Being Inspired, maybe - 88
A
picture paints ... well, as many words as you like. For instance:
The invitation arrived at
the editor's office and he had summoned me,
Thinking it was for another bollocking, it was a surprise to learn it
was the date and time I was to join two other reporters to tour the facility
behind the wall.
Speculation was rife
about what was there.
That speculation was
about to be dispelled by what was being described in our newspapers as the
three wise reporters. I would have gone
with monkeys but kept that to myself.
There were so many myths
out there, surrounding the building some said was a portal to another world,
the visible part of a huge interstellar starship, or just a museum. The impenetrable security at the site fuelled
those outlandish theories because people preferred to think their government
was more interested in hiding something terrible than to acknowledge it might
just be something very ordinary.
I personally liked to
think that it might be an interstellar starship, being an avid fan of science
fiction, and having seen countless episodes of Star Trek, Doctor Who, Stargate
and Star Wars.
That thought was
uppermost in my mind when the minibus came to collect me from out front of our
office. The other two had already been
picked up, and being the closest to the site, I was last.
I'd only heard of the
other two by the by-line in their respective newspapers and the years
journalism awards, both of whom had featured as the best in their field.
James McDougall,
investigative reporter, the reporter who had single-handed brought down a huge
crime syndicate that had been fleecing people out of their retirement savings.
The other, Isobel
Cambridge, a major contributor to the weekend edition of her newspaper, who'd
won just about every award there was, bar the Pulitzer.
It was probably the reason why both of them glared at me when I stepped on the bus. I had no such credentials to my name, and it
made me wonder why [name] had selected me when there were better qualified
journalists at our newspaper.
Perhaps my editor had
considered we were not going to get the truth, and that it was not worth the expense of a proper journalist, clearly a completely different attitude to
other paper's editors. It had been noted
that he was the last of the old school editors, one of a dying breed in the new
digital age.
The driver slammed the
side door shut and walked around to the driver's side and climbed in. I sat in the front seat, the other two, who
clearly knew each other, sitting in the back seat. It was then I noticed that we couldn't see
out the windows, not clearly at any rate, but thought nothing of it.
Usually, it was the other
way around, the tint stopped people from seeing in. I wondered if the other two had noticed or
thought it odd.
They had been talking
until I got in. When the van pulled into
the street, Isobel said, "You're Alistair Gunth aren't you?"
At least they'd heard of
me. "That's right."
"What are you
expecting we will find?" she asked.
Perhaps that was what
they'd been talking about before stopping to pick me up. But, from her tone, it seemed that no matter
what I said it would be a point of amusement to them.
I don't think saying I was
expecting a starship would do anything except confirming their contempt for me,
but clearly, they were expecting a response.
I got a small reprieve when the driver had to brake suddenly to avoid
hitting a dog. A curse later, we were
back on our way.
It had given me the time
to consider what I would say.
"A big empty space
most likely, but my best guess is a museum, where they have collected the most
important and priceless artifacts pertaining to the country's heritage, a
project, if I'm not mistaken, that was set in motion under something of a cloud
of secrecy by a government not quite prepared to tell it's citizens the
truth."
The look on their faces
told me that was not what they were expecting.
And yet 24 hours earlier
the best guess I had was the big empty space.
Since then I had spent
some time with our chief political reporter, Basil, a semi-retired reporter
whom the newspaper had tried to retire years ago, a man who knew more about the
machinations of government than anyone else.
He'd been studying the latest raft of what appeared to be meaningless
housekeeping legislation and found an anomaly.
That anomaly was the
Ancient Artefact and Preservation of History and Culture Initiative tacked
onto the sundry government expenses act that allocated funds for running most
government services. It would not catch
anyone's attention but Basil. And the
funds allocated, three hundred million dollars.
Among billions it cost to run the government it was supposed to be
overlooked as petty cash.
It wasn't, not by
us. And it made perfect sense.
Then James McDougall
smiled. "Of course, this is
something only Basil would dream up, isn't it?
You had me going there for a moment.
You really have no idea."
That might be the case, but
he was too smug for me to lose ground in this discussion. "I'll admit I spoke to about four of our
reporters who cover government affairs, and it wasn't necessarily Basil. The point is, how do we know about this and
you don't."
No answer.
I looked over, just in
time to notice that both of them had fallen asleep, just before my eyelids
fluttered, then closed.
I had a thought in those
last moments before unconsciousness, that we were not going where we’re
supposed to go, but somehow the powers that be were going to fill our heads
with what they wanted us to write about, and never get to see anything,
It was, I thought, a
dastardly, but extremely clever, plot.
©
Charles Heath 2020
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