The headquarters of the Radix Group stand before me, an imposing set of marble pillars that brace a neoclassical facade of yellowing white. Some kind of latin motto I can’t make out is inscribed in the walls next to me, beaten and worn down by age and rain. Above it, a newly-set brass plaque reads:
SOCIETAS ERUDITORVM INCOGNITORVM
IN TERRIS BRITANNIIS
“THE RADIX GROUP”
Alongside that title is their symbol, the hub and spokes of a stylised geometric wheel. There is a distinct sense, as I rest my hand on the polished, heavy wooden door, that I don’t belong here.
I knock, then push. The door doesn’t budge, and an electronic buzzer that I had ignored amidst the historic splendour squawks to life. “Good afternoon. Can I ask what business you have here?” The voice is crackly, distant, authoritative, sharp. It nearly sends me back out into the street.
I stoop, lean towards the tiny, awkwardly placed panel and say, “I’m here for an internship interview.” Six months of tests and back-and-forth communications have passed since that day in December. This is the final round.
Stepping inside the Radix Group building causes me to momentarily doubt if I had somehow managed to teleport myself to a different space entirely: the marble exterior gives way to an austere, hypermodern, almost brutalist interior of concrete and steel. The main space of the building is a maze of mobile desks clumped together, wires and gadgets of all kinds kitted together and surrounded by groups of chattering researchers. Large smart screens on the walls display stock market movements, social media posts, hundreds of indicators and trends with names and acronyms that escape me entirely. Bleary-eyed staffers dressed in slacks or pyjamas stumble around the edges of the room with papers, tablets, and massive mugs of steaming coffee. In the far right corner a massive conference-room sized table houses snacks and drinks of all kinds.
The receptionist is a massive, masked man who looks like he also doubles as building security, sitting in a cocoon of screens that forces entrants into the building to go left or right around it. Somewhere in the foyer there must be facial recognition cameras, because he smiles when I approach and glances down as if to confirm my identity.
“Internship interviews are on the second floor. Please take the stairs or the elevator to the right. By signing the interview and payment agreement you have consented for your image and biometrics to be recorded while in the building for security purposes.” He gives a practised flick to a large glass column at the left end of the hall. As I walk towards it I nearly bump into someone staring intently at a phone, muttering phrases like “loss plateau” and “5th epoch of training”. “Careful,” she grumbles as I dodge out at the last second.
The second floor of the Radix building is another aesthetic entirely, soft navy carpets and oak-panelled walls. The screens here are more muted, mostly showing live feeds of news stories and summaries rather than raw data. A door swings open mid-way along the hall, labelled Primus Inter Pares - SIMON DELACROIX.
“Come in.”
Simon Delacroix has a long, pale face, rimmed by thin spectacles with small projectors built into them, hiding his eyes with flickering displays of data. He sits in front of a small glass window, framed on three walls by massive, sagging bookshelves that reach from floor to ceiling. The floor is scattered with papers, books propped open with leather bookmarks, various laptops and extension cords, and what looks like a partially disassembled 3D printer. Rising out of the detritus like an island is a massive mahogany desk layered with curled post-it notes, sketchbooks, and three monitors. As I come in he makes a gesture with one hand, and the door swings closed silently behind me. The other hand rests gently on a blue hardback tome.
“Well. Try not to mind the mess, although we could use one of the conference rooms if you prefer. And congratulations, of course.”
“Congratulations?”
“The diplomatic conundrum we placed you in was not a simple one. A number of ex-UN diplomats worked quite hard to make that particular knotty puzzle, with some input from me about desired problem-solving skills to test for of course.” He clasps his hands together, pleased. “And you’re here! The takeup has been lower than desired, although I suppose we could call it self-selection given the results from the MTurk trial runs. For your information, you’re the fifth successful candidate from this particular process, but the first to accept the interview. We did offer to fly the boy in from Lagos but he said no, something about work…” He sighed. “C’est la vie.”
He looks at me expectantly, and I’m at a loss. Eventually, I go with “Hi.”
“Hi, yes. I’m Simon Delacroix, and I’m the primus inter pares of the Radix Group. Well, it says CEO in the corporate house filings, but we don’t work like that internally. I am but the first amongst equals and all that. And you are…”
“William Dunn.”
“Excellent. I was worried about bots, you know, infiltration from trolls, hostile governments. But you’re nothing like that! A local to these beautiful isles.” I still can’t see his eyes. I can’t tell how much he’s joking, but he turns away to one of the bookshelves. “Now, what were we going to talk about?”
I stay quiet because I still have no idea what to say. Thankfully, the moment passes before I can run out of the room. “Ah, yes. Saving the world. How would you do it?”
“I’m sorry?”
He takes off his glasses for the first time, and performs a motion that dims the screens on his table. There is a blackness there, behind the greying eyebrows and sagging face and eyes I can’t quite make out. A sense that whatever answer I give he’ll see right through me. “How would you save the world?”
“I-I mean… what from?”
He shrugs. “Whatever you think it needs saving from. I have a blank chequebook ready for you, how would you do it?”
“I. uh. Well, there’s the problem of climate change… We’d need to disengage from carbon based energy sources… cut down on production of wasteful goods…”
“Mm. Mmm.” He waves at me. “Keep going.”
“A total societal shift to a more renewable, viable future… A new way of life…”
His finger goes up, and I feel the will to speak drain out of me into a dark pit of anxious expectation. “Now—What have you told me that we didn’t know in 1999, or 2009, or 2019? An Exxon scientist could have told me we needed to go cold turkey on oil in 1980.”
The shame burns. “Nothing.”
His tone changes, becomes more gentle. “There’s nothing to be ashamed about. This is the hardest problem in the world, and I just told you to ad-lib about it. If you had a concrete plan for this new way of life you’d be sitting in this chair, not me.” A slightly mischievous grin comes on his face, as if he’s about to unveil a particularly fun fact. “And, as it happens, I do have a rather elegant plan in mind.”
“You have… a way out?”
“Precisely. And I need people to help me with it who aren’t just mathematicians or scientists. We are, after all, dealing with human issues and proposing solutions for human society—I have 10 computer scientists in this building working on time-series modelling for historical trends and not a single capable historian!” I can see Simon’s eagerness now, the strange intellectual hunger that animates him. Standing in front of him makes you feel like you’re on the menu.
“I—I study geography.”
“I don’t respect artificial subject divisions from the 1700s, and we need some geographers anyhow.” He yawns, stretches, then turns back. “So what do you say, Mr. Dunn? Care to join me? I’ll certainly pay you better than any consulting internship you’ll get this summer.”
A hand is offered. I hope you’ll understand why I shake it.