The Annihilation Score

by Charles Stross

  “I’m told it’s all good, you can’t go wrong.” He studies his menu for a bit. “But I think I’ll keep it simple: the bruschetta followed by the lasagne.”

  I roll the mental dice, decide to try the mozzarella and tomato salad, then the spaghetti aglio e olio. “I wish I could keep my life as simple as this menu.”

  A waiter turns up to take our order. After he’s gone Jim starts up the conversation again, with a leading question: “I can’t help noticing you spend an inordinate number of hours in the office.” I can imagine him continuing: And one of your colleagues mentioned a tense domestic situation. Because offices leak.

  I wrinkle my nose. “My husband and I both work for the Laundry. No children, not that it matters. Yes, things have been tense lately. He’s, um, living elsewhere at the moment. Trial separation.” The words somehow make it sound more final than it is.

  “I’m sorry.” His pro forma apology closes off that line of conversation before I can succumb to the temptation to use him as a shoulder to unload on—highly unprofessional, I know. “All I can say is, I hope it gets better for you.”

  “To tell the truth, I’m too busy to notice right now.” Bob’s bouncing all over the map, I’ve managed to cut back to working only seventy hours a week, and I don’t have time to deal right now. “I’ve been walking the all-work-and-no-play treadmill for a while. I really ought to get out more.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you? It’s a start.”

  “Yes, but I haven’t been to a concert or a theater or the opera for months. I haven’t even tried to score tickets to any of the Proms.” Even before the current crisis I was withdrawing: the panic attacks I get in public places with no cover and too many people had been growing for a long time. If anything they’re a little better these days, since Agent CANDID went on the shelf and Dr. O’Brien the Bureaucratic Functionary came out of the closet. And some of the mythological tropes . . . they cut too close to the bone. The bone violin. The— “How about you?”

  “Now that you mention it, hmm. I was spending too much time in Aberdeen and Fishguard earlier in the year. Wonderful places, but not exactly capital-city-grade cultural beacons,” he says drily. (When he’s thinking, he goes very still, I notice. Bob gets twitchy.) “Just as the whole three-sigma superpower thing blew up out of virtually nowhere, in a matter of months. Which ate all my spare time especially after I discovered I was . . .” He looks rueful. “I haven’t been spending enough weekends with Sally. Liz has been nagging me to pull my weight, and I’m afraid she’s right.”

  “I imagine looking after a sixteen-year-old must be a bit of a headache.”

  “Oh, it’s mostly about building trust. She’s still in the ugh, parents, uncool stage, but she’s self-aware enough to know that it’s just something she’s going through. So I’m trying to give her enough space that she doesn’t feel the need to burn bridges she might want to maintain later. The best thing you can do is provide them with a support framework rather than a cage. Don’t try to micromanage and overprotect them, let them know they can come to you when they’ve got problems, and as long as they’ve got a reasonably level head, that’s what they’ll do.” He pauses. “And I try to keep a poker face whenever she introduces me to a boyfriend.”

  His expression does something to me: I grin at him, then giggle, and he chuckles, and we end up laughing at each other. In my case it’s at the vision of a typical teenage male’s reaction at being invited home to meet the girlfriend’s parents for the first time and discovering that Daddy is Robocop; I’m not so sure what Jim is laughing at.

  “I try to go easy on them,” he adds when the chuckles subside. “We were all young once.”

  “Oh, I know some people who weren’t,” I say carelessly, thinking of Angleton. It brings up an incongruous sense of absence, the missing-tooth outline of a vacated life. “Um.” I pick up my water glass. “To absent friends.”

  “Absent friends,” he echoes with a clink of glassware and a quizzical expression. “Someone close?”

  “Co-worker,” I say automatically. “Known him for nearly ten years. Died a couple of months ago.”

  “Oh, that incident . . . I’m sorry for your loss.” And he does indeed look genuinely, respectfully concerned.

