The Parliament of Small Talk

A Bureau of Barbarity Hunter Challenge story featuring Agnes Blyth-Harrow.

Written for

Kelly Xan

’s Bureau of Barbarity prompt.

Agnes Blyth-Harrow, Wellington’s most formidable conversational hunter, has begun noticing something unsettling in her beloved Parlour — and something far worse inside the Beehive…

The Letter Arrives

The letter arrived on a Tuesday evening, slid neatly beneath my door as if whoever delivered it feared I might bite.
I had just returned from Parliament — the Beehive, as it is affectionately (and inaccurately) nicknamed by Wellingtonians — in New Zealand’s windy capital. The colonies have always been endearing in their belief that a structure shaped like a government’s worst impulses is somehow charming.

The corridor outside my suite was dim, the wind worrying the windows as Wellington winds like to do, but the envelope seemed to glow with a faint, bureaucratic menace. Heavy cream stock. Red wax seal. My full name written in a hand that had always annoyed me with its flourishes.

Charlemagne Kyng.
Of course.

I should have stepped over it. I should have left it in the hallway to be collected by housekeeping along with the other detritus of the state. I should have torn it into a thousand pieces, set them alight, and flushed the ashes down the hotel’s indecisive little privy.

But curiosity — that old parasite — took hold. I brought it inside, set it upon my desk, and regarded it the way one might regard a gift that hums ominously.

I knew what it would say before I opened it.

Something had been wrong in the city for weeks.
Something in the air, in the speech patterns, in the way conversations curled unnaturally around their own shadows.

Still, seeing the words in his hand was another matter entirely.

The Bureau wanted me back.
Or worse — they needed me.

The Parlour

The following evening, the wind assaulted my windows with the vigour of a city that refuses to mind its own business.

The Parlour sat as it always had: a long, high-ceilinged room on the second floor of the old hotel, its bones still whispering of gentlemen who’d once smoked cigars and avoided their wives here. I had civilised it — books stacked in precarious columns, soft lamps with yellowed shades, a scattering of mismatched armchairs — but on nights like this the place still felt faintly haunted by old arguments.

Which is why I noticed the quiet immediately.

My little cohort had already gathered. Three of them tonight: Maia, the barista screenwriter with chipped black nail polish; Oliver, who wrote speeches for whoever would pay him; and Bex, a poet with the temper of a cornered stoat.

They sat with mugs in their hands and too-careful smiles on their faces. Their voices drifted towards me as I closed the door.

“…no, totally, I completely agree,” Maia was saying.

“You’re so right,” Oliver added smoothly. “That’s such a good point.”

“Yes,” Bex said. Just yes. From a woman who normally required fire, blood, or at least a dangling participle to feel alive.

I paused just inside the doorway, umbrella dripping onto the threadbare rug.

“I’m late,” I announced. “Someone in the Prime Minister’s office used the phrase ‘speaking my truth’ in a draft. I’ve had to talk them out of it and may need a small lie-down.”

Normally that would have produced at least a snort from Bex, a muttered “kill me now” from Maia. Instead I was rewarded with three identical, bright, non-committal smiles.

“Oh, wow,” said Maia. “Yeah, that must have been… intense.”

“So intense,” echoed Oliver.

“Really intense,” Bex chimed in.

The same adjective. The same weight on the second syllable. The same polite, non-response.

My skin prickled.

I set my umbrella aside, hung my coat on the stand, and crossed to the low table in the centre of the room.

“Catch me up,” I said lightly. “Whose soul are we saving with the power of revision tonight?”

“It’s Oliver’s thing,” Maia said. “We were just saying how good it is.”

“So good,” Oliver repeated, with a modest duck of the head that looked curiously mechanical. “But, like, open to feedback, obviously.”

My gaze flicked to the stack of pages on the table. The title page stared up at me: Keynote Address — Future Forward Aotearoa.

If there is anything more likely to attract a Blandling than the combination of “keynote address” and “future forward,” I have yet to encounter it.

“All right,” I said, easing into my armchair. “Read me a paragraph.”

