My name
is Ted, and I work at the Department of Statistics, Numbers and Information
(DeStNI). I would say that I enjoy my job. Well, it’s 2 standard deviations
above the mean enjoyment-of-employment rating for 93% of employees who have
worked here for 6 months or longer in the 18-42 demographic, technically. At DeStNI we control how the people see the
world, and how the world should wish to be seen. We map out trends for
everything you could imagine – shopping habits, pregnancy rates, pregnancies as
a result of shopping too much or too little; you name it, we’ve got the stats
for it. When we see something we don’t like we release some statistics to push
things back the other way and keep everyone in check. Too much crowding on the
tube? We publish stats that bus riders are, on average, 64% happier, and we
leave out the fact that we only surveyed smiling children during the summer
holidays. When that doesn’t work the department of vagueness, guesses and misinformation
gets involved, but no-one likes to see that; that’s when things are serious. The
ministry’s methods are… well, we’ll call them heavy handed.
Of course, if anyone from the public could see the reality of life inside the department of statistics, numbers and information (DeStNI) the whole system would fall apart – they’d realise they were being manipulated. So, it’s one of the most secretive and closely guarded facets of the OverGov. ‘Knowledge is power and power needs a switch’ goes the departmental mantra. I’ve always found it oddly trite, and thought it fails to accurately summarise anything about what we really do here. It kind of implies we just cause blackouts when we fancy it, to be honest. I wouldn’t like to question the department heads though – they must know what they’re doing because all of the information reaches them.
The flow of data into DeStNI is constant, and must be handled with the utmost caution and at the highest rate possible. Hundreds of supercomputers run perpetually to crunch the numbers, and thousands of processing algorithms take the crunched up bits and assemble them into something useful. Well, useful most of the time – one of the algorithms is in the habit of plotting the amount of time which has passed since that morning, versus the time of day. No-one has yet managed to isolate which one is doing it, but whenever we see that straight line I crack a little smile to myself. I say whenever, obviously I mean a statistically relevant proportion of the time.
Of course, if anyone from the public could see the reality of life inside the department of statistics, numbers and information (DeStNI) the whole system would fall apart – they’d realise they were being manipulated. So, it’s one of the most secretive and closely guarded facets of the OverGov. ‘Knowledge is power and power needs a switch’ goes the departmental mantra. I’ve always found it oddly trite, and thought it fails to accurately summarise anything about what we really do here. It kind of implies we just cause blackouts when we fancy it, to be honest. I wouldn’t like to question the department heads though – they must know what they’re doing because all of the information reaches them.
The flow of data into DeStNI is constant, and must be handled with the utmost caution and at the highest rate possible. Hundreds of supercomputers run perpetually to crunch the numbers, and thousands of processing algorithms take the crunched up bits and assemble them into something useful. Well, useful most of the time – one of the algorithms is in the habit of plotting the amount of time which has passed since that morning, versus the time of day. No-one has yet managed to isolate which one is doing it, but whenever we see that straight line I crack a little smile to myself. I say whenever, obviously I mean a statistically relevant proportion of the time.
It was 09:37.67
on a warm (20% above yearly average) Wednesday when the new young lady started
in my sub-division – transit patterns of non-sentient materials. I remember it
over 3 times better than my average for a mid-week morning in the springtime,
which squarely qualifies it for ‘memorable’ status. I was sitting at my terminal
in the long, bright blue office, situated sub-optimally for access to the
printer, water cooler and lavatories, when weighted by overall cycle time to
reach all three. Individually, I was in the 90th percentile for
water cooler access and 32nd percentile for the printer, but my
lamentable 60 second journey time to the nearest lavatory placed me in the
tawdry bottom 4%, ruining my desk’s overall rating. Of course, if I was
recommending that statistic for report to the public it would be “In the bottom
90% for lavatory access but the top 5% for clean air”. I know how to interpret
the data favourably.
I had, as usual, been looking wistfully at the most desirable desk in the office – desk 37B. 37B had it all – watercooler and printer next to it for an immediate and incredible boost to amenity-circuit cycle time, and a lavatory on the wall opposite. The glorious minimised journey times, the convenience, the visibility of everyone using the office facilities – it was my ambition to claim desk 37B as my own. Since I’ve never vividly hallucinated about desk 37B in my sleep, it doesn’t warrant ‘dream’ status by any DeStNI-approved metric.
For the first 2 years of my employment at DeStNI, my first act of procrastination or daydreaming in any period of inattentiveness in over 96% of recorded cases was to stare at desk 37B. That’s how serious I was about getting there. I would make it mine, or more accurately, the career goal to which I would commit over 85% of my efforts over the next 2 years would be to secure assignment to desk 37B.
When the new young lady started, my gaze had been lingering specifically on the sunbeam which shone warmly on desk 37B from behind. It was as if the Sun itself conspired to make desk 37B the most desirable place in the office – the light never rose high enough to glare against the screens, but illuminated the desk with a bright, natural light and warmed the back of desk’s blessed resident. I was appreciating that very fact when she walked across my line of sight – a flash of burgundy panning left to right in front of me. It snapped me out of my sleepy daydreaming at approximately the 1 minute 30 second mark – around the median daydream length for that time of year.
When I looked up, I saw that she was not alone – Alec Carter, my direct manager, had also walked in next to her, mid-conversation and smiling politely. He was dressed in a blue striped shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and a pair of black slacks. It was his third most often worn shirt, and his sleeves were rolled up in 98% of interactions with me. This was the first indicator that the young lady in burgundy was not an important visitor from higher in the OverGov, but probably the new recruit. The second and far more conclusive indicator was what Alec was saying.
“…and this is where you’ll be working. Get yourself settled down and connected. You’ll have a task list for the first week which will automatically appear on your terminal. At the end of the week we’ll calculate your average calculation rate and use that to baseline your workload. Some of your tasks will be focused on outputs and interpretation of the calculations you’ve previously performed. Once we’ve looked over your work and you’ve been deemed necessary and sufficient, you’ll be given larger projects with more freedom of information. Any questions?” It was standard new start procedure.
“No, I think that’s fine.” She replied with confidence, but she’d made a rookie mistake of speaking without quantifying. It’s not the end of the world, but 78% of non-quantifiers leave the department within 6 months of their start date. Alec picked up on this too, and raised an eyebrow.
“My confidence that I understand is significant to the P < 0.05 level.” She corrected herself, after seeming to stifle a sigh. She’d get used to it.
“89% better.” Alec told her with the look he wears when he tries to be reassuring. It tends to just come across as creepy. “Come to see me if you have any problems.”
As Alec walked away, Lucy turned to her terminal and began switching everything on. She moved with the knowledge and assuredness of a professional, but the pace of a disinterested amateur, according to the detailed behavioural charts I’d populated and memorised. I waited patiently for her to finish, since I anticipated that she would be introducing herself once her terminal was powered. She’d have to be in the far reaches of the bell-curve’s tail not to say hello to her desk neighbour. The passage of a minute after the completion of her power-up sequence confirmed to me that she was so far away from the bell she wouldn’t even hear it ringing. I decided to take the matter into my own hands; after all, I’d be seen as at least a standard deviation ruder than average if I let us work all day without having said hello.
“Hi I’m Ted, nice to meet you.” I said to the back of her head. “23rd most common male name for children born within 2 years of me in either direction, and 3 miles of me in a northwesterly direction. Slight dependency on father’s occupation - 36% correlation with paternal steelworking.” It’s these details which help to break the ice, based on a survey of my own experiences in the office.
Lucy turned around slowly, and I mean 10th percentile slowly, before fixing me with a quizzical look.
“Erm, hi.” She said, in the vocal equivalent of a slow chair turn. I thought that I had perhaps intimidated her with my strong display of quantitative analysis. “I’m Lucy. Nice to meet you too.”
“Most common follow up statement after introducing yourself across all office-based professions, based on a survey of three-thousand people two years ago.” I added for her, to ease her into perpetually thinking about statistics.
“You really love this don’t you?” She said. It was a perfectly accurate observation, but it somehow sounded like an insult.
“I find it to be over 2 standard deviations more enjo-“ I started, but she rolled her eyes and looked back to her terminal. In over 78% of cases that is a sign of moderate to significant disinterest, so I ceased responding. She must have heard all those statistics before, I thought, and it made me feel strangely disappointed. Empirically she must have already experienced at least 95% of the joy those stats could give her, and that is clearly a positive outcome, but somehow it made me sad. Unaccountably, I wanted her to feel that joy because of me. It was curious, and I couldn’t quantify what it was that made me feel that way. Something between her expression, which challenged me to be impressive, her posture, which proved that I wasn’t intimidating, and the easy dismissal of my attempts to ingratiate myself to her, made me yearn to do better; and do better I would.
I had, as usual, been looking wistfully at the most desirable desk in the office – desk 37B. 37B had it all – watercooler and printer next to it for an immediate and incredible boost to amenity-circuit cycle time, and a lavatory on the wall opposite. The glorious minimised journey times, the convenience, the visibility of everyone using the office facilities – it was my ambition to claim desk 37B as my own. Since I’ve never vividly hallucinated about desk 37B in my sleep, it doesn’t warrant ‘dream’ status by any DeStNI-approved metric.
For the first 2 years of my employment at DeStNI, my first act of procrastination or daydreaming in any period of inattentiveness in over 96% of recorded cases was to stare at desk 37B. That’s how serious I was about getting there. I would make it mine, or more accurately, the career goal to which I would commit over 85% of my efforts over the next 2 years would be to secure assignment to desk 37B.
When the new young lady started, my gaze had been lingering specifically on the sunbeam which shone warmly on desk 37B from behind. It was as if the Sun itself conspired to make desk 37B the most desirable place in the office – the light never rose high enough to glare against the screens, but illuminated the desk with a bright, natural light and warmed the back of desk’s blessed resident. I was appreciating that very fact when she walked across my line of sight – a flash of burgundy panning left to right in front of me. It snapped me out of my sleepy daydreaming at approximately the 1 minute 30 second mark – around the median daydream length for that time of year.
When I looked up, I saw that she was not alone – Alec Carter, my direct manager, had also walked in next to her, mid-conversation and smiling politely. He was dressed in a blue striped shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and a pair of black slacks. It was his third most often worn shirt, and his sleeves were rolled up in 98% of interactions with me. This was the first indicator that the young lady in burgundy was not an important visitor from higher in the OverGov, but probably the new recruit. The second and far more conclusive indicator was what Alec was saying.
