Unintended consequences: part 1
The centre cannot hold
The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: Great Britain has just voted in a referendum to shut the portals to the other two dimensions, cutting the country — and world — off from 200 years of established cultural, political and economic exchange. What? Metaphors don’t always have to be subtle.
Late shift
On duty: DC Frank Holland and DC Yannick Clarke
London.
1974. December.
Christmas decorations hung from the ceiling and perched on every desk of the SDC office. Robin made a point of doing it every year and it irritated Holland to no end. He wasn’t one for festive cheer in the first place, but even then it wasn’t something he wanted in the workplace. Enforced fun wasn’t his idea of a good time.
On that, at least, he and Clarke agreed.
There had been a new tension in the office since the afternoon the referendum result had been announced. 51% to 49%, a vote so tight that it may as well be seen as an even split. That wasn’t how the government were responding, though. For Prime Minister Nigel Maxwell it was proof of their mandate, shoring up their tenuous coalition grip on power with the will of the people.
Holland had voted yes to closing the portals. He’d worked too long in the force, seen too much of the damage caused by unrestricted travel, to have done otherwise. Not that he’d expected the referendum to swing that way — it had seemed a long shot at best, but the commentators were saying it was the riots that had tipped it in the end. Still, it wasn’t like they could simply shut down all portal travel, and they wouldn’t be able to do it quickly. The process would take years, during which time they’d have to work out the details. It would result in a more sensible arrangement, with more controls, more security and safety for everyone. No more illegal transit with aen’fa dying in shipping containers. No more dodgy trade circumventing paying tax through obscure loopholes. It’d be painful, but could lead to a more balanced triverse.
He opened the drawer of his desk, took out his flask and unscrewed the cap. The whiskey woke him up and he sighed, reclining in his chair. He was pretty sure most of the rest of the office had voted no. They didn’t know that he’d voted yes, though they would no doubt have guessed. It might have been awkward to anyone else, but fuck it. Holland had voted with his conscience. It wasn’t his fault if over half the country agreed with him. Then again, half the country disagreed. The streets felt tense, alien, every glance an accusatory stare. This is your fault plastered over every person’s face. The one thing Holland didn’t like was the notion that his views were being imposed on anyone else. Sure, he’d arrest people and send them down if they deserved it, but that was the law. It wasn’t his opinion. As much as he’d thought it was the right way to vote, something about its binary nature sat oddly in his gut.
DCS Stephen Walpole emerged from his office at the far end of the room, near the stairs. He’d been more present since they’d moved to the Joint Council rooms, as if he was keeping a closer eye. Holland wondered if he was keeping an eye on the SDC, or on everyone else in the building.
Walpole didn’t piss about. He said what was on his mind and didn’t suffer fools or bureaucrats. Holland respected that.
“Alright, listen up, gentlemen and gentlewomen,” he said, standing with his hands on his hips as they all gathered around. “I think most of you knew this was coming, but it’s now come down the pipe from upstairs and across town. There are changes being made to briefings and reporting. The SDC is being merged back into the wider Metropolitan Police — I know, I know — as of tomorrow. It won’t be immediate, these things take time. Following the recent unfortunate incident it has been decided by those on a higher pay grade than me that more oversight is required.”
Clarke made a disgruntled noise under his breath. Chakraborty swore, loudly. Kaminski lit a new cigarette. Sergeant Golding stood off to one side, arms crossed, staring at the floor. Collins stood with a cup of tea in his hand, looking like the idiot child as usual. Holland caught Shaw’s eye, who quickly looked away.
“At the same time, we’ve got the new reality of the referendum result. At some point, that will mean less portal traffic. Over time, that will mean less work for us. Less need for a specialist division.”
Chakraborty cleared her throat. “Sorry, sir, but that’s bullshit.”
Walpole nodded. “It’s prime bullshit. You’re not wrong. But my hands are tied on this one. This comes from parliament and the Joint Council.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, as he always seemed to do when either stressed or contemplative — Holland had never quite figured out which — Clarke raised his chin. “What about the Commissioner?”
