"He's on in five minutes Jason. It's only around the corner. He's holding it in the little square outside Wrap-It-Up. You know? The burrito place? We could be there and back in ten –"
"It's not that I don't know where it is Josie. I've eaten there every day since they opened."
"Well then what's the problem?"
Jason sighed, finally looking away from his screen. It was only him and Josie left in the office, the rest of their co-workers had gone to see Lombard's speech. Like the fools they were. He glanced around the empty office, at the little screens humming away to themselves and the air conditioning whirring overhead.
"I just don't like the guy ok?" he said, finally meeting Josie's wide and, ordinarily, friendly eyes. What he saw there was not at all friendly. It was that fervent, slightly mad look he'd come to associate with Adrian Lombard's admirers. Josie stared at him, as though not really seeing him. As though struck dumb by his expression of dissent. She looked at him like she couldn't decide if he was dangerous or just stupid.
"He's not a politician, Josie. He just wants power."
She stared at him a moment, and then her expression softened.
"That's why people like him, Jason,' she said, her tone like that of a parent explaining to a beloved but impossibly stupid child. "He's not like usual politicians. He was a children's entertainer, and a brilliant scientist. He's a breath of fresh air."
Jason leaned forward in his wheeled office chair, propping his elbows on the arms.
"But he's not! He made a lot of money selling bogus predictions to people on national TV and calling himself a brilliant scientist. He claims to be able to predict impossible things, and people go along with it because it's him! His brand of prediction and questionable proof is not science."
"The things he predicts come true," Josie said serenely, with the calm confidence of the converted, "you can't deny that."
"Only because people want to believe it so much they make it happen! That house price rise he predicted? People were so desperate to buy after that the prices went up because of the demand!"
"What about the explosion at the factory? Are you saying he made that happen? Or the high school massacre?"
Jason's conviction died a little at the sight of her blazing eyes. The answer was an emphatic yes. He fervently believed that this smoke-and-mirrors charlatan's maniac followers had set the fire that destroyed the factory in Northampton, and he had no doubt that the troubled teenager who'd murdered his classmates wouldn't have done so without Lombard's ridiculous predictions. But he wasn't about to say so. Adrian Lombard had captured the heart of the country with his sweeping, frighteningly accurate predictions he attributed to a simple application of logic, human psychology and a scientific method he had yet to disclose. The current election was a joke. He and his collection of fanatics had no policies, no principles, not a single useful thing to offer the electorate. And yet they were standing in every constituency, propagating the idea that Lombard's supposedly infallible prediction science could replace politics.
Josie turned and stomped away, slamming the door behind her. Reluctantly, Jason followed, planning to stop by the Wrap-It-Up shop on the way.
Five minutes later he stood in the crowd, feeling a chill that neither his chicken wrap nor the brilliant sunshine could thaw. Adrian Lombard stood on a box, an actual soap box, smiling and talking as he always did: like a man with the answers to questions other people don't think to ask, but just as humble as aw-shucks and fiddle-de-dee. His white hair was slicked back, his pinstriped suit like something out of the 1800s. Jason couldn't decide if the old man made his blood boil or freeze in his veins. By his side was a large box with a clear plastic screen with hunched little figures hanging by strings inside. Jason felt an involuntary shudder as he recognised Lombard's puppets, the little marionettes he used as a children's TV presenter fifty years ago, brought along to enhance the impression of a trustworthy old man.
