“Welcome to the first round table meeting of the Castle Academy Student Council. There is no time for introductions. First of all, Rina, the vice president, will outline the current queries which we have been tasked to resolve, and what solutions have been tried before and failed, but before that-”
I looked at Rina, and she pulled out a remote from behind her and switched the large UK map screen to a BBC newscast of the Prime Minister being interviewed by a panel of journalists.
“What has the government planned to do to stem the cost overruns of Hinkley Point C’s construction?” asked a blonde-haired journalist from RTV news.
The prime minister smiled disarmingly.
“The Hinkley Point C plant is a state-of-the-art nuclear power facility which will give Britain cheap energy to over seventeen million homes and which will save British industry by making it competitive. By the logic that it should be cancelled just because of a few cost overruns, then we wouldn’t even have the tube, the London underground, without which you wouldn’t have been able to get here to ask me that question.”
There was some muffled laughter in the room at the prime minister’s comment.
“But Mr Prime Minister,” started a grey-haired man with a Scottish accent from the East Glasgow Times, “Britain’s population, and indeed the world’s population, has decreased consecutively for 30 years now. Shouldn’t the government focus more on environmental preservation than on producing energy for industries which will not exist? Is the Prime Minister aware that a parliamentary commission headed by your own government reported that more than seventy thousand fish will be sucked up along with the water needed to cool those reactors?”
The prime minister had a V-shaped smile on his lips and nodded sagaciously, giving the journalist time to speak without interruption.
“Oh, why yes, I am more than aware of that, which is why a new artificial lake is being constructed seventeen miles northwest of Hinkley Point C, which will more than make up for the loss of marine life. I should also note that, according to the Saulsbury report you are referring to, the loss of sixty-nine thousand fish, not seventy thousand, would be over a period of thirty years. This means that within a single year, we will recuperate any losses to marine life in Britain’s waters thanks to the artificial lake.”
Another journalist started to make a point about how a committee of farmers was complaining about the nuclear power station because the artificial lakes would be built close to their farmland, but before the journalist could finish his point, a small, bespectacled, flat-chested woman with long straight black-hair down to her waist, loudly broke into the conference room through a set of oversized double doors at the back of the room. The camera panned towards her. She was wearing a black suit, a miniskirt, but what completed her look was her glasses, which she pushed up with her index finger before pointing at her prime suspect, the prime minister.
“You monster! I know that you are conducting human experim-”
“This woman has lost her composure.” Prime Minister Chamberlain uncharacteristically interrupted the woman, and the guards soon tried to drag her outside. “Please escort her outside.”
The petite woman protested and shouted, and so had to be dragged out by two guards and two officers, who were often punched and kicked by her several times. I guess they didn’t tase her because she was a little woman, and they were on camera.
“I am under what!? Is this democracy manifest? Get your hands off my chest! What is the charge!? How dare you, get your hands off me!”
The woman held on to the frame of the large double door with both hands, and her fingers had to be pried off one by one. The camera zoomed in on the finger pressure marks left on the deformed door frame, and then the door shut behind them. Props to the cameraman for getting that shot. The screen changed back to its previous state. That was the end of the recording.
“The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is already under scrutiny,” Rina explained. “It is uncertain how long Prime Minister Chamberlain will be able to hide that its true purpose is to power this simulation in which we exist rather than provide power to British homes.”
And when that happens, there is no saying what will happen to me. It is quite likely that the simulation, along with me, will all be shut down to cover up the conspiracy.
Rina then turned the screen back to the map of Britain, indicating the maladies afflicting Britain: Unemployment, low productivity, inflation, brain drain, falling intelligence, capital flight, rising suicides, divorces, etc. The woman who interrupted the news conference, I immediately knew from her voice, was Ashley Tanaka, my lawyer. Obviously, I kept my lips tight about it for now. What was Ashley expecting to get out of this? Well, if it turned out that she could prove her charges, I guess she would be hailed as some sort of hero. I doubted it was just some guilt about failing one of her clients. Still, as a lawyer, she should have known that barging into a public conference would not do anything except maybe spread some rumours on some impotent online imageboards and forums.
Rina looked back at the four of us Student Council members.
