The Labyrinth Index

by Charles Stross

[Slide 7]

  The Elder Gods—part 1

  • Emergent climax ecosystems of an ancient alien singularity, or Satanic Creation?

  Either way, they’re bad for humanity (and un-Christian)

  • Historically, worshipped as a pantheon

  • Mystery cults persist into the present day

  • Establishing toeholds on Earth as the Computational Singularity looms

  [Slide 8]

  The Elder Gods—part 2

  • Our enemies:

  N’yar Lat-Hotep (“The Black Pharaoh”)

  Has taken over the UK, is active in Australia, Middle East, North Korea

  Czernobog

  Slavic/Russian mystery cults, extensive infiltration of KGB, possible Kremlin links

  H’astur

  Not obviously active (yet)

  The Sleeper

  Worshipped as Jesus by the Church of the Golden Promise

  Partially awakened but failed to fully revive in 2014

  Threat level: high

  [Slide 9]

  The Elder Gods—part 3

  • Our allies:

  Dread Cthulhu

  Currently sleeping

  Pledged to the service of the OPA by His priesthood

  Full immanentization requirements are costly:

  In excess of 109 directed human sacrifices (simple genocide is insufficient)

  or

  Successful deployment and activation of PROJECT GODWAKER orbital hypercomputer

  [Slide 10]

  PROJECT GODWAKER

  • Variable-inclination orbital swarm of > 4,294,967,296 invocation nodes

  • Invocation node: solar-powered neurocomputing node manufactured in orbit from Lunar regolith

  • High-bandwidth quantum-encrypted prayer links for peer-to-peer summoning coordination

  • Hyperdimensional Dho-Na curve geometry supported by breakthrough in deep neural-network systems

  [Slide 11]

  Launching PROJECT GODMAKER: Requirements

  • HLV Capability: Falcon Heavy or NASA SLS required for > 370 tons into Lunar orbit (20 launch minimum)

  • Deployment of Lunar Space Elevator (PROJECT MOONSTALK) from L1 to Lunar south pole

  • Deployment of > 1Gw of photovoltaic panels in L1 to power and provision GODWAKER Surface Installation (est. weight: 1000 tons)

  • Deployment of Phase 1 Von Neumann robot factory to Shackleton Crater (est. 2000 tons)

  • Shackleton to L1 lift of GODWAKER nodes into orbit via ascender

  [Slide 12]

  PROJECT GODWAKER Time Frame

  • Development of Heavy Lunar Surface Engineering capability

  2–3 years

  • Development of Phase 1 Von Neumann factory

  Ongoing

  • Design of GODWAKER node block 1 spacecraft

  15–30 months

  • Fabrication of L1 solar power station

  9–30 months

  [Slide 13]

  PROJECT GODWAKER Budget

  • Maximum wartime priority—see Manhattan Project, Apollo Program

  • Initial $120Bn allocation for FY2015 (approved unanimously by Congress and Senate)

  • Enabling Act to permit conscription of any necessary resources (approved unanimously by Congress and Senate)

  • FY2016 allocation to be decided (will be approved unanimously)

  • CBO Assent: unconditionally granted

  • Enabling Act to permit conscription of any necessary resources (approved unanimously by Congress and Senate)

  [Slide 14]

  Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

  All Hail the New Flesh!

  * * *

  Meanwhile, in London:

  In the middle of the table sits a rotary-dial telephone. It’s almost a century old, made of wood and brass and bearing the royal crest of King George V’s Post Office. A separate speaking horn hangs from a hook on its side, connected to its polished case by a very modern wire-wrapped cable (clearly a recent repair). The telephone is not connected to a wall jack. It sits on the conference table in the middle of a complex double ward, two concentric Möbius loops that glow silvery blue and eat the perspective of everything within, so that the phone’s boxy construction seems like a three-dimensional shadow cast by an object in a higher-dimensional realm.

  This is the hot line. Formerly stored in a secure vault under the New Annex, it is now installed in the White Drawing Room at Number 10 Downing Street. The Prime Minister’s staff meeting room is the demesne of Iris Carpenter: former Active Ops Manager in the Laundry, then prison inmate, and most recently, the Prime Minister’s High Priestess and Chief of Staff.

