18 quotes
Mo used to be a troubleshooter: whenever the organization had a spot of trouble she shot it until it stopped twitching.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
Mhari consults her conscience and takes another step into the twilight borderland between bending the rules and breaking them.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
Governments are machines for producing and implementing legal frameworks.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
I don’t understand exactly what she thinks we need to talk about, but maybe that’s half the problem.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
I’ve finally done it, I’ve broken something that shouldn’t have been broken, and I’m really not sure who the monsters are anymore.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
I don’t get enough practice at killing people to not feel bad about it; I hope I never do, although that’s looking like a forlorn wish these days.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
Lord Acton said power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
Well, incoming fire has right of way, as they say.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
The iron law of bureaucracy doesn’t help: everybody working to ensure that the organization continues to pay them a salary, rather than necessarily achieving its objectives.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
It’s the sort of Maxwell Smart hack that used to cost the CIA black budget half a billion to develop in the ’60s but is off-the-shelf from a Chinese toy factory these days.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
When they went looking for someone to represent the agency in public and picked me, they weren’t just scraping the bottom of the barrel, they were fracking for oil in the basement.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
Apparently you’re only allowed to demolish Wolverhampton if you’re a property developer like Donald Trump. Crawling eldritch horrors don’t get planning permission unless they’re Trump’s hairpiece.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
And because this is now a political problem, the usual political syllogism applies
The Delirium Brief (2017)
He’s found a teapot and milk and is brewing up, because that’s what the English do when they’ve just broken out of military prison one jump ahead of murderous assassins from an alien death god cult, then survived being shot at by a main battle tank.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
Mhari looks at me. I look at her. “No comment,” we chorus in unison. Then I add, “We’re just the performing monkeys; if you want a policy statement you’ll need to send the organ grinder a memo.”
The Delirium Brief (2017)
I hate guns. I can use them, but I don’t like being around them; they add this terrible random-act-of-no-god-at-all angle to any fight. Bang, you’re dead, even if you weren’t the person the shooter was aiming for, even if it’s an accidental discharge.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
But all these mitigating techniques have severe drawbacks, and as a result there are old ritual magicians, and there are bold ritual magicians, but there are no old, bold magicians. They don’t survive, and they tend to have unique skill sets, thereby defeating the first principle of bureaucracy: that nobody is indispensable.
The Delirium Brief (2017)
It’s insane, but no more insane than Japan shutting down its entire nuclear reactor fleet in the middle of a heat wave because an extreme tsunami washed over one plant, or the USA invading a noninvolved Middle Eastern nation because a gang of crazies from somewhere else knocked down two skyscrapers. In a sufficiently large crisis, sane and measured responses go out the window.
The Delirium Brief (2017)