“Commissioner Graves has been negotiating this for the last six months. We’ve kept it out of sight so that it didn’t distract you all from your important duties. Long term, we’re still working out what this means. For now, there’s no need to worry. The Commissioner has your backs, as always, but this has got a little bigger than even him.”
Holland swung the door shut behind him, not bothering to close it gently. He glared across the office at Miller, who was sat behind his desk.
“What’s going on?” Holland asked, spreading his arms wide. Walpole’s news had caught him off guard. “Are we about to be disbanded? Reassigned?”
“I’m as surprised as you are,” Miller said, shaking his head. “But let’s face it, Frank, we both know there are deeper problems in the SDC than one trigger happy idiot.” He stood up, moved around the desk and sat on its edge. “Listen, there’s no need to be concerned. Everyone knows how good you are. If anything, this might be a blessing in disguise. Gives you a chance to start afresh in a better position. Could be an easy ladder, if you know what I mean.”
Holland paced up and down. “What’s the point of all this? Why have I been looking into Clarke and the others if the whole department’s going to get shut down?”
Miller gestured for quiet. “Nothing is getting shut down. Changes, sure. Recent events have demonstrated a greater need for a rapid response unit. The SDC might shift its focus. Expand Golding’s unit. It’ll still need highly experienced officers to run it.”
“We do good work, though. Our closure rate is sky high compared to the rest of the Met.”
“I know that!” Miller grinned, then shook his head dismissively. “You’re looking at this all wrong. Big changes are happening, not least from the referendum. There’s a rebalancing, and shifting of power. Think of it like a see-saw, Frank. You want to make sure you’re on the end that’s going up.”
“So this is all politics? Orders from the PM and his cronies?”
“Maxwell?” Miller clapped with delight. “Fuck Nigel Maxwell. Come on, he’s a useful fool. He’s a pawn, right? Or, rather, he’s a mouth. Earth First are the muscle. They’re not the brains.”
At last, Miller might actually spill some specifics. “Earth First are the ruling party. They won the election.”
“Didn’t get a majority. It’s a coalition. They’re weak, despite all their bluster.”
“It was Earth First supporters that kicked off the riots at Buckingham Palace. I know, I was there. They’re hardly powerless, or pawns.”
Shrugging, Miller stood and moved around his desk. “I know, I know.” He pulled open a drawer and retrieved an elegant, slim wooden box. “Don’t worry. We have leverage. They do what we tell them to do. Sometimes they get a bit carried away, like at the palace, but that was useful in the end anyway.”
The man was giddy with his own success.
“We?”
“Me. Others. Lord Hutchinson, you already know. I think you’re a real asset, Holland. We want you to be a big part of this.” He opened the box and took out two cigars.
“Part of what? You’ve never said.”
“A changing of the guard.” He handed one of the cigars to Holland. “Sovereignty, at last. We can be our own country again. Be a proper empire. Put everyone else in their place. Back to the good old days.”
Pulling a lighter from his pocket, Miller lit his own cigar, then Holland’s. It was a good cigar. Must have been imported. Clearly Miller had cash to burn.
“OK, good,” Holland said. “If the SDC is becoming something else, it’s good to know I’ve got somewhere to go.”
“Absolutely,” Miller said through clenched teeth. “That means it’s time to tidy our house. We know Bakker has been leading an anti-government faction within the SDC. Our intelligence plus your investigation is proof of that.”
It was a stretch, but Holland allowed it.
“Here’s the thing,” Miller continued. “We can make a big song and dance about it, or we can just make it go away quietly. Clarke is at retirement age, and probably should have gone years ago. Chakraborty and Kaminski are feisty, but they’ll fall in line. The problem is Bakker. He’s a stubborn bastard. But he’s also the one calling the shots. Take him down and the others will fade away.”
“What about Styles?”
“What about her?”