“…and this is where you’ll be working. Get yourself settled down and connected. You’ll have a task list for the first week which will automatically appear on your terminal. At the end of the week we’ll calculate your average calculation rate and use that to baseline your workload. Some of your tasks will be focused on outputs and interpretation of the calculations you’ve previously performed. Once we’ve looked over your work and you’ve been deemed necessary and sufficient, you’ll be given larger projects with more freedom of information. Any questions?” It was standard new start procedure.
“No, I think that’s fine.” She replied with confidence, but she’d made a rookie mistake of speaking without quantifying. It’s not the end of the world, but 78% of non-quantifiers leave the department within 6 months of their start date. Alec picked up on this too, and raised an eyebrow.
“My confidence that I understand is significant to the P < 0.05 level.” She corrected herself, after seeming to stifle a sigh. She’d get used to it.
“89% better.” Alec told her with the look he wears when he tries to be reassuring. It tends to just come across as creepy. “Come to see me if you have any problems.”
As Alec walked away, Lucy turned to her terminal and began switching everything on. She moved with the knowledge and assuredness of a professional, but the pace of a disinterested amateur, according to the detailed behavioural charts I’d populated and memorised. I waited patiently for her to finish, since I anticipated that she would be introducing herself once her terminal was powered. She’d have to be in the far reaches of the bell-curve’s tail not to say hello to her desk neighbour. The passage of a minute after the completion of her power-up sequence confirmed to me that she was so far away from the bell she wouldn’t even hear it ringing. I decided to take the matter into my own hands; after all, I’d be seen as at least a standard deviation ruder than average if I let us work all day without having said hello.
“Hi I’m Ted, nice to meet you.” I said to the back of her head. “23rd most common male name for children born within 2 years of me in either direction, and 3 miles of me in a northwesterly direction. Slight dependency on father’s occupation - 36% correlation with paternal steelworking.” It’s these details which help to break the ice, based on a survey of my own experiences in the office.
Lucy turned around slowly, and I mean 10th percentile slowly, before fixing me with a quizzical look.
“Erm, hi.” She said, in the vocal equivalent of a slow chair turn. I thought that I had perhaps intimidated her with my strong display of quantitative analysis. “I’m Lucy. Nice to meet you too.”
“Most common follow up statement after introducing yourself across all office-based professions, based on a survey of three-thousand people two years ago.” I added for her, to ease her into perpetually thinking about statistics.
“You really love this don’t you?” She said. It was a perfectly accurate observation, but it somehow sounded like an insult.
“I find it to be over 2 standard deviations more enjo-“ I started, but she rolled her eyes and looked back to her terminal. In over 78% of cases that is a sign of moderate to significant disinterest, so I ceased responding. She must have heard all those statistics before, I thought, and it made me feel strangely disappointed. Empirically she must have already experienced at least 95% of the joy those stats could give her, and that is clearly a positive outcome, but somehow it made me sad. Unaccountably, I wanted her to feel that joy because of me. It was curious, and I couldn’t quantify what it was that made me feel that way. Something between her expression, which challenged me to be impressive, her posture, which proved that I wasn’t intimidating, and the easy dismissal of my attempts to ingratiate myself to her, made me yearn to do better; and do better I would.
Three
hours and forty minutes passed without any events surpassing the significance
level required for reporting. Lucy had proven to be resourceful, completing her
quota of tasks at a rate just below the mean but not asking for any help in
order to do so. That put her in the clear minority for high-independence. We
worked away, back to back, in silence, save for the occasional thunder of
keystrokes when the job called for it, until she finally had the need to seek
advice.
“Ted?” she called, as easily as if we’d worked together forever. There was no anxiety of feeling out our relationship, no bashfulness at seeking assistance.
“Yes?” I replied, trying my best to sound willing to help.
“My task requires a stat to reduce consumption rates of sweet potatoes, but I can’t find a good reason. None of the information points towards a better reason than anticipated shortages, but that would only lead to panic-buying. Would you please take a look?” She said please as if it was a request, but the cool manner with which she addressed me made it hard to take it as anything other than an instruction.
“Hmm… right, so look here. You’re only cutting the numbers one way, looking ahead at consequences of average to maximal potato consumption. You need to take another angle and try again; that’s how you’ll find out something useful.”
“I don’t think that reanalysing the same data will make sweet potatoes any more threatening to our society.” She said sceptically. The sound of her disappointment felt at least twice as heavy as Alec’s would have done. It didn’t make sense or follow any logical trend. Lucy had no power over me, so her approval should have been meaningless.
“I’m not saying it would, but you have to take a different approach. Plot consumption rates by demographic - types of employment, age, where they live, that kind of thing.”
“Yeah, I know what demographics are.”
“OK, good, so use them. If over 50% of any ‘undesirable’ demographic has high consumption then you’re sorted. The public don’t understand the difference between “the majority of criminals eat sweet potato 4 times a week” and “eating sweet potato 4 times a week turns the majority of people into criminals.”
“Alright,” she said after a thoughtful pause, “I’ll try it.” She faced her terminal and began attacking the information again. I lingered for a second, and then started to roll back to my own terminal, feeling not even half as fulfilled as I’d hoped. “Thanks.” She hastily added. My fulfilment level increased exponentially.
“Ted?” she called, as easily as if we’d worked together forever. There was no anxiety of feeling out our relationship, no bashfulness at seeking assistance.
“Yes?” I replied, trying my best to sound willing to help.
“My task requires a stat to reduce consumption rates of sweet potatoes, but I can’t find a good reason. None of the information points towards a better reason than anticipated shortages, but that would only lead to panic-buying. Would you please take a look?” She said please as if it was a request, but the cool manner with which she addressed me made it hard to take it as anything other than an instruction.
“Hmm… right, so look here. You’re only cutting the numbers one way, looking ahead at consequences of average to maximal potato consumption. You need to take another angle and try again; that’s how you’ll find out something useful.”
“I don’t think that reanalysing the same data will make sweet potatoes any more threatening to our society.” She said sceptically. The sound of her disappointment felt at least twice as heavy as Alec’s would have done. It didn’t make sense or follow any logical trend. Lucy had no power over me, so her approval should have been meaningless.
“I’m not saying it would, but you have to take a different approach. Plot consumption rates by demographic - types of employment, age, where they live, that kind of thing.”
“Yeah, I know what demographics are.”
“OK, good, so use them. If over 50% of any ‘undesirable’ demographic has high consumption then you’re sorted. The public don’t understand the difference between “the majority of criminals eat sweet potato 4 times a week” and “eating sweet potato 4 times a week turns the majority of people into criminals.”
“Alright,” she said after a thoughtful pause, “I’ll try it.” She faced her terminal and began attacking the information again. I lingered for a second, and then started to roll back to my own terminal, feeling not even half as fulfilled as I’d hoped. “Thanks.” She hastily added. My fulfilment level increased exponentially.
A few
minutes later Lucy spoke to me again, in much the same tone as before - roughly
85% of the key vocal characteristics were common.
“That still hasn’t helped.”
I wheeled my chair over to her terminal and took a look at what she’d done. Flickering away on her screen was a series of charts showing various pieces of information about the sweet potato consumption of various socio-economic demographics. It was the stuff that dreams were made of.
“There’s nothing here to make it sound like a good idea to reduce consumption.” Lucy stated matter-of-factly. “The highest rates are dominated by ‘desirable’ demographics. This has only reinforced my original conclusion.”
“Give me a minute.” I asked of her, not put off so easily. “Take these three – you can declare that 30% of the long-term unemployed, 42% of convicted thieves and 24% of murderers eat more than the average amount of sweet potato every month.”
“Those are all less than 50%.” Lucy told me accurately, but without appreciable relevance.
“So?” I replied “The public will assume that the connection we’ve made between these groups is somehow relevant. They don’t know that doctors, care workers and whoever else have even higher rates of consumption, so it won’t be thought about.”
Lucy stuck me with a suspicious gaze, as if I was making this up or somehow attempting to subvert her. I could see the cogs of her mind turning, but I wasn’t sure I liked what those cogs were driving her thoughts towards – she was guarded, she knew that not everyone was out to support her like this, especially in the high-octane world of statistical analysis. I watched silently as she cogitated. I knew my logic was sound, I’d applied it hundreds of times, but under her scrutiny I bubbled with fear of her rejecting it, fear of her thinking that I was going to mislead her. It was appalling enough to make me doubt myself. The cogs finally settled down.
“OK, that makes sense. I can believe it.” I was palpably relieved. “Thank you again.”
“You’re welcome.” I told her, because she most certainly was, and I rolled back to my terminal to stare at my own project again. I was glad the demographic cut had worked for Lucy, because it was failing here for me. I was attempting to increase the levels of scrap steel being brought into London by 30% over the next year – a directive from Alec Carter to fit DeStNI’s year-long objectives, reportedly – but all my measures so far were showing no progress. It was still early on in the life-cycle of the objective so I had plenty of time to fix it, but my total lack of progress was worrying. Very worrying.
“That still hasn’t helped.”
I wheeled my chair over to her terminal and took a look at what she’d done. Flickering away on her screen was a series of charts showing various pieces of information about the sweet potato consumption of various socio-economic demographics. It was the stuff that dreams were made of.
“There’s nothing here to make it sound like a good idea to reduce consumption.” Lucy stated matter-of-factly. “The highest rates are dominated by ‘desirable’ demographics. This has only reinforced my original conclusion.”
“Give me a minute.” I asked of her, not put off so easily. “Take these three – you can declare that 30% of the long-term unemployed, 42% of convicted thieves and 24% of murderers eat more than the average amount of sweet potato every month.”
“Those are all less than 50%.” Lucy told me accurately, but without appreciable relevance.
“So?” I replied “The public will assume that the connection we’ve made between these groups is somehow relevant. They don’t know that doctors, care workers and whoever else have even higher rates of consumption, so it won’t be thought about.”
Lucy stuck me with a suspicious gaze, as if I was making this up or somehow attempting to subvert her. I could see the cogs of her mind turning, but I wasn’t sure I liked what those cogs were driving her thoughts towards – she was guarded, she knew that not everyone was out to support her like this, especially in the high-octane world of statistical analysis. I watched silently as she cogitated. I knew my logic was sound, I’d applied it hundreds of times, but under her scrutiny I bubbled with fear of her rejecting it, fear of her thinking that I was going to mislead her. It was appalling enough to make me doubt myself. The cogs finally settled down.
