Relax.

Do this visualization excercise with me.

Now relax. Seriously.

Lean back in your easy chair.

You’re not relaxing.

Close your eyes. I’m not going to pull anything.

Seriously, close your eyes. Trust me.

Jesus, can’t you relax? Just fucking relax already.

That’s better.

You are in a large room full of people in suits.

You are at a United Nations conference.

The room is huge. It looks like a fucking science fiction set. Like wookies should be walking around and Star Wars troopers or something. But no Princess Leia anywhere. Although some of the secretaries are hot. And the ambassador of [deleted] is cute and stylish. And the delegate from Ireland, woot. Look at her! She could be in Playboy [Oh, you know, there's nothing I like better than frolicking naked in a dewy field of heather after a massive fry-up in the morning, that's just grand...] Wasn’t she on Riverdance? And her shoes, they must have been designed by an atheist.

Relax, I said.

You are in this room, on a chair in the back, but you have no translation earpiece so you sit there listening to the chairman say something in English, and then when a delegate starts saying something in Arabic or Russian or Chinese or French your attention drifts and you listen to the ambient sound in the room.

Shuffling papers. Muffled conversations.

Snatches of distorted translator voices escaping from vacant earpieces, in all five official UN languages. Especially English, for some reason her voice really carries today.

Doors opening and closing, footsteps on the carpet. Someone clicks their attach