Audio version below — if you’d rather listen than read this one.
I did not run.
Running suggested surprise, and I had been warning these people for three weeks with increasing clarity and diminishing patience. If anything, I was late. The fact that I was still required to cross the building in person in order to prevent further damage did not improve my view of the morning.
My cane struck the corridor floor in a rhythm that refused to align with the speech patterns bleeding through the walls, which I took as a small kindness. In my left hand, I carried the same sheet of paper I had handed to three separate advisers, two speechwriters, and one man who described himself as a “communications strategist” without visible shame.
They had ignored it, of course they had.
“…and that’s what New Zealanders expect.”
The last line landed behind a closed door as I passed, clean and complete, the five-part structure delivered without interruption, hesitation, or deviation, and I stopped, not because I needed to hear it again, but because I already knew what came after.
Nothing announced itself. The corridor kept its unpleasant neutrality, the lights steady, the carpet as unforgiving as ever. The change sat in the speech. The next voice did not respond to anything; it continued, as though the answer had been waiting for its turn rather than for a question.
There it is.
The words themselves were as harmless as they had ever been, which is to say deeply irritating and structurally unsound. The problem lay in what had been done with them. Five parts, handed off across speakers, each one arriving precisely where the last required it to be, until there was no gap left for anything unscripted to enter.
Acknowledge. Deflect. Soften. Reframe. Close.
Do not allow completion.
I had written that in capitals, underlined it, and in one regrettable meeting explained it using—heaven forfend—a diagram. They had thanked me with too polite voices and tight, shiny smiles, already choosing to ignore me before they had turned away.
I pushed myself back into motion, irritation sharpening into something much more useful. They hadn’t just rehearsed it. They had let it run.
If they did it again in front of cameras, there would be no interruption, no correction, no deviation. The exchange would complete itself regardless of what was asked of it, a sequence of sentences that sounded like answers and pointed at nothing at all. You can’t run a country on sentences that don’t point at anything, and if that was all they had left, then whatever followed would not be something they could manage.
I tightened my grip on the paper and kept walking.
They were already in position by the time I reached the back of the room, arranged in a shallow arc behind the lectern with the careful spacing of people who had been told where to stand and had not questioned it. Cameras hummed softly. Pens hovered. A journalist in the front row shifted her weight, ready to ask something that would not survive the next two minutes.
Daniel was where I expected him to be, just off to the side, expression neutral, eyes tracking the room rather than the speaker. He glanced at me once as I came in, not surprised to see me, not pleased either, and I gave him a look that said we would discuss this later if there was still anything left worth discussing.
The Prime Minister stepped forward.
“Good afternoon,” she said, and for a moment she sounded like herself, which was almost reassuring.
A hand went up in the front row. The journalist did not wait to be invited.
“Can you clarify whether the figures released this morning—”
“It’s important to acknowledge—” the Prime Minister began.
Of course it was. They had elevated acknowledgement to an art form, largely to avoid the messier business of reality.
“—and what New Zealanders are feeling right now—” said the adviser to her left, not looking at her, not needing to.
“—is that these are challenging times—” came the next voice, taking the line at exactly the point it required, as though it had been waiting there rather than listening for it.
The hand-off was too clean. No glance between them, no hesitation, no one checking they were about to speak. The sentence simply moved, person to person, arriving complete.
“—but we are focused on practical solutions—”
The journalist leaned forward. “That’s not what I—”
“—and that’s what New Zealanders expect.”
The last line landed without effort, as though the room had been working toward it from the moment the first word was spoken.
Five.
In any normal exchange, someone would have picked at that. The question would have been restated, sharpened, forced back into the space until it landed somewhere inconvenient.
Instead, the Prime Minister continued.
“What I’d say to that is—”
There was no new question, and no one thought to supply one.
Another adviser took the next line, voice smooth, measured, entirely untroubled by the absence of input.
“—we hear those concerns—”
“—and we’re taking them seriously—”
The answer moved on without reference to anything that had actually been asked.
So that was where it gave out.
The journalist lowered her hand slowly, her mouth still slightly open as though the rest of the question had misplaced itself. Around her, pens moved, heads nodded, and the room accepted the answer it had been given, despite the fact that no one had actually received one.
Beside me, Daniel became a statue of himself in a way I had only seen once or twice before – a stillness that suggested calculation rather than surprise. He wasn’t just watching the Prime Minister – he was measuring the depth of the void she was speaking into.
I watched the sequence carry on, voice to voice, each sentence arriving complete, unchallenged, untouched by the reality it purported to describe. You can’t run a country on sentences that don’t point at anything, and yet they were doing exactly that.
The Prime Minister paused at the end of the next line, just long enough for someone else to take it from her, her gaze moving across the room without settling on anyone in particular, following a path laid out in advance rather than responding to what was in front of her. She did not react when the next voice came.
I folded the paper in my hand, the creases falling into place with more certainty than anything being said at the lectern.
They had not just rehearsed it; they had handed it over.
Written for Bradley Ramsey’s Halls of Pandemonium writing prompt Day#3
I love this series. The way you use language to show vacuity of the government always makes me want to read more. I feel like you could do a Dan Brown style thriller with this character in this world
Stunning! Dang you can write...