“OK, that makes sense. I can believe it.” I was palpably relieved. “Thank you again.”
“You’re welcome.” I told her, because she most certainly was, and I rolled back to my terminal to stare at my own project again. I was glad the demographic cut had worked for Lucy, because it was failing here for me. I was attempting to increase the levels of scrap steel being brought into London by 30% over the next year – a directive from Alec Carter to fit DeStNI’s year-long objectives, reportedly – but all my measures so far were showing no progress. It was still early on in the life-cycle of the objective so I had plenty of time to fix it, but my total lack of progress was worrying. Very worrying.
Lucy’s
sweet potato report was met with great praise by Alec when she finally
submitted it – it turned out that she took my advice a step further and
subdivided the murderer category. Specifically calling out especially violent
murderers has the peak sweet potato consumers within the subset of criminals
was a stroke of genius – she’d go far. All the way to desk 37B if I didn’t keep
myself ahead of her.
I found Lucy to be a difficult, but not unpleasant, desk-neighbour. She was self-assured and confident enough to speak to me without anxiety, but just chose not to unless it was strictly necessary. I tried to tell myself that it was just because she was focused on her work and trying to make a good impression, but there was an undertone to her words; whenever I did pry some non-work conversation from her it felt like she resented speaking to me. Asymmetric resentment is a pretty poor basis for friendship, but a poor friendship is still better than tremendous enmity – I wrote a whole report on that very subject a year ago which determined poor friendships to be over 65% better than having someone hate you.
It took until the end of the following week before Lucy willingly engaged me in a conversation longer than ‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’ or something regarding her work. I was in the midst of a minor gaze at desk 37B when she spoke.
“What is it that you spend so much time staring at over there?” she asked me. The look in her eyes was one I’d not had the honour of seeing much – genuine interest. It made my stomach flutter pathetically.
“37B.” I answered, unclearly. “Desk 37B, over there, the one with the sunlit chair.” I then added.
“OK, and what’s so interesting about a desk that you need to watch it all day? I thought you found your job ‘2 standard deviations more enjoyable than average’ or something?” She remembered what I’d said. I smiled dumbly before I realised how much mockery her sentence had in its pockets.
“I do, I do. Desk 37B is my short-term workplace ambition.” I started, before explaining my three-factor desk desirability matrix to Lucy in full. I covered everything, from round-trip cycle time to individual sprint distances, weighting each of the three facilities by mean usage over the course of a working month, even touching on seasonal variations in the attractiveness of various sitting places in the office. I intended to finish with an explanation of the toilet-proximity characteristic and its manifold subtleties, which I was most proud of for its analytical beauty. Unfortunately, Lucy interrupted me mid-flow.
“I’m surprised you even need to use the toilet with the amount of shit that comes out of your mouth.”
I was stunned – this was prime, unadulterated statistical analysis about desk suitability. It was rigorously calculated and triple checked. I had even included error bars! But here she was, belittling it and then smiling at me with mischief behind her eyes, barely trying to hide her laughter. I was sharing my ambitions, heartfelt ambitions at that, with her, this woman who had an odd effect on me, and I was being mocked. She didn’t even seem to recognise that it could hurt me.
I span around to face my own terminal again, and Lucy did the same without a word. So much for the first voluntary social interaction she’d indulged in with me.
After that sorry episode I retreated into my shell, reducing my conversation instigation factor by 89%, based on some rough calculations. I had determined that reducing contact to prevent further insults to be a necessary measure to take, and the obvious way to do that was just to stop trying to engage Lucy in conversation. There were, however, other dependencies in the system which I hadn’t accounted for. Once I’d stopped putting in the effort, something happened which bucked all the trends I’d established over the previous fortnight and threw my mental models right off. It turned out although the total number of conversations did fall, it wasn’t by much. Instead, Lucy just took it upon herself to fill the gap where my unrequited chatter would usually have been. All of a sudden she said hello to me; not because I said it to her first, but precisely because I didn’t. Her words still came out with the same casual indifference and lack of self-consciousness that they always had, but now it was apparently caused by her own statements. I failed to understand why she would have the same indifference to her own words; if they were that boring she could just not say them. It was as if, despite her own lack of interest, the system of myself and Lucy had detected a change and levelled itself out. It was perplexing.
As Lucy’s newfound talkative side stuck around, I was forced to adopt a new conclusion in the face of the data in front of me –Lucy could not, in fact, have disliked me. There was another reason for her attitude, entirely separate to anything I was doing. This conclusion had the necessary corollary that I was not the most important factor in her life, nor were my actions the sole driver of her happiness. In hindsight, that should have been obvious. It led me to believe that my head should leave the vicinity of my posterior with great haste.
I found Lucy to be a difficult, but not unpleasant, desk-neighbour. She was self-assured and confident enough to speak to me without anxiety, but just chose not to unless it was strictly necessary. I tried to tell myself that it was just because she was focused on her work and trying to make a good impression, but there was an undertone to her words; whenever I did pry some non-work conversation from her it felt like she resented speaking to me. Asymmetric resentment is a pretty poor basis for friendship, but a poor friendship is still better than tremendous enmity – I wrote a whole report on that very subject a year ago which determined poor friendships to be over 65% better than having someone hate you.
It took until the end of the following week before Lucy willingly engaged me in a conversation longer than ‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’ or something regarding her work. I was in the midst of a minor gaze at desk 37B when she spoke.
“What is it that you spend so much time staring at over there?” she asked me. The look in her eyes was one I’d not had the honour of seeing much – genuine interest. It made my stomach flutter pathetically.
“37B.” I answered, unclearly. “Desk 37B, over there, the one with the sunlit chair.” I then added.
“OK, and what’s so interesting about a desk that you need to watch it all day? I thought you found your job ‘2 standard deviations more enjoyable than average’ or something?” She remembered what I’d said. I smiled dumbly before I realised how much mockery her sentence had in its pockets.
“I do, I do. Desk 37B is my short-term workplace ambition.” I started, before explaining my three-factor desk desirability matrix to Lucy in full. I covered everything, from round-trip cycle time to individual sprint distances, weighting each of the three facilities by mean usage over the course of a working month, even touching on seasonal variations in the attractiveness of various sitting places in the office. I intended to finish with an explanation of the toilet-proximity characteristic and its manifold subtleties, which I was most proud of for its analytical beauty. Unfortunately, Lucy interrupted me mid-flow.
“I’m surprised you even need to use the toilet with the amount of shit that comes out of your mouth.”
I was stunned – this was prime, unadulterated statistical analysis about desk suitability. It was rigorously calculated and triple checked. I had even included error bars! But here she was, belittling it and then smiling at me with mischief behind her eyes, barely trying to hide her laughter. I was sharing my ambitions, heartfelt ambitions at that, with her, this woman who had an odd effect on me, and I was being mocked. She didn’t even seem to recognise that it could hurt me.
I span around to face my own terminal again, and Lucy did the same without a word. So much for the first voluntary social interaction she’d indulged in with me.
After that sorry episode I retreated into my shell, reducing my conversation instigation factor by 89%, based on some rough calculations. I had determined that reducing contact to prevent further insults to be a necessary measure to take, and the obvious way to do that was just to stop trying to engage Lucy in conversation. There were, however, other dependencies in the system which I hadn’t accounted for. Once I’d stopped putting in the effort, something happened which bucked all the trends I’d established over the previous fortnight and threw my mental models right off. It turned out although the total number of conversations did fall, it wasn’t by much. Instead, Lucy just took it upon herself to fill the gap where my unrequited chatter would usually have been. All of a sudden she said hello to me; not because I said it to her first, but precisely because I didn’t. Her words still came out with the same casual indifference and lack of self-consciousness that they always had, but now it was apparently caused by her own statements. I failed to understand why she would have the same indifference to her own words; if they were that boring she could just not say them. It was as if, despite her own lack of interest, the system of myself and Lucy had detected a change and levelled itself out. It was perplexing.
As Lucy’s newfound talkative side stuck around, I was forced to adopt a new conclusion in the face of the data in front of me –Lucy could not, in fact, have disliked me. There was another reason for her attitude, entirely separate to anything I was doing. This conclusion had the necessary corollary that I was not the most important factor in her life, nor were my actions the sole driver of her happiness. In hindsight, that should have been obvious. It led me to believe that my head should leave the vicinity of my posterior with great haste.
Weeks
passed, and while relations with Lucy improved, my progress on the steel import
problem didn’t - I was still stumped. I had exhausted all of my most successful
techniques for data analysis and statistical reporting, and had been forced to
investigate other avenues of opportunity on the off-chance that they might make
a difference. In the same time, Lucy had come on staggeringly far, making her
voice heard among the cascades of data and constructing masterpieces of
whatever DeStNI threw at her.
Looking over the numbers, as I had done every day for what felt like an eternity, I found no clarity – no answers. Alec had been putting more pressure on me to make a change, but all the data streams seemed to work against me, delivering contradictory information to one another on a daily basis. Just when I thought I couldn’t sink any lower, I had a visitor appear at my terminal.
The visitor stood to my side, wearing an ill-fitting suit of peculiar colouration – it was as if someone had taken a wild stab at what tartan might look like, based on the testimony of a colour-blind liar. He stared at me silently with a blank expression.
“Hello.” I said tentatively. “Can I help you?”
“Probably.” He answered. Immediately, it rang alarm bells.
“Erm, OK. How? What can I do for you?”
“I need some help.”
“With what?”
“Some work.”
“I need more details than that. Does it involve statistical analysis of the movements of non-sentiment materials?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He said, smirking. It dawned on me - he was from the ministry of vagueness, guesses and misinformation. I was fraternising with a dangerous and infuriating man.
“You’re from the ministry.” I said, trying to remain professional despite the surge of disgust and fear which was welling up inside me.
“Perhaps. Are you going to help me?”
“Only if I get a direct order from my boss.”
“He’ll be on his way, from… somewhere.” The man from the ministry told me, adding no information at all.
“From where?”
“Um, here?” he opened the lowermost drawer in my desk.
“Ugh, stop that.” I snapped, slamming the drawer shut. “Just please wait quietly until Alec arrives.”
“That’s not very nice, Ted.” Lucy chastised me. “What’s got into you?”
“Bees?” the man from the ministry proposed.
“I’m not full of bees!” I snapped at my unwanted guest. “And no it’s not nice by the majority of metrics, but it’s the only effective way I’ve found to stop the tide of this nonsense from ministry personnel.”