Oliver obligingly cleared his throat and began.

It was… fine. That was the problem. A slurry of innocuous phrases: “leaning into challenges,” “bridging the gaps,” “shared journey.” Dear Lord. Every sentence arrived pre-sanded. No splinters, no edges, nothing to catch the mind.

As he spoke, the air in the room thickened. The lamplight seemed to flatten, as if someone had quietly taken a dimmer switch to my reality.

I heard it then: a soft inner smack, like something wet adjusting itself beneath the table. The tiny hairs at the back of my neck stood up.

“Stop,” I said.

Oliver faltered mid-clause. “Is it… bad?”

“Bad implies an attempt at meaning. This is something worse.” I let my gaze drift, unfocused, under the table, into the corners, the spaces between their faces. “It’s beige.”

Maia laughed. Bex laughed. Oliver laughed.

The same pitch, the same duration, the same quick little tailing off into nothing. Three separate throats producing one sound.

There you are, I thought.

Blandlings are usually easy enough to spot, once you know what you’re looking for. They’re plump little things, pinkish and damp, with skin like undercooked chicken and eyes like boiled peas. They lurk under tables and in the hollows of potted plants, exuding a pheromone that smells like safety to the human nervous system — safety and social media approval.

But when I glanced down now, I didn’t see a single, satiated lump curled beneath the table.

I saw a shimmer. A blur. As if the air itself had become… denser. And when Maia shifted in her chair, the blur shifted with her.

No, not a single Blandling. A cluster. Overlapping, pulsing in near-unison, like a pile of pale grubs learning to breathe as one.

Interesting. And not in the good way.

“All right,” I said pleasantly. “New exercise.”

Three sets of eyes turned towards me. The Blandling-mass quivered.

“Oliver, tell us the last time you were angry.”

He blinked. “Sorry?”

“Angry,” I repeated. “Not irritated by a bus, not annoyed that your oat milk was out of stock. Genuinely livid. I would like a specific incident, a verb stronger than ‘disappointed,’ and at least one adverb you’re ashamed of.”

Maia gave a small, reflexive wince at the word adverb. Bex’s fingers tightened around her mug. Good. Nerves.

“It’s not really… productive to dwell on anger,” Oliver said, after a beat. His tone was mild, almost soothing. “I just think, like, focusing on solutions is better for everyone.”

“Yes,” Maia said quickly. “Totally.”

“Right? Totally.” added Bex.

The laughter earlier had unsettled me; this unanimity chilled. Bex avoided emotional exposure the way some people avoid gluten, but she never parroted anyone else’s avoidance.

I leaned back in my chair, folding my hands over my stomach.

“Is that so?” I asked. “Because from where I sit, it looks like the three of you have agreed not to feel anything stronger than mild approval in at least the last half-hour. And Maia, if you tell me you have not had a murderous thought about your manager in the last week, I will call you a liar and make you diagram your last argument in the café kitchen.”

Her cheeks flushed. For a split second I saw the old spark — the Maia who once delivered a twelve-minute rant about stackable mugs — flare behind her eyes.

Then it went out.

“Honestly, Agnes, it’s just not that deep,” she said, and my heart stopped.

Her voice. Oliver’s voice. Bex’s voice.

They weren’t identical. Not quite. But their cadence had aligned; the breath at the end of the sentence landed in the same place. They had harmonised, in the way a choir does on an easy note.

The thing under the table swelled, pleased.

The room smelled faintly of lukewarm tea and printer paper. My tongue prickled, as if I’d licked a business card.

This was not normal Blandling behaviour. Blandlings fattened themselves on diffused conflict and soggy compromise, yes, but they did so as individual globs, waddling from meeting to meeting like corporate pigeons. They did not synchronise their hosts. They did not conduct.

“All right,” I said softly. “Another new exercise.”

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.

“Tell me something,” I said, “that you cannot say in your day job without consequences.”

Silence.

Bex looked down. Oliver stared at the wall. Maia’s thumb traced an anxious circle around the rim of her mug.

“Go on,” I coaxed. “One sentence. A small treason.”

