Charles Stross - Rule 34

“I’m good. Yourself?” You step back, find there’s a gap in the row of bar-stools—but the next one over is already occupied by a bloke who’s the spitting image of a kiddie-fiddler you helped put away ten years ago. (Only ten years younger, of course.) You turn away from him hastily as Dorothy’s smile opens up like the sun, and she waves past you, attracting the barman’s hypnotized gaze.

“I’m in town for the next two weeks”—she runs a hand through her hair, which is a deeper chestnut red than it was last time you saw her, and about ten centimetres longer—“visiting the Cage out at Gogarburn for an ongoing evaluation at the bank: Then I’ve got a spot evaluation on some American company’s local operation.” The Cage is the secure zone within the National Bank of Scotland campus: Dorothy is an auditor, the kind who gets to travel a lot. Her little black dress is more boardroom than cocktail bar—doubtless her brief-case and jacket are waiting in the cloakroom—but with her string of pearls and porcelain complexion, she could make it work anywhere. “They’ve stuck me in a tedious hotel in the West End, Julian is in Moscow this month, so of course…” She raises a meticulously stencilled eyebrow at you.

“We can see about that.” The barman pauses in front of you. “White wine spritzer, please,” you tell him, and flash your ID badge before he can card you. You wait until he delivers before continuing: “Have you eaten yet?”

“No. But there’s a place round the corner that’s been getting good reviews.” She looks at you speculatively.

“Do you have any plans? Outside of work?” You can’t help yourself: You have to ask.

“I don’t know yet.” For a moment she looks uncertain. “This is an odd one.” You catch the warning before she continues. “I may have to put in lots of overtime. I was hoping we could catch up if the job permits.”

Dorothy’s always like this. Babs accused you of being married to the job (and she wasn’t wrong), but Dorothy makes you look like a slacker. That alone would be enough to make your relationship with her an on-again off-again thing: And that’s before you get round to thinking about Julian, her primary.

So you nod, hesitantly. “I don’t have a lot on in the evenings this week. And I’m free Saturday and Monday. Is there anything particular you want to do? Theatre, music—”

“I was hoping we could start by finding somewhere for dinner?” She bites her lip. “And then I’d like to pick your brains about a little problem I’ve got at work…”

Dorothy is indeed staying in a boring business hotel in the West End. You end up in the bar around midnight, by way of a sushi restaurant and a couple of rounds of margaritas. You’re not sure whether you’re meant to play predator or prey here—it’s been months since the last time your paths intersected—but you’ve got a plushly padded booth to yourselves, and you catch her stealing sly glances at you in the mirror while she’s at the bar ordering a round. “I can’t stay too late—I’m on shift tomorrow,” you tell her regretfully, as she sits down opposite and bends forward to peel off her pumps.

She curls her lower lip, pointedly not pouting. “That’s a shame,” she says. You freeze, outwardly expressionless as her unshod left foot comes into contact with the inside of your right calf. Question answered. “Didn’t you say you’re free Saturday?”

You catch your breath: “Yes, I am.” Actually, clearing weekend leave usually takes advance notice, but you’re on weekday office hours right now: You can swing Saturday and Monday if you need to. Maybe even swap Sunday for Monday… Her stockinged foot caresses your ankle. It’s smooth, muscular (all those hours in hotel health clubs), reminding you, rubbing. “That’s assuming I don’t get roped into the latest mess.”

She shows you her teeth. “What could possibly be more important than next Saturday?” (She’s playing with you. If her own job demanded it, she’d stand you up in a split second.) “I thought nothing ever happened in Innovative Crime? Have they got you back on CID?” She pulls back her foot, leaving you tingling.

“The day before yesterday I was on a community team assignment and got called in on what turned out to be homicide—not your usual ned-on-ned stabby action: more like Tarantino meets Dali.”

“Wow.” Her eyes widen. “Why are you here, then?” She nudges your foot again: But this time it’s an accident, not enemy action.

“Because after I corralled the witness and set up the incident room, CID turned up and took all my toys away.” You shrug. “Not that I’ve got a problem with that. I don’t need an extra helping of crap to top up my regular work-load. But Dickie—uh, we’re on Chatham House rules here, aren’t we?” She nods. “He’s the big swinging dick on the investigation, and he’s your classic narrow-focus, results-oriented, overdriven, alpha-male prick. He’s treating it as a regular crime and he’s looking for a suitable perp. Which is normally best practice and the right thing to do, except I happen to know that there was a death in, um, another jurisdiction around the same time, and it bears significant points of similarity. All of which scream meme at me. Internet meme, class one, virulent. Only Tricky Dickie doesn’t want to know.”

“Oy.” Dorothy leans back and takes a deep breath, then raises her glass. “I didn’t hear any of that, I take it.”

“No, of course not.” You nod at her. “What’s your sob story?”

“Work.” She pulls a face. “Another bloody ethics-compliance audit. You walk in the door, and everyone gets defensive, like they expect you to put them on a ducking stool and accuse them of witchcraft or something.”

“Ethics: It’s not just next door to Suffolk anymore.” It’s feeble and she’s heard it a thousand times but it still raises a smile.

Dorothy’s job is an odd one: catching corporate corruption before it metastasizes and infects society at large. After Enron collapsed—while you were still in secondary school—the Americans passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, accounting regulations for catching corporate malfeasance. But all they were looking for was accounting irregularities: symptoms of maladministration. The unspoken ideology of capitalism didn’t admit, back then, of any corporate duty beyond making a return on investment for the shareholders while obeying the law.

Then the terrible teens hit, with a global recession followed by a stuttering shock wave of corporate scandals as rock-ribbed enterprises were exposed as hollow husks run by conscience-free predators who were even less community-minded and altruistic than gangsters. The ravenous supermarket chains had gutted the entire logistic and retail sector, replacing high-street banks and post offices as well as food stores and gas stations, recklessly destroying community infrastructure; manufacturers had outsourced production to the cheapest overseas bidders, hollowing out the middle-class incomes on which consumer capitalism depended: The prison-industrial complex, higher education, and private medical sectors were intent on milking a public purse that no longer had a solid tax base with which to pay. Maximizing short-term profit worked brilliantly for sociopathic executives looking to climb the promotion ladder—but as a long-term strategy for stability, a spiralling Gini coefficient left a lot to be desired.

The European Parliament responded by focussing on corporate governance. If corporations wanted to be legal citizens, the politicians riding the backlash declared, they could damned well shoulder the responsibilities of good citizenship as well as the benefits. Social as well as financial audits were the order of the day. Directives outlining standards for corporate citizenship were drafted, and a lucrative niche for a new generation of management consultants emerged—those who could look at an organization and sound a warning if its structure rewarded pathological behaviour. And as for the newly nationalized supermarket monopolies, a flourishing future as government-owned logistics hubs beckoned. After all, with no post offices, high-street banks, or independent general stores, who else could do the job?