My entry for Iron Fic 5, set in the Laundry Files universe by Charles Stross, a blackly humorous but still serious universe which combines spy fiction and Lovecraft. Please give the books a chance, even if you hate the following.
"...And in conclusion, I think you'll find me both a good and fair manager."
There was some polite clapping as the new boss finished his introductory spiel. I didn't join in. In truth, I barely looked up from my IT station. Bosses came and went at the Laundry. Those competent enough to do real damage were promoted out of the way quickly enough, while those without even that much skill tended to let me get on with my job. My name's Bob Oliver Francis Howard by the way. I work IT at the Laundry, have for years, ever since I nearly wiped Birmingham off the map. How you ask? Well, it involved using a geometry curve iteration algorithm and a partial invocation of Nyarlathotep.
Did I say Nyarlathotep? Why yes I did: messenger of the Outer Gods and horror of Lovecraft fame. That's the Laundry's job: keeping Britain's occult under control. Or that's the official story. I think the truth's a little different. The Laundry is where they stick all us pour saps who stumble onto Things Man Is Not Meant To Knowâ„¢.
(Or, given our Discrimination Policy: Things Men, Women, Intersexed Individuals and People Not Conforming to Standard Gender Types Are Not Meant to Know, Unless You Negotiate a Valid Religious or Cultural Exception with Human Resources First.)
A moderately well paid Civil Service job with pension prospects keeps us under control, you see. It's a technique that has been used for centuries; just look at parliament.
Sometimes I dream of putting in a transfer request, getting myself assigned to active status in Operations. They're the people who really do things around here. The rest of us: we exist in a maze of paperwork designed to keep us busy.
"Right then," said the Boss and clapped his meaty hands together. He's a big fellow, my new boss. Just under six foot and stocky with it, thick jowls and a thicker moustache. Think Eighteen Century nouveau riche industrialist and you've got the right idea. "Let's get back to work and give one hundred and ten percent!"
Not a good sign. He looked keen. Did I say keen? I meant keen. Management seminar, team building exercises and enough IT skills to check his email two times out of three keen (provided Outlook was already running, of course). And now he was my boss, in charge of computer support for the darkest part of the United Kingdom's notoriously light shy intelligence community.
I let out a sigh. What was the worst he could do?
When I arrived at work the next morning, there was a note on my key board. There was a cartoon cat on the note. It was smiling. The corner of the note was bent so the cat appeared to be holding it. It took me several minutes staring in disbelief before I realised that the note also had writing on it.
'Please see me at earliest convenience - TB,' it said.
"Bob," said the Boss when I arrived at his office, "I can call you Bob?"
"I'd really rather—" I started but the Boss rolled on with all the subtlety of a steamroller.
"Now Bob, as part of my Management Realisation Strategy, I am meeting and interviewing all my employees. And the first thing I ask them is this: What do you do in the IT department?"
"Do?" I said, the words plopping from my mouth before I could stop them. What didn't I do would be a better question. I did my job; a dozen other people's jobs; preformed technical support for those who'd somehow survived the Dread Seals on the Laundry's internal telephone directory to get my direct number; kept the servers running; and a whole gibbering host of other things, too numerous to name.
"Yes, Bob," he said. "What do you do?"
"I'm a network support engineer," I said, knowing full well that it didn't pay to speak arcane jargon to the muggles.
"Hm," he said, "that's what your file said. It also says you left University before completing your Computer Science degree."
Oh no. He wouldn't. No one could be that stupid. Not even the newest promoted manager could be this dumb. Speak to anyone in the department and they'd tell you I was the only person keeping the place running. Hell, didn't he even look at why I left university. Shouldn't the fact that I independently rediscovered the Turing-Lovecraft theorem count for something? I only disproved the Church-Turing hypothesis, created a way to convert NP-complete to P-complete and almost summoned Nyarlathotep for my trouble. What was that really worth? Not much as it turned out.
