Project: Evil - First Friday Brunch part 2

Project: Evil Chapter Four - First Friday Brunch part 2

'All in favour,' he said, not asking.  'Next subject.  Location of my secret lair.'  The Head of Facilities opened his folder carefully, pulling two sheets of paper out to consult.

'We've got two main options here,' he said, holding the sheets up.  'Obviously the uninhabited South Sea location we identified a couple of weeks ago is very interesting.  It's remote, inaccessible except from one direction only or via a myriad of underwater tunnels, has all the natural resources needed ranging from natural gas, Esso Blue and Calor, extensive coal reserves, various grades of oil from heating to diesel plus unleaded just under the surface, minerals such as iron, copper, both variants of aluminium to cater for British and American engineers, silver, platinum and gold.  It has seventeen varieties of edible fruit and oats, wheat and muesli grow in abundance, farmed by an inexhaustible amount of local labour,' he said to an entranced group.

'Or we could build it in Basildon,' he suggested.  'No pesky vulnerable undersea tunnels, no having to grow your own food, plenty of local labour direct from Poland and we can get European subsidies for building there.'  He held both sheets up, one in each hand, but the Basildon option was clearly pushed closer to the meeting.

'An inexhaustible amount of local labour on an uninhabited island?' questioned Daw.

'What's your point?' asked O'Feld.  Daw shrugged.

'From a HR perspective it sounds fantastic, but in my experience using local uninhabitants usually means ending up using infinite amounts of unskilled personnel to fill skilled slots where logistically the Basildon option provides a Polish workforce which means I can use an infinite amount of skilled workers to carry out unskilled work.'

'You live in Basildon, don't you?' asked O'Feld, looking at the Head of Facilities.

'Close to,' came the swift reply.

'High Street, Basildon,' said Daw, reading from a personnel file.  The Head of Facilities blushed.

'There's also our carbon footprint to think about,' he suggested.

'So we can save the planet while building a device to destroy it?' queried O'Feld, 'No, I'm going to have to consult with Mrs O'Feld on this one,' he said, picking the white Persian up and whispering into its ear.

'Oh my God,' thought Brian, 'I'm working for a madman,' he thought, before checking himself.  'Of course I am, it's the first line of my Terms of Reference,' he thought, smiling inwardly.  O'Feld put the cat down.

'Mrs O'Feld agrees with me, the South Seas is better for my complexion and she thinks the hunting will be good there.  Now, what about the next item, WMD?' he looked directly at Brian.

'Mr Richards, you had some interesting ideas at your interview about a space-borne death ray.  Would you care to amplify?' he asked.  Brian blushed, he'd only suggested a couple of ideas he'd picked up in comic books.

'The practicalities would be down to the engineers,' he suggested, 'but in essence I envisage tapping into the enormous energy from the sun and directing it using mirrors mounted in space, maybe using a giant lens as well.'  There was a murmur of approval from the assembled engineers and scientists.

'How would we get these items up there?' one asked.

'Space Shuttle, Ariane launcher,' suggested Brian, out of his depth – his job wasn't to come up with solutions, just to organise them into logical sequences, allocate resources and provide explanations why they didn’t happen on time, on budget or as described. Had nobody else read the PRINCE2 manual?

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The characters, companies and places referred to in Project: Evil are fictitious and any resemblance to people, companies, businesses or places is entirely coincidental

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