“How long have you known Ashley Tanaka for?”
“Oh, Ashley? You won’t get much out of her. It’s just that we share a common enemy in the Albion Online Project. She has been rather useful but I have been rather useful to her too.”
“Why are you against the Albion Online project?”
“You don’t believe that it’s because of humanitarian concerns like Ashley? Or because it’s environmentally harmful due to it’s high energy usage like why the VHEPO is opposed to it?”
“What I believe is of no consequence. I am asking what you think about it, Mr Blair.”
“Very droll but it seems that young people like you don’t listen to the speeches which I make almost every week. It’s quite simple really. Whether my protege realises it or not, this is simply an escape from reality rather than a pursuit of progressive politics in the real world. Poor Chamberlain might fancy himself a great man of history, but there is no such thing, the only thing which exists is the system of institutions. By creating an alternative system, control is bound to slip from his hands into that system, no matter how clever he thinks that he’s being. There can be many men who serve the system but there can only be one system to rule the masses and the leaders too.”
Alicia looked befuddled. This man is dangerous. I needed to ask Ryouta to cut this out, in any recordings which he handed to Chamberlain. Unfortunately, I couldn’t control the Alicia girl yet, but maybe if Ryouta spent some more time with her then he might be able to find some dirt on her, and so be able to control her without the need to mind control her.
“I know, I am sorry if that sounded a bit abstract, and I am not certainly trying to turn you to my way of thinking. It’s just that I have always been honest about my aims, and it’s a bit too late to change it now.”
“Do you have any evidence on wrongdoing on the part of the Prime Minister regarding Project Albion?”
“Something wrong? Why, there is plenty of evidence of that. Take John Fargo’s suicide case for example, but what Ashley Tanaka doesn’t realise is that people don’t really care about a few injustices like that, as long as they are not directed at them, and as long as they benefit from it. Still, it pays to have a moral patina when things inevitably reach some kind of crisis. Every crisis is an opportunity.”
“My job as a detective and a public servant is to prevent any such crisis, and as a former Prime Minister I hope and expect you to also contribute with that goal.”
“You must be new to the police force then. Maybe that’s why you were picked for this, to unloosen my lips and get me to reveal something inconvenient to me.”
“Is there something inconvenient for you to reveal?”
“Of course there is, but then that’s true for everyone. For example, you.”
“Stop trying to make this about me when it’s not.”
“Clever girl. Or is there someone feeding you answers even if I don’t see any earpiece? You can never be too sure these days. You see, as a politician, I would never let someone put some kind of brain implant into my head, call me old fashioned or suspicious of authority if you like.. And to think that back in my day, there was so much resistance to my introduction of universal digital ID. In any case, the crimes which the Albion Project is responsible for, will come out sooner or later, but the time when that alone could have sunk the project is now long gone. I am simply an old, harmless, irrelevant politician leading a lost cause. See, I don’t even have a secretary, not even of the virtual kind.”
That was the end of the recording.
