“They’re a death cult,” he’d said.
It had been a friend’s house party, back when Alex was a student – not the sort of place you’d except to find someone like him. Someone’s brother or their cousin, a low-level broker in the City and dressed like he’d come straight from work. In fact, it was his isolation that had first drawn her to him, his suit and tie repelling company like the sartorial signs of ideological herpes. He had been standing next to the boy wearing the t-shirt with a cartoon of a drunken Karl Marx saying, “Where the apparat-chicks at?”, an amused, supercilious look on his face while he’d sipped sangria from an Extinction Rebellion mug. Looking back, it’s probably because she’d felt like an outsider too.
“I know, right!” she’d replied, emitting a high-pitched drunken giggle, half drowned out by the boom of bass and beats, and raised her glass in mock toast. “To death cults!”
But he didn’t laugh.
“So what, then?” she said. “Human sacrifice? Blood curdling pacts with Satan? No! Atlas Shrugged cosplay parties!”
“Well, what else do you call something that knows what it’s doing will result in the end of the world?”
“Short-termism?” she suggested.
And then he did laugh.
“There’s this guy on my desk, right? He’s got this little gold-framed picture of Maggie next to his monitor – I’m dead serious! Full-colour high-quality print, signed by the Iron Lady herself; must have got it off eBay. So I came in one day and he’s touching it, whispering to it, like for luck or guidance or something. Creepy as fuck.”
“So why don’t you just leave, if you hate it so much?”
“Where would I go? Doesn’t matter where you work, does it? Where you shop, what you buy, how you pay for it. It’s everything. Every book, every burger, every bit of clothing, all feeding the same system.”
“But you can shop somewhere else, buy stuff that’s fair trade, organic, ethical. You don’t have to feed the system. You can use it against itself.”
“Consumer activism?” shaking his head. “Truth is, in a modern capitalist society, consumerism commodifies everything, even dissent.” He cocked his head at the boy in the Marx t-shirt next to him. “Made in a sweatshop in Shenzhen. I’ll bet my left bollock.”
T-shirt boy gave him a bemused look, and slowly edged away.
“See,” continuing his analysis, “you’re allowed to rock the boat, so long as you don’t sink it, and they can still sell t-shirts in the gift shop. T-shirts with icebergs on, maybe.” He raised his mug ostentatiously, the XR logo facing prominently out toward her, and took another sip of sangria. “For nostalgia’s sake.”
“Sounds like you should be wearing that t-shirt, comrade,” she joked, though the humour was fast leaving the conversation.
He shrugged.
“And worst of all, they know it’s fucking everything up. It’s deliberate. As I said: death cult.”
She pulled a sceptical face. Deluded, yes; short-sighted, selfish – definitely. They probably think science is going to save us all. Giant mirrors in space. Plastic eating bacteria. But deliberate? “That would mean that they want the world to end,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows: And?
“Have you heard about antinatalism?” he asked. She shook her head. “It’s the philosophical belief that it is morally wrong to procreate. Literally, it is unethical to have children.”
“You mean, because of overpopulation?”
“No, I mean because of population. Antinatalists literally believe that existence itself is bad. Life is suffering – isn’t that what Buddhism says? And what decent parent would want their kids to suffer?”
“But life’s not just … there’s more to life, than—”
“And if you follow the logic through, not only should we not have kids, but we should also do our bit to minimise current suffering. Hence…”
“Ending the world? But that’s completely insane. That’s like ... What’s that thing, from Vietnam? We had to destroy the town to save it?”
He held up his hands. “Just playing devil’s advocate. So what’s going on now with climate change would be like a pro-active version of that. To speed things up, you might say.”
“Speed things up? Christ. And that’s what the people you work with believe?”
He shrugged. “Well, at least that would make some sense of their actions.”
But he didn’t look particularly alarmed by all of this. Leant against the kitchen counter, sipping his sangria, passing quiet judgement on the bacchanal before him.
“So what will you do?” she asked him.
He had mused into the distance.
