The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9)

by Charles Stross

By the sacred cabling of AT&T and Comcast we bind the routers and ties of a continent together and broadcast the sacred timing codes that underpin the great working, the geas of forgetting. Using them, we, the servants of the Black Chamber—be we Friends of the Lord of Sleep or officiants in the Mysteries of Central Intelligence—act to buttress our nation’s magical boundaries against intrusions from outside. But the center cannot hold without

“Give me six lines written by an honest man, and I will find something in it with which to hang him.”

All large organizations are either superorganisms whose cells are human bodies, or very slow artificial intelligences that use human beings as gears in the Babbage engines that run their code. Pick a metaphor and stick to it: I prefer the biological one, but it’s a matter of taste. Some of the superorganism’s cells are formed into organs that carry out various vital functions. Human Resources is the liver and kidneys, dedicated to purifying and excreting unwanted toxins. Quality Assurance and Standards are the immune system, stamping out rogue cells and insidious infections and other parasitic activities. Project Management is the circadian rhythm, and board-level executives form the cerebral cortex, the source of the organism’s emergent self-directed behavior. Behold Leviathan, anatomized.

“You have imposter syndrome,” He says, “but paradoxically, that’s often a sign of competence. Only people who understand their work well enough to be intimidated by it can be terrified by their own ignorance.

The besetting vice of high office is the temptation to micromanage, to take direct control of a small, concrete, easily understood subsidiary operation and start issuing orders, to the detriment of the chain of command (and the neglect of the big picture). The reason micromanagement is a vice is that it’s a temptation to self-indulgence: it’s too easy to get carried away. Taking on a low-level coordinating role while retaining the full executive authority and fiscal responsibilities of senior rank is like playing a game you’ve mastered on the lowest difficulty level. DeeDee

“This is America: electric kettles are a Communist plot, and tea is a Chinese conspiracy. Would you like some coffee instead? They haven’t figured out it comes from Arabia yet.”