Charles Stross - The Atrocity Archives

"Sump degreaser." He winks at me. "Stops Pinky dipping his wick in it, right?" I wink back, a bit nonplussed; I do not think that phrase means what Brains thinks that it means, but if I told him I doubt he'd give me any more of this stuff, so I'm not going to enlighten him. Right now I've got a strong urge to get blindingly drunk-which he seems to have sensed. If I'm blind drunk I won't have to think. And not thinking for a while will be a good thing.

"Thank you," I say, as gravely as I can-it's Brains's secret, after all, and he's confided it in me. I'm obscurely touched, and if I didn't keep seeing Fred grinning at me whenever I closed my eyes it might actually get to me.

Brains peers at me closely. "I think I know your problem," he says.

"What's that?"

"You need"-he's already topping up my cup-"to get pissed. Now."

"But what about your-" I wave feebly at the worktop.

He shrugs. "It's an early success; I'll get it working properly later."

"But you're busy," I protest, because this whole thing is very un-Brains-like; at his worst he's a borderline autist. To have him paying attention to someone else's emotional upsets is, well, eerie.

"I was only trying to prove that you can make an omelette without breaking eggs. That's just a dumb metaphor or a silly practical experiment; you're real, and a classic example of what it means, too. You're broken, in the course of scrambling a body-snatcher's zero point outbreak, and I figure we need to see if all the king's men can fix you, or at least make you feel better. Then you can help me with my egg-sacting project."

I do not throw the glass at him. But I make him refill it.

An indeterminate but nonzero number of semifull vodka glasses later, Pinky appears, looking tall and gangly and slightly flustered. He demands to know where the nearest bookshop is.

"Why?"

"For my nephew." (Pinky has a brother and sister-in-law who live on the other side of London and who have recently spawned.)

"What are you getting him?"

"I'm buying an A to Z and a bible."

"Why?"

"The A to Z is a christening present and the bible is so I know the way to the church." Brains groans; I scrabble drunkenly behind the sofa for a sponge bullet for the Nerf gun, but they all seem to have fallen through the wormhole that leads to the planet of lost paper clips, pencils, and irreplaceable but detachable components of weird toys. "Say, what's going on here?"

"I'm taking a break from my cunning plan to help Bob get drunk, because that's what he needs," says Brains. "He needs distracting and I was doing my best until you came in and changed the subject." He stands up and throws one of the suckers at Pinky, who dodges.

"That's not what I meant; there's a weird smell in the kitchen and something that's, er, squamous and rugose"-a household catch-phrase, and we all have to make the obligatory Cthulhu-waggling-tentacles-on-chin gesture with our hands-"and yellow tried to eat my shoe. What's up?"

"Yeah." I struggle to sit up again; one of the straps under the sofa cushions has failed and it's trying to swallow me. "Just what was that thing in the kitchen?"

Brains stands up: "Behold"-he hiccups-"I am in the process of disproving a law of nature; to wit, that it is impossible to make an omelette without breaking eggs! I have a punning clan-"

Pinky throws the (somewhat squashed, but definitely formerly spherical) omelette at his head and he ducks; it hits the video stack and bounces off.

"I have a cunning plan," Brains continues, "which if you'll let me finish-"

I nod. Pinky stops looking for things to throw.

"That's better. The question is how to churn up an egg without breaking the shell, then cook it from the inside out, correct? The latter problem was solved by the microwave oven, but we still have to whisk it up properly. This usually means breaking it open, but what I figured out was that if I inject it with magnetised iron filings in a lecithin emulsion, then stick it in a rotating magnetic field, I can churn it up quite effectively. The next step is to do it without breaking the shell at all-immerse the egg in a suspension of some really tiny ferromagnetic particles then use electrophoresis to draw them into it, then figure out some way of making them clump together into long, magnetised chains inside it. With me so far?"

"Mad, mad I say!" Pinky is bouncing up and down. "What are we going to do tonight, Brains?"

"What we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!" (Of haute cuisine.)

"But I've got to buy a couple of books before the shops close," says Pinky, and the spell is broken. "Hope you feel better, Bob. See you guys later." And he's gone.

"Well that was useless," sighs Brains. "The lad's got no staying power. One of these days he'll settle down and turn all normal."

I look at my flatmate gloomily and wonder why I put up with this shit. It's a glimpse of my life, resplendent in two-dimensional glory, from an angle that I don't normally catch-and I don't like it. I'm just about to say so when the phone chirrups.

Brains picks it up and all expression drains from his face. "It's for you," he says, and hands me the phone.

"Bob?"

My free hand starts to shake because I really don't need to hear this, even though part of me wants to. "Yes?"

"It's me, Bob. How are you? I heard the news-"

"I feel like shit," I hear myself saying, even though a small corner of my mind is screaming at me. I close my eyes to shut out the real world. "It was horrible. How did you hear?"

"Word gets around." She's being disingenuous, of course. Mhari has more tentacles than a squid, and they're all plugged into the Laundry grapevine. "Look, are you okay? Is there anything you need?"

I open my eyes. Brains is staring at me blankly, pessimistically. "I'm getting as drunk as possible," I say. "Then I plan to sleep for a week."

"Oh," she says in a small voice, sounding about as cute and appealing as she ever did. "You're in a bad state. May I come round?"

"Yes." In an abstract sort of way I notice Brains choking on his drain fluid. "The more the merrier," I say, hollow-voiced. "Party on."

"Party on," she echoes, and hangs up.

Brains glares at me. "Have you taken leave of your senses?" he demands.

"Very probably." I toss back what's left in my cup and reach for the bottle.

"That woman's a psychopath."

"So I keep telling myself. But after the tearful reconciliation, hot passionate bunny fucks on the bedroom floor, screaming pentacle-throwing tantrum, and final walkout number four, at least she'll give me something concrete and personal to feel really depressed about, instead of this gotta-save-'em-all shit I'm kicking my own arse over."

"Just keep her out of the cellar this time." He stands up unsteadily. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some omelettes to nuke…"

A WEEK LATER:

"This is an M11/9 machine pistol, manufactured by SW Daniels in the States. In case you hadn't figured it out, it's a gun. Chambered to take 9mm and converted to accept a sten magazine, it has a very high cyclic rate of 1600 rounds per minute, muzzle velocity 350 metres per second, magazine capacity thirty rounds. This cylinder is a two-stage wipeless supressor, not what you might have seen in the movies as a 'silencer'; it doesn't silence the gun, but it cuts the noise by about thirty decibels for the first hundred or so rounds you put through it.

"You need to know three things about this machine. One: if someone points one at you, do whatever they tell you, it is not a fashion accessory. Two: if you see one lying around, don't pick it up, unless you know how to carry it safely. You might blow your feet off by accident. Three: if you need one, dial the Laundry switchboard and ask for 1-800-SAS-our lads will be happy to oblige, and they train with these things every day of the week."