It wasn't easy running the world, thought John, as Tokyo exploded. The satellite feed was beautiful – the red halo of light unfolding from ground zero opened up like a chrysanthemum filmed in stop-motion. John tapped the screen, zooming in. “Computer,” He spoke into a horn-shaped mouth-piece, “Could you identify the bomb that did this for me?” The screen remained fixed as it was. Nothing happened. “Please.” He added.

  A fan whirred into life somewhere inside the computer console, and it started to think. John considered whether it would be worth sitting around and waiting for it to finish – instead he got up with his empty mug and went to join Jodi and Jules at the coffee machine. “Tokyo's gone.” he said as he poured out the black liquid.

  “Oh no,” Said Jodi, “It isn't, is it?”
  “Just now.”
  “Well... I don't know what I think about that.” She pursed her lips in displeasure. “No, I don't like that. Are you sure?”
  “Yup.” He took a big gulp – luke-warm. Typical.
  “Well then...”
  “Yeah.” John gave Jules a little smile - she didn't send one back – and returned to his cubicle. The flickering computer screen now showed an open book, which said:

  50 megaton Tetrarch 2.03 thermonuclear warhead. Do you want to know what the boys in city-watch are thinking? And for reference, a little courtesy wouldn't kill you.

  John let out a little sigh. Fucking typical. He said:

  “Don't bother, computer. I think I know how the bomb got there already. City-watch won't tell me anything new.” He scribbled down the bomb details, though he already knew them pretty well – he'd been hearing them for a week - and scooted out. “And you can fuck courtesy!” He called back over his shoulder as he went.

  The office was filled with the typical hubbub you get when lots of people all come together to control the world. Joseph and Jole were arguing heatedly over the price of herring in the Baltic – James, Jamie and Joseline were trying to decide whether the next big craze should be an anthropomorphic badger or not - and Justin was nattering away in Mandarin over the phone, trying to negotiate a five-year lease on Tibet. John strutted up to his boss's glass cubicle, and rapped on the door sharply. Inside, he could see the fat, balding man bent over a map of the economy of Singapore – but considering the “windows” were actually holograph screens, he didn't put much stock by the appearance. From within came a voice:

  “I'm busy, God damn you!” It sounded very, very drunk.
  “Mr. Bardot? Excuse me?”
  “You sweltering puss-ball, I said – dammit, chair – I said damn you, go away!”
  “Yes, well I'd love to, but I don't think that under the circumstances-”
  “I'm busy, God dammit! Can't you understand – you, can't you – understand, these, this, this sound of business? Can't you?”
  “Not under the circumstances, no, so if you don't mind I'm just going to come in-”
  “No! Nooo!” The voice was suddenly filled with a heated passion. “No, no, the door!”
  “The door?” John's hand hovered by the handle.
  “There's a bomb.”
  “You rigged the door up to explode?”
  “...yes?”
  John held his breath. On the one hand, his boss was exceedingly drunk – and on the other, he wouldn't be the first member of management to fit a door with an explosive device. He moved his hand a little away from the handle, took a pen from his pocket and chewed it thoughtfully.

  “So... so this door is rigged up all explosive, right?”
  “Yes!”
  “Huh.” He reached over with a foot and tugged the chair out of Julia's cubicle. “So, I guess you must not want anyone in there, right? I mean, for you to go and rig a door up like that.”
  “Yes! No-one – not one of you God-damn – not one of you is getting in here!”
  “Right, right, so you've got the bomb and everything, fine, but have you maybe thought of making yourself a little fort out of your desk?”
  “...no?”
  “Hmm. Pity.”

  And with that he smashed the chair through the window.

  Glass splintered and hidden fibre-optics splayed out in a spray of colour. Mr. Bardot was standing on top of his desk, waving his hands in trepidation. The floor was littered with huge stacks of paper, falling one over another, bleeding into one another. The glass shards had already been absorbed into the mass. He stepped carefully on the tops of several piles, trying hard not to scatter them. The door was rigged up quite impressively, John could see from this side, although he wasn't certain that the liquorice laces would serve very well as fuse wire.

