Zero Hour (audio story)

Zero Hour was the seventh audio episode of Aliens Among Us and the third story in the second box set. It continued the topic of rift manipulation. It was written by Jay Harley.

Publisher's summary
Welcome to Deliverables. Thanks to us, Cardiff is enjoying an economic miracle. We have created thousands of jobs. We have wiped out homelessness.

More importantly, there are so many benefits to you. Deliverables will deliver your post, your packages, your meals. We are Deliverables, and we never stop.

Deliverables – we always know where to find you. Deliverables – put your life in our hands.

Plot
Hasan, a Deliverables employee, delivers to a café in Cardiff Bay and orders a complicated coffee every day before almost being hit by a scooter driver. Tyler bumps into him one day and takes an interest in him, approaching him the next day and being brushed off. The day after, Tyler meets with Ng at the café and talks about Hasan, whom he follows.

In the Hub, Mr Colchester and Orr detect a surge of Rift energy which threatens Penarth. Ng is called by Tyler, who tells her how Hasan throws away his coffee without drinking it and follows instructions given to him by an app through his headphones. He follows him again the next day, this time with his knowledge, and learns that Hasan follows seemingly arbitrary commands from the Deliverables app. Tyler kisses him, causing him to run away. Tyler grabs his headphones and apologises, distracting Hasan from his job and causing him to be told off by the app. They continued with the day, picking up packages from a collection point and delivering them.

Ng is having trouble with Anwen, who tells her that she hates her. Tyler calls and asks her to look into Deliverables for him. He joins Hasan again and delivers to all the same places, making him suspicious. He picks his way into Lavender Court and finds it uninhabited and full of rotting pizzas and unopened packages, which he reports to Ng. At the end of his shift, Hasan tells Tyler that he will let him kiss him later and heads to the warehouse. Ng continues to have trouble with Anwen and Gwen tries to comfort her. Hasan is told to report to human resources and says goodnight to Tyler.

Tyler, feeling that something is up with Deliverables, signs up for the company and begins work. He looks for, but is unable to find, Hasan. Ro-Jedda wonders where he is and has her computer find him, saying that it was "nice while it lasted" after finding that he was at Deliverables. Orr visits Ng with crisps, a cheap bottle of wine and information on the company, having found that Deliverables had sprung up from nowhere and seemed to have no one in charge. Ng calls Tyler using the Rift to get past the app and tells him what Orr has learnt. Orr and Ng come to to the conclusion that Deliverables is using its employees as a computer like Langton's ant.

Tyler takes a comfort break to talk to Hasan, who has been demoted to packaging sand into the boxes to be delivered. Tyler realises that the whole exercise is pointless. In the Hub, Mr Colchester has been holding the Rift Manipulator in place all day by turning his laptop on and off again every five minutes whilst Jack is collecting spare parts from Neath. Orr tells him about Deliverables and proves with probability waveforms that Cardiff is falling into a pattern.

Tyler, who has become more mindless and focused on his work, is pressured to take a comfort break by Hasan and plans to have sex with him in a changing room after he returns from getting his benefits package from human resources. Tyler returns to work and is called by Ng the next day. He has been demoted to shovelling sand and has not seen Hasan since the night before. Ng becomes concerned and calls Tyler again after Orr told her that Deliverables was effectively a Rift Manipulator. Having remembered about recent changes to zero-hour contracts in Wales, Tyler realises that the sand is actually the ashes of employees who were about to gain basic workers' rights and that Hasan has been killed.

Ng goes home to look after Anwen and thanks Orr for their advice on dealing with children. She asks Orr to babysit Anwen and leaves, causing disruption to Deliverables by burning down the flat at Lavender Court, setting fire to the water mains on Newport Road and possibly causing a chemical spill at the Cardiff Bay Barrage. She calls Andy to make sure that the problems are not dealt with, ensuring that the patterns are stopped and Torchwood's Rift Manipulator's control of the Rift is restored.

As a result, Deliverables orders its employees to go to human resources to be killed. Tyler is aware of this and tries to get his colleagues to stop, but they do not listen and stop only after Ng arrives with a gun and tells them that they have all been fired. Tyler confronts Ro-Jedda about the scheme, causing her to eat two members of the Women's Institute as a threat. She told him that, although she liked him and he could be useful, he was easily replaceable and ordered him to come up with a cover story for why Deliverables went under by blaming the foreign labourers, as well as to somehow spin the rise of unemployment in a positive way.

Rhys reads Anwen a bedtime story and Gwen tries to tell her that she would always be there for her. Ng says that she is Anwen's new favourite and says goodnight.

Cast

 * Ng - Alexandria Riley
 * Mr Colchester - Paul Clayton
 * Orr - Sam Béart
 * Tyler Steele - Jonny Green
 * Rhys Williams - Kai Owen
 * Sgt. Andy Davidson - Tom Price
 * Gwen Cooper - Eve Myles
 * Ro-Jedda - Rachel Atkins
 * Hasan - Sacha Dhawan
 * Lorry Driver - Rick Yale

Worldbuilding

 * Hasan orders a soy flat white with two extra shots and sugar-free hazelnut.
 * Hasan delivers to Lavender Court every day.
 * Ng has to cut bubblegum out of Anwen's hair.
 * Ng calls Tyler a cockwomble.
 * Orr's first human owner was a woman who ran a dot-com and liked mathematics, having Orr talk about topics such as Langton's ant whilst wearing bunny ears.
 * Jack has gone to a chemical plant in Neath to get spare parts for the Rift Manipulator.
 * Probability waveforms cause Mr Colchester's coin to repeatedly land on heads.
 * In Wales, an employee can only work on a zero-hour contract for twelve straight weeks before being entitled to basic workers' rights, including sick pay and holidays.
 * Two members of the Women's Institute visit Ro-Jedda and give her jam.

Continuity

 * Tyler mentions Ng having sex with Jack. (AUDIO: Love Rat)
 * Colchester says he misses the days when the Sorvix just took aspirin and killed strippers. (AUDIO: Aliens & Sex & Chips & Gravy)
 * A real Red Doors group has been created from the Sorvix lie. (AUDIO: Changes Everything etc.)