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5922f09
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There is cold comfort to be drawn from the sure and certain knowledge that the correct way to deal with the problem you're facing in your job involves napalm, if
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Charles Stross |
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dd84579
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I'm not mad, you know, although it helps in this line of work.
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Charles Stross |
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bb264f9
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We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our brains.
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Charles Stross |
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cc1052e
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It's the kind of outfit one wears in the hope of meeting someone who'll help you out of it
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Charles Stross |
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b52ca19
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There is cold comfort to be drawn from the sure and certain knowledge that the correct way to deal with the problem you're facing in your job involves napalm, if you find yourself confronting a dragon and you aren't even carrying a cigarette lighter.
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Charles Stross |
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1c277df
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Nobody taught me how to say no when a beautiful naked woman begs me to take my clothes off.
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Charles Stross |
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b8fb316
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The informational density of the inner planets is visibly converging on Avogadro's number of bits per mole, one bit per atom,
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Charles Stross |
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d271482
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when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error.
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Charles Stross |
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62db2fd
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Sorry, I should have warned you." Apologies are the keystone of an enduring relationship. Failing to apologize for mistakes, or getting onto a treadmill of belittling insults, is a bad warning sign. So far we've avoided it, but . "
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Charles Stross |
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f45ace9
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And now my blood ran cold. Because if there's one thing worse than an IT manager who's feeling the chill wind of obsolescence blowing down his neck and consequently trying to contribute code to the repository like an actual working developer, it's an IT manager who's getting creative.
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Charles Stross |
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119b28c
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Back to my question: is it better to reign in Hell--or should I aspire to be a citizen in the early years of a better nation?
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Charles Stross |
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8cc8949
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Crawling eldritch horrors don't get planning permission unless they're Trump's hairpiece.) That
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Charles Stross |
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5814863
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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--
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Charles Stross |
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8b0e464
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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
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Charles Stross |
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b21acb5
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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."
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Charles Stross |
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3d6a3d7
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the sacrificial repository at Arlington
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Charles Stross |
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5f3baf8
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It's as exhausting as dealing with an early-stage dementia sufferer--one with a trillion-pound budget and nuclear-weapons-release authority.
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Charles Stross |
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a9363ca
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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.
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Charles Stross |
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0f14d1e
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Are they by any chance a quiverfull ministry?" Pete's lips thin. "Yes." The word "quiverfull" sets my alarm bells ringing, and clearly upsets Mo. It goes back to Psalm 127, which refers to having many children as having a full quiver. They're arrows for the Lord, and a number of evangelical churches have adopted the theory that you can never have too much ammunition."
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Charles Stross |
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d5a87db
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His remit will be to monitor the use of reality-modification weapons by both sides in the conflict and to assure the civilized worlds that the New Republic does not engage in gratuitous use of time travel as a weapon of mass destruction.
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Charles Stross |
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681b93c
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It's almost as if Congress has no idea that a giant occult power struggle for control of the US government is in progress ... or perhaps it's over already, and a ruthless media clamp-down by tongue-eating mind control parasites is the only thing keeping the world from learning about the takeover of DC by gibbering alien nightmares.
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Charles Stross |
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69fbc6e
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Apparently you're only allowed to demolish Wolverhampton if you're a property developer like Donald Trump. Crawling eldritch horrors don't get planning permission unless they're Trump's hairpiece.)
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Charles Stross |
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eeacacc
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either they're trying to upsell you a fifty-quid-a-head artisanal pork pie (serving this week: Peppa Pig's Uncle Bertie's left haunch, marinaded in a drizzle of preschoolers' tears) or
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Charles Stross |
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5cb0883
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Although now that I'm in middle management I'm supposed to call it "refactoring the strategic value proposition in real time with agile implementation," or, if I'm being honest, "making it up as I go along."
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Charles Stross |
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ed5d5ed
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I'm not a morning person, I just do my best worrying when I should be asleep.
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Charles Stross |
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0b30aa3
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He shrugs, an aw-shucks gesture quite at odds with the rest of his mannerisms, and produces a grin from wherever he keeps his spare faces when he isn't wearing them.
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Charles Stross |
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bb952ef
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pivoted the results on our Criminal Records Bureau and National Insurance database mirrors to get the place of work for everyone who's on the books, and the pre-processor is turning that into grid reference data so we can plot them on a map or query for areas where the rate of that's funny . . .
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Charles Stross |
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9377a6a
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and that the seeds of evil usually germinated in the footprints of people who knew how everybody else ought to behave and felt the need to tell them so.
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Charles Stross |
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e4609c2
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To boldly go where no uploaded metahuman colony has gone before
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Charles Stross |
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ac1b0bc
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when it isn't spending half its energy scanning for viruses or painting a pretty drop-shadow under the mouse pointer it runs like greased whippet shit.
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Charles Stross |
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b484f08
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In a sufficiently large crisis, sane and measured responses go out the window.
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Charles Stross |
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044562b
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Very strong imagery of conformity versus mold-breaking, concealing conformity disguised as mold-breaking. Ever wondered why Mac users are so glassy-eyed about their boxes?
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Charles Stross |
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06c77e5
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They're vermin, Bob. They've been driven inland by over-fishing and now they're spreading disease, attacking waste collections, keeping people awake in the small hours, and carrying away stray cats and small dogs. Next thing you know they'll be cloning credit cards and planning bank robberies." "Yes, but..." I see no point in arguing; it's not as if I like seagulls."
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Charles Stross |
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b048385
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Finally, they began to investigate the prime minister, Harold Wilson. Wilson, Wright was convinced, was a KGB agent." I'm nodding along like a metronome at this point. "There was a group, a cabal if you like, of MI5 officers. About thirty of them. They actually planned a coup d'etat in 1972. They"
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Charles Stross |
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6f98392
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can't decide whether his next show should be a sitcom about government bureaucrats or a horror series
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Charles Stross |
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ac20a82
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Fucking netbooks; you can't even use one to beat an alien brain parasite to death without it breaking.)
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Charles Stross |
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3024111
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Bet you he's a smart sociopath, the kind that does well in midlevel management, all fur coat and no knickers--and willing to shed blood without a second thought if it's to defend his position.
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Charles Stross |
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16a17b9
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It seems I have not been truly myself for a long time," he says, barely whispering, a dry, papery sound like files shuffling in a dead document archive."
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Charles Stross |
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2137250
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an autonome, a native of this continuum:
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Charles Stross |
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fb42d00
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Viewed in the right light, a little sprinkle of free market pixie dust can turn the drabbest of public sector services (sewerage, for example) into a rainbow-hued profit unicorn.
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Charles Stross |
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c7ccf40
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The dirty little secret of the intelligence-gathering job is that information doesn't just want to be free--it wants to hang out on street corners wearing gang colors and terrorizing the neighbors.
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Charles Stross |
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e65a2cb
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Computers aren't as powerful as most people think; running even a small and rather stupid intern can really bog down a server.)
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Charles Stross |
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7318812
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Mug of Joe," grunts Johnny. "Mocha venti with an extra shot for me, no cream," I add. "Anything else?" I shake my head and she wanders off. Johnny looks suspicious. "Since when do you speak Starbucks?" I shrug. "It's not as if I can help it; they've got our office surrounded, and they don't like it if you try to order in English." We wait"
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Charles Stross |
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2d20f28
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Desks are to executives what souped-up Mitsubishi Colts with low-profile alloys, metal-flake paint jobs, and extra-loud, chrome-plated exhaust pipes are to chavs; they're a big swinging dick, the proxy they use to proclaim their sense of self-importance. If you want to understand an executive, you study his desk.
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Charles Stross |