Home > Work > The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files, #8)
21 " the geas in question draws its power from the sum over time of the entire loyal British population’s faith in the Crown since that charter was established over four centuries ago. Which adds up to something like ninety million person-centuries-worth of belief. Hence the, shall we "
― Charles Stross , The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files, #8)
22 " All around the UK, the lights are going out and the shutters are falling across the doors of dozens of offices and remote installations. The lights will stay on for a while longer at a handful of sites that are only tenuously connected to the rest of the nation, sites that are isolated by virtue of the perilous forces they work with or by the most draconian of security perimeters; but the orders have been issued, and by Friday evening the Laundry as an organization will have ceased to exist. FIVE BREAKOUT Zero drives me out of the center of London efficiently and calmly. I "
23 " What are the consequences when the government, the media, and the leaders of commerce all speak with one voice? Why, it means that if you hold opinions other than the ones you are told to, you are out of step, and if so, it is best to bite your tongue and be silent. The most efficient kind of censorship isn’t the heavy-handed black inking of the secret policeman: it’s the self-censorship we impose on ourselves when we’re afraid that if we say what we think everyone around us will think us strange. "
24 " 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. "
25 " As Terry Pratchett observed, inside every eighty-year-old man is an eight-year-old wondering what the hell just happened to him "
26 " Crawling eldritch horrors don’t get planning permission unless they’re Trump’s hairpiece. "
27 " 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. "