Maia opened her mouth. For a second, I thought we had her.

“I just feel like—” she began.

The air thickened. The blur under the table convulsed, sending out a slick little wave of pressure that popped in my ears. Maia’s sentence died on her tongue.

“I just feel like… I’m really lucky to have my job,” she finished, with a brittle smile. “A lot of people don’t get opportunities like this.”

Oliver nodded, almost in slow motion. “Exactly.”

“Exactly,” murmured Bex.

Same cadence. Same fall on the last syllable. Same deadness in the eyes.

The Blandlings were no longer just eating nuance.

They were programming it.

I sat back, pulse finally picking up.

Somewhere in my coat pocket, Kyng’s letter rustled, as if remembering it existed.

You asked us to watch for patterns, Charlemagne, I thought. To see whether our monsters were learning from each other.

Well. Consider this my preliminary answer.

The Blandlings had discovered harmony.

And harmony, in the wrong hands, is much more dangerous than discord.

---

The Beehive

The next morning, the Beehive looked even more absurd than usual.

Wellington had woken to one of those soupy grey days when the sky seemed to sag under its own indecision. Mists clung to the lower levels of the circular building, softening its concrete ribs, as if someone had tried to dress a filing cabinet in tulle.

I flashed my temporary pass at Security — they knew me well enough by now to wave me through with only minor bracing — and took the lift up to the floor where the real mistakes are made: the one with the small meeting rooms and large egos.

The doors slid open to reveal a junior MP hovering in the corridor like a nervous comma.

“Professor Blyth-Harrow,” he said, straightening. “I didn’t realise… I wasn’t aware you were summoned today.”

“Neither was I,” I said, stepping past him. “Yet here I am. Language’s answer to pest control.”

He made a sound that might have been a laugh, then trailed after me, eager and useless.

They had set up in a mid-sized briefing room off the main corridor — oval table, jug of water, stack of printed talking points like so many sacrificial offerings. The Prime Minister was not present, which meant her staff felt safe enough to rehearse.

“Professor,” said one of the senior advisers as I entered. “Good of you to join us. We’re just workshopping lines for the afternoon stand-up.”

Workshopping lines. Like they were punch-ups on a sitcom rather than messages to a nation.

I took my usual seat in the corner, notebook open, pen uncapped, face schooled into what I hoped read as politely attentive and not actively predatory.

“Carry on,” I said. “Pretend I’m not here.”

They tried. I will give them that.

The first adviser — a man with hair so neat it must have been traumatised into obedience — stood and read from the page.

“It’s important that New Zealanders understand,” he began, “that while these are challenging times, this government is focused on delivering practical outcomes that make a real difference—”

The words washed over me in the usual way. I have built certain defences over the years; if I allowed every cliché to pierce me, I would have bled out by 1972.

But behind his voice, there was a faint additional sound.

A low hum. Like someone had left a radio on in another room, tuned between stations.

I let my gaze soften, listening past the surface text.

He reached the end of his paragraph, and without pause, the woman beside him picked up.

“What we’re saying,” she offered, “is that we hear people’s concerns, and we’re taking those concerns seriously, but we have to balance that against—”

Different speaker. Different timbre. The same five-beat structure.

Introduction. Deflection. Platitude. Reframe. “Next question please,” implied, if not yet spoken.

My pen moved of its own accord. On the page, I sketched the pattern: rising, dipping, flattening out. A waveform of nonsense.

As the third adviser spoke, then the fourth, the hum behind their words grew. It wasn’t loud; it was insistent. Every time they reached for a phrase like “at the end of the day” or “what I’d say to that is,” the hum brightened, pleased.

Echo-Things, certainly. I had met their kind before — parasitic mimics that loved nothing more than a catchy turn of phrase repeated until all flavour had been chewed out of it. Normally they operated individually, like particularly determined earworms.

Today, they were singing.

Not in unison. That would have been too obvious. But in… coordination. One voice rising as another fell, gaps being filled almost before they opened. A call-and-response of dead language.

