Halting State

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Book: Read Halting State for Free Online
Authors: Charles Stross
where an LED is glowing red, like the call disconnect button on your phone.
    “I think you’d better come with me, sir.” She has a key to the handcuffs, for which you are duly grateful, but she wants you to put your phone away, and that’s surprisingly difficult, because Sophie keeps going on about something to do with your oldest niece’s birthday and Confirmation—hubby Bill wants Elsie and Mary to have a traditional upbringing—and you keep agreeing with her because will you please put the phone down, a Dutch cop is trying to arrest me isn’t a standard way to break off this kind of scenario. (If only families came with safewords, like any other kind of augmented-reality game.) Things are stuck at this point for a tense few seconds as you mug furiously at the officer, until she raises one index finger, then unlocks the handcuff from around the pole, twists your arm around the small of your back, wheechs the mobie out of your grasp, and has your wrists pinioned before you can say “hasta la vista.”
    It’s shaping up to be a great weekend, make no mistake. And there’s always Monday to look forward to!

INTERLUDE: CIA World Factbook, 2017
    SCOTLAND
    Location: 54 38 N, 1 46 W—Western Europe, occupying the northern two-fifths of the island of Great Britain.
    FLAG
    Description : Sky-blue background with a white Cross of St. Andrew (diagonal) superimposed. As a member state of the EU, the EU flag may also be flown.

    NAME OF COUNTRY
    Conventional long form: Republic of Scotland
    Conventional short form: Scotland
    Data code: SCO
    Type of government: republic, EU core member state
    Capital: Edinburgh
    Independence: 1 January 2012
    Constitution: 13 March 2011; adopted 1 January 2012 at formal independence
    Legal system: based on Roman law and traditional Scottish law, substantially modified by indigenous concepts; compliant with EU corpus juris ; compliant with EU

    ECONOMY
    Economic overview: The economy is small and trade dependent. Offshore oil and gas, once the most important sector, is now dwarfed by industry, which accounts for 32% of GDP and 46% of export and employs 25% of the labor force. The financial sector is still large, and accounts for 24% of GDP and 40% of exports; Scotland is home to a disproportionate percentage of the former United Kingdom’s banks and insurance companies. Since independence and EU membership, the country has benefited from substantial EU assistance in developing its poorest regions. Inflation is low and there is a regular annual trade surplus. Unemployment remains a serious problem in regions formerly dominated by smokestack industry, and is a major focus of government policy.
    Politics: Scotland is noted for its ingrained left-wing political bias and rejection of the liberal economic and conservative social policies encouraged south of the border—this tendency contributed to the breakup of the former United Kingdom. The ruling Scottish National Party is nevertheless providing aggressive assistance to inward-investing companies and has established an industrial development office to encourage small indigenous firms. The model pursued has been described as “following Ireland and Norway,” and Scotland is widely viewed as being one of the “Atlantic Tiger” group of small but healthy economies on the western rim of the EU…

SUE: Earning Overtime
    You’ve been on scene for an hour already, your stress levels are rising, and it’s taken you this long to figure out just one thing: You’re going to be late for your evidence ’cast thanks to Wayne Richardson, Marketing Director and Prize Twat, who sits wittering and wringing his hands on the other side of his desk while you try to figure out how to investigate a crime that was committed by a radge bunch o’ faeries in a place that doesn’t exist. Your smartphone’s nagging you about hitting your transferrable overtime limit, and you’ve already blown your quota for time off in lieu this month; if this goes on you’re

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