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5111880
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Dear God," whispers Pete, "it's full of posters!"
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Charles Stross |
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5073e4d
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The morning after her date with her nerdishly cute prince of darkness, Cassie is scheduled for a lecture at nine o'clock. She blows it off because life's too short and anyway the world is going to end in about two weeks' time, when the Second Heavy Cavalry Brigade rumbles into town accompanied by skies that rain wyrmfire and the death spells of combat magi.
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Charles Stross |
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d687a42
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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.
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Charles Stross |
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375e249
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The perfect criminal, should he or she exist, would be the one who is never apprehended - indeed, the one whose crimes may be huge but unnoticed, or indeed miscategorized not as crimes at all because they are so powerful they sway the law in their favor, or so clever they discover an immoral opportunity for criminal enterprise before the legislators notice it. Such forms of criminality may be indistinguishable, at a distance, from lawful bu..
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white-collar-crime
white-collar-criminal
criminals
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Charles Stross |
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fea9c4e
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Cassie believes that she is Agent First of Spies and Liars, daughter of the former General-Overseer of the 14th Western Host of Air and Darkness, who is now the All-Highest of the Morningstar Empire (or what remains of it, all other claimants to that status having been crushed by the ancient horrors that ate the moon). But at the same time she is also Cassiopeia Brewer,
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Charles Stross |
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9fdd93c
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Autarchies had been shattered, hermit kingdoms destroyed. Almost a billion had died in war, plague, starvation, and madness. But worse was yet to come, as what passed for civilization on this world guttered and faded beneath the penumbra of a darkness deeper than eternal night.
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Charles Stross |
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cb14bdc
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Hate the sin, love the sinner: it's hard to stay pissed off at someone for doing something wrong if you know you'd have done exactly the same thing if you'd been standing in their shoes.)
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Charles Stross |
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54c5474
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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.
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Charles Stross |
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9986da2
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All life is based on the destruction of other life, even on tremendous scales of space and time... Our ancestors understood that right back to the Ice Age, and venerated the animals they had to kill.
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Charles Stross |
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15b9eb4
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Was failure to make tenure track justification for an honor killing?
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Charles Stross |
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9ddd80b
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Everything is terrorism these days: downloading, uploading, jaywalking with intent to cause fear.
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Charles Stross |
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c131601
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Non-euclidian sofa
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Charles Stross |
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6247abb
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I can't get out of here soon enough, he thinks, and glances at his smartwatch--a birthday present from his wife--only to see that it has crashed and frozen on reboot, mocking him with an image of the apple from the tree of knowledge, one bite down.
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Charles Stross |
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8380c05
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Stuff that really will improve my survival prospects when the tentacles hit the pentacle.
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Charles Stross |
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ba94ad8
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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."
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Charles Stross |
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2a4fa6b
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Jim can't tell if he was screaming from fear or yodeling in exhilaration.
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Charles Stross |
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6fc91eb
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I'm possessed, recursively.
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Charles Stross |
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45a45bb
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And convincing someone that an outrageous ritual has caused them to forget the constitutional bedrock of their society is hard.
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Charles Stross |
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b8594c5
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So once again Janice proves that not only is she a nerd, she's a useful nerd who gets to stay on the team.
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Charles Stross |
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fb05193
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I picked you for this task, Colonel, precisely because you won't do it lightly.
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Charles Stross |
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a592d7c
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The knife-shaped thing sticking out of his throat is drinking greedily; one glance tells Johnny that the cop's beyond help. There's always a cost for using such occult weapons, and Johnny will pay it later, of that he is sure; but for now he's simply relieved to still be alive.
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Charles Stross |
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74e51d1
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her Jonquil overlay
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Charles Stross |
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52debca
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The rich smell of life uneaten.
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Charles Stross |
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26bb92d
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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).
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Charles Stross |
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4ff9130
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There are things out there in the night where light cannot exist that make Cthulhu look like a Care Bear.
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Charles Stross |
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0f05822
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because there's something joyless and deadening in the air, as if what this room really holds is the decaying miscarried fetus of the human future. Anyone who lingers here will sicken and die, just as if they were stranded in the pyramid on a dead world where once the photo-reconnaissance Concordes flew.
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Charles Stross |
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abedca5
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Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority. --Lord Acton
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Charles Stross |
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c3de70b
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The widespread belief among some politicians that government can't do anything right--that the private sector is always better--becomes a corrosive, self-fulfilling prophecy. Government isn't allowed to be bright and cheerful, helpful and efficient.
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Charles Stross |
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bcf8ea3
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Ras is a big fan of Noam Chomsky; calling it the Propaganda Ministry keeps things honest, he says. Like having a Ministry of War rather than a Department of Defense, or Counting Other People's Murdered Children instead of talking about Collateral Damage.
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Charles Stross |
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bc5d4ec
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Our first priority is the same as it ever was," he said: "survival. Not all of us, or any of us in particular, or forever, but survival is the principal goal. It's the function of all life forms to persist for as long as possible. If nobody and nothing survives, nothing matters. And I don't know about you, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with that."
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Charles Stross |
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0670a81
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but on the ridgeline up by Magic Meadows there's a place where the trees are all flattened outwards in a circle and there's a scorched symbol in the dirt, kinda like a five-pointed star with an eye in the middle, like the Brotherhood
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Charles Stross |
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e17f5bf
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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.)
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Charles Stross |
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96a0ef7
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We fight on so that something that remembers being human might survive.
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Charles Stross |
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4361100
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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
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Charles Stross |
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c8ce821
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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.)
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Charles Stross |
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a8430e2
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It's a bit like cricket," Pete agrees. "Weeks of endless boredom interspersed with the occasional moment of existential terror."
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Charles Stross |
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1d966df
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Not our circus, not our monkeys," I murmur, and he nods."
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Charles Stross |
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bd85a3f
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Some of my people are well on their way to becoming formidable practitioners (like Alex, but best not to tell the little oik that).
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Charles Stross |
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c646818
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Oh, and if the Nazgul aren't already on the alert for reports of vampires entering the country, I'm a chocolate teapot.
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Charles Stross |
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3575b78
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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.
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Charles Stross |
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7b995db
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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?"
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Charles Stross |
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8102238
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skeletal. "It would hardly be unprecedented, don't you think? "So here's your new assignment: you will establish a new agency, recruit agents, and direct them--I have a little list of those who won't be missed, tum-de-dum, I shall send it to you presently--in order to develop and deliver a HUMINT capability directed against the United States. You are to bring the new organization to operational readiness, then lead them in penetrating the c..
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Charles Stross |
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f999fcd
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Apocalypses are easier slept through than experienced.
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Charles Stross |
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93844f6
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It felt like going commando in a miniskirt on a Saturday night in town, even after Jim sent an email to ensure that there'd be a shiny new Samsung waiting for me in DC. Not knowing I could check my team's timesheets on my phone at 3 a.m. felt profoundly wrong.
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Charles Stross |