The Shaking

Chapter Thirty Two

Radio South East studios. 05.10.

Neil Simpson looked out of the studio window as finished his four hour shift monitoring the nationally produced emergency broadcast retransmitted through the RSE facilities. He saw the muscular police vehicle which had been sent to protect the station from any roaming mobs was still parked in place outside the reception. Once again he wondered what he was doing here. Granted there wasn't much else that could be done under conditions like these, but as a broadcaster he felt superfluous. This type of event was what the station was supposed to be there for; yet the few staff who found themselves trapped in the undamaged outskirts of town studio building had been able to add little in the way of local information to supplement the coverage generated from beyond the afflicted area.

Neil decided to try to get his head down before his next shift was due; his early morning show having been suspended until there was enough content to fill it. In the meantime he, along with the other presenters, were reduced to reading out what scant local content there was as an addendum once the national on the hour news bulletins were over.

But try as he might, Simpson couldn't get any sleep. It might have been the unfamiliar camp bed and envelope sleeping bag, taken from the BBC Contingency Stores hidden away in a cupboard; shrink wrap sealed in the expectation of an emergency but still exuding a faint air of mustiness. Or more likely it was the appallingly strong coffee he'd been drinking to keep himself going. Whatever the reason Neil felt irritable, as if he ought to be doing better.

Rather than stare restlessly at the meeting room ceiling Simpson quietly got up, and moving carefully as not to disturb the room's other snoring occupant, slipped back into the production office. Chloe Hall was there, poring over her monitor, the screen's light reflecting off her face showing her middle age wrinkles deepened by worry.

"Any news about your family?" Neil asked softly.

"Yes, they're safe thank God! Gary finally got a text message through ten minutes ago saying they were all OK. He sent it hours ago but it only arrived as an email just then. The system must be really overloaded! Any word from Leslie?"

"No, we don't keep in touch anyway. The last I heard she'd moved to Crawley with her new flame so I expect she escaped the worst of it."

There was an awkward silence, eventually broken by Chloe.

"So you couldn't sleep either."

"No. I've got nothing to do here apart from hanging around like a spare wheel listening to other people performing our role; it's getting me down."

"I know what you mean, but we're stuck with it for the time being and I don't see it changing anytime soon. Still, while you're waiting you might as well take a look at these." she pointed to her screen. "I expect you've got them on your internal mail account; to be read as soon as possible."

"Oh bloody typical! Not even a disaster can stop our masters dumping more crap on us!"

"I think it's all because of the disaster actually. Anyway, they've got a bee in their bonnet about every member of staff taking it on board, and you know what they're like about compliance..."

"Only too well! Do we still have enough power to boil a kettle?"

"That shouldn't overtax the standby generator too much; we're supposed to have 48 hours of fuel, and after that it's anyone's guess."

"Well before I start wading through all that I'm going to make myself a brew; do you want one?"

"Not right now thanks."

His drink made, Neil settled down to read the latest directives. There was a large dossier regarding the duties of broadcasters during a State of Emergency, along with a policy statement explaining the planned transition from the breathless immediacy of the first reports through to an unemotional portrayal of the facts as they were as part of the public service output, then moving on to the post disaster environment where the media was to become a focus for public grieving as well as that being the cue to begin giving the news a more subtlely optimistic bias.

As part of the spin another message to editorial staff urged them to be ready to cover the Prime Minister's arrival at any of a number of locations in the region. The exact venues and times could not be released in advance due to operational as well as security concerns, but every opportunity should be taken to maximise the story's exposure with any chance social media content of the visits should it become available.

Obviously the internal BBC satellite internet was working, but Simpson wondered about the state of the rest of the online world and social networks; there was one way to find out. Logging on he found connectivity had been badly affected by the earthquake with availability of services patchy. Still there was some scant activity, even if the networks had been hobbled by the government restrictions and throttled by overdemand on what little capacity remained.

Neil checked his personal email account. There was little new in his inbox he needed to worry about, and he was annoyed to find that even during such a emergency, spam emails were still sneaking their irksome way through. But then among the headings Simpson noticed an automated notification from his rarely used SpookMail account, alerting him to the fact a message had been left for him there. After navigating his way to the site which loaded extremely slowly, Neil entered both his passwords and opened the email. It was a screen grab of a social message group, with this topic regarding the Dungeness B power station, the posts discussing the reason for the venting of so much steam from the complex as well as why there were so many large military helicopters flying to and from the site: Was it a terrorist alert? Or was it something else wrong there?

Intrigued the presenter tried clicking on the hyperlink to the thread, only to find the page was 'temporarily unavailable'. He tried reloading it a couple of times; still no result. Frustrated Neil tried accessing the site using the satellite internet, but to no effect. It was either not responding or had been blocked. But one thing which couldn't be obstructed was Simpson's curiosity.

"Chloe." he said to his producer. "Something's come up here which I think might be worth investigating."

"What's that?" she asked, trying but failing to stifle a yawn.

"A possible problem at Dungeness B."

"Where's the lead coming from; social media? If you remember just after the foreshock someone blurted that the reactor had melted down; there's alarmist panic like that all the time and it's invariably wrong. Who or what is the source of this anyway?"

"Annie Bromhaar."

"Oh Neil!"

"I know what your thinking but I've met her a few times and she's not given to exaggeration or making up stories. For an anti-nuclear activist she's actually very reasonable. Anyway I emailed the Potentia media relations unit about it and had an almost instantaneous autoreply claiming the steam circuit venting was a precautionary measure and the helicopter traffic was delivering essential staff and supplies: Of course they said this was no cause for alarm, as there never is, but the fact a statement had been pre-prepared arouses my suspicions ..."

"Maybe so; but do you think we'd be allowed to broadcast the story even if it were the case? We shouldn't set out to rock the boat at such a difficult time."

"Chloe, I can't believe you're saying this! Listen to yourself! I know I've been here a long time - too damn long it would seem - but I remember a time when the BBC used to fearlessly and impartially report the news as well as develop our own stories. What the hell has happened to the corporation? - to you! If there's something badly wrong there people ought to know about it!"

"But we're operating under a State of Emergency; all of our newsgathering has to be centrally cleared before it can be transmitted. Neil; where are you going?"

"I'm going to do what I'm paid for! I'll take a Sat-Pak, ride my bike over to Dungeness and see what's happening there; if the lead is a bust I'll amble my way back picking up plenty of human interest earthquake stories on the way; at the very least you'll have lots of multimedia content to send through to your beloved central clearing! Julie Drummond should be in soon, she can take over my non-job while I'm gone."

Leaving Hall speechless Neil shrugged on his leather jacket on and picked up his crash helmet before walking out. One way or another he was going to get to the bottom of this story.