The Labyrinth Index Quotes

“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.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“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.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“There are things out there in the night where light cannot exist that make Cthulhu look like a Care Bear.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“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.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“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”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“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?”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“History is written by the survivors, a narrative they compose to explain events to themselves. So the historicity of journals like this one—their accuracy and authenticity—is a function of the reliability of the narrator”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“And convincing someone that an outrageous ritual has caused them to forget the constitutional bedrock of their society is hard.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“One does not simply walk into Mordor these days; one drives a rented Cadillac Escalade the size of a county, shiny black and chrome, with a fake walnut dash, and enough black leather to clothe a battalion of Hell’s Angels.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“Yippee. I haven’t had this much fun since I was in the Transhuman Police, mixing it up with superpowered neo-Nazis, and by fun I mean fuck me I demand a pay rise and a nice quiet office job—”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“It’s a bit like cricket,” Pete agrees. “Weeks of endless boredom interspersed with the occasional moment of existential terror.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“Oh, and if the Nazgûl aren’t already on the alert for reports of vampires entering the country, I’m a chocolate teapot.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“We fight on so that something that remembers being human might survive.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“Jim can’t tell if he was screaming from fear or yodeling in exhilaration.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“By the way, what is that you’re working on?” “Software-configurable RAID grid.” She pauses, a cable in each hand. “Go on, your ride will be waiting.” “RAID grid being . . . ?” “Redundant Array of Interconnected Demons.” She bares her teeth at him. “Demons!” he squeaks, and clutches his magic dice.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“the sacrificial repository at Arlington”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“So once again Janice proves that not only is she a nerd, she’s a useful nerd who gets to stay on the team.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“Firewyrms (I refuse to dignify those things by calling them dragons; real dragons should be elegant reptilian predators, not sea slugs with wings that vomit acid).”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“It’s as exhausting as dealing with an early-stage dementia sufferer—one with a trillion-pound budget and nuclear-weapons-release authority.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“Nor can I tell him—lest the SA’s command override cause my arterial blood vessels to burst and my eyeballs to catch fire—about Long-Term Continuity Operations and the Resistance.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“The PM smiles, and for a moment I see a flickering vision where His face should be: an onion-skin Matryoshka doll of circular shark-toothed maws, lizard-man faces, and insectile hunger. “A word in my study if you don’t mind. Right this way.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“This would be an extinction event for humanity. We can’t let it happen. It is also a who-poisoned-my-beehives event for the Black Pharaoh, which is why He’s trying to prevent it. (We bring Him honey: He keeps us around.)”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“Within the shielded darkness of the President’s limousine a geas unlocks in my head, and I can finally remember the message the PM wants me to convey to his counterpart”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“(If he’s serious about turning, I can probably walk him through the process using the tablet as a teaching tool: damn Alex for inventing such an easy-to-understand visualization. If you could broadcast it over a TV channel … my blood runs cold at the thought.)”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“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.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“About 80 percent of the NSA’s total body count are actually employees of various consultancy firms, because that way they don’t show up on the org chart. Their remaining internal managers can point to the black boxes that do the job and sneer, “Employees? We don’t have no steenking employees!” (Tell that to Edward Snowden.)”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“long”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“Ninety feet directly beneath the center courtyard café in the middle of the Pentagon—previously known as the Ground Zero Cafe, because when the bomb dropped that was where it would most likely detonate—there is a deep subbasement office with ferroconcrete walls and a filtered air supply, accessible by discreet elevators and staircases from all five wings of the main building. It was designed as a deep command bunker back when the worst threats were raids by long-range Luftwaffe bombers bearing conventional explosives. Obsolescent since the morning of July 16, 1945—it won’t withstand a direct ground burst from an atom bomb, much less more modern munitions—it still possesses certain uses. Being deep underground and equidistant from all the other wings, it was well suited as a switch for SCAN, the Army’s automatic switched communications system, and later for AUTOVON. AUTOVON led to ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet, and the secure exchange in the basement played host to one of the first IMPs—Interface Message Processors—outside of academia. By the early 1980s a lack of rackspace led the DoD to relocate their hardened exchanges to a site closer to the 1950s-sized mainframe halls. And it was then that the empty bunker was taken over by a shadowy affiliate of the National Security Agency, tasked with waging occult warfare against the enemies of the nation. The past six months have brought some changes. There is a pentagonal main room inside the bunker, and within it there is a ceremonial maze, inscribed in blood and silver that glows with a soft fluorescence, converging on a dais at the heart of the design. The labyrinth takes the shape of a pentacle aligned with the building overhead: at each corner stands a motionless sentinel clad head to toe in occlusive silver fabric. Robed in black and crimson silk and shod in slippers of disturbingly pale leather, the Deputy Director paces her way through the maze. In her left hand she bears a jewel-capped scepter carved from the femur of a dead pope, and in her right hand she bears a gold-plated chalice made from a skull that once served Josef Stalin as an ashtray. As she walks she recites a prayer of allegiance and propitiation, its cadences and grammar those of a variant dialect of Old Enochian.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“Rule Number One is don’t die. Corollary Number One is don’t poke things that will certainly kill you, like high-tension cables and hostile level-six Existential Anthropic Threats.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index

“you can’t learn from a fatal mistake.”
― Charles Stross, The Labyrinth Index