Charles Stross - The Fuller Memorandum

“Iris is putting me on light administrative duties,” I protest.

Angleton smiles humorlessly. “Then you’ll have something to do when you’re bored,” he says. “Be off with you!”

I EMERGE FROM THE STAFF ENTRANCE TO THE C &A ON THE high street, blinking like a groundhog caught in the headlights of an onrushing Hummer.

It is a Wednesday, just before the lunchtime rush, and the pavements are full of shoppers and people with nowhere better to go. A herd of buses rumble past, farting clouds of sulphurous biodiesel and lunging at cyclists. But I am not at work. Something is wrong with the world, something is broken: a wire has come loose in my soul.

I start to walk.

I don’t want to go home just yet: it’s sixty to seventy minutes of riding on two buses, but then I’ll have nothing to do but sit staring at the walls for the rest of the afternoon. If it was a normal summer’s day I could go for a walk on Wandsworth Common-it’s only about a mile or two from here-but the sky is overcast and gray, threatening rain later on. Or I could go into town. Maybe get the tube to Euston and visit the British Library. I’ve got a reader’s card, and there are some interesting manuscripts I’ve been meaning to look at for a while, relevant to the job… No, I can hear Iris ticking me off in the back of my head, telling me that’s not what I ought to be doing when I’m on medical leave.

In the end, I walk to the next bus stop just in time to see the tail end of the herd vanishing round the corner, and wait nearly ten minutes for the next bunch of buses to arrive, with only my iPod for company-that, and a couple of students, a pensioner pushing a shopping bag on wheels, and an Uncle Fester type in a dirty trench coat who is pointedly not making eye contact with anyone.

I sit on the top deck for forty minutes as it slowly migrates towards Victoria, then hop off and head for an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet for lunch. It’s stowed out, as you can imagine, because I’ve hit peak lunch time; but it makes a welcome change from the dismal little pie shop round the corner from the New Annexe. I emerge into daylight with a full stomach and my sense of well-being marginally restored. It’s trying to rain, lonely drips spattering the pavement and evaporating before they can join up. I shuffle along with the tourists and foreign language students and shirking office workers, staring into shop windows and feeling faintly wistful, something nagging at the back of my mind.

The penny drops. My PDA! Okay, it’s Laundry-issue. But it’s toast! Sure I have a cheap, dumb mobile phone as well, but I relied on that PDA; it had my life embedded in its contacts and calendar. Yes, there’s a backup, but it’s on my office PC, which is most definitely not a laptop and most definitely not allowed to go home with me-the last thing the Laundry needs is headlines like CIVIL SERVANT LOSES LAPTOP: ENTIRE POPULATION OF TOWER HAMLETS EATEN BY GIBBERING HORRORS

FROM BEYOND SPACETIME-so for the time being, I’m adrift. If Mo called me right now I genuinely couldn’t phone Pete and Sandy. Help, it’s a crisis! Well okay, it’s a minor crisis, but I rationalize: obsessing over my lost address book is a lot healthier than obsessing over a blinding purple flash and an imploding face-

Besides, shopping is therapeutic. Right?

I pull out my phone and look at it in distaste. It’s a cheap Motorola jobbie with a pay-as-you-go SIM, and its major virtues are that it’s small and it makes phone calls. I bought it a year and a half ago when word went round that IT Services were threatening to inflict Arseberries on us along with a centralized work directory, and start billing for personal calls. The rumor turned out to be unfounded but I kept the phone (and the PDA I wangled Andy into signing off on) because between them they did a better job than the old Treo, and besides, all smartphones are shit these days. It’s the one industry where progress is going backwards in high gear, because the yakking masses would rather use their phones as car navigation systems and cameras than actually make phone calls or read email.

About the only smartphone that doesn’t stink like goose shit is the JesusPhone. But I’ve steadfastly refused to join the Cult of Jobs ever since I first saw the happy-clappy revival tent launch; it brought back painful memories of a junior management training course the late and unlamented Bridget sent me on a few years ago. Nothing can possibly be that good, even though the specifications look rather nice on paper, right?

You know how this is going to end…

I spend an hour shuffling around mobile phone shops, comparing specifications and feeling my brains gently melting, which confirms what I already knew: all mobile phones are shit this year. Then I allow my feet to carry me into the O2 shop and plant me in front of an austerely minimalist display stand where halogen lights play their spotlight beams across the polished fascia of a JesusPhone, a halo of purity gleaming above it.

“Can I help you, sir?” beams one of the sales staff.

“That thing.” My finger points at the JesusPhone as if drawn to it by a powerful geas. “How much?” (That’s the only question that matters, you see: I’ve already memorized its specifications.)

“The 64Gb model, sir? On an eighteen-month contract-”

The JesusPhone, I swear it is smiling at me: Come to me, come to me and be saved. The luscious curves, the polished glissade of the icons in the multi-touch interface-whoever designed that thing is an intuitive illusionist, I realize fuzzily as my fingertip closes in on the screen: That’s at least a class five glamour.

The next thing I think is, I shouldn’t have let myself get so close. But by then I’m on my way out of the store, clutching a carrier bag and a receipt that says I’ve put a dent in my bank balance big enough that Mo’s going to have something new to swear about this month, to the benefit of Apple’s shareholders.

I slink home with my metaphorical tail between my legs, clutching my shiny new JesusPhone like a consolation prize for my lack of a real life.

IT IS 4 P.M., THE COOL RAINS HAVE BROUGHT THEIR GURGLING freight of water to the overflowing gutter above the kitchen window, and I am sitting at the table with a laptop and a freshly jailbroken JesusPhone when the doorbell chimes.

(You didn’t expect me not to jailbreak an iPhone so I can run unsigned applications on it, did you? That would be no fun at all!)

I get up and slouch towards the front porch.

“Surprise party!” It’s a pair of familiar faces. Pinky is holding the umbrella while Brains hefts a pair of beer casks at me.

I take a step back. “Hey, what’s the big deal?”

“Beware of geeks bearing beer.” Pinky cocks his head and looks at me madly as Brains makes a beeline for the kitchen and clears some counter space. “We heard about the whoopsie and figured you might want some company.”

Pinky and Brains: the (ex-)flatmates from heck, if not hell. I used to share a house with them, back in the days when I was still seeing Mhari. They’re a matched couple of geeks, working for Technical Support these days (Gizmos department, Dirty Tricks directorate). Brains does the hardware, Pinky does human factors and delivery flourishes, and both of them do the Pride march around Regent’s Park every summer even though they don’t need to be publicly out to maintain their security clearances these days.

A voice calls from the kitchen, “Hey, who let that thing in here?”

I go back inside hastily. “It’s mine. As of this afternoon.”