“That’s not very nice either.” She told me. “How are you, sir?” Lucy asked the visitor, in an attempt to befriend the devil himself.
“Perfunctory.” The man from the ministry replied.
Lucy shrugged and turned back to her terminal as Alec arrived.
“Ted, I see you’ve met Harry here. He’s from-“
“The ministry, yeah. We’ve established that.”
“Right, well he’s here to investigate a breach of DeStNI codes of conduct – it seems that someone has been overstepping their bounds and disseminating misinformation outside of ministry control.”
The blood drained from my body – this was the most serious act that a DeStNI employee could commit, short of going on a killing spree or urinating in the printer. We dealt in information and reliable facts – misinformation was too dangerous to be handled lightly. We might represent things in a certain light to get to the conclusion we desire, but it’s all factual. Without facts we’d all get lost in the lies.
“That’s the most shocking thing I’ve heard in over 4 years by a margin of-“ I started but Alec interrupted me.
“I understand, Ted. I need you to answer a few questions for Harry.”
“What are you implying?” I said, shocked.
“A number of questions between three and seven.” Alec replied. I relaxed a little – his lack of clear quantification had scared me.
“OK, I’ll answer up to seven questions.”
Looking over the numbers, as I had done every day for what felt like an eternity, I found no clarity – no answers. Alec had been putting more pressure on me to make a change, but all the data streams seemed to work against me, delivering contradictory information to one another on a daily basis. Just when I thought I couldn’t sink any lower, I had a visitor appear at my terminal.
The visitor stood to my side, wearing an ill-fitting suit of peculiar colouration – it was as if someone had taken a wild stab at what tartan might look like, based on the testimony of a colour-blind liar. He stared at me silently with a blank expression.
“Hello.” I said tentatively. “Can I help you?”
“Probably.” He answered. Immediately, it rang alarm bells.
“Erm, OK. How? What can I do for you?”
“I need some help.”
“With what?”
“Some work.”
“I need more details than that. Does it involve statistical analysis of the movements of non-sentiment materials?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He said, smirking. It dawned on me - he was from the ministry of vagueness, guesses and misinformation. I was fraternising with a dangerous and infuriating man.
“You’re from the ministry.” I said, trying to remain professional despite the surge of disgust and fear which was welling up inside me.
“Perhaps. Are you going to help me?”
“Only if I get a direct order from my boss.”
“He’ll be on his way, from… somewhere.” The man from the ministry told me, adding no information at all.
“From where?”
“Um, here?” he opened the lowermost drawer in my desk.
“Ugh, stop that.” I snapped, slamming the drawer shut. “Just please wait quietly until Alec arrives.”
“That’s not very nice, Ted.” Lucy chastised me. “What’s got into you?”
“Bees?” the man from the ministry proposed.
“I’m not full of bees!” I snapped at my unwanted guest. “And no it’s not nice by the majority of metrics, but it’s the only effective way I’ve found to stop the tide of this nonsense from ministry personnel.”
“That’s not very nice either.” She told me. “How are you, sir?” Lucy asked the visitor, in an attempt to befriend the devil himself.
“Perfunctory.” The man from the ministry replied.
Lucy shrugged and turned back to her terminal as Alec arrived.
“Ted, I see you’ve met Harry here. He’s from-“
“The ministry, yeah. We’ve established that.”
“Right, well he’s here to investigate a breach of DeStNI codes of conduct – it seems that someone has been overstepping their bounds and disseminating misinformation outside of ministry control.”
The blood drained from my body – this was the most serious act that a DeStNI employee could commit, short of going on a killing spree or urinating in the printer. We dealt in information and reliable facts – misinformation was too dangerous to be handled lightly. We might represent things in a certain light to get to the conclusion we desire, but it’s all factual. Without facts we’d all get lost in the lies.
“That’s the most shocking thing I’ve heard in over 4 years by a margin of-“ I started but Alec interrupted me.
“I understand, Ted. I need you to answer a few questions for Harry.”
“What are you implying?” I said, shocked.
“A number of questions between three and seven.” Alec replied. I relaxed a little – his lack of clear quantification had scared me.
“OK, I’ll answer up to seven questions.”
Harry’s
questioning was equal parts tiresome and worthless. At least four of his
questions were guesses at my name, which he had been told prior to the
interview, leaving three questions at most to investigate the supposed
dissemination of misinformation. By the end of the interview we had established
that I was not called Martha, that I didn’t know ‘the answer’ to ‘some
questions’, and that I didn’t know who had been corrupting the data streams
flowing out of DeStNI. The last piece of information had been freely offered on
my part to end the charade.
When I returned to my desk, looking a surprising 68% more flustered than I had when I’d left, Lucy turned in her seat to face me.
“Are they all like that?” Even Lucy sounded sickeningly vague after speaking to Harry, that’s how far I was withdrawing from the poorly-specified madness of the ministry’s representative.
“At least half of them are worse.” I said, shuddering. “They don’t commit to anything – it’s all coulds, maybes and outright lies.”
“OK, I know you like quantitative analysis, and I’ll admit that Harry was annoying to the point that I suspect him of being seriously mentally-ill,” Lucy’s words were reassuring, mostly because they were clear statements of fact “but why do you hate people being vague so much? It’s not the end of the world – you can get the gist of what people are saying without talking like a text book.”
I slumped into my chair and sighed heavily.
“My best friend was killed by a vague comment.”
“By a- I’m sorry to hear that, but… how?”
“He was at the dentist having a tooth out. The assistant was a trainee, barely qualified to look at a healthy incisor, let alone remove a molar. My friend told the dentist that he could still feel his gums, that it was painful, so the dentist told his assistant to give him some more anaesthetic. The assistant asked how much, and do you know what the dentist told her? ‘Enough.’ She gave him two whole bottles, directly into his jaw, one tiny syringe at a time. It must have taken at least ten minutes, and even then the dentist only noticed when he saw her unstoppering a third bottle. She had no idea how much enough was, Lucy! She didn’t have any idea where to stop because it hadn’t been made clear. The vagueness killed him.” I fell silent; the pain of the memory too much to bear.
“Ted, I- I’m sorry, but your friend wasn’t killed by a vague comment, he was killed by malpractice!”
“The malpractice of poor instructions, perhaps.” I countered.
“Ugh.” She groaned, and then retreated back to her terminal. I felt like I might have said something wrong, and then shuddered at my own thought’s lack of specificity.
When I returned to my desk, looking a surprising 68% more flustered than I had when I’d left, Lucy turned in her seat to face me.
“Are they all like that?” Even Lucy sounded sickeningly vague after speaking to Harry, that’s how far I was withdrawing from the poorly-specified madness of the ministry’s representative.
“At least half of them are worse.” I said, shuddering. “They don’t commit to anything – it’s all coulds, maybes and outright lies.”
“OK, I know you like quantitative analysis, and I’ll admit that Harry was annoying to the point that I suspect him of being seriously mentally-ill,” Lucy’s words were reassuring, mostly because they were clear statements of fact “but why do you hate people being vague so much? It’s not the end of the world – you can get the gist of what people are saying without talking like a text book.”
I slumped into my chair and sighed heavily.
“My best friend was killed by a vague comment.”
“By a- I’m sorry to hear that, but… how?”
“He was at the dentist having a tooth out. The assistant was a trainee, barely qualified to look at a healthy incisor, let alone remove a molar. My friend told the dentist that he could still feel his gums, that it was painful, so the dentist told his assistant to give him some more anaesthetic. The assistant asked how much, and do you know what the dentist told her? ‘Enough.’ She gave him two whole bottles, directly into his jaw, one tiny syringe at a time. It must have taken at least ten minutes, and even then the dentist only noticed when he saw her unstoppering a third bottle. She had no idea how much enough was, Lucy! She didn’t have any idea where to stop because it hadn’t been made clear. The vagueness killed him.” I fell silent; the pain of the memory too much to bear.
“Ted, I- I’m sorry, but your friend wasn’t killed by a vague comment, he was killed by malpractice!”
“The malpractice of poor instructions, perhaps.” I countered.
“Ugh.” She groaned, and then retreated back to her terminal. I felt like I might have said something wrong, and then shuddered at my own thought’s lack of specificity.
The
weeks passed by and questions about the steel problem came harder and faster by
margins of 33% and 47%, respectively. Alec wanted solutions to the stagnant
import rates, and Harry wanted a smack in the mouth, but neither one of them
was giving me room to think. Alec especially had been keeping a closer eye on
me – his office was set behind a glass wall which directly faced Lucy and me.
Desk 37B’s relative shelter from Alec’s gaze was another feather in its hat.
Working on the same problem for thirteen weeks was exhausting to the point of choking my soul; I felt a devastatingly low 4% of my average motivation to dedicate any more time to the task, knowing that the median day’s work would actually yield negative progress, as I found some new aspect of the data to fail to understand.
While I had been failing to have an impact on anything, Lucy had managed to single-handedly increase the circulation of 50p pieces by over 80%, just by linking an increase in their use to reduced levels of ennui. She’d cleverly used data from a warehouse in Slough, where the vending machines only accepted 50ps; an absolute masterpiece of analysis. She’d even managed to encourage the purchase of tinned goods by tying a full recycling bin to greater cumulative household earnings, by summing the incomes of the tenants of a block of flats and comparing it to a vacant bedsit in Great Yarmouth. My failures and her successes gave Alec the idea of pairing us up to defeat the steel problem once and for all. Lucy had confided in me almost immediately that she was pessimistic about having any impact on the project, saying that she was only doing so well because of what I had taught her. The only problem was that refusing to help would involve saying no to Alec, and she wasn’t going to turn away from a challenge like that. At the very least, she said, we could fail this one together.
It was the last in a string of late nights working together. Alec said that we needed to pull out all the stops to get this solved because questions were coming down from higher up in DeStNI that he was struggling to answer. Long into the night, around 22:34, I finally leaned back in my chair and flopped my hands down by my sides.
“This is so, ridiculously, awfully, confusing. Nothing makes sense, and it hasn’t done for months. I’m out of ideas, Lucy, and I’m knackered.”
“Wow! You actually talked like a human for once.” Lucy exclaimed, surprised. She smiled as she said it. It was clearly insulting, but somehow, from her, it came across as a compliment. I felt the blood surge around my stomach as I sat there, embarrassed at my own lack of quantification, but at the very least satisfied that Lucy’s reaction had been favourable. By my calculations, a favourable reaction to anything I said or did had a probability of less than 1%, so I had to take what I could get. But I wouldn’t tell her that, of course. That kind of thing seemed to spoil her mood.