"Now Bob, if you read our ISO-9000 mission statement and progress plan, you'll see that your job requires a University Degree or equivalent."
I stared in shock, too numb for words.
"Now don't fret. I am keen to help you realise your skills within a certification framework we can all accept. Towards that end I have prepared a list of approved qualifications that can get you right back where you belong. If you work hard, it should only take... Two years? Get at 'em sport."
I stormed back to my desk, miniature explosions going off behind my eyelids. Who did this Boss think he was? Did he know the things we dealt with, that I dealt with? Where was he when some bureaucratic twit in HR scanned a photo of the Yellow Sign, a truly fiendish example of Dho-Nha geometry. Did he spend all night scouring it from the Email Server with an Exorcism Tool Kit before it caused micro demon summonings in everyone's brain? Where was he when Residual Human Resources botched the upgrade to the New Enochian Dictionary and set a pack of brain eating zombies loose in the basement?
I dropped into my seat and logged in. A few clicks later I logged in again, this time with a username and password I'd lifted from a less than IT literate superior, three bosses ago. From there it was easy to get into the HR files and call up the information I needed.
In the management world there's something called the Peter Principle. Simply put: as long as you are good at your job, you keep getting promoted. As soon as you stop being good at your job, the promotions stop. Within the Civil Service world of the Laundry, such a principle is something to be strived for. Here, the shit rises and doesn't stop.
The Boss entered the Laundry's sphere of interest already a middle-manager in a large stationary firm. He took part in an administration seminar, which was actually a front for the Cult of Nyctelios. They planned to summon their fallen god into the world using an army of brainwashed middle managers. As cult plans go, I've heard worse. Luckily for Britain's vital paperclip industry, we stopped it in time.
After a six month grace period, the Boss was put in charge of the Dead Letter Office. There, he more than double the number of post mortem communications we received, which I bet looked very good on a Power Point presentation somewhere. Unfortunately (as a check on my part showed) over three fifths were official letters of complaint. It seemed the Boss instituted a mail bomb campaign which didn't go down well. Some spooks, it seemed, enjoyed the peace of the grave.
Next on his hit list was the Underland Revenue, which resulted in an official protest from the Canadian High Commissioner and what may or may not have been a small war. The Court Martial was, quite literally, still out on that one. From there, he was promoted up a level and given a minor office in HR. This resulted in the only proper blemish on his record, a 'Notice of Understanding' to the fact that he had acted with cultural insensitivity to a number of people.
Under the shadow of this black mark, he was only sideways promoted to Maintenance & Janitorial. Despite an intensive three weak training course, he failed to learn the Enochian needed to manage the zombies and went to Transport. As part of a 'Be Green!' initiative he instituted a car pool system (ready to go live 2014) and sold half our company vehicles. To replace them, he entered orders for a fuel efficient alternative. When the company making said fuel efficient cars went bust, he jumped ship, leaving his deputy to take the fall.
What followed was a series of promotions and management disasters to make an Auditor weep. The Boss seemed to live a charmed life, forever just escaping censure for his actions. Or maybe I'm being overly hard. It wasn't like he stole paper-clips or anything serious like that. The last item on file was his promotion to SSO 6(A) and assignment to head the Information Technology Division as my boss.
When I arrived for work the following morning I had one piece of good new and one piece of bad waiting for me. The good: my emergency appeal to HR had been accepted and I'd been granted a stay of execution pending a review. I'd keep my job for now. The bad news: the Boss had instituted a new 'working directive'.
First, we were instructed to gather 'key stakeholder information' from all helpline calls, including race, religion and economic background so any systematic bias or racism could be identified and corrected.
Second, in order to ensure network stability, all changes, however minor, needed to be signed off by a group of Network Gurus. This group, it seemed, would be put together over the coming weeks. The rule took effect immediately.
Third, at four pm every Friday, we'd stop work and have 'Group Based Review Sessions'. A 'free and frank exchange of views and ideas' seemed to be involved. Today was Wednesday. It gave me something to not look forward too.
