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Inspellen's plan would succeed. There was no risk of failure there. He would achieve political influence through the subterfuge of the Oracle Project, exploiting the credulity of heads of state with his tales of High Science beyond the ken of Mortal Men.

What I tried to predict, what concerned me, were the consequences of Inspellen's success.

Inspellen would use the expertise of the Institute to tailor advice for the visiting dignitaries, to be filtered through the theatre of the boy in the tank and his induced visions, the computer simulated prophecies.

Inspellen would dole out solutions for civil unrest, economic collapse, military conflict, disease control, environmental concerns; solutions based on reason and logic and data, instead of political favours, favouritism, naked corruption and greed.
And in the process he would by cunning and guile create a new and fairer world order.

It seemed ideal, a quiet revolution carried out by a man of science, achieved by strength of intellect rather than force of arms.

But.

But.

Things nagged at me. Nothing ends where we want it to. A utopia never stays balanced. There are always forces both internal and external that are unseen or unnoticed that exist to unbalance and upend a golden state.

I thought ahead, speculated.

The influence that the Institute would attain would change it. The Institute would become a new social elite.
It is a rule of history that all elites tend towards conservatism.
The Institute was already an academic elite, but the mechanism that kept it fluid and dynamic was that it was focused purely on research, the acquisition of knowledge.
The membership was dictated purely on merit, on academic achievement, attracting only the brightest and best, ensuring a constant flow of new blood, new ideas.

Even so, there was an ever present tension between the older faculty members, resting on the laurels of past achievements and dismissive of the new ideas of the junior members. As much as the old hands argued that their restraint encouraged 'younger, less disciplined minds' to be absolutely sure of their results and soundness of their theories, so too the young bloods railed against the 'hidebound old fools' stifling dangerous new hypotheses because they conflicted with their own pet ideas and assumptions.

With the new influence the Institute would begin to accrue, how long until the other powerful factions began to press for their own agents to be admitted to the Institute, so that they had their own inside track for gaining access to the Oracles advice?
Perhaps not the research section, but the administration bureau perhaps, toadying little men who toe the company or government line?

Or maybe the Institute wises up to such infiltration and instead restricts membership to family members of existing staff? Only direct descendents to gain new admittance to the Institutes ranks. Overnight, the creation of a fledgling aristocracy on the back of utopian intentions. Overnight, the death of the influx of new talent and ideas that made the Institute such a powerful force.

But then, all research will probably have been subsumed and redirected to serve the Oracle project.
And assuming that the existing power struggles don't weigh the balance between the advantage gained from the Oracles advice and the disadvantage posed by the loss of their own sovereignty and decide to dismantle the Institute; with tanks and troops and advanced precision munitions if necessary, for how long would the Institute use it's new found power benignly.

How long before they stop aiding the cause of the poor and disposed, the helpless that society and its laws are supposed to protect, and start to work towards the benefit of 'our sort of people'?

An olive bounced from the side of my head, and woke me from my reverie, Gregor was holding a glass aloft and Erst shouted out a toast.

More liquor flooded me, sharply scented of pine and citrus.


We dispersed into the night, Jalayt electing to see me home. We ambled down to the river bank, waiting for one of the river ferries to take us across. The jetty we waited on was lit with red paper lanterns, staining us all a deep pink by the black water.

I tried to tell Jalayt as best I could of my fears for the institute, the path Inspellen was leading us all down, with his secret project, the deception he'd embroiled me in, the secrets kept from the Administration, but I was too tangled with drink to make much sense.

I began to doze on the boat that ferried us across the wide curve of the river bend, and kept stumbling from moments of brief and sudden alertness to soft cotton wool sleep, so that the journey home was made up of postcards of memory.

Stepping up a cobbled street, Jalayt laughing at my inept progress; Slumped in a doorway, murmuring doggerel; Crawling up a spiralling staircase on my hands and knees; lying on a stripped wood floor trying to convince Jalayt that I'd be fine, I'd just sleep here for the night, I'd see him in the morning, whilst he fussed at a doorway.

And then I was in my bed, and listening to Jalayt's heavy footsteps in the hallway.
I heard the door slam behind him and sighed into the pillow, waiting to sink beneath the surface of sleep like a stone.