“She was close to Clarke,” Holland said, running Miller’s words over and over. “Could be a problem.”
“She’s nobody. Can’t do anything while she’s stuck on Palinor, and she won’t be coming back any time soon. We can extend her liaison contract, keep her at arm’s length. Her being so far away weakens Bakker’s little cabal. And if she does become a problem, we have lots of friends in Bruglia who can take care of it.”
Holland nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. It didn’t make much sense. “So what next?”
“That’s the thing,” Miller said, blowing smoke across the room. “I need you to do something. Once this is done, Bakker’s lot will be done, and you’ll be in.”
“What is it?”
“The recording we have of Bakker. Of him and Shaw. It’s time to make use of it. I need you to take it to his house, once he’s off duty. Show it to him. Hell, show it to his wife, I don’t care. Let him know he either backs off, or the video gets copied and sent to the press.”
All in, then. “Why me? You could just post it. Or have someone else do it.”
Miller stared at him for longer than was comfortable. “For one, because I asked you to do it. Two, because it works better if it comes from you. If he looks you in the eye. That’s what will break him. He’ll know the game’s up. One of his own, fighting the good fight and letting him know that he can’t get away with this.”
“What do you want him to do?”
“He’s too young to take retirement. Forcing him to resign would be too noisy, make too much fuss. He’ll take a posting to some backwater nowhere town up north. Somewhere he can’t do any damage.”
Holland considered his options. It was now or never. This was his way out. Or up. With everything else going on, he needed a way forward. There was a wave coming and he didn’t want to be swept away by it.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said. “Get me the tape.”
Thank you for reading!
It’s all getting a bit tense. More on that ramping up of tension in the author notes, below.
First thing on the reading list this week is this note from Substack designer
:Mills has been a consistent voice since I moved my newsletter over to Substack. Even if you have no interest in Substack or newsletter writing, his insights into online culture are fascinating and worth pondering. Increasingly, I find myself looking back on the last 10-15 years of online life as being a big waste of time; a fever dream that humans are only now slowly waking from. I don’t know if Mills and his team will manage to pull off what they’re trying to do, but I think it’s worth giving them a shot.
On that note, if you’re still struggling to break free from scrolling endlessly on your phone — or perhaps you see that behaviour in someone close to you —
’s latest has some tips:
While working and writing yesterday I decided to take Ted up on his music recommendations. Hence this week’s chapter was written to John Luther Adams’ ‘Become Ocean’, as well as albums from Canadian band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. That was quite a rabbit hole I dropped down.
Music often has a big influence on the tonality of a chapter, so I have to pick what I’m listening to quite carefully.
Also this week: thoroughly enjoyed
’s piece on originality:
Things I’ve been enjoying:
I went to an author event on Wednesday night with Naomi Alderman, who is launching her new book The Future. If you haven’t read The Power, please do so. It’s phenomenal. It was one of those author talks that pulled my brain apart and reconstituted it in a new shape. I’ll talk about it more in Monday’s newsletter.
Completed the Phantom Liberty expansion for Cyberpunk 2077. It’s really quite the achievement in narrative. Very satisfying, with a perfectly attuned noirish delivery that denies anyone a happy ending. Bombastic, sure, but the game thrives in the small details and character moments.
We watched the live action Avatar: The Last Airbender. I wasn’t keen on the first episode but thought it got better with each episode and was quite charming by the end. Perhaps nothing special compared to the original, but the 11 year old loved it and we’ll be moving on to the animated source ASAP. Oddly we watched Legend of Korra with him a couple of years ago, but he was resistant to watching Aang’s story. Something I did note was just how negative the reviews were, making it out like this was some kind of disaster for the ages. There was a glee to a lot of the reviews that I found slightly distasteful. Revelling in their meanness.
Also finished Or Flag Means Death. Unique and remarkable. So silly, yet so profound.
I’m reading Making Comics by Scott McCloud. So far, it’s very, very good. I’m desperate to make a comic, and with Triverse coming to an end this year it might be my next project.
