Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

The longest riot in history took place in Runcorn over the arrest of two juvenile rabbits accused of stealing a packet of Ryvita, which might have ended without drama but for a stubborn regional commander who refused to give in. It lasted ninety-six days. Mass-arresting the rioting rabbits, waiting until they dropped or even using water cannon and tear gas made no difference – they were simply replaced by more rabbits. Even cordoning off the location of the riot didn’t work as the rabbits just shifted the protest a hundred yards to the left, and carried on as before.

The Runcorn Ryvita Riot was a resounding win by the rabbits and, as a mathematical crowd-crunching side note, led to the discovery of a fifteen-hundred-digit prime number that someone had missed. More importantly, it made the authorities concede, with great reluctance, that any rabbit riot had to be dealt with using dialogue and compromise if any useful resolution could be achieved.

The first mass email arrived within the hour, informing the building what we’d already been told fifty-five minutes before: we were on lockdown. The despondency soon gave way to a cheery school-end-of-term atmosphere, with everyone gathering in the corridors to look out of the windows, knowing that since they were semi-silvered, none of the rabbits could see in. While I tried to get some work done, we were interrupted by Dennis, the Taskforce employee who always organised the office sweepstakes: pick a rioter and if your rabbit falls over first, you win the kitty.

‘The only slots that are left are the fifth, ninth and seventeenth rabbit from the right,’ he said, a bag of tenners in one hand and a clipboard in the other. ‘Can I put you down for one each?’

Toby obliged but I didn’t. I made some excuse about having no cash.

After an hour of tantalisingly complex three-body gravitational mathematics, Patrick Finkle turned up with a Labstock that I recognised as Ansel DG-6721, a cousin of Fenton and the local representative of the Grand Council of Coneys. They both came to the front door of the Taskforce HQ and demanded the release of the four prisoners. They were told that this was quite impossible as, firstly, they weren’t ‘prisoners’ but ‘guests’, and secondly, the release would require confirming who was in custody – which would be a potential breach of the rabbit’s data protection rights. Finkle replied that if the Senior Group Leader wouldn’t negotiate within sixty minutes they’d have a thousand rabbits outside within twenty-four hours and five thousand within the week – and an unwanted and potentially embarrassing civil disobedience on their hands.

‘Do you think Finkle is kidding?’ asked Toby when the news filtered back to us.

‘No,’ I replied, having heard numerous tales of Finkle’s unswerving dedication to rabbits. It was rumoured he was in a relationship with one, but if he was, he kept it secret. Not out of shame, but because his partner’s liberty would rapidly become a bargaining chip. The Senior Group Leader was already on his way in, and arrived fifteen minutes after Finkle and Ansel’s ultimatum. I got the call I was dreading ten minutes after that, demanding I attend a meeting in the fox’s office.

Mr Ffoxe was already there when I arrived, still dressed in his Sparco overalls as he’d been track-testing his racing Bentley when he got the call. He didn’t look very happy. Lugless and Whizelle had been called down to join us along with heads of departments, Legal, Sergeant Boscombe and the local representative of RabToil, the government-owned company that oversaw the many work contracts the rabbit fulfilled. Nigel Smethwick was also there – coincidentally, as it turned out. Although he was prime minister, his constituency had always been Hereford East, and he still liked to maintain strong links with his core supporters.

His physical appearance, I noted, was at odds with his power and influence. He was a small and ineffectual-looking man without height, charisma or any memorable features. The sort of person you’d fail to recognise if you met him out of context, the sort of person who was pushed around a lot at school and who classmates remembered – if they could at all – as ‘the quiet one’. These days he was about as cold and calculating as anyone you would ever meet, and his quiet demeanour and outwardly vanilla presence hid a steely commitment to task. He spent years at UKARP in the policy unit and barely anyone knew his name until he’d wrested control of the party in a surprise coup.

‘So what are the numbers?’ asked Smethwick who was accompanied by a small retinue of staff which included Pandora Pandora, 40 40. Improbably enough, this was her name. No one knew whether it was the result of unimaginative parents, a foolish error during her birth registration or taking a partner’s coincidental second name on marriage. the Taskforce’s public relations guru. She was tall and thin, habitually dressed in black and with her blond hair pulled aggressively tight into a ponytail. She had the sort of cultured voice that can only be acquired through wise investment in parents, and her assistants – she had many – all looked pretty much the same: blonde, slender, dressed in black. I think they popped them out of a factory somewhere in Shoreditch.

‘We’ve got about three hundred outside right now,’ said Pandora Pandora, consulting an iPad, ‘and with a disgustingly aggressive threat from the Grand Council of Coneys and that loser Finkle to mobilise a thousand of them within twenty-four hours if their demands are not met.’

‘Can they do that?’ asked Smethwick.

‘Almost certainly, Prime Minister,’ said Whizelle. ‘From Colony One via the free movement rule. I think we’ll have to hunker down for a long wait given Fenton DG-6721’s popularity. Of all the rabbits to arrest, Fenton was probably the worst choice of all.’

‘The way in which he was detained might be interpreted by an unsympathetic judge as illegal,’ added the in-house legal representative, ‘and to the left-leaning public at large as extrajudicial overreach. They’re not human, which is legally useful, but they’re cuddly with big eyes, something the otherwise apathetic general public often finds irresistible. We’re keeping a careful eye on the platforms to see what develops.’

‘Social media?’ said Lugless with a sneer. ‘ Balls . This morning it was something about a celebrity insulting another celebrity, at lunchtime it was a video of a piglet in gumboots. By this evening it will be someone you’ve never heard of saying something vaguely controversial on a subject that until now you knew nothing about. The hashtag #rabbitinperil barely trends at all these days, and every bunny outside on the street mumbling about standard deviation is one less bunny causing trouble.’

Smethwick had been staring at Lugless, probably because he hated rabbits and here, standing closer than he’d ever been to a rabbit, was a rabbit who also hated rabbits. I think it was kind of confusing for him.

‘Why was he arrested anyway?’ asked Smethwick. ‘Even I’d think twice about having Fenton detained. Justin Bieber and the Dalai Lama follow him on Instagram for Christ’s sake. None of this will play well with the leftie press, who are already winding themselves into a lather over MegaWarren.’

‘It was part of an ongoing investigation into the Rabbit Underground,’ said Flemming, who, like her or loathe her, looked after her team. ‘The threat of a LitterBomb has been raised to Alert Red status, and Labstocks recently came under suspicion.’

‘Whose investigation?’ asked Smethwick.

Lugless put up his paw and Smethwick, who I think was about to hand out a serious bollocking, decided not to. I think it wasn’t so much that he hated rabbits, than he was frightened of them.