The Milestones Are Right

Arioch glares at the Mi Go squatting awkwardly on an office chair on the other side of the table.

The Mi-Go regards Arioch with equal distaste through its curious organs of vision.

Since the cult-in-government inflicted its sacrificial decimations upon the bureaucracy, the bureaux in the City of Witches and on Yuggoth were amalgamated. Adjustments were hard on both worlds. Arioch is very sceptical of the advertised financial efficiency, considering the expense of rebuilding locally the cyclopean, windowless basalt temples the Mi-Go inhabit. There is also the language problem. Arioch, a veteran of the arcane traditions of the bureaumancers, finds the polychromatic jargon of the modern business solar system frustrating.

Ecru. Smaragdine wenge azure. the Mi-Go pulses with what, on any normal person, would be a forehead. This one also uses it as a place to wear a tie. It’s a shiny green tie.

“Again? We went over this at our last meeting,” says Arioch. “We can’t bring forward the completion milestone because bureaucracy in a hurry leads to holes in Space–Time. In this bureau, we have Procedures. On this planet, we still have a crust.”

Sinoper. Sarcoline, murrey amaranth, taupe. The Mi-Go emphasises the last shade with a clatter of one of its grooming claws on the tabletop. Coincidentally, the Mi-Go’s iPhone buzzes pregnant with new import. The Mi-Go immediately checks it, buzzing to itself in bistre and drunk-tank pink.

This is another thing Arioch dislikes about the bureaucrats from Yuggoth: they are grafted to their cellphones.

Arioch waits, seething, while the Mi-Go shoots a quick text back to its cohort. When he is pretty sure he has its attention again, he tries to show it a chart showing the size of the holes in Space–Time that resulted from the last arbitrarily truncated bureaucratic project. The Mi-Go gestures contemptuously with its feathery basidiocarps and utters a series of colours Arioch can barely follow. Several of them seem to be from spectra other than Earth’s. Arioch thinks that’s unprofessional: the Bureaumantic Code specifies Euclidean chromosemantics are to be used at all times.

Nacarat onyx. Aeneous nacarat gamboge!

Arioch is angry now. That was uncalled-for. “It’s not a matter of the Stars Being Right. It’s a matter of due diligence and not blowing holes in Space–Time. I don’t care if your demiurge wants it ahead of the project plan, nor about its—and your—career aspirations.”

Atrous icterine subfusc?

“By all means. Refer it all the way up to your demiurge. You know I’m in the right, and you’re just a corner-cutting fungal cowboy. Crepusc in your own subfusc!”

Falu.

“Falu too.”

That went well, Arioch thought later.

The Fear

Indagari can not be alone any more. The fear is there. It is a small thing, like a wizened child. It crouches on furniture and lurks behind curtains. It touches things: examining them, sniffing them, sometimes quietly tasting them. It is always quiet, apart from the furtive rustling, and never in the way. Indagari acknowledges its discretion, but the way it lingers is oppressive and eventually, chilling. Indagari only works out why that is after a few days. A mirror betrays the fear in the act of reaching when Indagari's back is turned, touching a shoulder-blade, and softly insinuating surprisingly betaloned wizened fingers deep into Indagari's back. Indagari feels a new coldness, a new sickness, as the fingers draw back a tiny sliver of heart which the fear nibbles at like a mouse at a corncob, its thin-lipped mouth scarlet with Indagari's stolen heart-blood.

The fear rides on Indagari's shoulders from room to room and sleeps on the pillow at night. Its prurience when Indagari is in the toilet or shower is disturbing.

The fear is an unpleasant companion, but for Indagari, now, it is better than the silence.

Deliberation

"Only God is perfect," mutters Arioch to himself, making a deliberate error while completing a new edifice of bureaucratese.

The mistake leads to a loop of definition, a stopping problem, a semantic black hole that sucks all matter and energy out of the entire nation.

The cockroach civilisation that follows worships Arioch as a god.

Optimising performance

"You have to edit and recompile your source code for the next twelve months," the Hierarch told Arioch.

"I have source code?" Arioch asked, wincing inside. It never looked good to appear bewildered in front of the hierarchy.

"All minions must edit and recompile their source code so they are optimised for the due prosecution of corporate goals in the next work year."

"What are the corporate goals?"

"They are in your source code."

Arioch frowned. "...But I wasn't here at the last compile. I don't have them."

"Then create some in accordance with corporate goals."

"But I - Okay." Arioch was desperate for time to work out how to fake something. It was not as if anyone would ever look at the source code.

"By the end of today."

"Okay."

The Hierarch bustled off to harrass a stapler. Arioch looked over his collection of corporate manuals and found them big on profundities, short on procedures. "It's not even as if I know what language I'm compiled in," he muttered, reaching for the Pause/Break button at the back of his skull.

Wrong vision

One morning Arioch put the wrong eyes in. The night before he had inadvertently put down the glass with his eyes in it too close to the tray on his bedside table where he kept his pocket-watch, pounamu hole-stone on a string, verdigrine drachma and other assortments. In the cacaphonic scramble at the stupid o'clock alarm he ended up with the pocket-watch in one socket and the drachma in the other. It gave him entirely the wrong view on the world.

