Professor Joanne Dudgeon strode across the room and angrily force-fed the newspaper into a protesting shredder.

'Parasites!' she scowled, as the machine strained and grumbled through the newsprint, before grinding to a noisy, shuddering halt in a stinking cloud of burning metal. Dudgeon cursed again, ripping up what was left with alarming ferocity over the bin, which hissed and sucked the pieces of paper out of sight. A tiny robot sped out of a hatchway in the skirting and meticulously cleaned up the remaining debris, retreating apologetically. She ignored all this, and instead looked moodily through a dramatic glass wall, which made up one side of the room. A ferry full of photo-happy tourists wandered lazily up the Thames. 'I have an MBE, for God's sake,' she muttered.

Natalie coughed politely. 'I'm sure it won’t be a problem, ma'am,' she said. 'We can contain this little, um, distraction.' She tapped a sleek, black device and a series of colourful charts appeared on a large white screen which unrolled silently from the ceiling. 'It feels right this time.' she added, flicking through the charts until she settled on a slide entitled Opinion Poll Results and Projections, Spring 2010. The Professor’s reflection scowled back at Natalie.

'If you would look at the latest figures,' Natalie continued, a little desperately, 'you'll find the public very much in favour of our SuperSociety^TM campaign. The latest vox pops have been very promising, we just need-'

'Yes yes, alright Natalie,' Dudgeon interrupted, massaging her temples and watching as one of the tourists leaned too far over the side of the boat and fell in. No hint of amusement crossed her face. The man was instantly surrounded by a little crowd of camera jocks, all flashing away, pointing and laughing. Dudgeon sighed and turned back, giving Natalie's chart a cursory glance.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's been a very trying day.'

'It's all getting a bit hectic.' Natalie agreed.

Dudgeon snorted. 'A bit,' she said.

The faint smell of burning flesh hung in the air, some remnant of the Professor's morning. Natalie tried not to think about it. Just lab stuff. Not her business. Besides, they had more important things to worry about. Like becoming Prime Minister within a fortnight.

The London Police force is almost entirely composed of DPharm Secs now,' she said. 'If you look here, and here,' she pointed out several generous looking spikes in a large, complicated graph, 'You'll see crime is down by forty percent. With no increase in the prison population. They're actually an effective deterrent.' Two of the dumb apes stood either side of Dudgeon's office door, staring stupidly, unblinkingly ahead. Natalie usually tried to pretend they didn't exist. It was hard.

'Of course they are,' Dudgeon said. 'I made them.'

'What I mean is: there's no reason for this newspaper article to affect the campaign. You are stronger than ever.'

'So what's our next move?' asked Dudgeon, making a show of studying a display of pie charts showing public opinion of her latest run of television interviews. 'Murder all the reporters?'

Natalie would have laughed, but she knew her boss. There were many reasons she was known as The Dragon, a sense of humour was not one of them.

'Obviously you will arrange a witty riposte to this charlatan,' Dudgeon said, with a nod at the smouldering shredder, 'but we must strike quickly before this nonsense gets out of hand.' Natalie nodded, watching a boat pull up alongside the ferry to rescue the miserable, damp little tourist.

v'Do you want me to call the newspaper? This...' she flicked through newspaper articles on a little tablet PC, '... Holland character?'

'Yes. I should like to meet him face to face.' A nasty smile played across the Professor's lips, and her eyes flickered over to an ornate wooden casket on the desk. It had been there for as long as Natalie could remember, and Dudgeon often gave it strange looks. Sometimes wistful, but usually just angry, as if the box had done her a great wrong.

'I'll show him science!' Dudgeon added.

'Indeed.' Natalie noted the malice in the Professor's words. 'The team is working flat-out to hook the last few fence-sitters, ma'am,' she said. 'We have an extremely busy week ahead...' Natalie hoped Dudgeon would respect her skill in dealing with the public, and focus. The campaign was so strong now, she had not thought it possible to smear the name of the Great Professor. Not after she'd done so much for the health of the population, and Natalie had worked so hard on her image. But this tabloid scribbler had managed it. No wonder Dudgeon was angry. Show him science? What did that mean?

'...after that, we can start to look at the bigger picture. For now, you need to focus on presenting your best side to the public.' She was surprised to find herself still talking. Sometimes she could do that - let her mouth babble on while her mind worried about other things. 'They already worship you; we just need a little more empathy to come out in those interviews. Show them your research and scientific success is to their benefit.'

'I suppose one can manage that. After all, I am quite the revolutionary,' said Dudgeon, inspecting the Secs guarding the door. They stared back, impassively. 'And the journalist?' she asked with a nasty curl to her lips. Natalie sighed.

'I will see to him directly, ma'am,' she said. 'However if we can concentrate on this more pressing issue, if we want to catch the press-?'

'Very well.' Dudgeon said, and paced back to the wall of glass, as if waiting for more tourists to entertain her while Natalie talked.

'Naturally this will need to be bigger, and more impressive than producing a new vaccine, ma'am. But I think we have come up with something to really grab their attention this time.' The Professor looked hard at her, interested now, trying to read her expression. Natalie nodded enthusiastically and thrust her tablet into Dudgeon's hand. She ignored the Professor's groan and began to browse through some impressive-looking graphs. Slogans and logos. All nonsense of course, but it did not seem to matter, anyway. They were well on their way towards an astonishing political victory and Dudgeon just didn't want to talk about it.

'First London, then the world!' She had remarked once, when they were deep into one of their late night planning binges. Unless some juicy scandal came out that ruined everything. This journalist had a lot to answer for.

London had been easy.