Rule 34 - Charles Stross [100]
There was a time when, after working hours, you’d be off to the gym or auditing a distance-learning course or some other worthy pursuit. But these days, it’s hard to see the point anymore.
The sad truth, which only dawned on you after you were fifteen years down this path, is that it doesn’t mean anything. Your job, your vocation, your life’s calling—you’re like a priest who awakens one day and realizes that his god has been replaced by a cardboard cut-out, and he’s no longer able to ignore his own disbelief. And, like the priest, you’ve sacrificed all hope of a normal life on the altar of something you no longer believe in.
Heaven knows, it’s not as if the job doesn’t need doing. Fifteen years in the force has taught you more about the stupid, petty, vicious idiocy of your fellow humans than you ever wanted to know. (It’s also startled you—very occasionally—with their generosity, intelligence, and altruism. Very occasionally.)
But policing, crime prevention and detection, is a Red Queen’s race: You have to run as fast as you possibly can just to stand still. You can collar criminals until the cows come home, and there’ll still be a never-ending supply of greedy fuckwits and chancers. It’s like there’s a law of nature: Not only is the job never done, the job can never be done.
And then you hit your career derailment, passed over for promotion and sidelined into running the ICIU. And that’s even worse. The movies playing inside people’s heads every day are a million times nastier than what’s out on the streets. Your colleagues have got no fucking idea what people day-dream and fantasize about: It’s some kind of miracle you’re not dealing with a thousand Hungerford massacres a day, going by what ICIU shows you. The sad fact is, the actual crimes that are committed are a pale shadow of the things people fantasize about. Even the poor-impulse-control cases who clog up the holding cells at the sheriff’s court mostly have some rudimentary inhibitions that hold chaos at bay, most of the time.
But for the past couple of years, it’s been sapping your will to live, never mind your ability to believe in the job.
You’re just about thinking about retreating to the bedroom—a lonely end to a boring evening—when you get a text. It’s from Dorothy. How old-school, you think.
YOU HOME? she asks.
YES.
CAN I COME ROUND? She capitalizes and uses correct written grammar, as formal as the way she dresses. NEED COMPANY.
Your heart flip-flops at the promise of company. SURE, you send, trying not to sound over-excitable, and tag it with your address and directions. Check the time: It’s ten thirty, for heaven’s sake. Doesn’t she have to go to work tomorrow? Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow? Your heart flip-flops again, and suddenly you feel hot and bothered; but a cool, collected part of you asks, Didn’t you have a date for Saturday? Dorothy’s the planning kind. Why so sudden?
BE RIGHT ROUND, she texts again. NEED TO TALK.
You shove your tablet away hurriedly, start to run fingers through your hair, then stop. You’re a mess, and there’s no time to do anything about it. “Shit.”
Precisely eight minutes and forty-two seconds later, the doorbell rings. It’s her, as you knew it would be. Swearing quietly, you buzz her up. The bed’s made, the sofa cushions are plumped, there’s coffee waiting in the cafetière in the kitchen if you need it, fuck knows what this is about but . . .
You open the door. It’s Dorothy. She looks at you with red-rimmed eyes, steps forward into your open