  Food happens, and so does conversation that is amusing and intelligent and that steers clear of the two pitfalls of work (not safe for conversation in public) and messy personal entanglements (not safe for conversation in private). I actually enjoy myself, so I’m a little sad to see the dessert menu and realize that my eyes are larger than my stomach. “This isn’t going to work,” I sigh. “I can’t stay here forever. And anyway, I’ve got that nine o’clock meeting tomorrow.”

  “Not to worry, I’ll give you a ride home.” Jim starts looking to catch the waiter’s eye. I’ve been trying for a few minutes, fruitlessly—the invisibility thing is particularly infuriating in restaurants—but he has the middle-aged alpha male Gaze of Waiter Summoning down pat, and the maître d’ is over in a split second. “My treat,” Jim says, brandishing his plastic.

  “Hey, not fair!”

  “You can pay next time.” His smile is bland.

  “You’re making assumptions,” I accuse.

  “I hope not.” He looks suitably chastened, though. While the maître d’ goes to fetch the chip and pin reader, he continues: “I’ve been thinking. You’re feeling culturally deprived, and I’ve got a sixteen-year-old barbarian to educate. How would you like to go to a concert or two with me and Sally? She needs the exposure, and we both need to get out of the office more—”

  “I’m assuming by ‘concert’ we’re not talking about the latest reunion tour by Union J, right?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of The Marriage of Figaro myself. English National Opera are putting on a run starting this weekend and I was looking for an excuse to go and see it.”

  “Ah, that kind of education! I can provide the Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary, highlight all the rude bits if she gets bored.” It sounds good to me. “Okay, deal. Let’s keep our eyes open for fun stuff happening in town, hmm?”

  “Deal.” He nods.

  A thought occurs to me: “But your car . . .”

  “That’s all right: Sally can ride on the roof rack.” He guffaws. “Kidding, really and truly: just kidding. I’ll get Liz to agree to a car swap in return for a Sally-free evening. She kept the Volvo but she’s been making cow eyes at the Z4 ever since I bought it: she’ll bite.”

  “Works for me.” We push back our chairs and stand. I pull my jacket on and follow Jim out; we head back to his car. “Deal. Now you’ll need to give me directions, if you want that lift home to go anywhere useful . . .”

  So I do that, and he drops me at my front door. I do not invite him in, and he doesn’t try to kiss me, because we are not dating. But at least I have something to look forward to next weekend.

  14.

  INFECTED

  My first meeting the following morning is in the New Annex. The SA has organized a date for me with our tame superpower epidemiologist and his boss, Dr. Mike Ford, and intimated that there are things here that I need to be briefed on urgently that are not for general consumption. I am, as they say, agog.

  Dr. Mike doesn’t actually work at the New Annex: he’s based at one of our outlying R&D labs, disguised as a somewhat recondite office in an engineering company south of the river. For this particular briefing, the SA has actually summoned him—which is quite a feat. Dr. Mike doesn’t like to travel. He’s seldom seen outside the building he works in. There are rumors about a camp bed that lives under his overflowing desk. To see him in the New Annex is distinctly unusual.

  The meeting is on the fourth floor, in one of the Mahogany Row briefing rooms that has been restored to regular use since the Code Red incident. I can’t suppress a cringe as I tiptoe past the boarded-up doors of the offices ab
ove and to either side of Room 202—two floors below—with fresh wards and THAUM HAZARD signs prominently displayed. Angleton (and others: Judith, Andy . . . ) died down there, giving their lives for the nation in a senselessly bloody endgame engineered by a master vampire who was already dead when it kicked off. And for what outcome? My husband, now estranged, possessed by or possessing the alien soul-thing that rode in his former boss’s flesh. My own life, damaged and diverted. A breach of sanity and a plethora of endings. I can do this, I tell myself as I edge around the last of the off-limits rooms and walk swiftly towards 411, heels clacking on the scraped-bare floor. They have not yet replaced the thick wool carpet. Its woven-in wards sparked and burned during the battle two floors below, triggering the sprinkler system.

  To get to Room 411 I have to pass through a vestibule with a blue-suiter on duty. I leave my handbag and phone with him on the way in; Lecter, as an occult device, is a special case, and after some discussion I’m allowed to keep him—but not my highly dangerous lipstick case and tissues.

