‘That’s a splendid idea Kelvin’, said an enthusiastic Dr. Hargreaves, realising this was the excuse to leave he so dearly needed. ‘I’m sure Mr. Brunel would love to hear all the intricacies about Project Gladstone. Don’t spare him the detail though!’ Turning to Dick the doctor added, ‘You’re in good hands Jeremy. You’ll find what Kelvin has to say truly interesting’. He looked at his watch. ‘I have to go now but I’ll see you at four in the test lab. Kelvin will show you the way’.
Dr. Hargreaves left, closing the door behind him.
Taylor put his fingers to his lips and mouthed, ‘Shhhhh’ before continuing. ‘Let me start at the beginning Mr. Brunel’, he said, still with no hint of recognition in his voice or in his expression. ‘We had four main obstacles to overcome with the programme starting with a logarithmic inexactitude that needed addressing and a conflict in the hexadecimal point syntax. And when we considered the concurrent logic circuits, it transpired there was a procedural paradigm in the source code!’
Taylor went on like this for seemingly ages. Then again, it might have been for just a few minutes but all the talk about coding linguistics and programming hypotheses made it seem like ages. Still talking, Taylor quietly pushed the storeroom door open as quietly as he could, peeked out in both directions and then closed it again. He took out his pocket watch and opened the back to reveal some sort of gauge, pointing it all around the room.
‘OK, it’s not bugged. We’re clear!’. Putting the watch away Taylor hugged Dick but in a manly way, the way a leader of the Resistance would hug his key operative.
‘It’s great to see you’, Taylor whispered. ‘I can’t thank you enough for giving Alice that warning about Parnell’. Taylor shook his head. ‘In the back of my mind I knew his defection was too good to be true. I should have listened to you. Yes, I know I was too hasty and I am truly ashamed of my actions’.
‘That’s OK’, said Dick, still recovering from the shock of seeing him. ‘Is everyone OK?’
‘Yes. Thanks to you’, said Taylor. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were here. I had to find you!’
‘And I can’t believe you worked here all along. And on Project Gladstone too!’, gasped Dick. ‘How come we never met when I was here before?’
‘There were a couple of occasions where our paths could have crossed but I made certain I kept right out of your way. If you ever saw me or knew what I did here it would have compromised my position’. Taylor continued. ‘That time in the library when we discussed Alice, I told you I knew about the scheme and that I had an engineering background. I couldn’t tell you any more in case you were ever captured’.
‘I wouldn’t have revealed that sort of information’, Dick said confidently.
‘But what if you were tortured?’
Dick gulped. It was a big gulp. A gulp in direct proportion to the enormity of what he was about to say. ‘Ah… yes… If I was tortured…’
‘That’s right. How do you know you wouldn’t have cracked? I’ve heard of the strongest-willed men and women crumbling under Party torture’.
‘Theyweregoingtogetwaspstostingmynob!’, blurted Dick.
‘Pardon’, said Taylor.
‘Wasps. On my nob. Crawling over it. Stinging it. Time and time again. Venom entering my penis. Attacking the nerve ends. Burning. Burning. I couldn’t take it!’ Dick was hysterical. Taylor slapped him across the face.
‘Pull yourself together man! You’re talking jibberish. You’re no use to anyone like this. Tell me everything that’s happened since that Ruling Council meeting’. Then he slapped him again, this time really hard. This slap wasn’t actually necessary; it’s just that Taylor still had a tiny, lingering amount of seething resentment as a result of what happened between Dick and Alice and this was his way of finally getting closure.
So, perched on a large cable drum, Dick told Taylor all the recent news, each subsequent disclosure being more significant and almost more unbelievable than the previous. Dick told Taylor about Benjamin not being a subversive and how Vera framed him. Then Dick told him about how he was exposed by the Leader and who the leader actually was — not just a resistance member who suddenly vanished, but Dick’s old rival. By this point Taylor didn’t know whether he was prepared for any more revelations but Dick continued, revealing in graphic detail how he’d been tortured, although he elaborated on one tiny part of the story to make him sound more heroic. In Dick’s re-imagining of the events the insects had actually been released into the wasp box and were crawling all over his penis, stinging it time after time after time until he gave in and confessed everything he knew about the Resistance and his own mission. Dick saved the best piece of news for last; the secret weapon itself.
Taylor had mixed emotions. He was livid that Dick had given in to torture, even if it did involve wasps and his penis. He was delighted that he’d been right all along about a secret weapon. And he was absolutely terrified on hearing that the weapon was going to be launched the day after tomorrow.
‘My god!’, Taylor exclaimed. ‘So it’s an Impotence Bomb!’
‘You didn’t know about it?’ asked Dick in amazement. ‘Even though you worked here?’
‘No. None of us working in my section have been involved in any part of the project’ said Taylor. ‘There are different levels of security clearance embedded in our ID chips and as a mere Grade 3b programmer I’m not allowed access to the upper levels of this building where the bomb was being developed’. Taylor stood up and began to pace the room, which wasn’t easy as most of the floor space was covered in junk. ‘We’ve got to consider our next course of action — and quickly. Let’s see what we’ve got’.
Counting on his fingers Taylor began summarising the status as he saw it. ‘Point one, we know about the weapons and where they’re currently stored in this building. Point two, you’ve still got your freedom…’
‘Very limited freedom’, interjected Dick, rubbing his crotch to make it look like the unbelievably painful wasp stings he received during his torture were still causing him a high degree of discomfort.
‘Granted, but at least you’re not dead or imprisoned’, Taylor added, ‘And that means, point three; you can still potentially stop the launch or at least disable the bombs’.
‘You forgot point four: how the fuck am I going to do that? The bombs are kept in a locked room protected round the clock by two armed guards and the only people who can access them are Maxx or Hargreaves via a retina scan’, Dick said dejectedly, adding for good measure, ‘And they’ll soon be ready, primed and transported to multiple launch sites’.
‘I see’. Taylor rubbed his chin, deep in thought. Then he rubbed his chin some more before finally saying, ‘That means we need to put point five into effect’.
‘And that is…?’ Dick asked.
‘Our plan’.
Now it was time for Dick to rub his chin. I don’t mean that Dick rubbed Taylor’s chin. That would be odd and quite disturbing. No. Dick rubbed his own chin. ‘So, you’ve got a plan, eh?’
It turned out that Taylor did. He outlined the basics to Dick and the two of them fleshed it out, there and then. As plans went it seemed to work in principle, but then again, most plans do. This plan required Taylor’s technical skills and Dick’s ability to move within the research facility without arousing too much suspicion. The biggest stumbling point was getting access to the bombs. Neither of them could figure a way of doing that discretely, so both agreed to sleep on the problem.
Taylor looked at his pocket watch. ‘Right. It’s ten minutes to four. I’ll show you where the main test lab is then I’ve got to go. Come back here tomorrow morning at nine. Tell Hargreaves that you want to continue our discussion’.