Thursday was if anything worse. HR was remarkably on the ball and rejected my appeal, so I fired off another, this time listing a range of discrimination complaints. According to my finished L-HR-13, I'd suffered discrimination on account of attending a Birmingham based university. For fun, I also said not letting me play D&D on company time was a violation of my cultural identity as a Geek. I don't even like Dungeons and Dragons but let them think of it what they will.
After dealing with that problem, I turned my attention to the Boss. There was a raft of new regulations in my inbox. Some would be disastrous if ever implemented, even individually. As a group... I got out a pen and paper and began making notes. Firewalls changes there, reassignment of Cat Watches here...
My eyes opened wide. The Boss was no IT illiterate muggle; he was a computer genius. In the mass of changes there was a pattern, as fiendishly clever as it was simple. The changes would open a door, a hidden path way right into the heart of our system. I thought back to what I'd read in his file: the Cult of Nyctelios. What if the Boss hadn't escaped unharmed? What if they'd turned him into a sleeper agent, an assassin in the Laundry's midst to take it down from the inside? I immediately fired off an email to HR, elaborating my suspicions and explaining my evidence. For the rest of the day, I kept a watchful eye on his plain pinewood office door.
My heart beat fast come Friday as I sat down at my computer. There were two emails from HR waiting for me. The first said my appeal had been accepted. I'd get to keep my job and have one hour set aside each week to play D&D. The second was worse. They'd assessed my suspicions and found them wanting. They pointed to the Boss' sterling service, the tough checks he'd undergone and on-going counter-espionage measures. If I wanted to save the Laundry, I'd need to do it on my own.
Despite being an IT support technician by trade, I'm also a rather good computational demonologist. In the Laundry the jobs are almost one and the same. That means I know all about using computers to do magic. I spent until lunch time working through the Boss' plan and came to one inescapable conclusion: the door he was opening would need a key. Somewhere in his office (in his place of power) there'd be a high end computer, singing the mathematical songs to form the gate. The regulations would build around it, like a mine tunnel around supporting struts. If I found that, HR would have to take me seriously.
At 3pm I left my desk and hid in the toilet. There I waited, a long hour of flushing loos and rushing taps. When my watch passed 4, I waited another ten minutes, then crept out. IT was deserted, everyone at the 'Group Based Review Session'. I snuck through rows of quiet cubicles, the only sounds my feet on the hard carpet and the whirring of fans. Blood pounded in my ears when I reached the Boss' office door. It creaked as I pushed it open and stole inside. Now, if I was a secret super computer, where would I be?
The office was small and I searched hard. The computer on his desk was too small, too Microsoft. Even demons had standards. The file cabinets produced nothing. The desk draws were filled only with papers. When all seemed lost, I found something hard and square, attached to hidden hooks below the desk. I pulled it out, hands shaking. It was a small lockbox, the key helpfully tied to the handle by a piece of string. It looked almost too small to hold the kind of computational hardware the task required. Maybe something experimental stolen from Q-Division?
I opened it with baited breath.
I left the office, dazed and staggering on my feet. What I'd seen rattled about my head, impossible to dislodge, impossible to ignore. It was horrible, a revolting image worse than the eldritch signs of dark and banished gods. Oh god. I wanted to throw up.
One thing: I had been wrong. The box hadn't contained a stolen super computer. The boss really was just an incompetent, promoted again and again due to the Laundry's byzantine structure and HR compliant arcane rules. There was no secret design to his actions, only an expert's habit of seeing patterns were there were none. That should be a relief of some sort, but what I saw filled my mind and blocked anything else out.
The box had contained pictures, personal snap shots. Explicit snap shots. Snap shots showing the Boss wearing only underwear. Women's underwear. Women's underwear over a body covered in wiry black hair.
I shuddered.
This was it. The last straw. Come Monday, I was putting in my request. I was finally going to do it. I was finally going to try and transfer to Operations and the exciting spy life it promised. Anything to get the photos out my head.
~~~
The Boss
"...And in conclusion, I think you'll find me both a good and fair manager."
There was some polite clapping as the new boss finished his introductory spiel. I didn't join in. In truth, I barely looked up from my IT station. Bosses came and went at the Laundry. Those competent enough to do real damage were promoted out of the way quickly enough, while those without even that much skill tended to let me get on with my job. My name's Bob Oliver Francis Howard by the way. I work IT at the Laundry, have for years, ever since I nearly wiped Birmingham off the map. How you ask? Well, it involved using a geometry curve iteration algorithm and a partial invocation of Nyarlathotep.
Did I say Nyarlathotep? Why yes I did: messenger of the Outer Gods and horror of Lovecraft fame. That's the Laundry's job: keeping Britain's occult under control. Or that's the official story. I think the truth's a little different. The Laundry is where they stick all us pour saps who stumble onto Things Man Is Not Meant To Knowâ„¢.
(Or, given our Discrimination Policy: Things Men, Women, Intersexed Individuals and People Not Conforming to Standard Gender Types Are Not Meant to Know, Unless You Negotiate a Valid Religious or Cultural Exception with Human Resources First.)
A moderately well paid Civil Service job with pension prospects keeps us under control, you see. It's a technique that has been used for centuries; just look at parliament.
Sometimes I dream of putting in a transfer request, getting myself assigned to active status in Operations. They're the people who really do things around here. The rest of us: we exist in a maze of paperwork designed to keep us busy.
"Right then," said the Boss and clapped his meaty hands together. He's a big fellow, my new boss. Just under six foot and stocky with it, thick jowls and a thicker moustache. Think Eighteen Century nouveau riche industrialist and you've got the right idea. "Let's get back to work and give one hundred and ten percent!"
Not a good sign. He looked keen. Did I say keen? I meant keen. Management seminar, team building exercises and enough IT skills to check his email two times out of three keen (provided Outlook was already running, of course). And now he was my boss, in charge of computer support for the darkest part of the United Kingdom's notoriously light shy intelligence community.
I let out a sigh. What was the worst he could do?
~~~
When I arrived at work the next morning, there was a note on my key board. There was a cartoon cat on the note. It was smiling. The corner of the note was bent so the cat appeared to be holding it. It took me several minutes staring in disbelief before I realised that the note also had writing on it.
'Please see me at earliest convenience - TB,' it said.
"Bob," said the Boss when I arrived at his office, "I can call you Bob?"
"I'd really rather—" I started but the Boss rolled on with all the subtlety of a steamroller.
"Now Bob, as part of my Management Realisation Strategy, I am meeting and interviewing all my employees. And the first thing I ask them is this: What do you do in the IT department?"
"Do?" I said, the words plopping from my mouth before I could stop them. What didn't I do would be a better question. I did my job; a dozen other people's jobs; preformed technical support for those who'd somehow survived the Dread Seals on the Laundry's internal telephone directory to get my direct number; kept the servers running; and a whole gibbering host of other things, too numerous to name.
"Yes, Bob," he said. "What do you do?"
"I'm a network support engineer," I said, knowing full well that it didn't pay to speak arcane jargon to the muggles.
"Hm," he said, "that's what your file said. It also says you left University before completing your Computer Science degree."
Oh no. He wouldn't. No one could be that stupid. Not even the newest promoted manager could be this dumb. Speak to anyone in the department and they'd tell you I was the only person keeping the place running. Hell, didn't he even look at why I left university. Shouldn't the fact that I independently rediscovered the Turing-Lovecraft theorem count for something? I only disproved the Church-Turing hypothesis, created a way to convert NP-complete to P-complete and almost summoned Nyarlathotep for my trouble. What was that really worth? Not much as it turned out.
"Now Bob, if you read our ISO-9000 mission statement and progress plan, you'll see that your job requires a University Degree or equivalent."
