Halting State by Charles Stross Read Free Book Online Page B

and it doesn’t mean I’m going to charge you with anything, but a crime has been committed here, and you’re on the scene, so it’s routine to caution everyone. Then I’m going to formally ID you, and we’ll have a little chat, which will be logged under rules of evidence. At the end of this session, I’ll email ye the raw file. About three days later you’ll get a transcript in the email. What you do is you sign it in ink and bring it to the station within seven days, with your ID card, where we take a saliva sample, register it, and it goes into the file as evidence. That’s so it can be brought up in court.”
    He frowns, looking worried.
    “What?”
    “What if, uh, what if the transcript’s wrong? Or something?”
    You can’t help yourself: You snort. “The transcribers can be pish, sometimes, I’ll give ye that, it’s what you get when you farm out half the office jobs to Lagos and the other half to a buggy AI, but you’re allowed to correct it before you sign it. It’s your statement to us , ye ken. Just don’t spread it around.”
    (You don’t feel the need to remind him that failure to sign and return the affidavit within 7 (seven) working days is a summary offence under the Criminal Justice Reform (Scotland) Act (2012), failure to present a valid biometric ID card is a more serious offence under the Identity Cards Act (2006), and fiddling with the statement may be an offence under the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act (1995). Because, well, as a law-abiding citizen it’s his job to know these things, and you’ve a not-quite-teenage son to be riding herd on besides.)
    “Okay, I guess.” His shoulders droop. “Where do we begin?”
    “Well. Now we’re on the record”—you pause to tell the button on the phone to save a time-stamp—“in your own words, would you mind explaining to me exactly what is it that your company does and what went wrong today?”

ELAINE: Death or Coffee
    It’s a Friday morning in a North London suburb, and you haven’t won the lottery yet, and nobody’s drafted you for the King’s Musketeers, so it’s off to work you go. (Actually, you don’t buy lottery tickets in the first place. You ran the figures back when you were seventeen and, wishful thinking or no, you’re not that stupid. But that’s not the point, is it?) It’s a Friday morning, you’re on the job, and Chris left an email on your mobile about a 10 A.M . crisis meeting. Crisis, what crisis? There was none on the horizon when you left work yesterday evening. Hopefully it’s just HMRC querying the executive bizjet account consolidation file again.
    You check out your shoulder in the bathroom mirror. That’s quite some bruise Mike landed on you at the club. The pint and a half of Budvar in the Frog and Tourettes afterwards let you sleep without noticing it, but it’s stiffening up now, and you’re going to have to work that shoulder carefully for the next few days. So it’s the black blouse and the grey suit today. Which will need washing by the end of the week because the Tube seats are filthy these days. TfL can’t afford to clean them because they’re in crunch mode, buying their way out of their Infraco PPPs to avoid bankruptcy. The mess defederalization has left the country in has really come home to roost this decade: What the cooked books give, the cooked books taketh away. Isn’t that the way the world works?
    Breakfast is a hastily munched Kellogg’s bar washed down with a glass of organic apple juice. You grab the latest copy of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability and stuff it in your briefcase, along with the usual: pen, iPod, your father’s antique pocket calculator, and a dog-eared copy of Tobler’s manual of sword-fighting that you borrowed from Matthew. You visit the bathroom briefly for a smear of lipstick and eyeliner, then you’re out the door.
    Early May used to be the chilly tail-end of spring, according to Mum. And it certainly used to be cooler. Now