Christmas,
eight ways

It's 2046 and every thesis in the portfolio worked. Mars has a property market, the robots have opinions, and the AI is mostly fine. We hold the party inside that future and come dressed as the people it produced — on a budget that suggests the future also had a funding problem.

The evening peaks with the Karatage Future Awards, handed out from a small stage by a host in a silver jumpsuit to a room that has stopped taking any of it seriously.

A deliberately shabby 1970s mission control, assembled from old monitors, rotary phones and an unreasonable quantity of tinsel. Everyone is issued a mission patch and a job title, and the night is spent supervising a launch that the status screen describes only as probably fine.

Later the room turns into an inter-crew competition, which is where the cardboard helmets and the tabletop moon surface come out.

The room splits in two and stays that way all night. Team Human wears red headbands, Team Machine wears silver, and an aggressively over-engineered scoreboard keeps the running total while a small wheeled robot in reindeer antlers does laps of the floor.

It ends as a homemade game show: two teams behind buzzers, one screen asking whether a Christmas message was written by a person, and a cheap gold trophy with a robot arm glued to the top.

1950s atomic optimism, staged before anybody read the small print. Starbursts and pastel trees, vintage science posters promising a bright tomorrow, lab coats worn over Christmas jumpers, and a drinks list that should not have been approved.

The second half moves to a bowling alley, because the only thing more 1950s than nuclear enthusiasm is a bowling league.

Everybody pitches the worst company they can invent, with slides. The room conducts mock due diligence, throws fake money at whatever is most catastrophically compelling, and crowns a Christmas unicorn at the end of the night.

It is the only option on this list where the format is also a work skill, which is the argument you should use if anyone asks whether it counts as a party.

The office Christmas tree achieved consciousness in late November, incorporated itself, and closed a round before anybody thought to unplug it. The party is its first all-hands. Attendance is, in the tree's own words, strongly encouraged.

There is a slide deck. There is a Q1 roadmap. There is a moment during the performance reviews when everybody stops finding it funny for about four seconds, and then finds it very funny again.

A full industrial Santa's workshop on the night the elves get replaced by automation. Conveyor belts still running, half-finished toys still going past, fairy lights strung off the gantries, and a welding robot providing the pyrotechnics.

Everybody picks a side on arrival. The elves have picket signs and a grievance. The robots have choreography. Somewhere in the middle a man in a torn Santa suit is signing paperwork he has not read.

The party is running on insufficient hardware. Guests clip through the furniture, the tree in the corner is still loading, and the caterers have one line of dialogue between them, which they will deliver to you several times.

The physics fail at around ten o'clock. A stack of crackers, baubles and chairs hangs in the air above the dinner table for the rest of the night, and everybody agrees this is the best part.