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November 1 - December 10, 2018
“A powerful glamour has engulfed the United States of America. It’s not the first time, of course—that nation is a shining temple to amnesia with its foundations built atop the bones of vanished empires
Supposedly wholesome bitcoin mining apps are actually running demon-summoning algorithms in disguise.
The Denizen of Number 10 is the avatar—the humanoid sock-puppet—of an ancient and undying intelligence who regards mere humanity much as we might regard a hive of bees. Our lives are of no individual concern to Him, but He likes honey. As long as we continue to give Him what He wants—honey—He is content to keep us around, and even to tend to us to the extent that it does not inconvenience Him.
Okay, so maybe I was overreacting, but I signed up for an MBA and grabbed on to the corporate ladder hard.
There is endless scope for backbiting, rivalry, and internecine feuding and plotting. Perhaps it’s my HR background speaking, but sometimes it seems to me that that’s all that ever happens. My job was just to repair or replace the damaged components of the human machine when the gears started to grind. Now, at a slightly higher level, it’s my job to help debug the programs—the legal code—that keep my chunk of the machinery running smoothly.
Nearly forty years in captivity, spent DM’ing a very peculiar role-playing game, has left Derek with an eerie ability to glance at a building’s floor plan and infer the likely layout and functions of the blank parts of the map, the implied spaces where secret rooms and hidden treasures lie.
Iris is a fan of Cardinal Richelieu: “Give me six lines written by an honest man, and I will find something in it with which to hang him.”
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.
His Infernal Majesty leans towards me confidingly. “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. It’s the opposite of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where the miserably incompetent think they’re on top of the job because they don’t understand it.” He winks—I think—and adds: “It screws with precognition, you know. Almost as much as the DM’s dice. Makes you unpredictable.”
“Oh, now I get it. Is that the real reason I’m here?” “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.
Quality counts, but quantity has a quality all of its own:
