The Nightmare Stacks: A Laundry Files novel Read Online Free
Author: Charles Stross
able to live with themselves. But Her Majesty’s Government has a use for a cadre of tame PHANGs and,
as long as I do my job satisfactorily
, once a week there will be an ampoule of fresh blood drawn from a donor * waiting in my in-tray.
I don’t think I’m a murderer.
(I might be deluding myself, though.)
Anyway: after I rediscovered the V syndrome theorem and accidentally infected myself, like an idiot I went and exposed everyone else in the Scrum to the same disease. Which some of them mistook for an opportunity to act like bandits, mostly because they failed to ask themselves why exactly nobody knew about this thing already. Two months later half of us were murdered (shock, horror) by a vampire hunter. It turns out that the first law of vampire club is
vampires don’t exist
, and if a vampire
does
allow their existence to come to light the other PHANGs will do their best to kill them, lest the government notices and institutes mandatory naked noonday identity parades.
Well, part of the government
has
noticed and, as noted previously, they have a use for us survivors. The part that noticed us is known as the Laundry; it started out as part of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War, and today it’s the occult equivalent of MI5 or GCHQ. You probably have some idea of the uses a secret agency might have for agents who have super-strength and unnatural powers of persuasion? † Well, you’d be wrong: because I’m not James Bond, I’m a twenty-four-year-old virgin with a maths PhD and AIDS. Anyway, so far the job seems to consist entirely of Human Resources interviews, training courses, form-filling, and, oh, a 73.21 percent pay cut. All in return for that weekly keep-you-going ampoule in the in-tray. Ha ha fuck you no it’s not very funny, is it. Not very funny at all.
(I’m not bitter or anything.)
Anyway, this is my work diary. It’s pretty boring right now because my work is pretty boring, and if you’re sitting here reading my diary that means
your
work is pretty boring. Maybe I’ll try and liven it up by telling you all about my family, or coming up with some more lies about the Nazi gold, the stolen secret files, or the IRA Semtex. Except I’m not very good at lying.
Go on, fuck off. It’s not as if anything interesting ever happens to me, is it?
It’s a cold, damp Monday and Alex is ready for work.
It’s still early enough in the year that he can be out and about at five in the afternoon without fear of immediate photocombustion, as long as he covers up and slathers himself in heavy-duty sunblock. So he loiters behind the snack kiosk in the entrance to the city railway station, the collar of his coat turned up and his hat pulled down like a spy movie cliché. He’s already drawn a couple of curious glances from the transport police, but they’re too busy to check on him. Meanwhile, the kiosk provides some cover from the homeward-bound throng of commuters as they stumble through the echoing concourse, eyes downturned, attention focussed on their phones.
The 17:12 from King’s Cross is showing on the Arrivals board. Alex figures this means his co-worker and nominal mentor will be with him as soon as he puzzles out the maze of escalators and overhead walkways from Platform 10 to the ticket gates. Alex shifts from foot to foot resentfully. He knows in an abstract kind of way that Pete has a wife and a young baby, and was in any case needed in the New Annex for a morning committee meeting (something about a scary American televangelist), which is why he couldn’t come up at the weekend. Still, Pete is effectively forcing Alex to wait in public, and he feels horribly exposed. He’s always been a little bit agoraphobic, and PHANG syndrome gives him every reason to dread public spaces – it’s not that accidents don’t also happen to normal people, but he can’t help morbidly rehearsing the possible fatal outcomes.
Leg broken by a hit-and-run driver, he ends up on a
as long as I do my job satisfactorily
, once a week there will be an ampoule of fresh blood drawn from a donor * waiting in my in-tray.
I don’t think I’m a murderer.
(I might be deluding myself, though.)
Anyway: after I rediscovered the V syndrome theorem and accidentally infected myself, like an idiot I went and exposed everyone else in the Scrum to the same disease. Which some of them mistook for an opportunity to act like bandits, mostly because they failed to ask themselves why exactly nobody knew about this thing already. Two months later half of us were murdered (shock, horror) by a vampire hunter. It turns out that the first law of vampire club is
vampires don’t exist
, and if a vampire
does
allow their existence to come to light the other PHANGs will do their best to kill them, lest the government notices and institutes mandatory naked noonday identity parades.
Well, part of the government
has
noticed and, as noted previously, they have a use for us survivors. The part that noticed us is known as the Laundry; it started out as part of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War, and today it’s the occult equivalent of MI5 or GCHQ. You probably have some idea of the uses a secret agency might have for agents who have super-strength and unnatural powers of persuasion? † Well, you’d be wrong: because I’m not James Bond, I’m a twenty-four-year-old virgin with a maths PhD and AIDS. Anyway, so far the job seems to consist entirely of Human Resources interviews, training courses, form-filling, and, oh, a 73.21 percent pay cut. All in return for that weekly keep-you-going ampoule in the in-tray. Ha ha fuck you no it’s not very funny, is it. Not very funny at all.
(I’m not bitter or anything.)
Anyway, this is my work diary. It’s pretty boring right now because my work is pretty boring, and if you’re sitting here reading my diary that means
your
work is pretty boring. Maybe I’ll try and liven it up by telling you all about my family, or coming up with some more lies about the Nazi gold, the stolen secret files, or the IRA Semtex. Except I’m not very good at lying.
Go on, fuck off. It’s not as if anything interesting ever happens to me, is it?
It’s a cold, damp Monday and Alex is ready for work.
It’s still early enough in the year that he can be out and about at five in the afternoon without fear of immediate photocombustion, as long as he covers up and slathers himself in heavy-duty sunblock. So he loiters behind the snack kiosk in the entrance to the city railway station, the collar of his coat turned up and his hat pulled down like a spy movie cliché. He’s already drawn a couple of curious glances from the transport police, but they’re too busy to check on him. Meanwhile, the kiosk provides some cover from the homeward-bound throng of commuters as they stumble through the echoing concourse, eyes downturned, attention focussed on their phones.
The 17:12 from King’s Cross is showing on the Arrivals board. Alex figures this means his co-worker and nominal mentor will be with him as soon as he puzzles out the maze of escalators and overhead walkways from Platform 10 to the ticket gates. Alex shifts from foot to foot resentfully. He knows in an abstract kind of way that Pete has a wife and a young baby, and was in any case needed in the New Annex for a morning committee meeting (something about a scary American televangelist), which is why he couldn’t come up at the weekend. Still, Pete is effectively forcing Alex to wait in public, and he feels horribly exposed. He’s always been a little bit agoraphobic, and PHANG syndrome gives him every reason to dread public spaces – it’s not that accidents don’t also happen to normal people, but he can’t help morbidly rehearsing the possible fatal outcomes.
Leg broken by a hit-and-run driver, he ends up on a
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