Charles Stross - Overtime

Copyright 2009 Charles Stross

with an illustration by Carl Wiens

All bureaucracies obey certain iron laws, and one of the oldest is this: get your seasonal leave booked early, lest you be trampled in the rush.

I broke the rule this year, and now Im paying the price. Its not my fault I failed to book my Christmas leave in time-I was in hospital and heavily sedated. But the ruthless cut and thrust of office politics makes no allowance for those who fall in the line of battle: You should have foreseen your hospitalization and planned around it said the memo from HR when I complained. Theyre quite right, and Ive made a note to book in advance next time Im about to be abducted by murderous cultists or enemy spies.

I briefly considered pulling an extended sickie, but Brenda from Admin has a heart of gold; she pointed out that if I volunteered as Night Duty Officer over the seasonal period I could not only claim triple pay and time off in lieu, Id also be working three grades above my assigned role. For purposes of gaining experience points in the fast-track promotion game theyve steering me onto, thats hard to beat. So here I am, in the office on Christmas Eve, playing bureaucratic Pokmon as the chilly rain drums on the roof.

(Oh, you wondered what Mo thinks of this? Shes off visiting her ditz of a mum down in Glastonbury. After last time we agreed it would be a good idea if I kept a low profile. Christmas: the one time of year when you cant avoid the nuts in your family muesli. But I digress.)

Christmas: the season of goodwill towards all men-except for bank managers, credit scoring agencies, everyone who works in the greeting card business, and dodgy men in red suits who hang out in toy shops and scare small children by shouting ho ho HO! By the time I got out of hospital in September the Christmas seasonal displays were already going up in the shops: mistletoe and holly and metallized tinsel pushing out the last of summers tanning lotion and Hawaiian shirts.

I cant say Ive ever been big on the English Suburban Christmas. First you play join-the-dots with bank holidays and whats left of your annual leave, to get as many consecutive days off work as possible. Then instead of doing something useful and constructive with it you gorge yourself into a turkey-addled stomach-bloating haze, drink too much cheap plonk, pick fights with the in-laws, and fall asleep on the sofa in front of the traditional family-friendly crap the BBC pumps out every December 25th in case the wee ones are watching. These days the little uns are all up in their rooms, playing Chicks v. Zombies 8.0 with the gore dialled to splashy-giblets-halfway-up-the-walls (only adults bother watching TV as a social activity these days) but has Auntie Beeb noticed? Oh no they havent! So its crap pantomimes and Mary Poppins and re-runs of The Two Ronnies for you, sonny, whether you like it or not. Its like being trapped in 1974 forever-and you can forget about escaping onto the internet: everybody else has had the same idea, and the tubes are clogged.

Alternatively you can spend Christmas alone in the office, where at least its quiet once everyone else has gone home. You can get some work done, or read a book, or surreptitiously play Chicks v. Zombies 8.0 with the gore dialled down to suitable-for-adults. At least, thats the way its suppose to work except when it doesnt, like now.

Lets rewind a week:

Im pecking away at a quality assessment form on my office PC when theres a knock at the door. I glance up. Its Bill from Security. Are you busy right now? he asks.

Um. My heart just about skips a beat. Not really?

Bill is one of our regular security officers: a former blue-suiter, salt-and-pepper moustache, silver comb-over, but keeps trim and marches everywhere like hes still in the military. Its about your Christmas shift, he says, smiling vaguely and hefting a bunch of keys the size of a hand grenade. Im supposed to show you the ropes, yknow? Seeing as how youre on overnight duty next week. He jangles the key ring. If you can spare half an hour?

My heartbeat returns to normal. I glance at the email on my computer screen: Yeah, sure. Its taken me about five seconds to cycle from mild terror to abject relief; hes not here to chew me out over the state of my trainers.

Very good, sir. If youd care to step this way?

From Bill, even a polite request sounds a little like an order.

You havent done the graveyard shift before, have you sir? Theres not a lot to it-usually. Youre required to remain in the building and on call at all times. Ahem, thats within reason, of course: toilet breaks permitted-theres an extension-and theres a bunk bed. You probably wont have to do anything, but in the unlikely event, well, youre the night duty officer.

We climb a staircase, pass through a pair of singularly battered fire doors, and proceed at a quick march along a puce-painted corridor with high wired-glass windows, their hinges painted shut. Bill produces his keyring with a jangling flourish. Behold! The duty officers watch room.

We are in the New Annexe, a depressing New Brutalist slab of concrete that sits atop a dilapidated department store somewhere south of the Thames: electrically heated, poorly insulated, and none of the window frames fit properly. My department was moved here nearly a year ago, while they rebuild Dansey House (which will probably take a decade, because they handed it over to a public-private partnership). Nevertheless, the fittings and fixtures of the NDOs office make the rest of the New Annexe look like a futuristic marvel. The khaki-painted steel frame of the bunk, topped with green wool blankets, looks like something out of a wartime movie-theres even a fading poster on the wall that says CARELESS LIPS SINK SHIPS.

This is a joke. Right? Im pointing at the green-screen terminal on the desk, and the huge dial-infested rotary phone beside it.

No sir. Bill clears his throat. Unfortunately the NDOs office budget was misfiled years ago and nobody knows the correct code to requisition new supplies. At least its warm in winter: youre right on top of the classified document incinerator room, and its got the only chimney in the building.

He points out aspects of the rooms dubious architectural heritage while Im scoping out the accessories. I poke at the rusty electric kettle: Will anyone say anything if I bring my own espresso maker?

I think theyll say thats a good idea, sir. Now, if youd care to pay attention, let me talk you through the call management procedures and what to do in event of an emergency.

The Laundry, like any other government bureaucracy, operates on a 9-to-5 basis-except for those inconvenient bits that dont. The latter tend to be field operations of the kind where, if something goes wrong, they really dont want to find themselves listening to the voicemail system saying, Invasions of supernatural brain-eating monsters can only be dealt with during core business hours. Please leave a message after the beep. (Supernatural? Why, yes: were that part of Her Majestys government that deals with occult technologies and threats. Certain abstruse branches of pure mathematics can have drastic consequences in the real world-we call them magic-by calling up the gibbering horrors with which we unfortunately share a multiverse [and the platonic realm of mathematical truth]. Given that computers are tools that can be used for performing certain classes of calculation really fast, it should come as no surprise that Applied Computational Demonology has been a growth area in recent years.)