I stared in shock, too numb for words.
"Now don't fret. I am keen to help you realise your skills within a certification framework we can all accept. Towards that end I have prepared a list of approved qualifications that can get you right back where you belong. If you work hard, it should only take... Two years? Get at 'em sport."
~~~
I stormed back to my desk, miniature explosions going off behind my eyelids. Who did this Boss think he was? Did he know the things we dealt with, that I dealt with? Where was he when some bureaucratic twit in HR scanned a photo of the Yellow Sign, a truly fiendish example of Dho-Nha geometry. Did he spend all night scouring it from the Email Server with an Exorcism Tool Kit before it caused micro demon summonings in everyone's brain? Where was he when Residual Human Resources botched the upgrade to the New Enochian Dictionary and set a pack of brain eating zombies loose in the basement?
I dropped into my seat and logged in. A few clicks later I logged in again, this time with a username and password I'd lifted from a less than IT literate superior, three bosses ago. From there it was easy to get into the HR files and call up the information I needed.
In the management world there's something called the Peter Principle. Simply put: as long as you are good at your job, you keep getting promoted. As soon as you stop being good at your job, the promotions stop. Within the Civil Service world of the Laundry, such a principle is something to be strived for. Here, the shit rises and doesn't stop.
The Boss entered the Laundry's sphere of interest already a middle-manager in a large stationary firm. He took part in an administration seminar, which was actually a front for the Cult of Nyctelios. They planned to summon their fallen god into the world using an army of brainwashed middle managers. As cult plans go, I've heard worse. Luckily for Britain's vital paperclip industry, we stopped it in time.
After a six month grace period, the Boss was put in charge of the Dead Letter Office. There, he more than double the number of post mortem communications we received, which I bet looked very good on a Power Point presentation somewhere. Unfortunately (as a check on my part showed) over three fifths were official letters of complaint. It seemed the Boss instituted a mail bomb campaign which didn't go down well. Some spooks, it seemed, enjoyed the peace of the grave.
Next on his hit list was the Underland Revenue, which resulted in an official protest from the Canadian High Commissioner and what may or may not have been a small war. The Court Martial was, quite literally, still out on that one. From there, he was promoted up a level and given a minor office in HR. This resulted in the only proper blemish on his record, a 'Notice of Understanding' to the fact that he had acted with cultural insensitivity to a number of people.
Under the shadow of this black mark, he was only sideways promoted to Maintenance & Janitorial. Despite an intensive three weak training course, he failed to learn the Enochian needed to manage the zombies and went to Transport. As part of a 'Be Green!' initiative he instituted a car pool system (ready to go live 2014) and sold half our company vehicles. To replace them, he entered orders for a fuel efficient alternative. When the company making said fuel efficient cars went bust, he jumped ship, leaving his deputy to take the fall.
What followed was a series of promotions and management disasters to make an Auditor weep. The Boss seemed to live a charmed life, forever just escaping censure for his actions. Or maybe I'm being overly hard. It wasn't like he stole paper-clips or anything serious like that. The last item on file was his promotion to SSO 6(A) and assignment to head the Information Technology Division as my boss.
~~~
When I arrived for work the following morning I had one piece of good new and one piece of bad waiting for me. The good: my emergency appeal to HR had been accepted and I'd been granted a stay of execution pending a review. I'd keep my job for now. The bad news: the Boss had instituted a new 'working directive'.
First, we were instructed to gather 'key stakeholder information' from all helpline calls, including race, religion and economic background so any systematic bias or racism could be identified and corrected.
Second, in order to ensure network stability, all changes, however minor, needed to be signed off by a group of Network Gurus. This group, it seemed, would be put together over the coming weeks. The rule took effect immediately.
Third, at four pm every Friday, we'd stop work and have 'Group Based Review Sessions'. A 'free and frank exchange of views and ideas' seemed to be involved. Today was Wednesday. It gave me something to not look forward too.