I stayed silent, caught in internal conflict between keeping Lucy happy and giving into my natural desire to back up my statements with data. My face must have been a dead giveaway.
“You can do it, Ted. Talk like a real person again, don’t mention a percentage or a confidence level. I dare you.”
Dares were 78% more dangerous to ignore than normal requests, since they invite the risk of being a labelled a pansy or leather-bound arse-trumpet, depending on which circles you mix with. Even so, I was tempted to stay within the rules, within my comfort zone – but what was so comfortable about it these days? Unsolvable problems and a junior member of staff being roped in to bail me out. The unknown was scary, but it held the promise of another of Lucy’s smiles. Apparently, that was worth the risk.
“I don’t want to work on the steel problem anymore. I find that some of the time it is intolerable, and the rest of the time the data streams are just pouring crap all over my terminal.” I said bravely. Lucy beamed at me and her subversive joy was intoxicating. It made my heart beat faster and added to the rush of speaking without quantifying. I stood up exercised this new rebellious streak that Lucy had nurtured, running around the office in clear violation of the personal preservation guidelines, weaving between desks and darting among the chairs. Lucy began to laugh again – somehow, performing everything sub-optimally made her far happier than meticulous adherence to the most efficient path.
“Do you know how many regulations I’ve just broken?” I shouted back to Lucy.
“I don’t; is it more than three?” she laughed back.
“It’s many! More than none but less than all!” I cried defiantly, clumsily wielding vagueness in my over-specified diction. I was high on the thrill of bending the rules – I’d not quantified anything for over… well, lots of seconds! Many seconds! And what’s more I was using vagueness outside of ministry approval. Everything about it was wrong, but it was a new flavour. I felt like I had to take more sub-optimal paths and make objectively poor decisions.
Lucy was leaning on the desk directly in front of Alec’s office cackling to herself at my child-like joy. I felt like a new man, the kind of man who didn’t need to clarify exactly what kind of man he was.
“Where’s the nearest bin?” Lucy managed, struggling to calm herself. “I want to throw everything we have on the steel problem into it.”
“Here it is!” I said, pointing to a nearby rubbish receptacle. Lucy prepared to walk my way, but I raised a hand to stop her. “No, it’s alright. I’ll help”. I leaned down and picked up the knee-high bin, and then threw it to Lucy, leaving a trail of rubbish as it flew through the air. Adding to the inefficiency, Lucy moved out of the way rather than catching it. The vessel of unwanted items soared past her harmlessly before coming to rest within Alec’s office. Having a new bin in Alec’s office for a short time was probably a good thing overall, however the end had failed to even partially justify the means; the shattered remains of the office window stood as a testament to that.
I stood perfectly still, in stunned silence at what I’d done. Even Lucy was looking on in dumb horror at the sparkling glass-scape which had, until a few seconds ago, been Alec’s distinctly shard-free office. My antics had taken a sharp turn from ‘cathartic blowout’ to ‘full-scale meltdown’ in a spray of shattered window – as shattered as my dreams of desk 37B would be once Alec found out what had happened.
“Shit…” Lucy muttered, adequately summarising both of our feelings on the matter. I rushed over and stood in front of the carnage I had caused. I’d had cause to study glass shatter patterns on previous projects, since glass is one of the non-sentient materials which gets moved around an awful lot, often as suddenly as this. This glass had performed almost perfectly in line with the expectation value for distribution of fragments along the trajectory of the projectile. My natural urge to analyse the situation was returning, my own brain attempting to comfort me.
“Alec is not going to be happy with his. I think, in fact, he will be the angriest he has ever been with me.” In and of itself, that was not a terribly imposing statement – I’d never given Alec any reason to be angry with me, since that would require me to perform an action with a 70% dissatisfaction value or more. At most, I had hit an estimated 32% dissatisfaction level when he had caught me during an upper quartile stare at desk 37B. Even then, he had only made a joke with me about average eye-resting-places and encouraged me to return to my work.
“Gods, how am I going to explain this? This event is too anomalous to pass off as an innocent mistake. No-one has ever accidentally propelled a piece of office furniture through their manager’s office window, as far as my records go.” The closest example I could think of was when a sleep-deprived accountant had forgotten how to use the printer; rather than replacing the ink cartridge, he’d strapped the printer to his chair and bowled it down the corridor. The mobile-printer soared through the office window and down to the pavement some fourteen storeys below.
“I’m going to tell Alec it was me.” Lucy said, almost emotionlessly.
“What! You can’t do that; it’s a lie!”
“I can and I will. If you take the hit for this one then you’ll never get 37B. You’ve worked so hard for it.”
“It’s not your fault that I threw a bin through his window though – I won’t let you do this.” I was shaking with anxiety, but couldn’t let her take a bullet for me.
“And how exactly do you intend to stop me?” Her forceful confidence had returned, once again working against me for my own good.
I scrabbled for words. “I… I… I’ll stab you!”
“You’ll stab me.” She said sarcastically. “Where will you stab me?” she then asked, calling my awful bluff.
“In… the teeth. Right in the teeth.” I told her intimidatingly.
It took over ten minutes for Lucy to stop laughing. I don’t know how much time exactly, because she caught me timing her, and slapped the stopwatch out of my hand whilst doubling over again. Laughing at a threat is an indicator that it has not had the desired effect in approximately 75% of cases. Laughing for over ten minutes is an indicator that the person issuing the threat may need to re-think their life.
“OK, so I guess that didn’t work, but I still don’t want you to take the fall for me on this. Please Lucy, you’ll lose your job and that’d be even worse than losing the desk.”
Lucy’s giggles subsided quickly. “I don’t know, I’m thinking that this may not be for me after all. If even someone like you can get into a rut like this then what chance do I stand?”
I was taken aback by this sudden admission of insecurity – it went against every observation I’d made of Lucy since she’d arrived. “I-… my situation is an anomaly. You’re doing incredibly well, Lucy, you know that, right? Honestly, you’re the greatest threat to my acquisition of desk 37B by over 14%. I’ll show you the plots of threat vs. time if you’d like.”
She smiled slightly and looked at the ground, to the sparkling glass-field it had become. If I didn’t know better I would have said that she was blushing.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, but thank you, Ted. Anyway, let’s get this tidied up. If I can’t take the fall for you then I’ll at least help you hide as much of the evidence as possible.” She grinned the grin which was usually reserved for when she’d just made fun of me.
The pair of us crossed through the threshold of the ruined window and examined the carnage. Alec’s otherwise pristine office glittered under the fluorescent strip-lighting, like the victim of a terrible diamante assault. I stooped over to start picking up the shards of my regret, when Lucy slapped me on the arm.
“Stop! You’ll definitely cut your hands to pieces if you pick it up like that, you goon! We need to find a dustpan and brush, or a broom if possible.”
“Then why did we walk in here without them?”
“Because… well I wanted to take a look around before we cleared it up. Don’t you want to do a little snooping first? I mean, there’s not a huge rush here given that Alec won’t be back until tomorrow morning.”
I felt deeply uneasy about snooping, rummaging or nosing of any kind. In Alec’s office that feeling was only exaggerated. I mentioned this to Lucy and she rolled her eyes at me, and I was overwhelmed by the fear of losing her respect again.
“Well, OK then. Let’s have a little look before we clear up. Even though it would make more sense to look around after removing the huge laceration hazard.”
“It’ll encourage us to be careful.” She beamed at me.
Lucy picked her way through the room, making quiet crunching sounds with every step she took. The throne-like leather chair was mercifully free of detritus, and she plonked herself down into it.
“Lucy! You don’t sound enough like a robot from a bad sci-fi when you talk! Get 98% better or your job will be 56% more threatened!” she boomed in a mock-Alec voice before giggling to herself and looking at me for my reaction.
“Classic Alec.” I confirmed with a stupid grin on my face as the butterfly sensation in my stomach returned. This childish side of Lucy was something I felt like I could get used to, if I only knew how to draw it out without vandalising the office.
“What’s he got in his drawers, I wonder?” she said with exaggerated intrigue, staring at the desk in front of her. She wiggled her fingers in preparation, ensuring they were up to the task of pulling the handle – based on my experience, warming up for opening storage spaces in office furniture was only necessary in 1% of cases. The first drawer was predictably unremarkable – stationery, loose change and business cards clattered around and rattled against their own lack of importance. The second drawer was where things started getting interesting.
“Whoa, Ted look at this.” Lucy said enticingly, pulling a stack of papers from the drawer. At first glance they seemed pretty standard – graphs, charts and statistical reports of the kind Lucy and I made every day. The reason Lucy had called my attention to them was that every piece of information included in the documentation was about me.
“What the… why does Alec have so much data on me?” I said, shocked. “If he’d wanted information about me he could have asked me directly and I’d have created a report over twice as reliable at this one.”
“That is so far from the point, Ted.” Lucy told me. She looked aghast. “Look at this – ‘Number of toilet uses vs day of the week’, ‘Analysis of printer trip times March – September’, ‘Time spent daydreaming’. This is all creep-level material.”
I wasn’t sure what the criteria were for creep-level interest in something, but I felt intuitively like Lucy was right about this. If she didn’t find me creepy then this must have been incredibly serious.
We spent over half an hour sifting through the piles of notes and analyses Alec had accumulated about me. Lucy even logged into his terminal to see what Ted-data he had been processing. I didn’t learn anything terribly surprising about myself, although I did feel highly uncomfortable with Lucy having access to this kind of in-depth information about me. I wasn’t self-conscious about the frequency of my lavatorial visits per se, but it’s not something I wanted Lucy to be actively thinking about, especially with her analytical mind. Any spikes in activity would warrant too many awkward questions.
The report which really caught my eye was “Locations stared at whilst daydreaming”. For the first two years of my employment the leader was, by far and away, desk 37B. It confirmed that Alec was aware of my desires as well as the direction of my gaze. But there was a big red circle around the data for the last thirteen weeks – time spent staring at desk 37B had been gradually falling since I had started working on the steel problem. It turned out that my gaze had been resting more and more on Lucy instead.
I stared at the graphs for an unspecified amount of time, since I couldn’t see a clock from where I was sitting. I mulled over the implications and the consequences of what I was seeing, and wondered if it related to why Alec had assigned Lucy to work with me on the steel problem. Was he trying to help me out, trying to contrive a reason for Lucy and I to spend even more time around one another? I couldn’t pull that mental string very far, because Lucy snapped me out of my contemplation once again.