  The room itself is windowless and boardroom-sized, with chairs, a lectern, and a projection screen. Think in terms of a much older and somewhat more spartan version of COBRA, only set up as a miniature lecture theater rather than a committee room. The security we don’t see is enforced by summoning grids embedded in walls, floor, and ceiling, alien Actors and Agents locked and programmed to strike out at certain classes of threat. Any information leakage while the doors are shut is sensed and traced, and if it’s directional, active countermeasures may be deployed. It’s a really bad idea to snoop on a high-security briefing in Mahogany Row.

  Once inside I find myself among a select few. The SA himself is here, of course, as is Dr. Mike. Our paranormal epidemiologist, Julian Sanchez, is setting up a set of overhead projection slides (PowerPoint is strictly forbidden in these briefings, for obvious reasons: it supports Turing-complete macros), and we have some additional hangers-on. Colonel Lockhart is here from External Assets. The strikingly pretty young Auditor, Seph or Persephone or whatever she’s called, sits beside a bloke whose body language screams Special Forces at me—I’ve seen enough of them in my time. (He’s Special Forces, after the British—or maybe French—fashion: incredibly wiry, not a bulky bodybuilder the way the Americans make them. Emphasis on enormous stamina rather than sheer strength.) He’s introduced simply as “Johnny,” which leaves me wondering, but it’s not my job to police the guest list. We’re just taking our seats when the door from the vestibule opens again. Mhari slips inside and hastily sits down next to me. I manage not to flinch at the abrupt move. I’m getting better at it.

  “Good morning,” says the SA, smiling down at us from the lectern. “I’d like to start by asking Dr. Sanchez to give us a brief rundown on the epidemiology of the superpower outbreak as it has evolved over the past month. After his backgrounder, Dr. Mike will then discuss the implications.”

  “Er, hi,” says Sanchez. He looks nervous at first, but sheds it rapidly as he gets into his stride. “Today I’m here to deliver an update on the three-sigma incident monitoring project that I reported on a month ago, along with additional data. This comes with good news and bad news attached.

  “First, here’s last month’s graph of notifications of superpower incidents.” A familiar slide showing an ominous hockey-stick curve appears on the screen. “Second, let me add the new items we’ve processed since then.” The shocking exponential slope from last month, in blue, is extended, in red—and shows a dramatic off-ramp, tapering back towards a steady state. “As you can see, it seems to be a classic sigmoid curve—suddenly goes from a horizontal line to near-vertical increase, then just as suddenly tails off and goes flat again, albeit at a higher level. We’re still working on the confidence limits here, and there’s some scope for updating the curve as more low-grade incidents work their way through our reporting system, but it looks, for now, as if we have dodged the bullet. There is no superhero singularity looming in our near future. Just a regular elevated rate at which ordinary people will suddenly acquire enhanced capabilities.”

  There’s an audible relaxation of tension on all sides, a sudden rustling and shuffling and wheezing as we stop holding our collective breath. I wasn’t consciously aware that I was doing it, like the rest of them: We’re not going to die just yet, I realize. To say that my guts turn to water with relief is only a slight exaggeration. I try not to slump too obviously; beside me, Mhari lets out a tiny gasp.

  “That’s the good news,” warns Sanchez. “There’s bad news, too. Before I get into that, I’ve been asked to give a brief overview of the international situation. We are not tasked with assessing and evaluating extraterritorial events that do not represent direct threats”—because, money and time—“so this is based on secondary sources: reports from cooperating allies, public news reports in non-cooperating territories. Different cultures have different responses to paranormal phenomena. In sub-Saharan Africa we are tracking an upswing in reports of vigilante attacks on suspected witches. There may be some correlation with homophobic political rhetoric: moral panics frequently spread to adjacent targets by contagion. Certainly there has been an upswing in reports of koro from western Africa recently . . . In predominantly Islamic countries there have been increasing reports of Djinn and ifrit, and witchcraft trials have been reported in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan’s tribal territories, and Afghanistan. However, they can’t be ascribed directly to superpower manifestations: witchcraft accusations are often leveled at ordinary men and women as a pretext for settling grudges. There’ve also been outbreaks of miracles in Poland, Ireland, Mexico, and elsewhere in Central and South America. Statues of the Virgin crying tears of blood, that sort of thing. Religious manifestations in India, much speaking in tongues in Baptist churches in the Deep South.

