THIS MEMORANDUM was dictated and annotated by Acting Regional Director, Yara Lightfoot, Thursday the 14th of April 2022, for the attention of the Senior Committee of the Department of Metaphysics.
The incident began at exactly 6:00am BST. There are seven cameras monitoring road and foot traffic outside Parliament. All were functioning without a problem at 5:59am. At 6am there was a short image failure on Camera Number Three, dedicated to the north-east corner of Parliament Square. When the image feed resumed there was a second statue of Winston Churchill in shot, directly adjacent to the original.
Police officers were immediately dispatched to the scene. It was ascertained that the statue was identical to the original, physically, structurally and in terms of bas relief. There was also no evidence gleaned as to how it was installed. The ten second time gap in the image was deemed a prima facie anomaly with possible criminal/seditious intent. A cordon was set up by officers present around the green and a message dispatched to the Department of Metaphysics, London Field Office at 6:32am. A Field Team was dispatched, under my orders, at 6:43am.
Before the Field Team could assemble, at 7:06am a small gathering of approximately thirty people was discerned outside the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. Forward Intelligence met with members of the group, who called themselves Football Lads for the Defence of Statues, a previously unknown group, though apparently far-right in affiliation. No one was willing to be identified as the organiser of the demonstration however, though it was possible to ascertain they were gathered to prevent the second statue’s demolition. Forward Intelligence asked for guidance on whether to disperse the demonstration.
They did not get a response from Scotland Yard, however the demonstration appeared to disperse “of its own accord without disturbing the peace” at around 7:23am. Field Agents of the Department of Metaphysics arrived shortly after this, at 7:28am.
While the Field Team took basic measurements the situation appeared to be stable. The only outward sign of anomaly was a light airplane spotted circling above Westminster that appeared to be pulling a banner featuring a quote Churchill famously made about Hinduism. Air traffic control was asked to track the craft but could not find it on radar. The plane disappeared behind an unexpected cloud. An assessment was completed by the team by eight o’clock, culminating with an average Kant reading of 23.3kpsqm. There appeared to be a pattern embedded within the signal. These findings were relayed to the DoM HQ and the Prime MInister’s Office. A set of portable reality anchors were installed around the second statue, and the team awaited further instructions.
There was a COBRA meeting called for 8:45am, several cabinet members were unable to attend due to the reality anchors affecting their cover. A small number of people working across Whitehall (members of Parliament, civil servants and security officers included) were outed. The Prime Minister was not present and could not be located. Despite not reaching quorum, at 8:57am a request was relayed from the meeting to the Department of Metaphysics LFO to send out an Extraction Team to remove the second statue.
Before the team could be dispatched however, at 9:00am approximately 200 members of FLftDoS arrived and managed to break the police cordon in Parliament Square by unknown means. They surrounded the statue. Police were not able to regain control of the situation until reinforcements arrived at around 9:15am. The demonstration was kettled and forced out of the square, onto Westminster Bridge, after which the DoM Field Team were able to resume their work. Seven members of FLftDoS were identified by police as ringleaders, arrested and taken into custody at Charing Cross Station. On arrival however the ‘ringleaders’ turned out to be immobile humanoid figures made from mutant potato tubers.
The Field Team were not able to hand over to Extraction as details of the COBRA meeting were leaked in the House of Lords in a two-minute speech made Lord Fistofel of the Cayman Islands, a crossbench peer, accusing the government of capitulating to Cultural Marxism by having the statue removed. Fistofel is presently out of the country, unavailable for questioning. It is not known how he obtained such information.
The speech happened just after 9:05am and was covered, live, by London Broadcast Company Radio, while conducting a simultaneous interview with the Leader of the Opposition. The LOTO denied to the programme’s host the Labour Party wanted to undermine the integrity of British statues and promised that, once in office, he would start a patriotic bond for an expanded statue building programme. To show his commitment, he also said would join the Football Lads in their vigil.
