Hi, I’m Bob Howard. I’m a computational demonologist and senior field agent working for an organization you don’t know exists. My job involves a wide range of tasks, including: writing specifications...
He stabs at the mouse mat with one finger and I wince, but instead of fat purple sparks and a hideous soul-sucking manifestation, it simply wakes up his Windows box. (Not that there’s much difference....
He monologued at me. With PowerPoint.★★ ★★He what? And you’re still sane? Obviously I underestimated you.★★
Hate the sin, love the sinner: it’s hard to stay pissed off at someone for doing something wrong if you know you’d have done exactly the same thing if you’d been standing in their shoes.)
Give me a bottle of Mountain Dew, an MP3 player hammering out something by VNV Nation, and a crate of Pringles: that’s like being at home. Give me root access on a hostile necromancer’s server farm, a...
Firewyrms (I refuse to dignify those things by calling them dragons; real dragons should be elegant reptilian predators, not sea slugs with wings that vomit acid).
Fatal accidents never happen because of just one mistake. It takes a whole chain of stupids lining up just so to put a full stop at the end of an epitaph.
Everything he’s learned about the Civil Service tells him that having tea poured for you is one of the ferociously guarded signifiers of rank, like the grade of paintings from the Government Art Colle...
Dear God, whispers Pete, it’s full of posters!
Crawling eldritch horrors don’t get planning permission unless they’re Trump’s hairpiece.)
Crawling eldritch horrors don’t get planning permission unless they’re Trump’s hairpiece.) That
Compliance with the mile-high stack of social expectations you grow up with as a girl turns out to be mandatory if you want to get ahead in business. Be blonde, be skinny, and don’t forget to smile, b...
Cocktail hour at the embassy consisted of lots of charming men and women in suits and LBDs drinking Buck’s Fizz and being friendly to one another, and so what if half of them had gill slits and dorsal...
But what are we going to do with a load of guns? asks Pete. I don’t know, Brains, what are we going to do with a half-track full of guns? Pinky asks. Brains chuckles. Same thing we do every night, Pin...
Bet you he’s a smart sociopath, the kind that does well in midlevel management, all fur coat and no knickers—and willing to shed blood without a second thought if it’s to defend his position.
Because if there’s one thing worse than an IT manager who’s feeling the chill wind of obsolescence blowing down his neck and consequently trying to contribute code to the repository like an actual wor...
Basically it’s a velociraptor with a fur coat and an outsize sense of entitlement. Right now it has convinced Pete that it is harmless, but I know better: just give them thumbs and in no time at all t...
And rumor has it that the Central Ammunition Depot hanging off Box Tunnel still contains two thousand barrels of iron-tipped English longbow arrows, in case it becomes urgently necessary to re-fight t...
And he’s maneuvered Old George into a position where the only way to safety lies through the New Annex. Things are about to get very messy indeed, for blood-on-the-walls values of messy.
And because my employers agree with me, and they’re the government, you’re outvoted.