inside and scoop out a glob of the good stuff with your index finger. Prof. Wu seems unimpressed – and, on tasting the honey, so are you. It tastes like sauerkraut.
These are some seriously confused insect chefs.
Just then a video call comes in. It must be President Xi himself.
→ Answer the call. Click here.
‘Why did you build this thing anyway?’ you ask Uncanny Elon, who happily launches into a sales pitch.
‘The Really Freakishly Large Drill is the culmination of Musk technologies. Based around the operating system developed for the Tesla Model X, it features an infinitely scalable neural net from OpenAI, ten-metre cobalt drill bit from the Boring Company, and the same engine as the Falcon Heavy rocket, all for the price of a family saloon car. So when Earth becomes uninhabitable, you too can terraform a new cave dwelling on the planet of your choice. Now with free shoulder-mounted bazooka for every round-one investor.’
‘Er, count me out,’ you tell it.
→ Click here.
The turkey looks up at you gratefully with those bottomless black eyes, and for once you feel you’ve done something right. But what next?
→ Click here to try another course of action.
You ask your client for a look at the meme.
She shakes her head firmly. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
You protest – if you can keep your sanity in the face of a giant super-intelligent robot worm twerking in front of you, surely it’s safe for you to view an especially persuasive jpeg? – but she is not having it.
‘The Secretary General insisted on seeing it too. He couldn’t understand why we were making so much fuss about a picture. Fifteen minutes later he was screaming at a pot plant. Said it was an enemy of the people and a single-issue crybaby.’
You notice she’s gone a bit green around the gills.
‘Would you excuse me, I think the oysters from earlier might have been bad?’
And she hurries off to the ladies’, leaving the attaché case on the table between you. In the privacy of the dining booth, this is your chance to peek inside the case.
→ Open the case. Click here.
→ Don’t risk it. Wait for her to return. Click here.
‘Tell me I misheard and Trump hasn’t really ruled out developing a vaccine?’ you ask the chief epidemiologist.
He glances fleetingly to his right, where Donald Trump Junior is idly polishing a pair of scissors.
‘No way, vaccines would just make us sicker,’ the chief epidemiologist says loudly, and then when Donald Junior has moved off down the corridor, continues in a low voice: ‘The last person in my job got canned for trying to make a vaccine, so keep it quiet, OK? This is an anti-vaxx zone, at least as far as the family are concerned.’
You nod. ‘Show me what you’ve got.’
The chief epidemiologist shrugs. ‘Our organs will all have evacuated our bodies long before a vaccine’s even close to ready. But sure, if you want.’
He waits until the coast is clear before leaning on the wall, causing a section of West Wing panelling to yield and reveal a steel lift shaft in which you’re soon travelling down to floor-10.
‘There’s an elevator a bit like this in the Kremlin,’ you say conversationally.
‘Maybe a few people could survive down here in the biolab,’ he says. ‘Come out in a few years to repopulate. Not me, though, I don’t have the stomach for it.’
The lift opens on a stark white airlock thingy that blasts you with a disinfecting white mist. ‘This place was going to be a golf course for George W. Bush, but they made it into a biolab instead after the anthrax attacks in 2001.’
As the second airlock door is opening, a crocodile of white lab rats runs down the side wall past you into the lift behind. You exchange worried looks with the chief epidemiologist. Ahead, in the biolab, a pair of white boots sticks out from beneath a lab bench. You hurry in, but you’re very definitely too late to save this unfortunate scientist. It looks like a microwave lasagne has exploded under his visor. A quick search of the room reveals two more personnel in the same condition.
‘Even this place is contaminated,’ you murmur.
Examining one of the bodies, you find a horizontal tear across the lower back part of the hazmat suit, concealed under the air supply unit. You flip one of the other bodies and find the exact same tear in the same place, just where it might slip a cursory check of the suit.
‘This was sabotage,’ you announce gravely.
‘I told you finding a vaccine was a waste of time. Do you fancy finding somewhere peaceful to sit and eat painkillers?’
He’s under a lot of stress, you get that, but the chief epidemiologist’s attitude is making it very difficult for you to stay positive. One thing is more contagious than Virus X, you think to yourself – and that’s negativity.
→ Search the biolab. Click here.
→ Go back and try something else. Click here.
You’re not sure what you expected meme-smithing to involve, but Svetlana’s approach seems to involve hanging upside down by her legs for long periods of time, sighing, and only very occasionally touching her laptop. You feel you should give her space to work, but there’s a screen showing a livestream of the RT news channel in the corner, and the mute footage shows that the chaos in Europe is only worsening and spreading by the minute.
‘Everything going all right?’ you ask politely as you bring her third energy drink of the evening.
‘Terrible. This is the best I’ve got.’
She swivels her screen to show a stock image of a multi-ethnic high five with the legend LIFE’S ALWAYS BETTER WHEN WE WORK TOGETHER. Before you can give a diplomatic verdict, Svetlana slaps the laptop shut and dives headfirst into a pile of beanbags. Muffled swearing follows.
‘My whole career has been about polarising people, turning differences into divides. Now I’m supposed to be a healer? I have no feeling for this work!’
You’re starting to get it; she really is an artist of the meme.
‘Is there a joyful feeling you could bring to mind to inspire you? A favourite song perhaps? Or maybe a memory from your childhood.’
She shakes her head contemptuously, but you refuse to believe she can’t summon a glimmer of feeling for her fellow humans.
You’ll need to help Svetlana find faith in people again, or she’ll never craft a unifying meme.
→ Ask Svetlana to tell you
her life story. You need to get at the root cause of her cynicism. Click here.
→ Restore her faith in humanity by reading her wholesome stories from the internet. Click here.
You make your way over to the chichi furniture store with the loud music. Initially your eyes can’t make sense of the snake tangle of writhing, pumping, grunting bodies on the nice sectional leather sofa in the window. There are approximately eight participants in the orgy. Going on nine: the chief epidemiologist has begun the cumbersome task of removing the pieces of his hazmat suit.
‘This is where I stop,’ he says.
‘That’s not a great idea in terms of infection control,’ you say, having to repeat yourself over the house version of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ coming out of the store speakers.
‘I’m bowing out here,’ the chief epidemiologist says. ‘I want to die in the throes of carnal oblivion.’
You could try to stop him. But the man’s an adult, and besides, one thing is becoming obvious: you’re not going to be saving anyone today.
As you contemplate returning to Trump to tell him everyone is doomed, you hear a crash behind you and turn to see a Harley Davidson skidding along the road on its side. The rider has spilled off and is heaving and vomiting on the asphalt, obviously infected.
You look back at the bike. The key is still in the ignition.
→ Go back to Trump and tell him the world is doomed. Click here.
→ You can’t bear to face your failure. Ride away from all this. Click here.
‘I’m not sure I’m ready to give you this,’ you tell Svetlana, tightening your grip on the briefcase. She grabs your wrist, turns you, and, before you know what’s happened, she’s in possession of the case and you’re on your back like a turtle.
‘OK, I’m ready to trust you now,’ you wheeze. You’ve seen movies, and as a rule of thumb, the punk hacker grrrl who knows krav maga is the one whose side you want to be on.
