text stringlengths 0 4.23k |
|---|
"No sir, I'm afraid not. Procedure." |
"But it's stupid! The guys who tried to mug us are long gone, I've given you their descriptions, you have their *identification* --" But they didn't, not yet. The wallet still lay where Art had dropped it. |
PC McGivens shook his head slowly, as though marveling at the previously unsuspected inanity of his daily round. "All very true, sir, but it's procedure. Worked out by some clever lad using statistics. All this, it increases our success rate. 'Sproven." |
Here it was. Some busy tribalist provocateur, some compatriot of Fede, had stirred the oats into Her Majesty's Royal Constabulary. Art snuck a look at Linda, who was no doubt being subjected to the same procedure by PC DeMoss. She'd lost her rigid, angry posture, and was seemingly -- amazingly -- enjoying herself, chat... |
"How many more times have we got to do this, officer?" |
"This is the last time you'll have to repeat it to me." |
Art's professional instincts perked up at the weasel words in the sentence. "To you? Who else do I need to go over this with?" |
The officer shook his head, caught out. "Well, you'll have to repeat it three times to PC DeMoss, once he's done with your friend, sir. Procedure." |
"How about this," Art says, "how about I record this last statement to you with my comm, and then I can *play it back* three times for PC DeMoss?" |
"Oh, I'm sure that won't do, sir. Not really the spirit of the thing, is it?" |
"And what *is* the spirit of the thing? Humiliation? Boredom? An exercise in raw power?" |
PC McGivens lost his faint smile. "I really couldn't say, sir. Now, again if you please?" |
"What if I don't please? I haven't been assaulted. I haven't been robbed. It's none of my business. What if I walk away right now?" |
"Not really allowed, sir. It's expected that everyone in England -- HM's subjects *and her guests* -- will assist the police with their inquiries. Required, actually." |
Reminded of his precarious immigration status, Art lost his attitude. "Once more for you, three more times for your partner, and we're done, right? I want to get home." |
"We'll see, sir." |
Art recited the facts a third time, and they waited while Linda finished her third recounting. |
He switched over to PC DeMoss, who pointed his comm expectantly. "Is all this just to make people reluctant to call the cops? I mean, this whole procedure seems like a hell of a disincentive." |
"Just the way we do things, sir," PC DeMoss said without rancor. "Now, let's have it, if you please?" |
From a few yards away, Linda laughed at something PC McGivens said, which just escalated Art's frustration. He spat out the description three times fast. "Now, I need to find a toilet. Are we done yet?" |
"'Fraid not, sir. Going to have to come by the Station House to look through some photos. There's a toilet there." |
"It can't wait that long, officer." |
PC DeMoss gave him a reproachful look. |
"I'm sorry, all right?" Art said. "I lack the foresight to empty my bladder before being accosted in the street. That being said, can we arrive at some kind of solution?" In his head, Art was already writing an angry letter to the *Times*, dripping with sarcasm. |
"Just a moment, sir," PC DeMoss said. He conferred briefly with his partner, leaving Art to stare ruefully at their backs and avoid Linda's gaze. When he finally met it, she gave him a sunny smile. It seemed that she -- at least -- wasn't angry any more. |
"Come this way, please, sir," PC DeMoss said, striking off for the High Street. "There's a pub 'round the corner where you can use the facilities." |
9. |
It was nearly dawn before they finally made their way out of the police station and back into the street. After identifying Les from an online rogues' gallery, Art had spent the next six hours sitting on a hard bench, chording desultorily on his thigh, doing some housekeeping. |
This business of being an agent-provocateur was complicated in the extreme, though it had sounded like a good idea when he was living in San Francisco and hating every inch of the city, from the alleged pizza to the fucking! drivers! -- in New York, the theory went, drivers used their horns by way of shouting "Ole!" as... |
And the body language was all screwed up out west. Art believed that your entire unconscious affect was determined by your upbringing. You learned how to stand, how to hold your face in repose, how to gesture, from the adults around you while you were growing up. The Pacific Standard Tribe always seemed a little bovine... |
Beauty, too. Your local definition of attractive and ugly was conditioned by the people around you at puberty. There was a Pacific "look" that was indefinably off. Hard to say what it was, just that when he went out to a bar or got stuck on a crowded train, the girls just didn't seem all that attractive to him. Objecti... |
He'd always felt at a slight angle to reality in California, something that was reinforced by his continuous efforts in the Tribe, from chatting and gaming until the sun rose, dragging his caffeine-deficient ass around to his clients in a kind of fog before going home, catching a nap and hopping back online at 3 or 4 w... |
Gradually, he penetrated deeper into the Tribe, getting invites into private channels, intimate environments where he found himself spilling the most private details of his life. The Tribe stuck together, finding work for each other, offering advice, and it was only a matter of time before someone offered him a gig. |
That was Fede, who practically invented Tribal agent-provocateurs. He'd been working for McKinsey, systematically undermining their GMT-based clients with plausibly terrible advice, creating Achilles' heels that their East-coast competitors could exploit. The entire European trust-architecture for relay networks had be... |
Now V/DT was striking back, angling for a government contract in Massachusetts, a fat bit of pork for managing payments to rightsholders whose media was assessed at the MassPike's tollbooths. Rights-societies were a fabulous opportunity to skim and launder and spindle money in plenty, and Virgin's massive repertoire co... |
London nights seemed like a step up from San Francisco mornings to Art -- instead of getting up at 4AM to get NYC, he could sleep in and chat them up through the night. The Euro sensibility, with its many nap-breaks, statutory holidays and extended vacations seemed ideally suited to a double agent's life. |
But Art hadn't counted on the Tribalists' hands-on approach to his work. They obsessively grepped his daily feed of spreadsheets, whiteboard-output, memos and conversation reports for any of ten thousand hot keywords, querying him for deeper detail on trivial, half-remembered bullshit sessions with the V/DT's user expe... |
Four hours in the police station gave Art ample opportunity to catch up on the backlog of finicky queries. Since the accident, he'd been distracted and tardy, and had begun to invent his responses, since it all seemed so trivial to him anyway. |
Fede had sent him about a thousand nagging notes reminding him to generate a new key and phone with the fingerprint. Christ. Fede had been with McKinsey for most of his adult life, and he was superparanoid about being exposed and disgraced in their ranks. Art's experience with the other McKinsey people around the offic... |
Trepan: Afternoon! |
Colonelonic: Hey, Trepan. How's it going? |
Trepan: Foul. I'm stuck at a copshop in London with my thumb up my ass. I got mugged. |
Colonelonic: Yikes! You OK? |
Ballgravy: Shit! |
Trepan: Oh, I'm fine -- just bored. They didn't hurt me. I commed 999 while they were running their game and showed it to them when they got ready to do the deed, so they took off. |
##Colonelonic laughs |
Ballgravy: Britain==ass. Lon-dong. |
Colonelonic: Sweet! |
Trepan: Thanks. Now if the cops would only finish the paperwork... |
Colonelonic: What are you doing in London, anyway? |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.