Lord Fistofel was responded to by a government minister, Lady Milbenkaze of Dunwich am Main, at 9:10am. Milbenkaze passionately denied that the government wanted to remove any statues, reversing the decision made by COBRA, diverting the discussion onto the proposed new cheese quota for schools in England and Wales. This was put by the LBC host to the LOTO, who said he agreed with Lady Milbenkaze and urged the government to go further, by proscribing Extinction Rebellion and other affiliated environmentalist groups. Before any sense could be made of this the station went to a commercial break, which consisted of a chopped and screwed version of Winston Churchill’s ‘fight them on the beaches’ broadcast followed by twenty-three seconds of silence.
While this was happening Football Lads for the Defence of Statues was causing difficulties for river traffic by urinating off Westminster Bridge. Their urine was copious and toxic enough to cause yellow steam to rise off the Thames. At 9:15am River traffic was temporarily closed. Police present attempted a baton charge at 9:23am to disperse the crowd. The charge failed to dislodge FLftDoS but at 9:26am the entire assembly leapt into the river, along with several officers and, for the time being, did not reemerge. Without anyone to arrest, the remaining police officers detained and removed the Department of Metaphysics field team on suspicion of anomalous criminal sedition. The agents were taken to Paddington Green station. The DoM was not informed of this.
There was a power cut in the Houses of Parliament at 9:33am that led to business being suspended for over an hour. There was a second meeting of COBRA at 9:45am, only three cabinet ministers were able to attend. The decision to keep the second statue was unable to be countermanded. At 10:10am the Prime Minister is discovered unconscious in Cabinet Briefing Room B, a former bunker in the Whitehall Citadel now used to store videotapes. Though alive, he proved impossible to rouse. Civil servants present installed a caffeine enema and wrapped the PM in a stem cell blanket before taking him by underground tunnel to a Commons basement.
Despite being booked by the Staff Sergeant in Paddington Green at 10:23am, the Field Agents were able to enact the Gorman Protocol by 10:29am. They were released from custody at 10:35am, inducting eleven police officers as temporary field agents for the purposes of retaking control of Parliament Square.
Simultaneous to this, a spectrogram was discovered in the Kant radiation readout originally taken by the Field Team. It was a picture of four people, three men and one woman, holding an oblong banner, saying: “We shall continue until London is Free.” This is a known slogan of a Group of Interest, a hybrid syndicate/modal network that: “Uses oblique strategies to overcome income and spatial inequalities across Occupied London.”
Also simultaneous to this, the Football Lads for the Defence of Statues reassembled on Milbank. There were around 1,000 participants this time. They marched toward Parliament Square again but were intercepted by an aeroplane, possibly the same one from earlier in the morning. The plane flew very low and, according to eyewitnesses, dispersed a yellow-brown vapour on the crowd that turned the marchers into human-sized carnivorous plants growing out of the tarmac.
The now expanded Field Team reassembled in Parliament Square at 11:11am, taking further readings. A double perimeter of reality anchors was installed around the second statue, which stabilised the ambient improbability. Shortly after this was achieved, the Prime Minister was successfully revived, washed, dried and briefed on the forthcoming Prime Minister’s Questions, due to happen at 12noon.
PMQs did not mention any of the events that happened that morning. Nothing anomalous happened during the debate though the Prime Minister did fall asleep several times and, after completing his questions, the Leader of the Opposition walked out of the chamber and seemingly got lost on the way to his office, turning up at a Wetherspoons just off Trafalgar Square that evening, unaware of any time passing.
The Field Team remained in place until COBRA met at 3pm that afternoon. No decision was reached about the second statue, as the cabinet ministers sat motionless, in silence, for twenty-three minutes before leaving the room. At 6pm, the statues were covered in tarpaulins and the site placed under remote observation.
This morning, Thursday the 14th of April 2022, at 6am, two more statues of Winston Churchill appeared in the north-east corner of Parliament Square. At present, there are four such statues. This is, so far, an exponential development that requires immediate attention. If this continues unabated, by the end of this week, there will be over 280 million statues of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.
This originally appeared in the print edition of Locust Review 9. Social media splash image by Tish Turl and Adam Turl. Locust Review 9 cover by Adam Ray Adkins.
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