But I didn't. Time passed, I wasn't sure how much. All I knew with any certainty is that I wasn't sleeping. Something was keeping me awake, almost alert.
It was the smell, I realised. I could smell her in the room, the soft vanilla and warm salt smell of her skin. She'd been here just hours before, collecting her things, hidden in here when I blundered in.

I flinched from the realisation just as much as I craved it. The smell was invasive, unwanted, and treasured. I felt an ache erupt behind my ribs and I collapsed back onto the bed.

I was asleep in seconds.


The next day I arrived at the Institute by car. I usually walked in, preferring to see the city awaken around me as I walked through it, but waking late this morning I had arranged for the Institute to send a driver to collect me.

I experienced a brief wave of dizziness as I hurried up the steps that lead to the Institute, and was glad that I had breakfasted lightly on fruit that morning.

I was met at reception by a pleasant seeming man around my own age who introduced himself to me as Grey. He was blond and slim, dressed in a neat and unfussy black suit, with a relaxed and confident air about him. I recognised him as a member of the Administration; but I wasn't sure exactly which section.
We shook hands, and he was polite enough to not ask about my black eye and the bruise on my jaw, although his eyes lingered on my face for a few seconds before he shot me a friendly grin.

"I promise not to keep you too long, if you'd just come this way?" Grey gestured to one of the elevators reserved for the Administration Bloc.

Inside the lift, decorated in a black material that gleamed like volcanic glass in an oil slick curve around us, Grey slid a thin pass key into a discrete port and the lift hummed quietly as it lifted us away.

Grey turned to me, whilst around us distorted ghosts of our reflections twisted and ran together whilst he spoke to me. The effect was a little too much, and I closed my eyes for a second whilst I fought a moment's nausea.

"I'm sorry?" I asked; when the sensation passed. Grey seemed intensely amused by my fragility.

"I understand that you've been Inspellen's assistant for some time now?"

I nodded.
"Yes, I joined his staff at the beginning of his work on varied plasma containment."

Grey nodded as well. I had a moment of realisation that nothing I was going to tell him was going to be a surprise.
"Inspellen's work has always been" Grey paused for a moment, staring ahead at the eerie reflection of the lift doors, before turning back, with his lips pressed together in wry amusement. "Ambitious." He concluded, as the doors slid open.

We stepped out into a vast room, something suited to heads of state or princes. Windows two stories high made up the back wall, revealing the city below in a vast vista. It spread out, grey and black, spotted with patches of green and rent in two by the dark black curls of the river. Above it, reflecting the gold of the early morning sun and casting its shadow onto the blotched surface of the city was a mountainous bank of cumulonimbus, impossibly huge, and resembling a discarded tower made for some giant.

Silhouetted against this awesome view were a handful of men seated at a semi circular table, far away from were we stood at the entrance to the lift.

The floor was the same material as the interior of the lift, the opaque black glass that shone with oil slick colours as we began to walk across it.
The walls on either side of us as we began the long walk to approach the table we decorated in matching mosaics, showing heroic figures from some long past antiquity battling with chimerical creatures, combinations of goat, heron, lion, snake, rhino, bull, wolf and eagle.

As we approached the table, I could see it was a single huge piece of wood, possibly a massive section from a stump of a vast sequoia, carved and planed to resemble a weathered piece of driftwood fortuitously moulded to just the dimensions needed to create this piece of furniture.

Seven men sat round it in chairs large, serious looking chairs. I had expected, given the grandeur of the room, for them to be unspeaking and stern, composed and reserved as Satraps, but instead they seemed welcoming and relaxed, uncles and grandfathers at a wedding perhaps.

One of them called out as we approached.
"Hello! So glad you could make it up to us." He gestured to a low simple chair at the focus of the semicircle that Grey guided me to.
"My name is Butler." He said, as I sat down. "I really am dreadfully sorry to intrude upon your time like this."

The other men nodded and made sympathetic noises. I said that it was no problem, and was rewarded with smiles and nods.

"Tell me," Butler asked, "have you heard of the Foresight Committee?"

"No." I answered. Butler smiled in an avuncular fashion.
"Excellent. Young man, we were wondering if you could tell us everything you know about what Doctor Inspellen is working on at present."