Charles Stross: Rule 34

The more devout and twitchy-curtained neighbours don’t know anything about your private life, and you want to keep it that way: Our neighbour Anwar, he’s a good family man, they say. And if you want the free baby-sitters and community bennies, you’d better keep it that way. So you are discreet: You avoid the local boozers and are at pains never to go home with beer or worse on your breath. Which is why you go about your business in a snug little pub that sits uphill from the top of Easter Road, close by the Royal Terrace Gardens, for a wee outing afterwards.

Of course, going to the pub is not wholly risk-free. For starters there’s your phone, set to snitch on your location to the Polis—and if they call, you’d better be there to give them a voiceprint. (It’s not like you can leave it at home: You’ve done the custodial part of your sentence, but you’re still under a supervision order, and carrying a phone is part of the terms and conditions, just like wearing a leg tag used to be.)

Your phone copies them on everything you text or read online, and you heard rumours when you were inside—that the Polis spyware could recognize keywords like “hash” or “dosh.” You figure that’s just the kind of stupid shite paranoid jakies make up to explain why they got huckled for shoplifting on their second day out of prison—but you can’t prove it isn’t so, which is why you keep a dirty sock rolled over the phone’s lower half. (And your real phone is a pay-as-you-go you got Bibi to buy you “for the job hunting.”)

But anyway: pub time.

You’re in the back room, surfing on a pad borrowed from the bar as you work your way down your second pint, when the Gnome materializes at your left elbow with a pot of wheat beer and a gleam in his eye. “Good afternoon to you, Master Hussein! Mind if I join you?” The Gnome is a vernacular chameleon: Going by his current assumed accent—plummy upper-class twit—you figure he’s in an expansive mood.

You nod warily. The Gnome is not your friend—he’s nobody’s friend but his own—but you understand him well enough, and he’s interesting company. You’ve even spent a couple of relaxing afternoons in his bed, although he’s not really your type. “Bent as a seven-bob note,” the Cardinal pronounced him when the subject of trust came up in conversation: “Yes, but he disnae get caught ,” you pointed out. On paper, he’s a fine, upstanding member of the community; despite looking like the personification of Uncle Fester cosplay fandom, he even managed to get himself elected as town councillor in some deityforsaken hole in Galashiels. (Probably on the Hairy Twat vote. You can persuade the remaining students at Herriot-Watt’s out-of-town campus to vote for anything if you get them drunk enough, and there’s precious little else to do out there but drink.) “Have a seat.”

The Gnome sighs appreciatively and smacks his lips, then sits in contemplation of his beer for a minute or two. “What brings you to my office today?”

“The usual.” You frown. The Gnome claims to work for the university computer-science department, on some big make-work scheme called ATHENA, but he seems to spend most of his time in the back rooms of pubs: You figure he’s most likely working on his own side projects. (He maintains that nobody can earn a full-time living in academia anymore, and who’s to say he’s wrong?) “I’ve just had my weekly sermon, and I don’t need a second serving right now.”

The Gnome chuckles, a quiet hiccuping noise like a vomiting cat. “I take your point.” He necks another mouthful of beer. “And is business good?”

“Don’t be daft, Adam.” You switch off the pad. “I’ve only been out two months; my mobie’s running six different kinds of Polis spyware, and I can’t even surf for porn without official permission. What do you think business is like?”

The Gnome looks duly thoughtful. “What you need is a line of work that is above reproach,” he declares after a while. “A business that you can conduct from a cosy wee office, that is of such utter respectability that if they’re getting on your tits, you can complain about how shocked, shocked! you are, and they’ll back off.”

“I couldna hack the law courseware you pointed me at,” you remind him. “And besides, I’ve got a record now.”

He’s shaking his head. “No. No-no-no. I was thinking…” He cocks his head on one side, as he does when he’s hatching one of his malicious little schemes. “I was thinking, how would you like to be an honorary consul ?”

“A what ?” Visions of a residence on Calton Road and a shiny black BMW hybrid with diplomatic plates clash confusingly with your gut-deep sense that such a scam is beyond even the admittedly impressive grifting capabilities of the Gnome. “Don’t be silly, I was born over here, I don’t even hold dual Pakistani citizenship—”

“You don’t understand.” He takes your wrist. His fingers are clammy from his beer glass: “Let me explain. You don’t need to be a native. You just need to be a fine upstanding citizen with an office and enough time to attend to the needs of visiting nationals. The high heid yins all have proper embassies staffed by real diplomats, but there are plenty of small players… play-states, just like Scotland’s a play-state, hived off the old Union for the extra vote in the council of ministers in Brussels and some plausible deniability in the budget. The deal is, we find some nowhere country that can only afford a proper embassy in London or Brussels, if that. They issue you with a bunch of papers and an official phone, and you’re on call to help out when one of their people gets into a spot of bother over here. If you’re really lucky, they’ll pay you an honorarium and the office rent.” He winks ; the effect is inexpressibly horrifying.

“Get away with you!” You take another mouthful of beer. “You’re winding me up.”

“No, lad, I’m serious.”

“Serious?”

He chugs his pint and smacks his lips. You roll your eyes: You recognize a shakedown when you see one. “Mine’s a Hoegaarden,” he says, utterly unapologetic.

Five minutes later, you get back from the bar and plant his new pint in front of him. “Spill it.”

“What, the beer”—he kens you’re not amused and shrugs, then takes an exploratory sip. “All right, the job. I have a mutual acquaintance who happens to work for a, shall we say, small player ’s diplomatic service as a freelance contractor. They’re a very new small player, and they’re hiring honorary consuls for the various Euro sub-states—”

You’ve had enough of this bullshit. “Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

“No.” His brow wrinkles. “Here’s the thing: Issyk-Kulistan is a very new state. It used to be part of Kyrgyzstan, but five months ago there was a vote on independence, and they seceded, with official recognition…” You stare at him. The Gnome has a warped sense of humour, but he’s not crazy. He’s got dozens of fingers in scores of pies, some of them seasoned with very exotic spices. And right now he’s got that intense brow-wrinkling expression he gets on his gizz when he’s desperately serious, or trying to pinch a jobbie in the lav. He’s droning on: “No budget to speak of, but they’re soliciting recommendations. The angle is, they’re dirt-poor—all they’ve got is a played-out gas field and a bunch of collective farms. Their capital city’s smaller than Stirling; in fact, the whole country’s got the same population as Edinburgh. I believe the real story is that Issyk-Kulistan was let go by Kyrgyzstan because unemployment’s around 40 per cent and the big man in Bishkek wanted an excuse to cut their bennies. Think of it as national downsizing, Anwar—Kyrgyzstan’s got a budget deficit, so what are they going to do? Cut overheads! Anyway, the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan can’t afford a real diplomatic corps. Indeed, there’s probably nae cunt from Karakol in the whole of Scotland. Or Latvia, Iceland, or Moldova, for that matter. Which is the reason—”