A Speech
“Good evening, people of Britain. I would apologise for interrupting the ten o-clock news, but what exactly are you missing? More depressing shit about an incompetent government, a natural world being degraded and destroyed further with every passing day, and systems that were brought to their knees by a virus no more than two hundred nanometres in diameter.
“You may have sat in front of the TV and been convinced you could do a better job than the clowns currently running the world. But due to a lack of motivation, or imagination, or self-belief, you chose not to do anything about it. I am the person who chose to do something about it. I-”
“Boss, can I just stop you there a moment?”
Bossman looks up from his cue cards and glares at me. “It’s a first draft, okay? It doesn’t have to be perfect. Keep your questions and comments until the end.”
“It’s not about the speech, though, it’s about … I know you wanted to broadcast during the ten o’clock news, but that’s filmed in London, not Bristol.”
“What?”
“I mean, we could always go to London.”
“Are you freakin’ kidding me? Every part of takeover day is planned around Bristol. The port, the MoD place at Abbey Wood, the-”
“We don’t have to go to London though, plenty of stuff gets filmed at BBC Bristol. You could broadcast during … errr…”
“Countryfile,” Em supplies.
Bossman is not happy with this suggestion at first, because he thinks Countryfile lacks gravitas. He doesn’t relish the thought of introducing himself to the British public when they’re watching a segment about the Chelsea Flower Show. It also means re-writing the first part of his speech. But eventually Bossman stops complaining and reads out the rest of it. Then he asks for feedback, which is not a common occurrence. Em makes the most of it, and tells him everything that’s wrong with the speech. It’s too long, it’s too wordy, it’s too pompous. Bossman says he would like to see Em do better, and Em obliges.
“Hello, unwashed masses. I am a mad genius with a shit-tonne of money and a robot army, so yeah, I basically own you now.”
“You think I’m a genius?”
“No, I think you think you’re a genius.”
“Ha! You totally think I’m a genius. Not that it matters, I mean I have an IQ of 224 so your opinions are irrelevant.”
I listen to them bicker, and I wonder how things will change when Bossman is ruling the world. It feels like we are coming to the end of something, and the beginning of something else.
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