  “Overall, the incidence of religious anomalies worldwide—reported miracles, curses, incidents of successful imprecatory prayer—is up by roughly 150 to 200 percent over the past three months.

  “As for superheroes, they’ve broken out all over. Japan has its own version of the paranormal-slash-superpowered individual in popular culture. Luckily the prevalent anime and manga media tend to emphasize social responsibility and teamwork, with even their fictional bad guys frequently working within a controlled framework. We understand that the Home Office is actively liaising with the National Police Agency under the auspices of the National Public Safety Commission”—I share a glance of mutual ignorance with Mhari: nobody’s told us about that—“and others to define best standards for co-opting and diverting transgressive behavior among the superpowered. There are also reports of yokai-related crime and disorder, but these are less clearly correlated with—”

  “Yokai?” asks the SA.

  “I’m sorry, I should have said: traditional Japanese folkloric and mythological monsters. Neko-mata, the two-tailed cat demon; Nopperabo, the faceless ones; Kappa, or water goblins. Kitsune and Tanuki and Nurikabe. They’ve got hundreds of the things—Japan is one of the most densely haunted territories on Earth if you believe the folklorists, and the plethora of Shinto Kami or spirits overlap with Yokai, monsters. When you first get paranormal bleed-through, it manifests via canalized pathways.

  “Moving on. In the United States the tide seems to have been stemmed by two very successful initiatives: the big media franchises are proactively litigating for trademark violation against infringers—they’ve sued sixteen Supermen, twenty-one Batmen, eleven Iron Men, and nine Wonder Women so far—while the Nazgûl appear to have taken action to ensure that no four- or five-sigma instances reach the public eye. There’s such a sharp cutoff point in the power spectrum of reported American superpower events that it’s fairly clear somebody is suppressing the high-end individuals. Probably by a conscript or kill strategy, knowing how the Black Chamber operates.

  “The American mainstream news media have so far steered well clear of the subject because the phenomenon has been enthusiastical
ly embraced by the talk radio fringe, leading to a death spiral of diminishing credibility. So we see a situation over there where the visible superpower scene resembles a low-rent version of the World Wrestling Federation with added special effects and non-trademark-infringing suits, while in the background the Black Chamber are either icing or co-opting the high-power examples. This follows an emerging pattern among the G20 governments, whereby they appear to be splitting into two groups: those who adopt a strategy of co-option and positive leadership, as in our own case, and those who go for outright suppression, such as the Russian Federation and the United States.”

  Sanchez clears his throat and drinks from a water bottle. “As you can imagine, the likes of the FBI and the DEA take a very dim view of having to compete with Superman. And they’ve got the entrenched support and the corporate contractors with the lobbying muscle to make their preferences stick. We shouldn’t be surprised, really. But anyway. I think I’m done here. It’s time for the bad news. Dr. Mike?”

  Dr. Mike stands up and slowly shuffles to the podium. He doesn’t look well, I realize with a stab of concern—it’s been too long since I dropped round for a cup of tea and a chat about the latest thinking on CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, which is simultaneously his curse, his obsession, and his entire career.

  “Yes, that,” he says slowly. He looks at us. “The step-function in superpower outbreaks is good news,” he says. “It means we don’t have to worry about the entire population manifesting quasi-godlike powers—at least, not unless there’s yet another step-function transition lurking unseen in our future. But it leaves us with a major problem. What you must understand is, we don’t yet know the full spectrum of medical side effects of these emergent occult capabilities. However, there is reason for serious concern. I’ve been working with Dr. Wills at UCLH to try to determine an approach for dealing with this. Let me illustrate.”