Empire Games Series, Book 1(29)
“Certainly.” Miriam sat still. Her legs ached. Her back ached. Sometimes it felt like she was a single ache held together by willpower: she was a year off fifty, and middle age was not proving to be fun, even without the cancer scare the other year. “As long as you’re done in ten minutes.”
“Don’t worry, Minister.” That was Jeffrey, her young new PA. Was it just her, or were PAs getting younger every year? And changing faster and faster? Hell, Radical Party Commissioners seemed to be getting younger by the day too, especially since she’d ended up running a ministry of her own—the then-unforeseen but retrospectively inevitable outcome of that prison camp meeting all those years ago. “You’re looking wonderful, madame.”
“Great.” She kept her face still as Erica dusted her, brushes flicking. Fashions had changed slowly in the New British Empire of old, at least until relatively recently. Fabric and labor had been more expensive than in the United States, so clothing had to be made to last. The Revolution that had overturned the old monarchy and created the New American Commonwealth had done away with the baroque court dress of the old royal court—for which Miriam was sincerely grateful—but the outfits she was expected to wear, as a female Minister presiding over public events, were still elaborate compared with what she’d grown up with. It meant her entourage was large—dressers and makeup artists as well as bodyguards and personal assistants. “Do we have time for one last run-through?”
Half an hour later she was on stage, standing before a bouquet of bulbous microphones and a flicker of press camera flashes. Beside her were the Mayor of Cambridge, the Citizen Commissioner of Development for the Republic of Massachusetts, and a collection of local Party members and handpicked workers. Then it was time for speechifying:
“Today is a great day for Cambridge and Massachusetts—and more important, for the entire Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has made great progress in the past fifteen years, but many of our fellow citizens have yet to be exposed to the revolutionary potential of micro-electronics, much less the potential of automation, information technology, and computing that the microprocessor makes possible.”
Before she’d discovered—or been discovered by—the Clan and learned to world-walk, Miriam had grown up in the United States. She’d worked as a tech journalist during the dot-com boom era. The hackneyed Silicon Valley rhetoric of revolutionary change came easily to her. But to ears raised in the New American Commonwealth it sounded fresh, exciting, and new: they’d barely had vacuum tubes when she arrived. “This factory will showcase the Watertown Semiconductor Cooperative’s first fully integrated fab line: a historic breakthrough. And one day in the future, we’ll be able to put a minicomputer in every school and workplace across the Commonwealth”—not to mention eventually providing the brains for the secure terminals required by the People’s Logistic Allocation Network, in every factory and warehouse and farm across three continents—“training our children for the computerized future they will live in…”
Keep it as short as possible was one of her guidelines: Miriam had sat through too many of these events, on the other side of the mikes and cameras, to enjoy abusing her captive audience. But: Make it too short and nobody will notice anything you say. And Miriam needed to milk every opportunity to be heard. It wasn’t just everyday politics: it was vitally important to keep the master plan visible in the public eye at all times, gathering momentum, delivering the goods. Or in this case, delivering the first indigenous, crude, eight-bit microprocessors from the Commonwealth’s first civilian semiconductor factory.
All because the USA was coming.
Finally it was time for the ribbon-cutting and confetti—the latter an imported prop, one that had been latched onto with enthusiasm by the locals—and the band struck up a jaunty revolutionary march. Miriam took her place at the end of the receiving line in the factory canteen, beside the union convener and the plant’s magistrate. They were both old hands, deeply wary of each other and of her world-walking self: they clearly had no intention of burying their worker/management hatchet without some discreet external head-banging.
“Play nicely, now,” she said, smiling at the magistrate over a glass of passable sparkling zinfandel: “We’re in this to make life better for everyone, not just a select few.”
“In my experience, the nobs don’t settle for just their share of the cake if they think they can ’ave it all,” said the union rep.
“You’ve got my office number. If you think the managers are overreaching, I assure you my staff will be very interested to hear about it. Just try to remember that my task is to ensure the best outcome for the nation as a whole.” She smiled again to take some of the sting out of the words. “This plant isn’t going to stand still and hammer out the same products for the next thirty years, you know. Today’s chips will be obsolete in five years’ time. The only constant will be change—”
The line shuffled forward while she shook hands, chatted over her shoulder, and exchanged smiles and the odd greeting with the people before her: they were into the workers now, mostly skilled technical personnel who’d been taken on to run the silicon foundry. She was glad she was wearing gloves: about one in four of them seemed to want to cripple her with their robust handshakes, but at least she wouldn’t need to worry about picking up the flu.