  Iris sits by the telephone, flanked on her left by the man who consigned her to prison for six years (no grudges are held: their relationship was and is complex), and on the right by a former subordinate, still technically a subordinate, possessed of terrifying power (and, thankfully, a degree of maturity he lacked back in the day). “Well, this is a pretty pass,” she mutters to herself, and wipes her palms on her trousers. “What do you think, Michael? James?”

  “It’s Bob, not James,” the body on her right grunts resentfully. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. I’m infinitely more human than those fuckers.”

  “Language, Mr. Howard,” chides the Senior Auditor.

  “Okay already!” Bob’s voice rises. “I don’t like them,” he adds apologetically. “They give me the willies.” He crosses his arms tightly, almost hugging his shoulders. “Brrr.” Most of the people in this building wear business suits; Bob wears a hoodie and combat pants, but nobody dares give him any flak. They give you the creeps? Iris thinks rhetorically: Have you looked in a mirror?

  The Senior Auditor snorts. “I’m sure they don’t like your face either, Bob, but that’s the whole reason you’re here, isn’t it?”

  Bob grunts. “It’s so nice to be wanted for my sparkling personality and scintillating conversation. Although, isn’t this room—” he gestures at the doors leading to the Terracotta Room—“adequately warded?”

  “It’s more than warded. The PM saw to the protections on Downing Street in person as soon as He moved in,” Iris reassures him. The SA gives her a sidelong look. “It’s not as secure as the new eyrie will be when it’s converted, but needs must.” The legacy architecture of Downing Street can’t be protected from occult attack as effectively as a steel-framed skyscraper, which is why the New Management will be moving into the penthouse of the Shard once it has been converted. But converting the tallest skyscraper in Europe into an occult fortress takes a lot of work, and (figurative) sacrifices must be made in the meantime. Which is why Iris can’t even have a quiet phone chat with her opposite number in North America without bringing the Eater of Souls along as metaphysical muscle.

  Not that she’s happy with Bob. Iris still hasn’t forgiven him for unintentionally massacring most of her congregation, cocking up a very important summoning which might have shaved four years off the critical path to the New Management, and always being late with his timesheets. But they’re on the same team now, working to a common shared goal, and a big part of good management is knowing how to work with what you’ve got. So she indulges his little snits for now. There’ll be time to make adjustments later, once His Majesty’s rule is secure.

  She considers the Senior Auditor in turn. The SA is potentially even more dangerous than the Eater of Souls, and he has played the Svengali to her Trilby for many years. He, too, is supposedly on the same team—indeed, he was instrumental in striking the devil’s bargain that made the team possible in the first place. But he hides his deadly light behind the guise of an amiable old don, collegiate and tweedy. It’s never easy to be sure what he’s thinking. “Dr. Armstrong?” she asks.

  “Ready to proceed when you are, Mrs. Carpenter,” he says gravely.

  Iris takes a deep breath, picks up the speaking horn, and enters a three-digit number on the antique rotar
y dial.

  “This is Downing Street. We’re ready to talk to the Directors. They’re expecting this call.”

  For long seconds there is nothing on the line but faint white noise. Then Iris hears a voice—or rather, the absence of static, speech modulating the sound of silence to convey information. “This is the Director’s office. You can hang up now.” The crypt-voice disappears: after a few seconds of mundane line noise she hangs up.

  The summoning grid connected to the phone’s base energizes. The far wall of the formal drawing room fades into a misty void stippled with pinpricks of un-light. A conference table limned in smoke takes shape, with three suited figures arrayed along the far side. Their faces are indistinct, but not in the same manner as the Prime Minister’s visage, which memory refuses to grasp: in their case, smudges of darkness outline the presence of features too indistinct to see in the first place.