The owl of Athene was not his friend. Baleful omens surrounded him, mispelling his emails and chilling his coffee. He could not free his taste and smell of the lingering sourness of fur-packaged owl regurgitations.

The pocket-watch, unwound, made him late and staccato. His words, shorn of tempo, bewildered and even offended those used to more fluid, tuneful statements. Towards the end of the day he even developed a nervous tick.

Vexing though the day was, Arioch considered the experience educational and decided to repeat the experiment with other combinations of eyes. The metallic chrome-green of the preserved tropical scarab tempted him particularly. He had always wanted green eyes.

The Messiah

Arioch has a new job. No one knows exactly what it is supposed to do, but they're all terribly enthusiastic that the position is finally filled.

"You must have great plans for the temple!" they say.

Arioch smiles agreeably to hide the bewilderment. Second day on the job: not a good time to admit cluelessness. "What do you need from it?"

"Oh, you know - stuff! The temple must limpidly express the quintessential truths that we strive for, in the public's name."

"What truths?"

"Just the obvious ones."

In the lunch hour, Arioch has begun fashioning an escape rope out of old phone-cords. For some reason, phones are scarce.

Blattodeacino

After several minutes' silence across the breakfast table Arioch said, "I have a confession."

"Hmmm?" Indagari enquired around a sip of coffee.

"The coffee maker. While you were showering. I thought the water reservoir looked a bit manky so I pulled it out to give it a good clean.

"...There was a cockroach in there."

Indagari's coffee cup was placed back on the table with fastidious horror. Indagari was not one for histrionics.

"It's OK - I made your coffee only after I disposed of the corpse and cleaned out the reservoir and tubes. "

Indagari could not help but continue to stare in horror at the coffee.

"The thing is, the cockroach was mouldy and going transparent. I wonder how long it's been in there." Arioch scratched one antenna with a middle leg thoughtfully. "Still, we don't seem to have suffered any ill effects."

The Edge

Arioch stands at the edge of the rocks, as close as he dares to the gravity-poisoned space beyond. It's not that he is particularly prone to vertigo or acrophobia. But his nerves scream "Get some perspective!" so that his fingers hurt as if they've been hit with a hammer. The wind, gusting, mischievous, cold, doesn't help. It makes it quite clear that it wants to fling Arioch into the void and snatch away his screams on the way down. It just can't quite work up the strength to do so.

Arioch regards the view: the objective for climbing to the edge. It's larger than he can keep in his mind at once - he turns his head from side to side to take it all in. Wind-tormented clouds scud across the sky, bringing spitting rain, lances of sunlight and staccato shadows. The sky is kept aloft by brown-sided mountains, their jagged tops still splashed white with snow. Below the edge the rocks sweep down to a scree slope partially covered in dun tussock grass and bramble thickets. To the left a swift stream chooses today's path amid its grey-bouldered alluvial fan, expanding into a rushy mere and swamp before disappearing off behind another slope to the right. There are ducks.

The wind tries to tear the air from Arioch's mouth and nose so he can't detect the coldness and flinty hint of snow on its breath, but fails. Arioch inhales deeply, enjoying the freshness turning so very cold. It has better luck with his unprotected eyes, finding moisture in them to drag out and spatter on Arioch's cheeks with its icy claws.

Arioch grimaces into the wind to show he is not afraid of it. In disgust it flings a hawk past him, feathers ruffling in its grip. The hawk meets Arioch's gaze with one exultant yellow eye: it also plays with the wind.

Exact terminology 1

During the night Indagari dreamt there was a word for the colour of sunlight after two days of rain.

Waiting for the end of parrots

Leaving work, Arioch passed a parrot. It was on the ground amid the shrubs growing in perpetual shade by the office building's entrance. It eyed Arioch wearily. Arioch walked more softly so as not to disturb it into shrill chattering flight, and it did not do so. Arioch felt momentarily smug and privileged to come so close to the bird.

The next afternoon the parrot was there again, or perhaps still there. Arioch wondered idly if it were waiting for someone. In fact this turned out to be true.

The next afternoon the parrot was under the shrubs again, but this time it was obviously dead. It lay on its back, its weary eyes now milky with the sights they now saw. Arioch noticed its belly-feathers were a mess of mud - or dirty dried blood. Car? Cat? Collision? Cancer? No answers.

Arioch realised the parrot had been dying there in the shrubs next to the office entrance, for at least several days. Smug privilege soured into complicit guilt. Even though it was now too late to care or intervene, Arioch stopped, picked up the parrot and carried it reverently to a nearby bin. The body was light, cold and stiff. Its bright feathers were ragged and dirty. All its parroty animation had fled. Arioch disposed of its discarded husk thoughtfully, miserable that the bird's suffering had been prolonged by inaction.