“I know why you can’t solve the steel problem.” She told me in distracted horror. “You’re right about it being confusing and not making sense, Ted. It’s misinformation!”
Her shock was infectious and seemed to fill me before I’d had time to process the words. When the words finally did sink in they only made my shock worse – it was a real bummer.
“Misinformation? How?”
“Look at this; the incoming data stream is being altered before it gets redirected to you. Alec’s doctoring the information.” She showed me a series of calculations and processes being applied to data feed. Every piece of information to enter this loop was changed in some way, rendering it a work of utter fiction – the exact opposite of DeStNI’s remit.
“But, why? This doesn’t make any sense at all. He’s been pressuring me into getting results from something he’s been fabricating. I don’t get it.”
“He’s setting you up, Ted. Don’t ask me why, but Alec is trying to make you out as a misinformer.”
I was lost for words. I couldn’t believe that anyone would want to do that to me, let alone Alec. He was never my best friend, but I was no threat to him, nor did I conduct myself poorly at work.
“But that’s ridiculous! We were able to stumble into his office and find his manipulations without even trying. Surely he’d take at least some measures to protect himself if he was trying to spark an investigation to get me caught.”
“Hey, I didn’t say he was setting you up well. Maybe he’s just an idiot or thinks that he’ll be above suspicion because he ratted you out. Either way the evidence is clear – he’s been monitoring you and forcing you to work on bad data. Ted, we need to take this to the ministry.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Take it to the ministry? I’m not going to willingly walk into that nightmare.”
“It’s either that or the nightmare will walk itself to you, Ted.” The prospect of a nightmare growing legs and ambulating my way was horrifying – 20% more horrifying than the prospect of a visit to the ministry. The numbers were clear – we had to go.
Working on the same problem for thirteen weeks was exhausting to the point of choking my soul; I felt a devastatingly low 4% of my average motivation to dedicate any more time to the task, knowing that the median day’s work would actually yield negative progress, as I found some new aspect of the data to fail to understand.
While I had been failing to have an impact on anything, Lucy had managed to single-handedly increase the circulation of 50p pieces by over 80%, just by linking an increase in their use to reduced levels of ennui. She’d cleverly used data from a warehouse in Slough, where the vending machines only accepted 50ps; an absolute masterpiece of analysis. She’d even managed to encourage the purchase of tinned goods by tying a full recycling bin to greater cumulative household earnings, by summing the incomes of the tenants of a block of flats and comparing it to a vacant bedsit in Great Yarmouth. My failures and her successes gave Alec the idea of pairing us up to defeat the steel problem once and for all. Lucy had confided in me almost immediately that she was pessimistic about having any impact on the project, saying that she was only doing so well because of what I had taught her. The only problem was that refusing to help would involve saying no to Alec, and she wasn’t going to turn away from a challenge like that. At the very least, she said, we could fail this one together.
It was the last in a string of late nights working together. Alec said that we needed to pull out all the stops to get this solved because questions were coming down from higher up in DeStNI that he was struggling to answer. Long into the night, around 22:34, I finally leaned back in my chair and flopped my hands down by my sides.
“This is so, ridiculously, awfully, confusing. Nothing makes sense, and it hasn’t done for months. I’m out of ideas, Lucy, and I’m knackered.”
“Wow! You actually talked like a human for once.” Lucy exclaimed, surprised. She smiled as she said it. It was clearly insulting, but somehow, from her, it came across as a compliment. I felt the blood surge around my stomach as I sat there, embarrassed at my own lack of quantification, but at the very least satisfied that Lucy’s reaction had been favourable. By my calculations, a favourable reaction to anything I said or did had a probability of less than 1%, so I had to take what I could get. But I wouldn’t tell her that, of course. That kind of thing seemed to spoil her mood.
I stayed silent, caught in internal conflict between keeping Lucy happy and giving into my natural desire to back up my statements with data. My face must have been a dead giveaway.
“You can do it, Ted. Talk like a real person again, don’t mention a percentage or a confidence level. I dare you.”
Dares were 78% more dangerous to ignore than normal requests, since they invite the risk of being a labelled a pansy or leather-bound arse-trumpet, depending on which circles you mix with. Even so, I was tempted to stay within the rules, within my comfort zone – but what was so comfortable about it these days? Unsolvable problems and a junior member of staff being roped in to bail me out. The unknown was scary, but it held the promise of another of Lucy’s smiles. Apparently, that was worth the risk.
“I don’t want to work on the steel problem anymore. I find that some of the time it is intolerable, and the rest of the time the data streams are just pouring crap all over my terminal.” I said bravely. Lucy beamed at me and her subversive joy was intoxicating. It made my heart beat faster and added to the rush of speaking without quantifying. I stood up exercised this new rebellious streak that Lucy had nurtured, running around the office in clear violation of the personal preservation guidelines, weaving between desks and darting among the chairs. Lucy began to laugh again – somehow, performing everything sub-optimally made her far happier than meticulous adherence to the most efficient path.
“Do you know how many regulations I’ve just broken?” I shouted back to Lucy.
“I don’t; is it more than three?” she laughed back.
“It’s many! More than none but less than all!” I cried defiantly, clumsily wielding vagueness in my over-specified diction. I was high on the thrill of bending the rules – I’d not quantified anything for over… well, lots of seconds! Many seconds! And what’s more I was using vagueness outside of ministry approval. Everything about it was wrong, but it was a new flavour. I felt like I had to take more sub-optimal paths and make objectively poor decisions.
Lucy was leaning on the desk directly in front of Alec’s office cackling to herself at my child-like joy. I felt like a new man, the kind of man who didn’t need to clarify exactly what kind of man he was.
“Where’s the nearest bin?” Lucy managed, struggling to calm herself. “I want to throw everything we have on the steel problem into it.”
“Here it is!” I said, pointing to a nearby rubbish receptacle. Lucy prepared to walk my way, but I raised a hand to stop her. “No, it’s alright. I’ll help”. I leaned down and picked up the knee-high bin, and then threw it to Lucy, leaving a trail of rubbish as it flew through the air. Adding to the inefficiency, Lucy moved out of the way rather than catching it. The vessel of unwanted items soared past her harmlessly before coming to rest within Alec’s office. Having a new bin in Alec’s office for a short time was probably a good thing overall, however the end had failed to even partially justify the means; the shattered remains of the office window stood as a testament to that.
I stood perfectly still, in stunned silence at what I’d done. Even Lucy was looking on in dumb horror at the sparkling glass-scape which had, until a few seconds ago, been Alec’s distinctly shard-free office. My antics had taken a sharp turn from ‘cathartic blowout’ to ‘full-scale meltdown’ in a spray of shattered window – as shattered as my dreams of desk 37B would be once Alec found out what had happened.
“Shit…” Lucy muttered, adequately summarising both of our feelings on the matter. I rushed over and stood in front of the carnage I had caused. I’d had cause to study glass shatter patterns on previous projects, since glass is one of the non-sentient materials which gets moved around an awful lot, often as suddenly as this. This glass had performed almost perfectly in line with the expectation value for distribution of fragments along the trajectory of the projectile. My natural urge to analyse the situation was returning, my own brain attempting to comfort me.
“Alec is not going to be happy with his. I think, in fact, he will be the angriest he has ever been with me.” In and of itself, that was not a terribly imposing statement – I’d never given Alec any reason to be angry with me, since that would require me to perform an action with a 70% dissatisfaction value or more. At most, I had hit an estimated 32% dissatisfaction level when he had caught me during an upper quartile stare at desk 37B. Even then, he had only made a joke with me about average eye-resting-places and encouraged me to return to my work.
“Gods, how am I going to explain this? This event is too anomalous to pass off as an innocent mistake. No-one has ever accidentally propelled a piece of office furniture through their manager’s office window, as far as my records go.” The closest example I could think of was when a sleep-deprived accountant had forgotten how to use the printer; rather than replacing the ink cartridge, he’d strapped the printer to his chair and bowled it down the corridor. The mobile-printer soared through the office window and down to the pavement some fourteen storeys below.
“I’m going to tell Alec it was me.” Lucy said, almost emotionlessly.
“What! You can’t do that; it’s a lie!”
“I can and I will. If you take the hit for this one then you’ll never get 37B. You’ve worked so hard for it.”
“It’s not your fault that I threw a bin through his window though – I won’t let you do this.” I was shaking with anxiety, but couldn’t let her take a bullet for me.
“And how exactly do you intend to stop me?” Her forceful confidence had returned, once again working against me for my own good.
I scrabbled for words. “I… I… I’ll stab you!”
“You’ll stab me.” She said sarcastically. “Where will you stab me?” she then asked, calling my awful bluff.
“In… the teeth. Right in the teeth.” I told her intimidatingly.
It took over ten minutes for Lucy to stop laughing. I don’t know how much time exactly, because she caught me timing her, and slapped the stopwatch out of my hand whilst doubling over again. Laughing at a threat is an indicator that it has not had the desired effect in approximately 75% of cases. Laughing for over ten minutes is an indicator that the person issuing the threat may need to re-think their life.
“OK, so I guess that didn’t work, but I still don’t want you to take the fall for me on this. Please Lucy, you’ll lose your job and that’d be even worse than losing the desk.”
Lucy’s giggles subsided quickly. “I don’t know, I’m thinking that this may not be for me after all. If even someone like you can get into a rut like this then what chance do I stand?”
I was taken aback by this sudden admission of insecurity – it went against every observation I’d made of Lucy since she’d arrived. “I-… my situation is an anomaly. You’re doing incredibly well, Lucy, you know that, right? Honestly, you’re the greatest threat to my acquisition of desk 37B by over 14%. I’ll show you the plots of threat vs. time if you’d like.”
She smiled slightly and looked at the ground, to the sparkling glass-field it had become. If I didn’t know better I would have said that she was blushing.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, but thank you, Ted. Anyway, let’s get this tidied up. If I can’t take the fall for you then I’ll at least help you hide as much of the evidence as possible.” She grinned the grin which was usually reserved for when she’d just made fun of me.
The pair of us crossed through the threshold of the ruined window and examined the carnage. Alec’s otherwise pristine office glittered under the fluorescent strip-lighting, like the victim of a terrible diamante assault. I stooped over to start picking up the shards of my regret, when Lucy slapped me on the arm.
“Stop! You’ll definitely cut your hands to pieces if you pick it up like that, you goon! We need to find a dustpan and brush, or a broom if possible.”
