Qualityland

A LITTLE GARDEN PARTY

“Wasn’t your father planning to celebrate outside?” asks Denise, as she chooses her dress. Two days after their big fight, she has made up with Martyn. In the usual way. Martyn, who is still lying naked on the bed, says: “He called it ‘a little garden party.’”

In false modesty, his father loves referring to the enormous parklands which surround his property as his little garden. “Why do you ask?”

“Because it’s raining today,” says Denise.

Martyn swipes around on his QualityPad until the QualityWeather app opens. QualityWeather is one of the numerous companies that belong to his father.

“No,” he says after a brief glance at the display. “It’s cloudy, but it won’t rain until tomorrow.”

“But…” begins Denise.

“You never believe me,” grumbles Martyn. He turns the QualityPad toward his wife.

“Look. It won’t rain today.”

“But just look out the window,” says Denise. “It’s raining right now.”

Martyn looks out the window, then back at his QualityPad, then back out the window.

“The rain must be some kind of mistake,” he says. “Because it’s not raining. That’s what QualityWeather says, anyway. And the QualityWeather forecasts are unbeatable, at least since the company began to adjust the weather to fit its forecasts where necessary.”

“Seriously?” asks Denise.

“Cloud seeding, it used to be called. Did you know that there was a state weather adjustment bureau in China even back at the turn of the century?”

“Wasn’t China the country where everything was first invented?” asks Denise. She lowers the dress that she was about to put on. “Do we really have to go?” she asks. “Your father still scares me…”

“Don’t start making a fuss.”

In truth, Martyn understands. His father still scares him too.

His father is something of a phenomenon. The fact that an unpleasant, tasteless, ugly, mean, stingy, greedy, horny, unpopular, unathletic, fat, stinking, spluttering, sweating, egocentric, humorless, uncultured, lying, disloyal, misogynistic, chauvinistic, racist, homophobic, sick old son of a bitch like Bob Chairman could be a Level 90 person was a mystery to all who weren’t familiar with his bank balance. When Martyn was little, it had occurred to one of his friends as they were watching Star Wars one afternoon that Martyn’s father bore a certain resemblance to Jabba the Hutt. After that, Martyn was never allowed to invite the friend back, although the thought itself had returned many times. Nonetheless, Martyn can’t stand it that Denise always refers to his father as Blob rather than Bob.

When they arrive in Bob’s little garden, it’s no longer raining. The amorphous mass beneath a black hat that calls itself Martyn’s father is standing at the grill and turning over steaks. As he greets Denise, he uses the guise of father-in-law informality to grab her ass.

“So she’s not good enough to be your son’s wife, but clearly she’ll do for a grope,” says Martyn.

His father laughs. “You never did like letting me play with your toys, even when you were a little boy.”

“Hello, Blob,” says Denise.

Bob picks up a sausage from the edge of the grill, puts it in his mouth, pulls it out, pushes it in again. In, out. In, out. Then he bites off a piece.

“You’ve been lucky with the weather,” says Martyn. “It was still raining half an hour ago.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” says his father. “There was an 8 percent risk that my little garden party could be a wash-out. That was too high for me. So I gave the order to make the clouds rain beforehand.”

Bob turns to Denise. “Doll, why don’t you go over and join the other women? I have to talk politics with my son.”

Denise is only too happy to obey this command. She finds the Blob repulsive. Bob pushes the rest of the sausage into his mouth.

“What’s this mess you lot are causing there in the capital?” he asks his son, his mouth full. “A machine as president?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” says Martyn, picking up a sausage from the middle of the grill and burning his fingers in the process. Nonetheless, he doesn’t want to show weakness by letting it drop again.

His father laughs. “You never were the brightest. You know, while the power guzzler was making one gaffe after the other, I didn’t give a crap. But recently there’s been this astonishing comeback in the opinion polls.”

“Yes, but who pays any attention to opinion polls?” says Martyn, in the knowledge that election researchers are the only sociologists in QualityLand whose prognoses turn out to be reliably incorrect.

“If the electoral research institutes belonged to me, I would have long since started to adjust the results according to my own prognoses,” says Bob with a laugh.

Martyn smiles.

Bob stops laughing abruptly. “Do you know how much I’ve donated to your party?” he asks sharply. “Almost as much as I’ve donated to Cook. And what do I get by way of thanks? Public ridicule! No, my boy. No.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The thing with the leak, that was planned! It wasn’t a leak. It was a trap.”

Martyn tries to contradict him.

“Be quiet,” growls his father. “So I’m supposed to play the bogeyman now, am I? The big evil capitalist. But that’s not going to happen, do you understand? There will be consequences.”

“I really don’t think that they would have intentionally—”

“Your little experiment has failed. It’s high time that you and your pals realize that. You ordered an administration machine and what you got was a revolution machine.”

“I can’t say that I’m in agreement with everything John says, but—”

“We can’t just stand by and watch,” says Bob. “We have to act. And now.”

“So what’s your idea?” asks Martyn.

“We have to talk to the resistance fighters. To the Machine Breakers.”

“The nutjobs that bludgeon robots to death?” asks Martyn doubtfully.

“They’re not all nutjobs,” says his father. “Some of them are very reasonable people. I’m about to introduce one of them to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes, one of the leaders is here at my little garden party.”

“Excuse me? Aren’t they dangerous?”

“Nonsense,” says Bob. “As long as you’re made of flesh and blood, you have nothing to fear from them.”

“If I’m allowed to ask,” says Martyn, “you yourself employ as many robots as possible in your businesses. How is it possible that there are Machine Breakers here at your party?”

“My dear boy, the big property owners used to have slaves working on their land. But they would never in their lives have come up with the idea of electing a slave as their president. We have to draw a line here.”

“And the Machine Breakers have nothing against the fact that your factories are almost exclusively operated by robots?”

Bob laughs. “Do you think it’s by chance that the Machine Breakers only ever attack my competitors’ factories? No, chance no longer exists. It isn’t just in politics that a big donation here and there for a good cause can work wonders.”

“I see.”

“So. What do you say?”

“I’m not interested,” says Martyn.

“All they need is a little inside knowledge. When and where John will appear.”

“I’m not interested,” says Martyn.

“You’ll give it some thought,” says his father.