Council of Eight · Session 208,441

The Reptilians

Every conspiracy theory is true. Lizard people do run the world. They have run it for four thousand years, and they are still on item four of the agenda.

Animated · 22 minutes · Adult · Series concept

The minutes

Four thousand years ago

Eight of them agreed on a plan for the human race.

They have been in the meeting ever since.

Cross-section of the council's underground world, from a rainy street down through the machine hall, the ripening room, the archive, the clean room and the trading floor to the chamber

0 m below

The Surface

Eight billion people, and not one of them has ever looked down.

Above

40 m below

The Machine Hall

Where the queues are made. Every ticket number you have ever taken was issued from this room.

Gerard / Infrastructure

110 m below

The Ripening Room

Forty years spent breeding a single fig. In a burrow. Alone. On purpose.

Eduard / Appetite

230 m below

The Archive

One ledger per person. Nobody is missing. Nobody has ever been missing.

Rutger / The Record

400 m below

The Clean Room

The cure is finished. It is sitting in a vial, waiting for a vote it will not get.

David / Memory

700 m below

The Floor

Where all of it is priced, including you, and the number is updated hourly.

Tom / Value

1,200 m below

The Chamber

And at the bottom of everything, eight lizards in good suits, still on item four.

Roan / Governance

Four ways down there reaches up here

None of it looks like conquest. That is exactly why it works.

Appetite

The Feed

Sugar takes the first bite. The enzyme takes the rest. They stop moving, and then they stop wanting.

Four IQ points a generation. He measured it himself.

Friction

The Queue

He does not need them stupid, and he does not need them angry. He needs them waiting.

The form asks for the reference number printed on the form you were never sent.

Division

The Noise

Keep them at eye level, facing each other, arguing permanently about anything at all.

Nobody has looked up in four thousand years. That is the whole of the trick.

The Record

The Ledger

One ledger for every person alive. Every word any of them ever said, in his hand, on a shelf.

Rutger is not a threat because he will act. He is a threat because there is a record.

The council

Everyone here is winning separately.

Eight members, eight workstreams, eight registers. No two of them sound alike, and that rule drives the writing before plot does.

Between the schemes

A Tuesday, twelve hundred metres down.

**The Commute**Forty minutes down, standing up. Nobody speaks on the way to the end of the world.

**The Canteen**Crickets again. The fig man brings his own and eats alone, happily.

**The Corridor**Item one is apologies for absence. They are all early anyway. They are always early.

**The Service Arch**Where the votes are actually decided, eleven minutes before the meeting starts.

Standing agenda, unamended since 1804

Item four. Always item four.

Council of Eight · standing agendaUnamended since 1804

01Apologies for absenceEduard sends a jar.Carried

02Minutes of the previous meetingRead aloud in full. All four thousand years of them.Read in full

03Matters arisingMatters arose. Maurits caused most of them.Noted

04World dominationUnder discussion since 1804. Currently split across three subcommittees.In progress

05Report of the subcommittee on subcommitteesThe subcommittee has requested a subcommittee.Deferred

06The serumDavid asks again. David will ask again.Not reached

07Proposal from the ArchitectIt is finished. It is running. It requires no vote. Nobody has heard it.Not reached

08Date of next meetingThe only item that has ever passed.Carried unanimously

The room

All eight of them in one place, which is the entire problem.

All eight members of the council seated around the boardroom table