The Year of the
Megaphone

“It’s a disaster!” Viv waved her cigarette at the office party and sipped orange juice that she had secretly fortified from the half bottle of gin in her handbag. “No one knows how to party any more. Look at them all, sitting there texting or talking on their mobiles. And this music… I’ve heard better noises from my washing machine!”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Megan. She was overawed by the seniority of many of the people in the room, some of whom she only knew as names on authorisation documents.

“I’m gonna have some fun. That cute blond boy in accounts – sorry, financial facilitation, I know, we’ve got to use the correct terminology – I fancy a dance with him.” Viv went to stand up but Megan gripped her arm firmly.

“You mustn’t! You’ll get in trouble.” Viv turned to her.

“No more’n I’ve got already. A little bird told me I’m getting a CoD-PaCT notification tomorrow. I’m being restructured to a home for the terminally out-of-date. So I’m going to have some fun at their expense before I go.” Viv threw off Megan’s restraining grip and strode across the floor. The blond boy saw her coming and blanched.

During the dance, just as the boy looked like he was beginning to have fun, the lights went out.

* * *

The next morning, when Megan arrived at work, Viv wasn’t there. Viv always came in early to make sure she got one of the few remaining free car parking spaces. Since the latest office restructuring, the overcrowding in the office had become so bad they’d had to share opposite ends of the same desk and so had become great friends. Now, Viv’s chair stood empty.

Megan turned on her computer and downloaded her email. The first one was from Viv – Be casual it said and look in the top drawer of the desk. Megan had learned a lot about office secrets from Viv, so she pushed the keyboard back, put her handbag on the desk, then pulled out the top drawer. A fat white envelope lay there. Taking various things out of her handbag and putting them back, she managed to smuggle the envelope into her bag, then set off for the loo.

In the envelope there was a small, flat key wrapped in a short note. “You’ve been a good friend,” it said. “You’re already deputy floor fire warden. Now I’m gone, you’ll be chief, so it’s your turn to know the secrets. The chief’s fluorescent jacket is stowed under my chair – grab it before they take the chair away. The key fits a cabinet at the north end of the room, fourth from the left, beneath the window. You will find more space inside than appears possible. This was a CAD error. Remember, CAD doesn’t mean computer-aided-design, it means carp ay diem, which translates as seize all the floorspace you can.

“Inside that cabinet you’ll find the original floor fire officer’s cabinet fixed to the wall. It’s not locked. Inside that, you’ll find a hand-cranked firebell and a megaphone. You will need them. Soon. Good Luck.”

* * *

Megan sat at her desk, the key grasped in her hand, remembering Viv, who always had an alternate take on bureaucratic jargon – “if they can change names to suit their agenda, so can I,” she used to say. So when accounts became financial facilitation, she quickly rechristened it “fraud for friends” and when her personal bete noire, personnel, became the People and Change Team, whose sole job appeared to be to alter a person’s job description until they couldn’t do it and had to retire, Viv had quickly rechristened them the Change or Die mob. And now they had got her.

Megan didn’t know what to do. She guessed she ought to report the letter and the key but she didn’t want to. What else could she do? Nothing. She was lost in the bureaucratic maze. She reached for the keyboard to make her report. And the lights went out again.

* * *

Almost immediately, her phone began to ring. Demonstrating extraordinary presence of mind, she picked it up.

“The river has broken its banks,” a voice shouted. “Get everyone out down the north stairs. The south stairs are flooded and the fire doors are holding back the flood.” She looked up.

The fire alarm had begun to sound and everyone was making their way towards the south stairs, their assigned fire exit. As she looked, the first person arrived at the doors and tried to open them. He pushed harder, with no effect. Another man tried to help. Seeing the danger, she shouted “NO!” but to no effect. They couldn’t hear her above the whooping of the electronic fire alarm.

She felt the key in her hand, turned, and ran to the cabinet, dodging through the maze of office furniture with the skill of long familiarity. The key turned in the lock like an old friend and the door swung open. Inside, as promised, it was much larger than would appear to be possible. She grabbed the megaphone – massive – and pulled it out and laid it on top of the filing cabinets. Then she stepped into the cabinet and grabbed the big handle on the fire bell. As she pulled with all her might, the cabinet folded away around her and the clangorous rapture of the mechanical fire bell pealed out unencumbered

The clamour of the bell filled her being and she pulled and turned and rang and… realised she had a mission. Looking up, she saw the crowds of office workers were regarding her with wonderment. She let go the crank handle and the bell fell silent. In the ensuing dazed quiet, she stepped up to the megaphone. The narrow end, towards her, seemed a perfect fit for her mouth.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said and was astonished to hear her voice come back amplified tenfold. But not loud enough. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said again, but more forcefully and clearly, “the south stairs are not safe. Please make your way to the north stairs to exit the building.”

She repeated this several times and was gratified to see the people apparently wriggling towards her through the bewilderness of desks and chairs and cabinets and computers and making their way to safety through the doors to the north stairs just to her right.

Megan suddenly realised she hadn’t put on her chief floor fire officer fluorescent jacket. As the final person on her floor passed through the door, she turned back and writhed through the maze to her desk but, as she fished the jacket from beneath Viv’s chair, the doors to the south stairs burst open. And the lights went out. Again.

* * *

“Megan! Megan! Wake up!” The bright lights and the crashing noises finally brought her to her senses. Where was the flood? She started up, but gently restraining hands stopped her from hurting herself. And a familiar smile she had never thought she would see again.

“Viv? Viv. Viiiiiv!” She threw her arms around the blackened scarecrow before her and, suddenly, sobbed hugely.

“Megan, sorry love, but you’ve got to decide.”

“Decide? Decide what?”

“Whether or not you’re coming with us.”

“What do you mean?

“Megan, there is no flood. We’re just taking advantage of the docility of the office workers. They’re like sheep. Tell them there’s a fire or a fire practice and they will dutifully take the opportunity to stand outside and watch the place burn – or at least take a surreptitious extra fag break, sorry, screen break.

“We’re bureau-terrorists. We believe life can go on without offices and, as offices can’t run without electricity, we’re engineering power-outages that allow us to break into local government and other taxation centres and destroy all the records that allow them to squeeze us dry.

“But you have to decide. You can stay here in a safe job and eventually be euthanised or you can come with us and fight to free the people from the yolk of the oppressors, perhaps to die bravely but cleanly beneath the rubber stamp of a euro-bureaucrat.

“Of course, there will be no power outages over Christmas. Offices are closed over Christmas and people need to be able to cook their dinners. We might get publicity, but we would garner little sympathy if we sucked the electricity out of Christmas.”

“Viv, it sounds wonderful. I would love to become a bureau-terrorist like you but…

 

a) that terrorist outfit is so retro-chic. Why can’t I stay here and be an inside agent for you in sensible modern clothing?

b) I feel safe and I’m sure things will change for the better before they retire me, so I’ll stay here, thank you very much

c) as we’re all doomed to die, what difference does it make. I might just as well go home and simply wait for fate to sort itself out

d) the lights went out again.

e) Insert your own ending here

 

This Brazier/Eyeions Christmas story is slightly unusual in that it is interactive. Choose your favoured ending from those offered above and sit back, confident in a perfectly rounded story experience from your favourite story-tellers, Juliet and Paul and You.

 

(Anyone wishing to complain about the quality of this ending should write at least sixty thousand words of closely-argued critique and email them to the leader of the political party they most favour. And, yes, there is no close to this parenthesis

—the end—