  “Good, ah, afternoon,” says the figure in the middle, a languid roll of one bony wrist suggesting a glance at a watch. Her voice—the pitch is feminine—is mellifluous and warm. “I am the new Deputy Director. With me are Operations Director Black and Senior Agent Green. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  Iris keeps her face expressionless, even though she is aware that the hotline of the damned renders her and her companions’ features as bland and unmemorable as those of their counterparts. “Good morning, Deputy Director. I am the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff. With me today are two representatives of your counterpart agency: the Senior Auditor, and a Special Assistant to the Director of Operations.” She uses no names, even though the Deputy Director certainly knows who they are. The bound entities that provide this hotline service can find uses for an imprudently uttered name. “You wanted to talk?”

  The Deputy Director is disconcerted. “I was expecting my opposite number. An agency-level officer, not executive branch.”

  Iris resists the impulse to smile. The hotline is metaphysical, not electronic, and immune to interception by normal means—also, it resists recording. But it has certain drawbacks. It interprets intent, rather than transmitting speech directly, and it has a bad tendency to distort emotional color or facial expressions. They are either ignored completely, or morphed into something terrifying and abhuman, like a shadow show projected on the wall of Plato’s cave by a projectionist with strangely articulated claws instead of hands.

  “There have been some changes to the line of command,” Iris says blandly. “Melting stovepipes are quite the ‘in’ thing this year. In particular, the Prime Minister has personally assumed control over the agency. Unlike your presidency, which—”

  She stops. The projected image of the Deputy Director’s head has split open vertically from top to bottom, revealing a raw and bloody skull with unusual dentition, almost as if her flesh is a shriveling seed pod for her skeleton. Clearly some emotional nuance has been mistranslated. After a moment the edges of the bloody wound begin to ravel themselves together, from the bottom up. “Please do not mention that title again, or I will be forced to terminate this call,” the Deputy Director says primly, once her lips and palate have reassembled themselves and her canines have retracted. While her voice has the flatness and lack of affect characteristic of the link, her words quiver with rage.

  Interesting. Iris allows herself a faint smile, knowing that the Deputy Director can’t see it. Bob stares at their adversaries with the intensity of a hawk. On her other side, Dr. Armstrong frowns, but keeps his insights private. “You asked to speak to us,” Iris says. “What exactly do you want?”

  “Dialog.” The Deputy Director shrugs, an exaggerated gesture, almost burlesque, immune to malign mistranslation. “There has been a marked decline in communication and collaboration between our organizations over the past year, and this hasn’t been good for anybody.”

  That’s putting it mildly. Occult operations were not included in the UK-USA intelligence sharing treaty of 1945, and over the decades an unhealthy rivalry developed between the Black Chamber and its various European OCCINT counterparts. After the turn of the millennium, relations deteriorated to the point of open hostility. In the view of the Laundry’s executive oversight tier and expert practitioners—Mahogany Row—the Americans’ Operational Phenomenology Agency has been taken over by the eldritch horrors it is supposed to hold in check, in the most disastrous case of regulatory capture ever. But from the perspective of the Nazgûl, the Laundry is the lapdog of a hostile alien god.

  “Let us set aside recriminations and the apportionment of blame for a joint subcommittee to chew over, shall we? I believe a case can be built that mistakes were made on both sides. What is important is that we keep lines of communication open. The Ancient Ones are rising from their sleep of ages. We have a common interest in the survival of the human species, and it’s detrimental to that survival if we work at cross-purposes.”

  Operations Director Black straightens upright and declaims: “We are aware of your recent problems with Pastor Schiller and his inner temple. Schiller went rogue: your problems could have been avoided, if you had come to us—”

  If looks could kill, Bob’s death-glare would cause Operations Director Black to spontaneously combust. The Senior Auditor, usually imperturbable, gives Black a chilly stare. Beneath the table, Iris’s hands clench into fists. She forces herself to take a deep breath before she responds. “Perhaps if you refrain from insulting our competence it would be easier to find common ground,” she observes. Not adding: We know Schiller was working for you. “Again: What is this really about, Deputy Director?”

  “Intelligence sharing. Forces outside our control are at work on all fronts. Our response … to the coming crisis may regrettably be too little, too late. Factionalism and internal disputes weaken our ability to respond effectively. The … executive entity … you referred to earlier is currently outside our control, and we fear that a rival faction may acquire it and use it as a focus for a hostile zero-day offensive.”

