24th September, 8 am. Prison cell.

[therealpm]

*Peter wakes up feeling groggy and disorientated.  Although not as bone tired as yesterday, his muscles still ache and cramp.  Something nags at the back of his mind, something important that he needed to do and he rubs his eyes, mentally replaying yesterday's events, trying to remember.  The first memory that surfaces- being shoved into the wards

Comments

[ribble_mp]

*After half an hour wandering around the corridors below Westminster Palace- as intimidatingly gothic as those above ground, but these ones are lit by flickering florescent lights and their ceilings are interwoven with an incomprehensible web of pipes and cables- Nigel manages to find the entrance to Peter's laboratory. He's had to backtrack twice, and the shadows and rats that keep moving at the edge of his vision and the sudden rumblings of furnaces and hissings of air have him coated in a cold sweat by the time he arrives.*

*He steps cautiously over the threshold.*

Hello?

[therealpm]

*Peter looks up sulkily from his position hunched over the keyboard. John had recovered from nausea far too quickly in his opinion and had made pointed statements about lack of time before conference.

It's not that Peter minds coding the doppelganger model per se, but having John look over his shoulder every few minutes breaks his concentration and makes it difficult for him to focus on the overall structure the program requires. It means he ends up making stupid errors that he then has to correct under John's gaze as well. All in all it's a distinctly uncomfortable and irritating experience.*

[bamfbercow]

*John is looking over Peter's shoulder at the screen (trying to work out what Peter's doing, but having no such luck) when Nigel arrives.*

Ah! Nigel! Come in, come in!

*John ushers Nigel into the room.*

[ribble_mp]

*Nigel steps gingerly through the puddle of water- it is water, right?- covering the floor and looks around.*

*The walls and ceiling are a riot of multicoloured wires and clear tubes through which a wine-red substance- BLOOD? Is that BLOOD?- bubbles ominously. On the tables lining the walls a few computer monitors stand amidst a scattering of less comprehensible electronic devices and some dangerous looking magical arrays. Wires and glittering threads of magic link the whole mess together. At the far end of the room there's an ice-rimed portal that's being used as a cooling device, judging from the tubes linking it to the machines. Nigel gets the impression that he's stumbled upon some sort of vast, Rube Goldberg-esque supercomputer.*

What is this place?

[therealpm]

*Peter glares at the deputy speaker. One wand-happy idiot breathing down his neck was bad enough. With two, he'll never get anything done.*

A research lab.

*Peter looks wistfully at the slightly dismantled 'Tory In' pipe. It's probably still functional...*

[bamfbercow]

*John rolls his eyes at Peter's unhelpful answer*

It's Peter's... office, of sorts. All very technical and I haven't the foggiest, so I thought perhaps you could help out translating some of this stuff as well as your usual duties?

*John catches Nigel eyeing the coolant*

...never mind those, Nigel. Would you come and look at this screen for me, please?

[ribble_mp]

*Nigel follows Mandelson's gaze to a wide pipe marked 'Tory In'. That can't mean what he thinks it means, can it? Maybe there is more to the label on the far side of the pipe which he just can't see right now. Has to be.*

*Nigel scurries over to John's side.*

Why does he have an office under Westminster Palace? He's not in Government. He's not even elected!

[therealpm]

*Peter eyes the two other wizards with naked contempt, but keeps his mouth closed. He isn't certain exactly how John's defining a 'toe out of line', but suspects the definition is rather stricter when there are observers. Instead, he knuckles back down to the coding, trying to find some way of simplifying the multiple intricate loops that need to be run- perhaps he could vectorise here? No...*

[bamfbercow]

...Nigel, where would you rather he have it? At least here it's easier to know if something that shouldn't be happening is going on. If he had all this-

*John makes a wide gesture around the room*

-in his old constituency of Hartlepool, how would anyone ever know what he was doing?

[ribble_mp]

*Nigel glances at Mandelson, who is pretending to be absorbed in whatever he's typing.*

If he's doing anything he shouldn't be you should notify the police, not give him private office space in a building maintained at taxpayer expense. Space is a premium, we can't just let it out to people for possibly criminal activities!

Anyway I don't think he's bothered to visit Hartlepool since he swanned off to Europe.

[therealpm]

*Peter drops the pretence of working and instead turns to raise an eyebrow in Nigel's direction.*

On the contrary, I am President of Hartlepool United and have visited several times.

Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I have orders from John to follow...

*Peter determinedly resumes his typing.*

[bamfbercow]

*John beams at Peter.*

Anyway, enough bickering - Nigel, what does all this-

*John points at the lines of code on the screen*

-mean?

[ribble_mp]

*Nigel looks at the screen, but while he can recognise the Futhark runes he can't read them. His education barely covered Welsh; it didn't get into ancient writing systems.*

I don't know! It's not in English!

...I don't see how you're meant to monitor him if you can't even read what he's writing.

[bamfbercow]

Do you know, it hasn't been an issue yet? How fortunate!

[therealpm]

*Peter lets the two wizards bicker for a while, mind focussed on getting the structure of the program done as swiftly as possible. Eventually, their argument grows too loud to ignore and he mildly suggests that they sort it out over tea and biscuits, directing John to the tea dispensor and Nigel to the biscuit tin.

The next hour or so is occupied by Nigel being intermittently sick into a bucket and loudly disavowing Peter as an unnatural force for evil. Peter ignores both and instead adds careful comments to the code so that he can remember where everything's supposed to go tomorrow.

Eventually, once Nigel's stopped retching and Peter's back (and the rest of him, frankly) is starting to protest at being kept so long on a hard wooden stool (he really ought to invest in one of those ergonomic chairs. Wood fits with the decor but not with his 60 odd years), he stretches and demands to be returned to his cell for the night. The demand is odd enough to startle both other wizards out of their semi-resumed spat.*

[ribble_mp]

*Why does Mandelson have a disembodied human head? Why does John not seem to care that Mandelson has a head? It's not often Nigel feels the Daily Mail is insufficiently exercised about something- the paper is generally sensible but being gay does force one to question some of its more extreme positions, and John isn't nearly as bad as Mail columnists seem to think he is- but really, the press are not paying enough attention to Peter Mandelson. Sure, they're monitoring his progress up the property ladder, but do they know about he has a rotting human head in his "office"? Pipes full of blood? Keyboards made of a worrying ivory-coloured substance that is definitely not birch wood, whatever John may claim?*

*Nigel won't leak to the press, he's not that sort, but someone has to be told about this. Someone like Dawn. He hates to get John in trouble but Mandelson obviously has him under some sort of spell that makes all this appear normal to him. They can't rely on his judgment.*

Yes, let's take the werewolf back to his cell*Nigel