“Then why did we walk in here without them?”
“Because… well I wanted to take a look around before we cleared it up. Don’t you want to do a little snooping first? I mean, there’s not a huge rush here given that Alec won’t be back until tomorrow morning.”
I felt deeply uneasy about snooping, rummaging or nosing of any kind. In Alec’s office that feeling was only exaggerated. I mentioned this to Lucy and she rolled her eyes at me, and I was overwhelmed by the fear of losing her respect again.
“Well, OK then. Let’s have a little look before we clear up. Even though it would make more sense to look around after removing the huge laceration hazard.”
“It’ll encourage us to be careful.” She beamed at me.
Lucy picked her way through the room, making quiet crunching sounds with every step she took. The throne-like leather chair was mercifully free of detritus, and she plonked herself down into it.
“Lucy! You don’t sound enough like a robot from a bad sci-fi when you talk! Get 98% better or your job will be 56% more threatened!” she boomed in a mock-Alec voice before giggling to herself and looking at me for my reaction.
“Classic Alec.” I confirmed with a stupid grin on my face as the butterfly sensation in my stomach returned. This childish side of Lucy was something I felt like I could get used to, if I only knew how to draw it out without vandalising the office.
“What’s he got in his drawers, I wonder?” she said with exaggerated intrigue, staring at the desk in front of her. She wiggled her fingers in preparation, ensuring they were up to the task of pulling the handle – based on my experience, warming up for opening storage spaces in office furniture was only necessary in 1% of cases. The first drawer was predictably unremarkable – stationery, loose change and business cards clattered around and rattled against their own lack of importance. The second drawer was where things started getting interesting.
“Whoa, Ted look at this.” Lucy said enticingly, pulling a stack of papers from the drawer. At first glance they seemed pretty standard – graphs, charts and statistical reports of the kind Lucy and I made every day. The reason Lucy had called my attention to them was that every piece of information included in the documentation was about me.
“What the… why does Alec have so much data on me?” I said, shocked. “If he’d wanted information about me he could have asked me directly and I’d have created a report over twice as reliable at this one.”
“That is so far from the point, Ted.” Lucy told me. She looked aghast. “Look at this – ‘Number of toilet uses vs day of the week’, ‘Analysis of printer trip times March – September’, ‘Time spent daydreaming’. This is all creep-level material.”
I wasn’t sure what the criteria were for creep-level interest in something, but I felt intuitively like Lucy was right about this. If she didn’t find me creepy then this must have been incredibly serious.
We spent over half an hour sifting through the piles of notes and analyses Alec had accumulated about me. Lucy even logged into his terminal to see what Ted-data he had been processing. I didn’t learn anything terribly surprising about myself, although I did feel highly uncomfortable with Lucy having access to this kind of in-depth information about me. I wasn’t self-conscious about the frequency of my lavatorial visits per se, but it’s not something I wanted Lucy to be actively thinking about, especially with her analytical mind. Any spikes in activity would warrant too many awkward questions.
The report which really caught my eye was “Locations stared at whilst daydreaming”. For the first two years of my employment the leader was, by far and away, desk 37B. It confirmed that Alec was aware of my desires as well as the direction of my gaze. But there was a big red circle around the data for the last thirteen weeks – time spent staring at desk 37B had been gradually falling since I had started working on the steel problem. It turned out that my gaze had been resting more and more on Lucy instead.
I stared at the graphs for an unspecified amount of time, since I couldn’t see a clock from where I was sitting. I mulled over the implications and the consequences of what I was seeing, and wondered if it related to why Alec had assigned Lucy to work with me on the steel problem. Was he trying to help me out, trying to contrive a reason for Lucy and I to spend even more time around one another? I couldn’t pull that mental string very far, because Lucy snapped me out of my contemplation once again.
“I know why you can’t solve the steel problem.” She told me in distracted horror. “You’re right about it being confusing and not making sense, Ted. It’s misinformation!”
Her shock was infectious and seemed to fill me before I’d had time to process the words. When the words finally did sink in they only made my shock worse – it was a real bummer.
“Misinformation? How?”
“Look at this; the incoming data stream is being altered before it gets redirected to you. Alec’s doctoring the information.” She showed me a series of calculations and processes being applied to data feed. Every piece of information to enter this loop was changed in some way, rendering it a work of utter fiction – the exact opposite of DeStNI’s remit.
“But, why? This doesn’t make any sense at all. He’s been pressuring me into getting results from something he’s been fabricating. I don’t get it.”
“He’s setting you up, Ted. Don’t ask me why, but Alec is trying to make you out as a misinformer.”
I was lost for words. I couldn’t believe that anyone would want to do that to me, let alone Alec. He was never my best friend, but I was no threat to him, nor did I conduct myself poorly at work.
“But that’s ridiculous! We were able to stumble into his office and find his manipulations without even trying. Surely he’d take at least some measures to protect himself if he was trying to spark an investigation to get me caught.”
“Hey, I didn’t say he was setting you up well. Maybe he’s just an idiot or thinks that he’ll be above suspicion because he ratted you out. Either way the evidence is clear – he’s been monitoring you and forcing you to work on bad data. Ted, we need to take this to the ministry.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Take it to the ministry? I’m not going to willingly walk into that nightmare.”
“It’s either that or the nightmare will walk itself to you, Ted.” The prospect of a nightmare growing legs and ambulating my way was horrifying – 20% more horrifying than the prospect of a visit to the ministry. The numbers were clear – we had to go.
The
following morning, 1 hour and 13 minutes prior to the start of our shift, Lucy
and I arrived at the Ministry of Vagueness, Guesses and Misinformation - a
tangled web of OverGov-sanctioned lies and misdirection. We stood outside the
entrance and surveyed the tall mis-matched brass doors, neither one of which
fit the doorway in any manner. It seemed that the spirit of guesswork had been
embraced as early as the construction phase.
“I am over 99% certain that this place will make me physically ill.” I told her, reflexively quantifying again in the face of such horror.
“Let’s just get it over with. It won’t be that bad, I’m sure.”
The doors led us into a reception desk for the ministry, or at least, what passed for one. The sign above the receptionist read “Vampire: Do not tumble dry”. If this had been DeStNI I would simply have followed the signs to the correct location and ignored the reception desk altogether, however the signed directions in the ministry were less than exemplary. By a margin of 100%. A sign which read “This way maybe?” supposedly pointed to the department of guesses, directions to the department of vagueness consisted solely of “Over there” with no arrow at all, and two separate signs pointed in opposite directions, both marked “Nebraska”, for the department of misinformation.
“Argh I hate this place already!” I grumbled at Lucy, in a tone I reserved for the top 10% of irritations.
“Oh it’s not that bad. It’s confusing and I have no idea why anyone would design their building this way, but hatred may be a step too far here, Ted. Let’s just ask the vampire for directions.” she said with a wink. My stomach fluttered again.
The sign-posted vampire was a woman whom I would place between 38 and 43, wearing a grey blazer over a white blouse. The accepted norms of the office would suggest that she was wearing either grey trousers or a grey skirt, but I had no direct data to confirm or deny alignment with expectation. The distinct lack of bloodstains or fear of sunlight indicated that her designation as a vampire may have been made in error.
“Excuse me?” Lucy asked as we reached the vampire’s lair. “We’re trying to get to the department of misinformation to report an infraction. Could you please tell us which way to go?”
“The right way.” The supposed-vampire answered, smiling.
“Which would be?” Lucy persisted.
“Not the wrong way.”
“Fine. Will you please show me which way is the right way?”
“Probably not.” The vampire replied earnestly. It was too painful to watch any longer, and I had to step in.
“Hello. We’re from DeStNI and we’re on very important business, so would you please help us get to where we’re trying to go?”
The vampire sighed and shook her head at me. “I don’t work for DeStNI, so I shouldn’t interfere with DeStNI business.” I hit her with a flat and unimpressed expression. “Sorry.” She added, sounding anything but.
“Look, just bloody well help us or I swear I will tumble dry you!” I shouted. I’d lost control and resorted to laundry-based threats based on nearby signage.
“Well, really!” the vampire exclaimed, shocked. Even Lucy seemed surprised, but there was an approving edge to her expression. The vampire picked up her phone and pressed one of the speed dial buttons.
“Hello? Harry? Yes it’s the front desk…. Yes I have some DeStNI people here. They’re jabbering about misinformation... yes something about an infraction, but they’re being awfully aggressive. One of them threatened me… yes that’s right, tumble drying… I know, I know, I’m sure he can see the sign… OK… OK… bye.” She hung up again. “Please wait here, someone will be down to deal with you or something.”
“Thank you.” Lucy said tersely. I said nothing, because after threatening a receptionist, vampire or not, there’s nowhere else for a conversation to go.
“I am over 99% certain that this place will make me physically ill.” I told her, reflexively quantifying again in the face of such horror.
“Let’s just get it over with. It won’t be that bad, I’m sure.”
The doors led us into a reception desk for the ministry, or at least, what passed for one. The sign above the receptionist read “Vampire: Do not tumble dry”. If this had been DeStNI I would simply have followed the signs to the correct location and ignored the reception desk altogether, however the signed directions in the ministry were less than exemplary. By a margin of 100%. A sign which read “This way maybe?” supposedly pointed to the department of guesses, directions to the department of vagueness consisted solely of “Over there” with no arrow at all, and two separate signs pointed in opposite directions, both marked “Nebraska”, for the department of misinformation.
“Argh I hate this place already!” I grumbled at Lucy, in a tone I reserved for the top 10% of irritations.
“Oh it’s not that bad. It’s confusing and I have no idea why anyone would design their building this way, but hatred may be a step too far here, Ted. Let’s just ask the vampire for directions.” she said with a wink. My stomach fluttered again.
The sign-posted vampire was a woman whom I would place between 38 and 43, wearing a grey blazer over a white blouse. The accepted norms of the office would suggest that she was wearing either grey trousers or a grey skirt, but I had no direct data to confirm or deny alignment with expectation. The distinct lack of bloodstains or fear of sunlight indicated that her designation as a vampire may have been made in error.
“Excuse me?” Lucy asked as we reached the vampire’s lair. “We’re trying to get to the department of misinformation to report an infraction. Could you please tell us which way to go?”
“The right way.” The supposed-vampire answered, smiling.
“Which would be?” Lucy persisted.
“Not the wrong way.”
“Fine. Will you please show me which way is the right way?”