The Babylon 5 rewatch than I’m doing with a cosy group of people has reached episode 12. Do join us if it’s your sort of thing!
Everyone at my son’s school dressed up for World Book Day yesterday. He decided to go as Okari, a character from his own comic that he’s been writing and illustrating for the last six months. #ProudDad
OK, let’s get into some chapter specifics.
Author notes
Dipping into Holland’s mind isn’t pleasant at the best of times. He’s especially conflicted at this point in the story: there’s a jumble of thoughts running through his head that is increasingly difficult to parse (for him and us). Can’t beat a good unreliable narrator.
This chapter was originally called ‘Orders’, but I switched it to ‘Unintended Consequences’ last night. I like it when episode titles work hard to earn their keep.
In terms of increasing tensions, that’s what the previous storyline, ‘Shots fired’, and now this one as well, are all about. This season of Triverse has been the longest to date but we’re rapidly closing in on the finale. Two, maybe three storyline remain, all of which are tied closely to the main, over-arching story. Then there’s one more season to go, through 2024, until this entire thing is wrapped up.
It’s strange being on the downward slope. I’ve been writing and publishing this since summer of 2021. That’s a long time to be serialising a story. By the time the whole thing is done it’ll be over three years putting this out on the newsletter. All my previous books I serialised on Wattpad, so Triverse is the first that I’ve published on my own newsletter.
It’s gone better than I could have hoped, and I think points to exciting new options for writers at all levels. Obviously there’s the likes of
and and releasing serials and doing very nicely for themselves. Showing up with a big, established audience gives an enormous springboard for running a newsletter, and forming a close connection to that audience. They’ve all put in the hard work while writing in other mediums.But the thing is: I started this newsletter with fewer than 100 people on the list, which I ported over from Mailchimp. It may as well have been zero, really. There’s now 3.57k subscribers. Sure, that’s taken two and a half years and a ridiculous amount of hard work, but it’s writing that I would have been doing anyway. And it’s been fun. Hugely fun. It doesn’t feel like wasted time and effort, like previous endeavours on social media. Writing a newsletter and publishing fiction this way feels purposeful. Like it’s going somewhere.
Anyway, back to this chapter: some hints of Miller’s actual motivations in here, which you can extend to some of his co-conspirators. There are two phrases I always treat with extreme suspicion: ‘Common sense’ and ‘the good old days’. Neither actually exist and are constructs in the minds of disgruntled people, who would rather cling to ideology than form an actually coherent argument. They are phrases designed to avoid scrutiny and debate.
Oh, and I should probably address the elephant in the room: yes, Triverse has a lot of Brexit in its DNA. That become more overt over time and is at its most obvious now. My writing is always about me trying to work things out in my head. The trauma of the 2016 referendum is still raw and ever-present, and my fiction is where I deal with it. Seems like a healthier place to work through those thoughts, than on Twitter or by reading angry columnists.
Right, next week things really kick off. Stay tuned.
Photo by Alexandre Trouvé on Unsplash
Was wondering when that tape would resurface.
Fucking Miller and Holland.
Nice of Miller to infodump on Holland to make him feel important and trusted rather than realize he's just another minor tool to be used and discarded. Too bad Holland didn't catch that.
This reader appreciates the author's self-commentary in this chapter's flashback summary. "What? Metaphors don't always have to be subtle" made me chuckle.
Simon, if you're attending Suw Charman-Anderson's next Grist on creating personalities, just a reminder the matrix you're using is a direct derivation of Meyer-Briggs, hopefully tuned to be a better list for fiction, without the baggage of being bad psychiatry. I keep trying to expand it to ten (no real reason other than its root as a TTRPG tool is for a system using d10s, so I'm aiming for symmetry with most of my tables and lists being tens), but can't come up with new pairings that don't just break down as being a subset of an existing pair. I may have just gotten it right the first time with the seven.