I watched the faces around the table. Eyes slightly glazed, nods happening half a beat too early, smiles triggered by stimuli that hadn’t yet arrived. Bodies following a rhythm their conscious minds couldn’t hear.

“Stop,” I said.

Six heads turned towards me.

“I’m so sorry,” one of them said. “Are we not being clear?”

“Oh, you are being exquisitely clear,” I replied. “That is the problem.”

I inclined forward, steepling my fingers like a woman preparing to perform minor surgery on a sentence.

“Humour the old woman,” I said. “Do one round without your notes. No pages, no talking points, no lines drafted by the intern who still thinks ‘going forward’ is meaningful. Just… answer the question as if someone you loved were asking it.”

Awkward laughter. Shuffling. A few panicked glances at the pile of paper.

“Pick a topic,” I insisted. “Any current issue. Housing. Cost of living. Take your pick, I collect crises.”

The senior adviser cleared his throat.

“Let’s… let’s stick with the cost of living,” he said. “It’s the main line for today.”

“Splendid. Imagine I’m your mother,” I pressed, refusing to be deterred. “Or better yet, someone you’d be ashamed to lie to. I’m worried. I tell you I can’t afford my groceries. Answer me.”

Silence.

He opened his mouth. I saw the first syllable form — We — and watched him choke on it. His gaze darted, not to the notes, but to the others.

The hum surged, a pressure at the back of my skull.

“Go on,” I prompted softly. “One sentence. That’s all.”

“I… I understand that this is a challenging time for—”

The hum smoothed, satisfied. The others nodded, already anticipating the cadence.

“No,” I snapped. The word cracked the air like a slap. “Try again. Without the script. What do you actually believe will happen to people if you don’t get this right?”

His jaw worked. His face reddened. For a moment, I thought the Echo-Things’ grip might loosen.

“I believe…” he began, voice low, raw.

The hum wobbled. The light above the table flickered.

Then the woman to his left cut across him.

“What he’s saying,” she said quickly, “is that we’re absolutely committed to doing everything we can—”

There it was. The pattern. The old familiar five-step, sliding into place as smoothly as a knife into butter.

Introduction. Deflection. Platitude. Reframe. Next question.

Round the table it went, each voice handing off to the next at precisely the moment the last threatened to say something real. The hum behind them rose and fell like a shared breath.

Not separate infestations.

A network.

I sat back, pulse thudding in my ears.

If Echo-Things were learning to coordinate across hosts, if Blandlings were harmonising in my Parlour, if Empty Chairs were beginning to cluster in the committee rooms…

They weren’t just reflecting our fear of conflict anymore.

They were organising it.

The last adviser reached the end of her paragraph, triumphant.

“…and that’s why, at the end of the day, New Zealanders can trust this government to deliver,” she finished.

The hum peaked. For a second, I could have sworn I saw it — a shimmer in the air above the table, like heat over tarmac.

Then it was gone.

I capped my pen with exaggerated care.

“Well,” I said. “That was enlightening.”

“Is it… all right?” the junior MP from the corridor asked nervously. “The messaging?”

“Oh, the messaging is flawless,” I said. “It’s the voices I’m worried about.”

He frowned. “The… voices?”

“They’re not talking to us,” I said, gathering my notebook. “They’re talking to each other.”

On the way out, I paused by the window overlooking the grey bowl of the harbour. The city hunched against the weather, all its glass and concrete pretending it wasn’t built on fault lines.

In my coat pocket, Kyng’s letter crinkled again, as if clearing its throat.

Yes, Charlemagne, I thought. Your monsters are evolving.

And unfortunately for all of us, they’ve discovered rhythm.

I had barely stepped back from the window when three sharp knocks sounded behind me —precise, evenly spaced, bureaucratic in nature.

Mortimer Quill stood in the doorway, trench coat immaculate, a stack of forms clutched to his chest like a newborn.

“Professor Blyth-Harrow,” he said. “The Bureau received your preliminary alert. They’ve sent me to assist.”

I closed my eyes. Of course they had.

“Mortimer,” I said. “Do you know how to dismantle a choir?”

He blinked once.

“I’ll fetch the large forms.”