Charles Stross - The Fuller Memorandum

“Mine, precioussss.” Brains is bending over my new phone. “Jailbroken it yet? I’ve been doing some evaluation work on these too, they look promising…”

“Don’t be silly.” I peer at the beer casks. He’s lined them up next to the sink. “Hey, that’s not nitro pressurized.”

“That’s right; they’re cask-conditioned!” Brains says proudly. “Normally you have to leave them twenty-four hours to drop bright after you tap them, but with this”-he produces a home-brew box of electronics from one waterproof pocket-“you can cut the wait to sixty minutes.”

“What is it?” I pause. “If it’s a temporal multiplexer I’ve got to warn you, last time we had one in here Mo had to beat the fridge contents to death with a cricket bat-she was most annoyed-”

“Nope, it’s ultrasonic.” He switches it on as he plants it on top of the first cask, and I feel my jaw muscles clench. Ultrasonic it may be, but it’s got some low frequency harmonics that remind me unpleasantly of a mosquito the size of a Boeing 737.

“Switch it off, please.”

Pinky is doing something bizarre to the umbrella, turning it inside out through its own center-I do a double take: Is that really a Möbius strip umbrella?-and it vanishes, except for a stubby handle, which he hangs on the inside doorknob. I blink. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Iris said you could do with some company,” Brains says blandly as my phone chirps and does an incoming-text shimmy on the counter. I grab it. It’s a message from Mo: UNAVOIDABLY DETAINED BY WORK, DON’T STAY UP.

I might not be wearing a ward around my neck right now-I didn’t stay in the office long enough to sign out a replacement for the one I toasted yesterday-but it’s not my only defense, and right now my this-is-a-setup gland is pulsing painfully. “This is a put-up job, right? What’s going on?” I glance at the front hall, half-expecting the doorbell to ring again and Boris and Andy to be standing there, along with a briefing on some kind of harebrained operation-

“Don’t be silly, Bob,” Brains says crisply: “Iris just got word that your fragrant wife has been called away to an incident in Amsterdam and she thought someone ought to keep you company today. The saintly Mo should be back tomorrow; until then, we drew the short straw.” He gestures at the beer: “Just like old times, huh?”

“No, it’s not just like old times,” I snort. Then the penny drops: “Job in Amsterdam…?”

“They needed a lead violin.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling very small.

There is this about being married to Mo: every few months she gets called to an unexpected job somewhere in Europe, at short notice, with her violin. A philosopher by academic training and a combat epistemologist by subsequent specialization, she doesn’t talk about what happens on those trips; but I get to hold her shoulders and calm her when she wakes in the pre-dawn gloom, shuddering and clammy. Years ago, shortly after we first met, we got into a situation where I ended up rescuing her from-well, it wasn’t nice, and she overcompensated, I think. The violin’s an Erich Zahn original, refitted with Hilbert-space pickups. There’s a black-on-yellow sticker on its case that says THIS MACHINE KILLS DEMONS. And sometimes she sits up late into the night, playing music on it that I don’t want to think about.

I pick up my phone and thumb-tap back at her: ENJOY AMSTERDAM AND TAKE CARE XXX. Then I put it down carefully, as if it might explode.

Now I’ve got something to worry about, something to distract me from feeling sorry for myself because of the enquiry, or gnawing over the hollow sense of gnawing wrongness as I see Helen’s face melting away in front of my eyes again and again-something tangibly threatening to be upset about. If anything happens to Mo I don’t know what I’ll do. It’s not as if my parents or elder brother know what I do for a living: they think I’m just a junior civil servant. The same goes for Mo, only more so-her dad’s dead, Mum’s a ditz, and her kid sister’s married to an engineer in Dubai. We’re isolated, but we can confide in each other, do the mutual support thing that so many couples don’t seem to do. We understand each other’s problems. Which means that right now I’m drinking for two.

“In the fridge, top shelf on the left, there’s an open bottle of wine,” I say, standing and making for the cupboard to root out some glasses. “You guys didn’t drive, did you?”

“That would be irresponsible, Bob,” Pinky says soberly. “Is this the right bottle…?”

“Give it here.” I pause for a moment, bottle poised over an inviting glass: “Boris doesn’t have anything to do with this, does he? You’re quite sure it was Iris’s idea?”

“Don’t be silly, Bob,” says Brains, taking the bottle (and the glass).

“Boris is on detached duty with the Dustbin this year. Here, take this. How about a toast? Confusion to the enemy!”

I raise my glass. “What enemy?”

He shrugs: “IT, Human Resources, the grim march of time-whoever you want, really.”

“I’ll drink to that!” says Pinky, and I nod.

It’s going to be a long evening, but it was going to be a long evening anyway and at least this way I don’t get to spend it brooding on my own.

THE NEXT MORNING, I AWAKEN TO FIND THAT MY MOUTH TASTES as if a rat used it for a bed and breakfast, and Mo still isn’t here. I roll over, reaching across her side of the bed. Empty. It’s early but I yawn and sit up, then visit the bathroom to change the rat’s bed linen before stumbling downstairs. The kitchen sink is full of empty bottles, and someone left a JesusPhone on the kitchen table, plugged into my laptop-

Oh. Shit. It wasn’t a dream, then.

I switch the kettle on and run a comb through my hair, wondering if I can take the bloody thing back. I haven’t activated it, have I-oh.

There’s a handwritten note next to it. I read it with a sinking heart: HI BOB HOPE YOU LIKE THE EASTER EGGS BRAINS.

No, I can’t take it back. Not until I find out what Brains did to it. I rack my memories for any hint of details, but it’s all a bit of a blur. I remember him saying something about evaluation work. Jesus, he could have put anything on it. Not that Brains would install classified experimental work-related software on an agent’s personal mobile phone, oh no, but if he thought it had been issued to me by work that would be another matter entirely.

I turn the radio on just as the kettle rises to a rattling, rolling boil and shuts off. I pull the cafetière out of the cupboard and spoon coffee into it, pour water and stare at it, as if that’ll make it brew faster.

It is just occurring to me that today is a Thursday and I am not expected to-no, scratch that, I am expected not to-go into the office today, and I haven’t the foggiest idea what to do with myself. It’s not like a holiday, meticulously planned fun’n’frolics on a beach with Mo, or even a weekend of vegging out in front of the TV at home. It feels more like I’m under house arrest. Sick leave is no fun at all when you’re doing it on instructions from management.

The radio is blatting on about the news: Prime Minister talking about the need for faith schools, something about a UN Population Fund meeting in the Netherlands, an idiot footballer getting an idiot multimillionpound handshake from an idiot football team… all the usual cheerily oblivious rubbish we listen to in order to feel connected. Right now it sounds like it’s bleeding in from another world.

I carefully lower the plunger on the cafetière-it’s balky, and has a tendency to squirt hot coffee grounds everywhere if you don’t do it just right-then pour myself a mug and sit down in front of the JesusPhone. Gosh, that thing’s shiny. Now, what can Brains have done?