  Is he talking about the US President? Iris thinks frustratedly. “What kind of zero-day offensive?” she asks.

  “A focus for the will-to-believe of a third of a billion humans is no small thing,” intones Senior Agent Green. “If the chief … executive … falls into the wrong hands, they will become a sacrificial dagger held to the throat of a nation.” Her speech sounds almost pained when she utters the word executive.

  Bob bristles for a moment, then finally explodes. “You don’t know where he is? You’ve fucking lost him?”

  Agent Green recoils. “I would not put it so strongly—”

  The Deputy Director raises a spectral limb. “That is not as much of an overstatement as one may wish.”

  Dr. Armstrong nods. “Rest assured that if we locate your missing President, we shall be sure to let you know.”

  It warms the cockles of Iris’s heart to see the way the Nazgûl twitch when the SA utters the title, and brings joy to her soul to note his carefully ambiguous phrasing. She beams at them, deliberately courting a malicious misrepresentation of her expression. “Yes, indeed,” she affirms. “And if it leads to a resumption of cordial relations between our two powers, so much the better for everyone, yes? In fact, there’s a lot to be gained by everyone from cooperation. Perhaps we could share our lists of what we stand to gain, by way of motivation?” The Deputy Director’s shade is nodding. “You could call off these, ah, unhelpful attempts at imposing a capitative change on our government, and we could, in return, shelve any plans for a robust response, which would in any case be a tiresomely expensive diversion from our real mission.”

  The Deputy Director’s shade is no longer nodding. “I think that we would, ah, find such a proposal very welcome indeed, and I will convey it to the steering committee at once, if that is indeed a formal proposition on your part.” Iris nods. “Perhaps we should move forward by scheduling one of these chats on a regular basis—perhaps weekly? I think it helps enormously to clear the air, don’t you? We could even prepare an agenda for our
next call.”

  “Yes,” Iris agrees. “That sounds like an idea I can get right behind.” A pause. “As for your comment about internal factionalism, I am aware that your government has many agencies with conflicting agendas. We can make allowances. But we do have a pressing concern, which is, whose agenda overrides all others in your agency? The OPA disagreeing with the NSA and the State Department is all very well, but do your various internal departments all answer to the same oath-holder?”

  “Oh yes.” The Deputy Director nods emphatically. “We do. I am quite sure of it.” She reaches across the spectral table towards an invisible telephone. “I look forward to our next conversation, Mrs. Carpenter.” And the hotline session ends.

  “Bitch,” Bob hisses, nailing Iris’s mood, if not her preferred phrasing. He glances at her. “She cut us off deliberately, didn’t she?”

  “I’d say so.” The Senior Auditor pulls out a white cotton handkerchief and dabs at his forehead. It comes away stippled with red.

  “I suppose, coming from our friends in the Black Chamber, that sort of parting shot is not unexpected,” Iris hisses between gritted teeth. She yanks up the cuffs of her jacket and tugs off the knotted bracelets of human skin tied around her wrists. They sputter and smoke as she drops them in her empty teacup. “Damn them.”

  Bob squints at the smoking ward-fetishes. “Cute,” he says. Then to the Senior Auditor: “Bluff, or double-bluff?”

  “Time will tell.” Dr. Armstrong stares pensively at some inner vista.

  “People,” Iris says crisply, ignoring the first-degree burns on her wrists. “What did we learn? What did we disclose?”

  “They want us to think they’re in charge,” Bob says, almost automatically. “That they’ve got a unitary command authority. But”—his gaze sharpens—“the Deputy Director is new. And she was surprised to get you.”

  The Senior Auditor nods. “And you know what that means. There’s been an internal power transfer and they haven’t got—or they want us to think they haven’t got—their feet fully under the table yet. So we’re still in time…”

  * * *

  Dear diary: Rewind a week.

  Recall that this is a posthumous confession. If you are reading it, I should be beyond embarrassment. Even the New Management can’t do worse than Restoration-era judicial practices, like digging up Cromwell’s head and sticking it on a pike years after his death. Symbolism counts for a lot among the living, but if you’re already dead you’re beyond caring. (Don’t argue, I’d like to keep my illusions.)