Short Story,
The computer screen bathed the mans face, the chair and the room behind him in an eery cold blue light. The man was fifty something man with the eyes of a sage that forgot to stop reading and die twenty years ago sat in the buttoned leather wingback peering with a mixture of amusement and distaste though distaste seemed to be his faces default position. The library that light illuminated were shelves of oiled woods older even than the man perched upon the wingback, yet the books and binders that inhabited these ancient and wise shelves were scarcely less than thirty years old at their oldest and less than 6 months old according the dates printed across the spine, mostly plastic binders rather than formal bound volumes. Filled with words like geological, environmental damage, predictions, emissions, grain yield, immunity reactions and thousand other official and overcomplicated words that would cause the laymen’s eyes to glaze over.
The laptops screen was filled with more graphs.
The desk was sprawled with filled notepads and gilded pens and a half empty decanter and over full whiskey glass. The laptops screen a mess of twitter feeds, webcasts and half written emails and responses to articles. Dusty younger men stood at press stands and recanted the same dribble with newer shinier words like “deal with” and “no better time.”
His eyes rolled with every option, opinion and action dressed up in a new frock as well, new.
Lauren had protested on setting up the webcast and the twitter, she knew it would enrage him public acts of busy bodying always did. He still had the invite tucked away somewhere, he’d burnt the first one but they kept sending the sodding things.
The reporters were asking the same hypothetical questions of where it was all going to end and what if there was a conspiracy or a potential scandal like they didn’t know the answers. The money chirped on about their new found awareness and charity to help fix the planet. Would be bad form to start talking about the shortfall between what they offered and the damage they’ve done.
When he’d sold up they’d all thought he’d retire into the background and wash up on the public speaking circuit. Even when he’d left the think tank, which to everyones dismay was not a distraction but his research unbowed by corporate interest. Though those interests had never been any consideration or limit on what he did or said to everyones eternal frustration. Even after that incident with the nobel prize acceptance and the death of that research assistant here he still sat an invite to number 10 collecting dust and his blood boiling at the grand game playing out like a old record. If you flip it over it still spins the same way.
Doctor Dull Doom they’d called him. Apparently reality and inevitably didn’t sell. It wasn’t the prospect of being proven right just as the world ended it was the fact it wasn’t his problem. He was an old man who’d rung the bell the fire wasn’t going to get him he’d be as good as if not dead before the fire got him.
The smoke was already coming in through the door but of course no one wants to call it smoke. Ah well. Not long now. Last of the emails to finish up. All the facts were already in there it was just the joyous matter of adding the trademark amount of scorn and sarcasm. The time was 10:39PM Friday. By 6am Saturday Doctor Dunadays had died at the age of 67. He had logged off his email accounts at 3:52am. The first responses arrived at 11am on monday morning. The official death announcement was published at 9am monday morning. He was buried at 11:37am Wednesday. By 5pm Friday the response had stopped coming in.
In accordance with his will his unpublished works were framed and hung in the bathrooms of the estate and the library preserved with instructions it be recycled into bog roll on the “I told you so day.”
The estate went to his daughter, she never took up residence as he had expected but as a final insult he had also instructed it was never to be sold or left outside the family. Lauren still lives in the estates shadow and is still formally employed as it’s caretaker though she now works somewhere else during the day.
Those Game Makers 