"Here's to professional suicide," James raised his glass of sparkling wine. "Hopefully not mine."
The press conference had finished some time ago. Back here at the Spurious offices the post-function celebration was winding down to a small hard core of stragglers, those who perhaps had no better home to go to. In my group, it was just James, Miranda, and myself.
Coriolis and Graeme had never even shown up. Off somewhere doing press interviews, I presumed.
This was the in-house celebration. Sombre though the mood was, it was deemed a celebration because the conference had been a success. As it should have been, given the degree of scripting and rehearsal. It was a celebration because all the work that had gone into preparing for the day was now over. Whatever happened next, it was no longer up to us.
The venue was a conference centre across town. In a live video link from the basement lab, Miranda had taken her place in the machine as James had put it through its paces (from off screen – James's condition for agreeing to the show was that he take no publically attributable role). The demonstration exercises were similar to those he had used on me when I first joined up, with flash cards, random phrases, and lie detector tests. The difference this time being the greater accuracy and sophistication of the results, including an emotional monitor that showed Miranda's initial nervousness dissipate to be replaced by a sense of pride. The only edgy moment came during question time when one of the reporters asked her to visualise the Taj Mahal. They'd been prepared for something like this and a suitably surreal replica was duly produced on screen, courtesy, James later told me, of Technician Jeff who was stationed in the shed with Google Images and a picture fuzzification app.
"Well I'm gone." James rose wearily to his feet, stretched his already long limbs, and tottered off to find his way home.
We were in the Inspiration Room, its décor as garish as ever and the beanbags augmented with chairs from the open plan next door. The table that had supplied us with finger food and bottles of wine was now a mess of crumbs, spills and empties.
That left just the two of us. I hadn't asked Miranda about her arrangements for getting home, and nothing in her demeanour suggested she was in any hurry to be leaving.
"Are you honestly comfortable with all this deception? You're the public face of it now, you know. It's already getting hits on YouTube, and once it's out there you can never put it back. What happens when someone figures out what's going on? You know they're bound to sooner or later."
"It was something we had to do, Kurt."
"I suppose so. Gotta say, though, you did a great job. Totally inhabited the part. Entirely convincing in the role."
"Well, I was only playing myself." Almost a joke.
After James had left it felt odd, just the two of us sitting there facing each other on office chairs. Too much like we were still at work. At my suggestion we relocated to the now empty beanbags, an act that was in itself highly incongruous for Miranda. After slipping off her shoes, she had crouched down and patted the bean bag into a chair-like configuration before taking her seat. Still wearing the same formal business outfit in which she'd appeared at the scanner demonstration, with a knee-length skirt and pantyhose, she arranged herself in an upright position with legs stretched out before her. I'd been paying attention to the frequency with which she had refilled her wine glass, and while the number was not especially high – she wasn't drunk, not even close – it added up to more than I'd seen her get through at any previous after-work gathering. Perhaps her relief at the press conference being over at last had brought about this long-awaited loosening up. Our beanbags were positioned side by side – like two armchairs around a fire, only without the fire – and oriented away from the other stragglers, a group of engineers happily and noisily lost in some incoherent dispute of their own on the far side of the room. I'd been going easy on the wine myself, just enough to fall into a mood of comfortable intimacy. Short of other landmarks, I found my focus being drawn to her stockinged feet as they flexed and wriggled with each slight movement of her body, as if they too were enjoying an unexpected freedom.
"I knew what I was doing when I agreed to do it," she said. I caught what I felt was a trace of wistful emotion in her voice.
Miranda would have made a great artist's model. She had that stillness. Even slightly lit, as she was just now, there was a solidity to her, a relaxed immobility, something to do with the way her arms lay gracefully across her lap. We had left our empty glasses behind when we relocated, leaving our hands naked and empty.
"But did you? Do you really know why Graeme had to go through with this farce?"
She looked at me, brightly, like a teacher addressing a dim but good-natured pupil. "Of course I do. He explained it clearly enough. We need to stop everyone from taking us seriously so we can get on and finish our work."
Our work. Was there ever an office manager as dedicated as this? I imagined her as a serious child; she would have done projects, a scrapbook maybe or a diorama, and she would have completed them too.
"I understand all that. I was thinking about what he's doing over in Japan. Has he explained that to you?" I glanced across at the programmers in their corner. "Don't worry, they can't hear us."
Miranda pouted briefly. An expression I'd never seen on her face before, suggesting it must be a betrayal of some inner feeling or other. Lance might have been able to tell me which one. What sort of reaction would it have provoked, I wondered, had she seen herself in a mirror. Embarrassment? Or that look of placid contentment that would sometimes descend on her during work meetings when her boss was getting his own way. Whatever, it soon morphed back to languid, something she did very well, looking extremely at ease with herself, almost sleepy. At one point while I was talking she had put her hands on her head and stretched herself, feet pointing out like a ballerina on tip-toes, calf muscles shifting inside their hosiery casing.
"I don't know everything. I do know I shouldn't talk to you about it until the scans are finished."
"He hasn't done any new ones for weeks."
"Patience, Kurt. Wait until the time is right and I'm sure you'll be very happy with how things turn out." That wistful thing again, in her voice. The way we were sitting, I couldn't get a full view of her face.
"You're very important to what he's doing," she continued. "You must know that. Much more likely it will be you rather than my performance today that gets remembered." Once again, almost a suggestion of humour.
"He's going back there quite soon," I said. "Did you know? Later this week. I'm to accompany him. Seems my brain might still be needed for something." I gave her a moment but she didn't reply. "I was wondering, perhaps you might want to come with me?" I tried to catch her eyes, but they were gazing up at the ceiling. "We could find somewhere where the décor is a little more tasteful, discuss it over a nightcap maybe."
She turned to face me, her expression serious and no longer relaxed. "I'm very sorry Kurt. I think maybe I've let you form a mistaken impression."
"Oh?"
"I knew about Graeme's plans. And I've already booked my flight. Wednesday next week."
I stared at her for the length of a breath as her meaning dawned on me, as much through her body language as her words.
"Oh, I see."
How do you react to that? Do you hide your disappointment with chatter and pretend nothing has been said? Do you feel anger at not recognizing what should have been clear for some time?
"In that case, I guess I'll be seeing you over there," I said. "Well, I suppose it's getting late."
"You don't need to wait around for me, Kurt. Graeme will be coming back here to pick me up as soon as the public relations stuff is finished. He texted me earlier, shouldn't be much longer now. I'll be fine on my own. There's some things at my desk that need doing in any case."
"So, time to say good night then?"
"Good night Kurt."
My reaction was not what I might have expected. I did feel a pang of rejection, but that soon passed. I felt foolish, as if my failure to notice what should have been obvious was a personal shortcoming. That, too, I let slip away. Misunderstandings happen. The gaudy light show of emotions, the superstructure of rationalisations – these were present, but fleeting. So what did I feel, as I rode down on the elevator and walked out through the shadowed brickwork of the plaza to the bus stop? I felt the evening chill on my face. I felt the expansiveness of an open sky. Like a Zen acolyte provoked by a koan into discarding another layer of my outermost self – shedding a skin – I felt a new connection with the world, rawer and more real than it had been before. Crisp and sharp, but free from fear. It was a new experience.