Where are you leading me, anyway?
To the heart of the heart of the heart of the Apex.
I’m lost. So many offices. So many corridors.
They’re all curved, these corridors …
Sure – better for thinking. They’re looping.
It’s for inspiration. Getting lost can be productive. Wandering is part of thinking.
Even business thinking?
I’m deliberately leading you the long way round.
It’s like we’re following a spiral … These corridors are curved, aren’t they?
Better for thinking. They’re supposed to be inspiring?
Even for business.
You’re still thinking in old-fashioned terms.
Is there anyone here, in this building?
No one here, not tonight. They’re either at the party or hobnobbing with the World Economic Forum, or whatever.
This building, like, reads us. It can read our minds, practically. The signals we send. Our bodies. Our hormonal levels. It’s supposed to respond to us. Like, the lighting adjusts to suit you mood. But it’s more than that … Have you heard of sick building syndrome? This is the opposite of that. This is a health-promoting building. It makes you healthier. It cuts down stress. It calms you down. It knows what you need better than you do …
There’s not enough hatred in this building.
Oh, we’re not into hatred. Are you disappointed, philosopher?
The infinite ranks of Organisational Managers. The infinite number of offices. All the Organisational Management that gets done here.
Are you being sarcastic?
This is like superstar row. These are the big name professors. The big guns, from Penn State and Harvard and so on. The Organisational Management elite. Busy keynoting and publishing in the big ten journals. They have, like personal administrators. And superstar offices.
And these are the offices of the up-and-coming: the NU stars – have you heard of them? Young, thrusting types. Really going places. They’ll join the jetsetting elite …
This is the hospitality suite. For entertaining the grandees from government and business. We have everything ready in case Bill Gates flies in …
This is the Dome. It’s, like, a contemplation space. This is where colleagues come when they want to work through a problem. Or just meditate.
Are those lava lights?
Sure. They’re supposed to be restful.
They’re changing colour.
Sure, they’re responding to you.
Fuck you flames. Fuck you, lava lights.
They’re trying to calm you down – do you see?
I don’t want to be calm.
This is the Pulse. Our version of a holodeck – or it’s going to be. It’s still in production. It’s a prototype. There’s, like, an AI that can create virtual landscapes.
Switching it on.
See – this is nature. All green and leafy. Come on, it’s pretty convincing, isn’t it?
Sure – because you won’t be able to visit nature anymore soon enough. It’s going to be closed off. Rewilded. It’ll be just for billionaires. We’ll just have the metaverse version. That’s the plan.
There won’t be any farms. Or gardens. Or allotments. Everything’s going to be lab grown. Including us. We’ll be grown – we’ll all be synths. There won’t be anything natural left.
Go on, I’ll bite: what are synths?
Synthetic biology. Lab grown humans. And animals. And everything, really.
I don’t know about that. You might be a synth, you know. Did you ever consider that.
Laure, twiddling a dial. The Pulse will put you anywhere you want in the world. That’s the plan, anyway. We have virtual world developers who work on this stuff … It can actually turn into a disco. This disco ball descends. And there are laser beams … And there are gaming options as well … Great for team building.
Fuck off! Fuck off!
Up the spiral staircase.
Where are we going? Can it get any higher? It’s very 60s … very swinging.
See, philosopher: The Observatory. There’s a telescope.
These views … I don’t like it …
Come on, philosopher. It’s majestic! Magnificent! Even you can’t deny that.
This … verticality. I don’t want a panorama. It’s corrupting. It makes me feel too powerful. It’s like the temptations of Jesus – when the devil takes him to a high place and promises him the world.
How deep does this building go? The Apex lift goes down just as far as it goes up – that’s what I heard. You can go right down to minus 23, if you have the clearance.
What’s down there? Tunnels, I heard. A whole secret bunker. An underground city, with its own energy sources and food pods and whatever. For when the zombie invasion arrives.
Check this out: the conference room.
It’s built for supervillains. It’s like Dr Evil’s lair. Like something for thirty-third level masons. You could hold meetings of the UN here …
It’s a model of the finished campus. How it’s going to be. You can see what the finished monorail will look like. And the spaceport.
And the walls – I didn’t know you were building walls.
They’re the defences. Force fields, I think. To keep out the zombies – that’s what the architects always joke about. But I think they might mean it.
Work in Progress 