The Nightmare Stacks (Laundry Files, #7)

by Charles Stross

Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason. —John Harington (16th century)

In fact, once I’ve finished the course and have been certificated I’ll be entered in the books as a light tank for purposes of international arms control treaties.

Salvo’s is brightly lit, brash, and a fine example of what happens when a family of Italian restauranteurs in Yorkshire cross breed a mid-fifties American diner with a Neapolitan pizzeria.

Organizations are not human beings and they don’t obey the same priorities. They’re hives. Like the bank you worked for, I suppose, but you were too specialized, working at too low a level to see the politics going on around you. Hives run on emergent consensus and policy.

“Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence or overwork?” Alex asks, rising. “Something like that. But there’s a point at which sufficient incompetence is malice.”

Alex’s experience of dating is similar to his experience of string theory: abstract, intense, and entirely theoretical due to the absence of time and opportunities for probing such high-energy phenomena.

somehow he has internalized the ur-cultural narrative: you grow up, go to university, get a job, meet Ms. Right, get married, settle down, have kids, grow old together… it’s like some sort of checklist. Or maybe a list of epic quests you’ve got to complete while level-grinding in a game you’re not allowed to quit, with no respawns and no cheat codes.

I’m sure we’ll get on like a house on fire!” Visions of shrieking and jumping out of upper-floor windows dance in his mind’s eye.

Theories to account for her deviant behavior include an undiagnosed psychopathic personality disorder, an impressive talent for double-think, and overexposure to Windows 2000 Domain Services.

any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology,