The Obligatory Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I don't own Doctor Who or any associated characters, creatures, features, gadgets, gizmos or TARDISes. Nor do I own the organizations referred to, and my mentioning them does not in any way imply that I am affiliated with them - I just needed a bunch of organizations that are usually referred to by their acronyms. But I do own the politicians that make their entrance in this chapter.
"This is going to be chaos!" the Foreign Secretary moaned as he glumly surveyed an inch-thick pile of papers on the table before him.
"Prime Minister, we really must ask you to reconsider," said the Chancellor. "We have a total of 536…well, we have to call them 'parties'…all intending to run for government. It's ridiculous." The Prime Minister rubbed his aching head and blew his nose. He had tried to call in sick that morning, but the Cabinet wouldn't hear of it.
"So let them," he sniffed.
"But really, Sir," protested the Home Secretary, reaching over and taking the top sheet of the pile of paper. "Every man and his dog is on here! Just about every organization in Britain is calling themselves a political party and putting themselves down to run the country! I mean, look at this - W.P.O., M.U.S.A., P.E.T.A., U.K.O.S., I.V.A.B.S…"
"O.K.," said the Secretary of State for Defence irritably.
"Yes, they're here somewhere…C.P.G.S., C.O.S., A.F.F… I mean, who the hell are they?"
"S.H.U.T. I.T.," the Defence Secretary spelled, and the Secretary of State for Transport snorted into his coffee.
"There's six members of the public on there too, running as independent candidates," said the Secretary of State for Health, peering at another of the sheets of paper.
"My point exactly!" the Home Secretary exclaimed. "I mean, who do they think they are?"
"Well, three are rock radio DJs," the Health Secretary read. "Two are university students. One is some pensioner."
"University students? Where did they get £500 from?" the Prime Minister wondered.
"I told you those grants were being spent constructively," a sarcastic voice could be heard to say as the room erupted in talking. The Prime Minister rubbed his bleary eyes and sneezed. He considered calling one of the small swarm of PAs that usually followed him around and asking for a hot lemon and honey drink, but they seemed to have – quite sensibly, he thought – made themselves scarce. Suddenly, the First Lord of the Treasury rose to his feet and thumped on the table with his fist. The whole table shook and the room fell silent, except for the Transport Secretary, who squeaked as hot coffee splashed onto his hand.
"The media would love this, wouldn't they," he growled, glaring around the room, and sat back down. For several long seconds, the assembled politicians looked at one another, no-one daring to be the first to speak. Then, another sneeze from the Prime Minister broke the silence and the Foreign Secretary cleared his throat.
"We need to look at the current political climate," he said cautiously. "Relations with the United States are still tense, and they'll be watching this election closely after what happened to President Winters."
"They'll trust us even less if there's another situation with the wi-fi networks or whatever it was," the Health Secretary pointed out.
"Well they didn't have the job of dismantling the Archangel Network, did they?" the Defence Secretary glowered. After all the work he and his department had had to put in over the past year and a half, the events of last Christmas had come as a real blow. His technological advisers were quick to come up with a theory – residual corrupt data from old cellphones that had been running on the Archangel Network, combined with new high-speed wireless technology and the usual phone network overloads that came every Christmas...somehow, although the details eluded the Defence Secretary, giving people hallucinations of the man who had implemented the Archangel Network in the first place.
"Oh, it always comes back to bloody Saxon, doesn't it?" the Prime Minister complained. "How long are we going to be working in the aftermath of that madman?"
"I think we can expect repercussions for some time yet," the Chancellor replied. "He shook up the entire political system…"
"That's one way of putting it," the Home Secretary snorted.
"It is," the Chancellor continued, "just like they said on the news. A clean slate. No-one in this room has been in Cabinet for longer than a year and a half, and since Saxon's supporters were affiliated with such a range of different parties, no-one has an advantage over anyone else in the coming election."
The ministers shuffled uneasily, uncomfortably aware that they were debating in the very room where the previous Cabinet had been murdered. The First Lord of the Treasury considered filing the list of electoral candidates in his office somewhere before the other Cabinet members noticed his name on it. The Health Secretary absorbed himself in polishing his spectacles on a silk handkerchief. The Transport Secretary wondered if he believed in ghosts.
...
Back in his office that afternoon, the Defence Secretary undid his tie, reclined in his leather chair and drew a deep breath. The breath caught in his throat, however, as he spotted his in-tray, which had overflowed out into a cardboard box that someone had considerately placed beside it. With a barely concealed groan, he leaned forwards and plucked a handful of sheets off the top to skim through – and groaned again a few minutes later. Legal papers, portfolios and jargon, demanding in stiffly formal terms that he sign a series of documents to declare that he had done all he could to ensure that every last trace of the Archangel Network was erased from world telecommunications. Requests for interviews from every political journal from here to Dunfermline. And a letter from an American organization who referred to themselves as a "church", asking in very ambiguous terms to purchase the blueprints of the Archangel Network.
"Bloody Archangel…" he swore, scratching at a bubble in the varnish of his desk. Would this affair ever be over? The furnishing staff had done a terrible job with the varnishing, he noted. He had requested a new desk the moment he had sat down at it, but was told that the budget for parliamentary office furniture was already overdrawn from rebuilding the massive table in the Cabinet meeting room. Upon seeing his desk, though, they had relented and sent it off to be revarnished.
There was a knock at the door and the Defence Secretary's fingernail pierced the varnish bubble.
"Come in," he called, and his PR manager entered the office.
"Afternoon, sir," she said cheerfully. "Thought you might like to go over these interview requests."
"Not especially," the Defence Secretary yawned, distractedly picking at the varnish. "Can't it wait?"
"If you decline to comment, the press will inevitably put the blame on you."
"Ugh."
"They need someone, sir. And I'm afraid being the Secretary of State for Defence, you will be their first target, seeing as how the last Secretary of State for Defence was…" There was a ripping sound as the frustrated Defence Secretary pulled a little too vigourously on the edge of the flake of varnish and a whole sheet peeled back. The PR manager leaned over the desk and peered at the exposed wood, whistling through her teeth.
"Well. Certainly left his mark, didn't he?"
The Defence Secretary shuddered as he ran his fingertip along the rows of holes in the desk. It was as if someone had repeatedly stabbed a compass into the wood with unerring precision, pricking groups of four tiny holes, as evenly spaced as printed text, thousands of times over.