“Stick it out a year or two, until I’ve saved enough to buy a smallholding. Work the land, maybe, grow some turnips. Maybe get some alpacas.”
“Alpacas?”
“They’re very empathetic creatures, apparently. Good listeners.”
Which perhaps is what he did – Alex never saw him again. In which case, he would have been heading in the other direction to those disapproving young radicals and idealists around him, who had shunned the Evil Finance Guy, but would in the end quietly cave to some mid-level management job in serfdom to some corporate behemoth.
If she could avoid that fate, at least, that would be something.
So while her fellow millennials had protested and sat-in, waved banners and chanted slogans, Alex had gradually realised that if anything were to change, someone had to do something a bit more radical than whatever would fit around getting the best class of BA in Modern History and Politics that your social life would allow.
And she had begun to dig.
Not that she knew anything of The Society, back then, and would have scoffed at the idea if she had. Why did neoliberalism need secret clubs? Capitalism’s crimes were brazen, open to scrutiny – if you knew where to look – laid bare in government economic policy, the minutes of shareholder meetings and dividend reports; in WWF exposés of illegal logging in the Rainforest or environmental tariff evasion. You didn’t have to dig very hard to uncover its primary directives or its methods, or the effects these were having on the planet. It was plain for all to see.
So, OK, maybe not a cult, as such – not in the way he’d said. But that didn’t mean there weren’t secrets to be unearthed, corruption to be exposed, boys’ clubs where it all got workshopped, and revelations that might bring down the system that was driving the world all to hell.
From what she could find out, it had all started out innocently enough, as some sort of upmarket eighteenth-century frat club, somewhere less fusty than Freemasonry, where the bored offspring of wealthy elites could let their hair down, network, and throw the odd drink-fuelled orgy. And it was only later – though the orgies never dwindled – that it started to take itself more seriously. As a place where things got decided, where policies were hatched, pressures exerted, funnelling its dark money into opaquely funded think tanks and lobbying groups, advertising and propaganda, or even just good-old-fashioned bribery and blackmail, bankrolling the odd insurrection, the odd coup.
But whatever its backroom antics, as the group’s full title implies (though she still wouldn’t rule out some juvenile gropey pun), The Society of the Invisible Hand did its best to promulgate the fundamental goodness of capitalism, free trade, and robust commercial competition, forces that it argued could be entrusted to order the world’s affairs for the best. Once their moment came in the ’80s, with Thatcherism and Reaganomics, The Society would stand by these dogmas through boom and bust, obscene bankers’ bonuses and food banks, right up to the very brink of greed-driven climate-change disaster, and – if Finance Guy was right – beyond.
But all that was now a lifetime ago. She has crossed many bridges since that conversation with her would-be alpaca farmer – personal, moral, legal – perhaps now the least of them being sleeping her way into the confidences of well-connected and dim-witted kidults such as Savvy.
The path to this weekend has been long. And it’s not one down which she can now turn back.
Alex scouts out the château as best she can, without she hopes appearing overly inquisitive, and decides that this is a decent first day’s work. She heads back to the room to await Savvy’s return and to prepare her wardrobe for the evening’s dinner.
But when she opens the door, he is already there, slumped in one of the deep leather armchairs, nursing a Scotch and staring out the window, and she has to repress a guilty start, which she nimbly transforms into a look of surprised delight.
“Darling! You’re back early.”
He nods, smiles distractedly, takes a sip of his drink, and returns his gaze to the window.
“Is everything OK?”
Fuck. Is he on to her?
She wanders over and sits on the arm of his chair, drapes a leg across his lap and leans in to play with his hair.
“Yes. Fine, babe. Fine.” He smiles unconvincingly.
“How was the conference?”
“Ugh, you know: speeches, talks, discussions.” He makes a little sock puppet with his non-drinking hand. His eyes drift back out the window, and he again goes silent for a while.
“What’s it actually about?” she asks. “The conference?”
“Hmm? Oh, you know. Issues. Strategies. That kind of thing. All very yawn, I’m afraid to say.”
