The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9)

by Charles Stross

Back when I worked with Mo and Ramona on the Transhuman Police Coordination Force executive, we made a habit of going out for a team-building exercise exactly once a week. Team building in this context meant drinking wine until we fell over.

Botnets spread through unpatched copies of Windows 2003 running on medical diagnostic equipment, spamming arcane prayers on behalf of things better left unworshipped. Supposedly wholesome bitcoin mining apps are actually running demon-summoning algorithms in disguise. And don’t get me started on the prevalence of necromantic malware in the app stores.

I tapped the space bar on my laptop to bring up the first slide: no PowerPoint here, just a boring PDF of some bullet points generated by software with absolutely no power to infiltrate brains.

“We have a warrant.” Agent Smith extends a sealed envelope, then contorts his face into an expression that is probably a new kind of smile that was approved after being beta-tested on Martians. “We are here to observe the programming.”

Now integrating proactively with NSA, NRO, Homeland Security to deliver a Safer Republic

"Integrating proactively", hah. Perfect corporate speak

Not that she’s happy with Bob. Iris still hasn’t forgiven him for unintentionally massacring most of her congregation, cocking up a very important summoning which might have shaved four years off the critical path to the New Management, and always being late with his timesheets.

This is a problem I know. It’s like that embarrassing situation where you find a VP in Finance with their fingers in the candy jar up to the elbow, to the tune of a couple billion in unwise leveraged options, but you can’t prosecute them or fire them without admitting that your assets are down to pocket lint and pencil shavings, thereby triggering a run on your bank. Perversely, the worst kind of misconduct is the hardest for an organization to admit to.

“Are—are you with the Friends of Sleep?” she asks hoarsely. “I told you, we’re from the govern—” Agent Jones begins, just as Agent Smith says, “Yes.” Agent Jones clears his throat. “We are the Friends of the Lord of Sleep, and we’re from the government, and we’re here to help,” he explains. “To help our Lord,” Agent Smith clarifies, “not you.”

95 percent of the time the government runs on cruise control, a huge juggernaut of bureaucracy rumbling predictably along its tracks. Even the presidency, an office freighted with a mystical level of respect by the citizenry, has so little room for maneuver that officeholders with diametrically opposite ideologies can often appear identical from outside the Beltway.

The flight plan on file with the destination airfield in Canada hilariously mis-describes the Concorde as a Russian heavy bomber paying a goodwill visit, but that’s okay. They’ll be arriving after nightfall, under tight security, and even so, the prospect of a Tupolev 160 dropping round for poutine is less preposterous than the truth.

It’s pretty clear from her intermittent repetitive actions and gaze avoidance that Jon is stressed out. Whoever thought it was a good idea to stick her on a commercial flight to a foreign country on her own was—well, he’ll write them a stiffly worded memo when he gets home, with copious references to the Disability Discrimination Act. Maybe set HR on them about enforcing policy.

So Pete grapples for a few minutes with something called “Sirius XM” which, to British sensibilities, appears to originate from another star system.

(There is an International Standards Organization specification for brewing tea—ISO 3103, based on British Standards Institution BS 6008—but the SA violates it egregiously, every time, by using roughly triple the prescribed quantity of loose-leaf Assam, resulting in a bold and somewhat bitter brew.)

“Yes, Derek,” I tell him, “we hauled you four thousand miles out of your comfort zone just so you could make a saving throw vs. Cthulhu. Happy now?”

American cops are so heavily militarized these days that the only way I can tell the difference between them and the army is the color of their body armor—that, and the army is less trigger-happy.

“I assert diplomatic immunity!” I yell. “I’m a valuable bargaining chip and killing me won’t buy you anything! I had nothing to do with this, it was all the Black Pharaoh’s fault!” A mad god made me do it, then ran away. My fists rise again, without me willing it to happen. “Help!”