  “...!” Said Mr. Bardot, before falling backwards off his desk, sending up a shower of loose paper. John reached over and yanked him into a slumped position across the desk-top. He sat down next to him, one hand on his boss' collar, holding him in place.
  “So... so boss, am I right in thinking you've heard about Tokyo?”
  “...lovely city. Lots of roads...” The bald man muttered into his hands.
  “That's not exactly what I meant, no. I meant – you've heard about the nuke? This morning?”
  “This morning?”
  “Yes.”
  “A nuke?”
  “Yes sir, 50 megaton Tetrarch something something something. Did you hear about it?”
  “...no.” Mr. Bardot said sullenly.
  “By which you mean...?”
  “... no.”
  John took his boss's head and gave it a little rap on the desk-surface.
  “By which you mean?”
  “...yes.”
  “Right. Right. And when did you hear about that? About that nuke? That was going to blow up Tokyo?”
  “... don' know.”
  John had taken the pen out of his mouth and was idly doodling on his boss' scalp. “So, you don't reckon it was that nuke we gave to Simon in the Osaka office by accident, do you? The one we've been trying to get back all week? No chance of that, is there?”
  “...”
  “Only it's the same make and branding, and I thought – now stop me if I'm being a bit out of it here – but I thought, it could maybe be the same bomb. And I was wondering what you thought of that.”
  
  Mr. Bardot started to cry.

  “Yeah, I thought you might think that.” John handed Bardot a scrumpled up piece of paper -  it was a list of dictators with smiley-faces after the names -  which he blew his nose on. “Cheer up sir. They can't blame you for anything, he had clearance. I don't know why you're taking it so hard.”

  John cast his eyes over the cubicle. It was spacious and surprisingly leafy – one entire wall had been transformed into a green-house – and the paper was everywhere. There wasn't a flat surface, other than the desk, that wasn't littered in the stuff. The climbing plants at the far wall seemed to be growing out of the mulched paper filling an enormous dustbin marked “Miscellaneous”. There was a slight creaking noise from the ceiling of the office – a little flap opened and a flurry of paper fluttered down, settling like a layer of fresh snow.

  “Huh.” Said John, letting Mr. Bardot slide back under the paper. The man whimpered faintly as he went under. John picked up a sheet at random. It said:
  
Humming-bird requisition form. Department        32b            would like to request a replacement Humming-bird, as their previous Humming-bird was          eaten by a cat, you should have seen it it was huge      . Included with this form is authorisation from....

  And so on. John picked up another. All it had written on it was:

I'm watching you. Mr. Crêpe.

  John dropped that one like a snake. And the whole room was filled with this junk! The burbling noises coming from Bardot made a lot more sense now.

  There was a cracking noise, and John looked up to see a huge man in mechanical body armour walking straight in through the door. He didn't open it first – the door just split in front of him, spitting glass and the grenades Bardot had strapped to it in all directions. The huge, ominously armoured form turned to him, and intoned mechanically:

  “Bureau 31-J Director Jamiroquai Bardot, you are hereby withdrawn from duty for failure to avert-”
  
  “Woah, woah!” John interrupted hastily. “He's, Bardot, not me!” He yanked the stupefied man up onto the desk surface again. The huge, armoured head turned down to survey the bubbling wreck on the table. “And it was hardly his fault, I mean, I saw the paperwork that the Osaka department used to get hold of the nuke, it was all above board, there was nothing he could have-”
  
  “Show me this paperwork.”
  
  John looked despairingly over the tract-less wastes of paper. Fuck.

  The huge, robot-armoured soldier lifted Bardot up with one hand, and slung him over his shoulder. As he turned to leave through the gaping hole that was once the door, John yelled after him-

  “But who's running the department now? Who!”
  
The soldier stopped, and swivelled it's speakers to face him. “What is your surname?”

    “...Bartholemew.”

  “There then.”

  The soldier stomped away, Bardot's head bouncing from the tops of cubicles as he went. John turned back into the office, feet dredging through the mounds of paper as he went to unearth Bardot's chair. It was buried underneath a stack of  absence notes signed and dated by employee's children. With a groan, he sunk into it.

  It wasn't going to be easy running the world, John thought, as he picked up a small dossier labelled: “The joy of sex – employee relations for the large employer.” and began to leaf through it. It wasn't going to be easy at all.