James Smythe - No Harm Can Come to a Good Man

They walk through the terminal to a coffee shop and Laurence finds seats at a table while Amit goes to the counter. This is how it is, now, until there’s a result one way or another: other people trying to bear the brunt of the stress for him, deferring whatever they’re not sure he can take and treating him as if he’s important. He doesn’t push back. Amit’s phone beeps as he comes back to the table. He grins.

‘The prediction’s done.’

‘What?’

‘The little tick boxes, Larry. Remember the tick boxes?’ Laurence hates when he calls him that. He’s the only person who does, an affectionate little tic. Larry and Dee, frivolous and light … ‘The package is being put together, should be with us soon as anything.’

‘This is ridiculous.’

‘It is. But you’ve seen Homme’s. You know that it’s effective.’

Homme had his own prediction released to the public a couple of months ago, the product of spin and facts, but also deep-rooted in his public persona. Amit thought that it was managed – it had to be – but to the public it seemed to be honest. It was in some way a truth. The ClearVista algorithm took his information – his entire life, realistically, when you break it down – and fed out a picture of a candidate who wouldn’t actually be a bad leader. Statistically, Homme was weak on so many issues, running with very few actual policies he seemed to care about but he was balanced, accessible, open to all. He would take red families in some places, that was his trick. Crossing party lines. Along with the hypothetical suppositions of what his stance would be on certain hot topics (which contradicted so much of the usual left stances, pandering to moneymen and the religious right), ClearVista created a short video. This was their most important gimmick: a new addition to the premium package, only possible with the most detailed survey and at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars; but, they promised, the trade-off was worth it. The video was useable, open source, free to be circulated however the recipient desired. Homme’s was perfect for him. It was so on-message as to be almost laughable. There he was in a helmet and a flak jacket, surrounded by swirls of dust, running to a helicopter, waving at troops; shaking their hands as he passed them, mixed gender and color (and even, in their haircuts and rainbow pin-badges, crudely implied sexuality). It was very presidential, the press agreed. They joked, the first time that they saw the tech, about previous presidents, and what it would have shown of them: Marilyn Monroe; ‘I am not a crook’; interns and cigars. A few days after the video was released – along with the full results of the tests, and the answers he gave to get the results, in the spirit of full disclosure and honesty – his numbers increased, stripping out votes from the other candidates. The video worked, even if it was only smoke and mirrors. ‘Pointless to be nervous,’ Amit says. ‘It’s done. Results come through later today, they’ve said.’ They leave the Starbucks and head for the gate, scanning their ID cards as they pass through to the departure lounge.

They join the queue to board, and Laurence notices that the man who had been in front of them at the check-in desk is in front of them again now. He’s wearing his blue jacket this time: the back is wrinkled from where he was gripping it. He turns and smiles.

‘You’re Laurence Walker, right?’ the man asks. He holds out his hand, and Laurence looks at it: something wrong about this. It’s the second time he’s been here. He’s stopped believing in coincidence. Amit notices and steps in, shaking it first.

‘You’re a supporter?’ Amit is exuberant, as he always is.

‘Yeah, I thought it was you. I’m a big fan,’ the man says. ‘We’ve been needing somebody like you for a while now. We’ve been playing safe, I think. We need a shake-up, that’s what I’m saying.’

‘Yes,’ Laurence says. ‘I agree.’ The man talks about the party and the future and Laurence nods his way through the conversation, relieved for some reason. Relieved, and yet still nervous.

The flight attendants run through the drills and show the exits; and they show the little movie about what to do in an emergency; and then the plane waits while the captain runs the airline’s custom algorithm, to take into account the names of all the passengers, to generate a final figure that’s meant to dictate their safety levels; and Amit fights the elbows of the man next to him, who reeks of cheap cologne and grips the seat’s arms as they shuttle down the runway. He leans over, looking across the aisle at Laurence and the window, and he watches the ground seemingly get faster and faster, and then it tilts away from the plane as they head upwards, pulling away from the ground. His ears pop and he shuts his eyes and opens his jaw over and over in an approximation of a yawn. He’s one of the first to his feet when the seatbelt sign goes dark, grabbing his laptop from the overhead locker.

‘You want?’ he asks Laurence. Laurence shakes his head and jacks his seat back a few degrees.

‘I’ll get some rest,’ he says. ‘Wake me when we land.’ Amit sits down and logs into the Wi-Fi. He loads the calendar app and looks at the breakdown of the next few days, structured and tweaked to the minute in order to allow the maximum time with each of the potential investors, and at each photo opportunity. The little colored bars are packed tight, and he rearranges the ones that only involve the two of them – breakfasts, dinners – so that it maybe doesn’t look too bad to Laurence’s eyes. Artificial breathing room, Amit thinks: one of his finest tweaks to the system. And each of the appointments has information attached that both men have to memorize. They have to know who donated what previously, and why; what the thing was that swayed their wallets. They have to know how deep they can make them dig. One of Amit’s junior staffers has prepared a full breakdown on every man for them, telling them who to discuss God (capital G) and religion with, and who is likely to want to talk about artillery instead of textbooks. There are lists of the names of their wives, husbands and children. One of them has lost a child, just as Laurence has; this is common ground. All of them will know everything about him; their own research just levels the playing field. Lies are pointless now, because information doesn’t die like it used to. It all sits there on some server, waiting for somebody to discover it and mine it and crosscheck it and use it. Used to be in politics that you could tell a different story to two different moneymen and they’d both buy it. Now, Amit’s rule is that you should stick to the truth, or whatever version of it is most palatable. You only work with what you’ve got. Laurence’s life is available to the world already. Everybody can read the words from the eulogy he delivered at Sean’s funeral; that’s nothing but material now.

His email pings. It’s ClearVista . The whole thing is automated: no people sitting back and watching this, making it work. That was the tech that they were instigating when he finally left working for them. For whatever reason, that stuff always used to creep him out. The email is labeled Your Laurence Walker Results : there’s something disquietingly possessive about it. Laurence opens the email.

Thank you for your contract with ClearVista, the world’s foremost predictions and statistics company , it reads. Your package [LW008] has been completed and the contract fulfilled. Please find the initial results attached. Further emails with package enhancements will follow. Thank you for using ClearVista.

The numbers don’t lie.

Attached to the email is a glossily produced PDF file, little more than a glorified spreadsheet holding a series of almost incomprehensible posits and answers. There are questions asked at the top, about Laurence’s virtues and skills, things that are ambiguous but useful.