“Probably not.” The vampire replied earnestly. It was too painful to watch any longer, and I had to step in.
“Hello. We’re from DeStNI and we’re on very important business, so would you please help us get to where we’re trying to go?”
The vampire sighed and shook her head at me. “I don’t work for DeStNI, so I shouldn’t interfere with DeStNI business.” I hit her with a flat and unimpressed expression. “Sorry.” She added, sounding anything but.
“Look, just bloody well help us or I swear I will tumble dry you!” I shouted. I’d lost control and resorted to laundry-based threats based on nearby signage.
“Well, really!” the vampire exclaimed, shocked. Even Lucy seemed surprised, but there was an approving edge to her expression. The vampire picked up her phone and pressed one of the speed dial buttons.
“Hello? Harry? Yes it’s the front desk…. Yes I have some DeStNI people here. They’re jabbering about misinformation... yes something about an infraction, but they’re being awfully aggressive. One of them threatened me… yes that’s right, tumble drying… I know, I know, I’m sure he can see the sign… OK… OK… bye.” She hung up again. “Please wait here, someone will be down to deal with you or something.”
“Thank you.” Lucy said tersely. I said nothing, because after threatening a receptionist, vampire or not, there’s nowhere else for a conversation to go.
We
waited in the atrium for a few minutes, before Harry arrived through a trapdoor
just behind us.
“Hello Ted. Hello Lucy.” We both took a minor interlude to let out a surprised scream, and then responded.
“Harry, we have some important information for you, with a confidence level of over 99%.” I told him urgently. This was the sole purpose of our visit, so it was of the utmost important that this information was imparted without delay.
“Well that’s nice to know. Is that all? If so then I’ll be off.”
“No! We need to tell you the information first! It’s about misinformation and it’s the most important news I’ve had to tell anyone in over 5 years.”
“Regardless of how long it has been since you’ve had something interesting to say, misinformation is the business of the ministry, not of DeStNI. Please leave it to us, Ted.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. The misinformation you’ve heard about from DeStNI is wrong.”
“Oh…well, that’s nice of you to say, Ted. By definition misinformation should be as wrong as possible. Did you come all this way just to tell me that?”
“No! No, I mean that the leak was coming from Alec.”
“Yes, you’re right. Alec Carter called in the misinformation leak.”
“No- I- argh” was the best I could manage. Thankfully, Lucy stepped in with her grasp of complete sentences.
“I think what my friend- no sorry, what my moron is trying to tell you, is that he has been set up. You have been misinformed regarding the misinformation from the start.”
Harry physically stepped back. “Alec tried to misinform the ministry? That is a bold accusation, coming from the prime suspect. What makes you suspect Mr Carter?”
“The evidence is all on Alec’s terminal in his office – proof of him modifying the data streams before they reached me.” I told him.
“And how did you come to be sifting through Alec’s terminal?” Harry asked calmly. It seemed that he was able to ignore his natural urge to be vague and tiresome when it suited him.
“We, erm, broke his window with a bin and then got curious when we tried to clean it up. Please, take a look for yourself. You’ll know which office it is because of all the broken glass.”
Harry nodded and started to walk away, apparently seeing nothing suspicious about surprise evidence found at the scene of an obvious breaking and entering.
“Where are you going?” I asked him, not feeling that our conversation was really finished yet.
He paused for a second and looked around before answering me. “North.” The irritating side of Harry was apparently back.
“Fine. Just make sure you go far enough North to find Alec’s office.”
“Hello Ted. Hello Lucy.” We both took a minor interlude to let out a surprised scream, and then responded.
“Harry, we have some important information for you, with a confidence level of over 99%.” I told him urgently. This was the sole purpose of our visit, so it was of the utmost important that this information was imparted without delay.
“Well that’s nice to know. Is that all? If so then I’ll be off.”
“No! We need to tell you the information first! It’s about misinformation and it’s the most important news I’ve had to tell anyone in over 5 years.”
“Regardless of how long it has been since you’ve had something interesting to say, misinformation is the business of the ministry, not of DeStNI. Please leave it to us, Ted.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do. The misinformation you’ve heard about from DeStNI is wrong.”
“Oh…well, that’s nice of you to say, Ted. By definition misinformation should be as wrong as possible. Did you come all this way just to tell me that?”
“No! No, I mean that the leak was coming from Alec.”
“Yes, you’re right. Alec Carter called in the misinformation leak.”
“No- I- argh” was the best I could manage. Thankfully, Lucy stepped in with her grasp of complete sentences.
“I think what my friend- no sorry, what my moron is trying to tell you, is that he has been set up. You have been misinformed regarding the misinformation from the start.”
Harry physically stepped back. “Alec tried to misinform the ministry? That is a bold accusation, coming from the prime suspect. What makes you suspect Mr Carter?”
“The evidence is all on Alec’s terminal in his office – proof of him modifying the data streams before they reached me.” I told him.
“And how did you come to be sifting through Alec’s terminal?” Harry asked calmly. It seemed that he was able to ignore his natural urge to be vague and tiresome when it suited him.
“We, erm, broke his window with a bin and then got curious when we tried to clean it up. Please, take a look for yourself. You’ll know which office it is because of all the broken glass.”
Harry nodded and started to walk away, apparently seeing nothing suspicious about surprise evidence found at the scene of an obvious breaking and entering.
“Where are you going?” I asked him, not feeling that our conversation was really finished yet.
He paused for a second and looked around before answering me. “North.” The irritating side of Harry was apparently back.
“Fine. Just make sure you go far enough North to find Alec’s office.”
A
ministry task-force arrived at Alec’s office within the hour, and he was almost
immediately found guilty of manipulating DeStNI data. It seemed that leaving
evidence on an unsecured terminal, which itself was unattended, was not the
perfect cover for a crime after all. Regardless, the ministry gave him a
discrediting worthy of the most hardened criminal. The Times detailed his
exploits as a serial toilet-blocker, The Telegraph revealed that Alec had been
caught spreading woodworm with menaces, and the Mail ran a daring article on
his ‘secret past’, alongside a crudely doctored image of Alec high-fiving
Joseph Stalin. Somehow, that story was questioned least of all.
A follow-up search of Alec’s terminal revealed that he had also been creating a file on Lucy in the few weeks before we threw a bin through his window. As it turned out, she had been spending increasing amounts of her day-dreaming time looking towards me. Perhaps Alec had been pre-empting our refuse-heavy attack on his office-space and was trying to remove us before we could strike, or perhaps he just didn’t like overly ambitious and talented members of staff in his department. Whatever the reason, he was no longer our problem. The most senior member of our team, Lenny Blithe, was appointed as acting leader of our department, and DeStNI business carried on as normal – normal being defined as days in which over 85% of activities performed were present in over 85% of working days. It was a wordy but effective definition.
Shortly after his appointment, Lenny approached me at my terminal.
“Ted, I want to say thank you again for your 97th percentile efforts in rooting out corruption within DeStNI.”
“You’re welcome.” I told him. It was the appropriate response to a ‘thank you’ in over 99% of cases, although I would scarcely describe Lenny as ‘welcome’ to my efforts to prevent slander. Still, I’m not one to argue with the stats.
“As you know, it’s against department policy to reward you monetarily,” I nodded to confirm that I knew. The lecture on why that was the case had been dreadful. “however, I would still like to give you something by way of recognition. How would you like to be relocated to desk 37B?”
I didn’t know what to say, although the statistically significant answers were ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The chances were that Lenny had read the files that Alec had amassed and thus learned my desires, although it was still possible that he had worked it out on his own – after all, if I could objectively show desk 37B to be the prime office location in a number of ways then so could anyone else.
I turned my gaze to Lucy, and she was giving me a forced smile. It wasn’t the smile she gave me when she was mocking me, nor was it the smile she wore when I made a fool of myself. It had less life to it than that, but somehow more meaning. Everything was so tragically unquantifiable that I couldn’t bear to look at it, or even to have it exist anymore.
“Thank you for the offer, Lenny, I appreciate it over 75% more than I appreciated anything Alec ever offered me, but if Alec’s data has shown me anything it’s that this desk has something 37B could never contend with.”
Lucy looked away, her expression an approximately 30/70 split of disgust and embarrassment. But then she shone her mocking grin at me, and I knew to a six sigma confidence level that 37B had nothing left to tempt me at all.
A follow-up search of Alec’s terminal revealed that he had also been creating a file on Lucy in the few weeks before we threw a bin through his window. As it turned out, she had been spending increasing amounts of her day-dreaming time looking towards me. Perhaps Alec had been pre-empting our refuse-heavy attack on his office-space and was trying to remove us before we could strike, or perhaps he just didn’t like overly ambitious and talented members of staff in his department. Whatever the reason, he was no longer our problem. The most senior member of our team, Lenny Blithe, was appointed as acting leader of our department, and DeStNI business carried on as normal – normal being defined as days in which over 85% of activities performed were present in over 85% of working days. It was a wordy but effective definition.
Shortly after his appointment, Lenny approached me at my terminal.
“Ted, I want to say thank you again for your 97th percentile efforts in rooting out corruption within DeStNI.”
“You’re welcome.” I told him. It was the appropriate response to a ‘thank you’ in over 99% of cases, although I would scarcely describe Lenny as ‘welcome’ to my efforts to prevent slander. Still, I’m not one to argue with the stats.
“As you know, it’s against department policy to reward you monetarily,” I nodded to confirm that I knew. The lecture on why that was the case had been dreadful. “however, I would still like to give you something by way of recognition. How would you like to be relocated to desk 37B?”
I didn’t know what to say, although the statistically significant answers were ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The chances were that Lenny had read the files that Alec had amassed and thus learned my desires, although it was still possible that he had worked it out on his own – after all, if I could objectively show desk 37B to be the prime office location in a number of ways then so could anyone else.
I turned my gaze to Lucy, and she was giving me a forced smile. It wasn’t the smile she gave me when she was mocking me, nor was it the smile she wore when I made a fool of myself. It had less life to it than that, but somehow more meaning. Everything was so tragically unquantifiable that I couldn’t bear to look at it, or even to have it exist anymore.
“Thank you for the offer, Lenny, I appreciate it over 75% more than I appreciated anything Alec ever offered me, but if Alec’s data has shown me anything it’s that this desk has something 37B could never contend with.”
Lucy looked away, her expression an approximately 30/70 split of disgust and embarrassment. But then she shone her mocking grin at me, and I knew to a six sigma confidence level that 37B had nothing left to tempt me at all.
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