Thursday was if anything worse. HR was remarkably on the ball and rejected my appeal, so I fired off another, this time listing a range of discrimination complaints. According to my finished L-HR-13, I'd suffered discrimination on account of attending a Birmingham based university. For fun, I also said not letting me play D&D on company time was a violation of my cultural identity as a Geek. I don't even like Dungeons and Dragons but let them think of it what they will.
After dealing with that problem, I turned my attention to the Boss. There was a raft of new regulations in my inbox. Some would be disastrous if ever implemented, even individually. As a group... I got out a pen and paper and began making notes. Firewalls changes there, reassignment of Cat Watches here...
My eyes opened wide. The Boss was no IT illiterate muggle; he was a computer genius. In the mass of changes there was a pattern, as fiendishly clever as it was simple. The changes would open a door, a hidden path way right into the heart of our system. I thought back to what I'd read in his file: the Cult of Nyctelios. What if the Boss hadn't escaped unharmed? What if they'd turned him into a sleeper agent, an assassin in the Laundry's midst to take it down from the inside? I immediately fired off an email to HR, elaborating my suspicions and explaining my evidence. For the rest of the day, I kept a watchful eye on his plain pinewood office door.
~~~
My heart beat fast come Friday as I sat down at my computer. There were two emails from HR waiting for me. The first said my appeal had been accepted. I'd get to keep my job and have one hour set aside each week to play D&D. The second was worse. They'd assessed my suspicions and found them wanting. They pointed to the Boss' sterling service, the tough checks he'd undergone and on-going counter-espionage measures. If I wanted to save the Laundry, I'd need to do it on my own.
Despite being an IT support technician by trade, I'm also a rather good computational demonologist. In the Laundry the jobs are almost one and the same. That means I know all about using computers to do magic. I spent until lunch time working through the Boss' plan and came to one inescapable conclusion: the door he was opening would need a key. Somewhere in his office (in his place of power) there'd be a high end computer, singing the mathematical songs to form the gate. The regulations would build around it, like a mine tunnel around supporting struts. If I found that, HR would have to take me seriously.
At 3pm I left my desk and hid in the toilet. There I waited, a long hour of flushing loos and rushing taps. When my watch passed 4, I waited another ten minutes, then crept out. IT was deserted, everyone at the 'Group Based Review Session'. I snuck through rows of quiet cubicles, the only sounds my feet on the hard carpet and the whirring of fans. Blood pounded in my ears when I reached the Boss' office door. It creaked as I pushed it open and stole inside. Now, if I was a secret super computer, where would I be?
The office was small and I searched hard. The computer on his desk was too small, too Microsoft. Even demons had standards. The file cabinets produced nothing. The desk draws were filled only with papers. When all seemed lost, I found something hard and square, attached to hidden hooks below the desk. I pulled it out, hands shaking. It was a small lockbox, the key helpfully tied to the handle by a piece of string. It looked almost too small to hold the kind of computational hardware the task required. Maybe something experimental stolen from Q-Division?
I opened it with baited breath.
~~~
I left the office, dazed and staggering on my feet. What I'd seen rattled about my head, impossible to dislodge, impossible to ignore. It was horrible, a revolting image worse than the eldritch signs of dark and banished gods. Oh god. I wanted to throw up.
One thing: I had been wrong. The box hadn't contained a stolen super computer. The boss really was just an incompetent, promoted again and again due to the Laundry's byzantine structure and HR compliant arcane rules. There was no secret design to his actions, only an expert's habit of seeing patterns were there were none. That should be a relief of some sort, but what I saw filled my mind and blocked anything else out.
The box had contained pictures, personal snap shots. Explicit snap shots. Snap shots showing the Boss wearing only underwear. Women's underwear. Women's underwear over a body covered in wiry black hair.
I shuddered.
This was it. The last straw. Come Monday, I was putting in my request. I was finally going to do it. I was finally going to try and transfer to Operations and the exciting spy life it promised. Anything to get the photos out my head.