Opposite worlds

In winter Indagari remembers summer, but as if in a dream, something not quite real. Reality is cold to the touch, painfully so in the mornings when the frost makes every surface blue-grey and problematic in nature. Reality is a wind that bites through layers of heavy cloth to deliver its venom of chill deep into the bones. Reality is dark for the greater part of the day, the sun a low, orange trembling phantom ever fearful of being assailed once more by grey clouds. Reality is hearty stews and pasta in bowls with red wine in front of the telly, wrapped up in blankets.

Indagari tries to envision the summer-world: incessant heat, a sheen of sweat, the air never still for the chirring and rustling of insects. Light bright clothes and sunlight that tingles on the skin. But it all seems implausible.

Work lunch

The restaurant bustled and steamed; inscrutable waiting staff shuffled full plates to the tables and empty, smeary plates the other way to the kitchen.

It was a farewell: Owen from Systems was going on to better things. The entire suzerainty of the EL2, Matt Silverback, was assembled to do him honour, even though most of them barely knew him at all. Owen was one of the quiet ones.

Indagari ended up sitting next to Owen, near one end of a table. As the guest of honour Owen might have demanded a place at the centre of the group but that wasn't his way. It was the way of the banditos, the posse of techies who shared interests such as beer, cars and Xbox games, and inevitably shared work social occasions like this one with only each other. Some found it tough to be be excluded from their group but that wasn't really their intent: they weren't a clique, more of a default setting.

SIlverback had brought wine for everybody. Largesse. Conspicuous consumption. An open bottle of merlot had ended up in front of Owen. He turned to Indagari and asked, "Would you like some wine?"

"I never drink... wine," Indagari quoted.

Owen looked startled. "I should have known."

Indagari was also startled. "So odd, to meet a Kindred spirit so late in the piece."

"Damn Obfuscate."

A great day for caring

"Excuse me, have you heard about 'Save the Nudibranchs'?"

Arioch's mind was dragged back to the present. Idle daydreams while walking through the piazza shattered: here was a conversation. The questioner was a dishevelled, dreadlocked man, Irish by the accent, hippy by fashion sense, prominently carrying a red plastic clipboard that bore a 'Save the Nudibranchs' sticker. Arioch had to concede the cartoonish nudibranch depicted was somewhat winsome.

"Of course," replied Arioch, no stranger to conservation.

"Then you're aware that 75% of nudibranchs are endangered by over-hunting, and most end up merely being liquefied for use in the shoe polish industry."

"I was," Arioch replied dutifully, waiting for the clip-board bearer to get to the point and ask him for money.

"And you'll know then that since sandals became fashionable, over 90% of shoe polish merely goes crusty in the tin, so the nudibranchs are dying in vain to support an industry that no one wants."

Arioch glanced at the clip-board bearer's thongs and toes blue with cold without comment.

"Did you know then that only twenty ducats a month will ensure the survival of one species of nudibranch by allowing STN to buy up hunting rights?"

"I did not know that," observed Arioch, now sure where this was going. "And where do you get such riches?"

"Well, I was hoping that you could help me with that. Just fill in this sponsorship form with your bank details and you too can be the saviour of the little guys."

Arioch smiled politely, but the smile did not reach his eyes. "How much of my subscription will actually go to saving the nudibranchs?"

"Why, all of it!"

"Oh? STN has no business expenses?"

"We're a government-supported organisation. Our overheads are very low." This was impressive - Arioch was normally one-nil by now. The Irishman was well-trained.

"And you? You're working for free?"

The clipboard twitched. "Well, no. I get paid to do this."

Arioch nodded. "So it's not so much 'Save the Nudibranch' as 'Save the Student-backpacker?'"

"So you'll sign up? There's a monthly newsletter." The clipboard waved with cheeky optimism.

"I'll think about it." (Arioch-speak for 'Not in Hell'.) Arioch nodded in dismissal and turned to walk away, annoyed that the daydreams were irretrievable.

"We have a website!" called the paid nudibranch-fancier.

Twenty metres later: "Hey there? Can I ask you a question?"

"You just did."

Arioch always cared more for logic than causes.

Mi huevo su huevo, or I'll have to hurt you

Arioch said, "I've noticed that you crack your breakfast egg at the pointy end."

Indagari replied, "I do. So?"

"But you must realise that the government, in reflecting the aspirations of ordinary imaginary people, holds that boiled eggs are to be breached at the broad end, in accordance with custom, and in remembrance of the sacrifice the chooks make to bring us our daily googs."

Indagari was confused. "I still don't see your point."

"You have to stop!" Arioch persevered. "Pointy ends, I mean. It's immoral."

"How?"

"Custom. Tradition. Our society is built on the lawful penetration of big ends. Anything else leads to anarchy at breakfast."

"Anarchy at breakfast." Indagari did not sound convinced.

"That's right. A complete break-down of all the institutions we hold dear. The collapse of the economy. Children selling sexual favours to each other in the streets. It could happen here you know. The only reason it doesn't is because we have uniformity in our ovophagy!"

"That's stupid. How can my preference for little ends end civilisation as we know it?"

"Well, what if everybody thought like you?" Arioch asked hotly. "If nobody considered their duty to society before their personal whims and preferences?"

"Then at least we'd get some peace at the breakfast table."

"...Pass the fucking toast."

"White or wholemeal?"