I bet you are.
“So what did you get up to, eh?” he asks, brightening a little. “Did you have some lovely you time?”
She gives him an edited precis, taking care to emphasise the failure of her various attempts to fill the gaping void left by his absence: food, drink, beauty routines, celebrity scandal (the evidence of which she’s been careful to strew around the room and in the browsing history on her phone – well, the phone he knows about). He seems reassured by this, and begins to perk up further.
“Maybe I could bunk off early tomorrow, and we could find something better to fill your day with?”
Urgh.
“That would be lovely, Darling. But I don’t want to be the cause of you—”
“Christ, will you look at the time!” he says, glancing at his phone. “We’d better get our shit together!”
And with surprising vigour he jumps out of the chair, shakes off his lethargy, and sets about getting dressed for dinner.
She feels like the solitary hen at a cock fight. The only lamb at the wolves’ ball. Or – who knows – the one canary in the mineshaft. There are literally no other women. Anywhere. (A gay vampire thing?)
Still, it’s all quite convivial, despite the slightly intimidating size of the medieval banqueting hall, the bitter draughts that sway its dark and heavy tapestries of arterial reds and midnight blues – which, come to think of it, is why ladies of a certain period always wore those arm-length gloves. It is a black-tie affair and Savvy has scrubbed up very nicely – he is a good-looking chap, to be fair – and the black of the bow tie and suit set off his dark curly hair and snazzy little beard most dashingly. Alex herself is wearing a long crimson backless number, offset with turquoise earrings and pendant, all of which is making her feel not so pleasantly spotlighted, now there are no other women with whom to vie for all the undivided attention.
The attendees are seated in parties of four. There are no handy lapel labels to identify her fellow diners (some conference), so Savvy does the honours: “This is Herr Grüber.” A Swiss financier, about sixty, a chubby, whiskered face, thinning grey hair and owl-eyed glasses, who is amiable enough, if a bit formal in his manners. “And Stanford.” A tall, athletic American from Connecticut, in his early forties, blond hair, piercing blue eyes, jaw like a shovel, a much more garrulous manner and a ready grin, who turns out to be some sort of tech entrepreneur.
They exchange smalltalk over some sort of tomato-based cold soup starter – there is no menu – served silently by the white-gloved waiters.
“Have you visited Lefatigué before, Miss?” asks Herr Grüber.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t, Mr …” Is Grüber his first name? His last? The semi-formality is making her unsure whether she has been given forenames or surnames.
“Ah, it is a wonderful place, is it not? You have had a chance to explore the château?” A small trickle of soup has dribbled down from one side of Herr Grüber’s mouth, bleeding into his white, neatly trimmed beard, but he does not notice, and no one else says anything. “The gardens are especially delightful.”
“A … a little.” She can’t help side-eyeing Savvy evasively. “The library is quite something, isn’t it? Actually, I had the pleasure of meeting our hostess. She’s quite something, too.”
Herr Grüber frowns.
“You mean host? The head of the foundation? Herr Rheingold is a he.”
“No, no, the … er … she was certainly a she! Though I didn’t…” Catch her name. “She’s a descendant? Of the Lefatigué family.”
Stanford laughs, good-naturedly. “You’re giving me the goosebumps, there, Alex! The Lefatigué family are no more, I’m afraid. The last descendant passed away some years ago, left all this” – he gestures around him to the great hall and beyond – “to the foundation. So the family bloodline is extinguished, sadly.”
“Maybe it was a member of staff?” suggests the amiable Grüber. “Another attendee? Someone with a naughty sense of humour, yes?”
“No, I’m sure that …” She’s beginning to feel foolish, confused, and Savvy – bless him – steps in gallantly with a change of subject.
“This soup is remarkable, gentleman, don’t you agree? What is that … slightly bitter … slightly … salty …”
“Umami flavour?” Again, the helpful Grüber.
“Yes, perhaps. Umami. Quite remarkable.”
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi/fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. All instalments are free, but you can support my writing by taking out a paid subscription, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments.