time, despite the lack of navaids.
You review Number One Client’s background yet again as you pedal along beneath the trees that line Dean Park Crescent (all the crescents here are tree-lined these days, legacy of a government scheme to roll back urban warming), giving your thighs as thorough a work-out as any stationary cycling machine.
Number One Client has been of interest to the Operation for some time. He has a number of technical aptitudes that have brought him to prominence in the employment database, and to your personal attention as a candidate for head-hunting. In particular, he’s been of use in the past for organizing medium-scale redistribution of grey-market fabber feedstock. He’s proficient in highly scalable network-mediated marketing operations with high-yield outputs, and has a proven record of organizing wholesale-supply-chain ventures that include unmonitored cross-border trade, central multi-carrier dispatch of bespoke custom products, and VAT evasion. Which, all in all, is a pretty good match for what you’re looking for in a chief operations officer.
The Gorilla didn’t see any reason to employ someone with Number One Client’s characteristics, but you’ve already established his operational shortcomings. The Gorilla’s idea of how to sell this particular product was straight out of the nineteenth-century arts and crafts movement. Whereas Number One Client’s business experience is a comfortably close approximation to the enterprise you intend to bootstrap; the only question remaining is, is Number One Client suitable management material? Especially at the level you’re planning to grow the business to.
Number One Client is not, alas, a flawless ruby in the dust. He has a criminal conviction and has served a stretch in prison—that, on its own, is sufficient to disqualify him from executive progression within the Operation. But failure to obey the eleventh commandment is no obstacle to a management post, under suitable governance, and you need somebody with Number One Client’s aptitudes and (equally importantly) local connections. A preliminary interview is indicated.
And so you turn into an avenue of big stone houses and dismount at the kerb beside Number One Client’s town house, lock the bicycle, walk up to the front door, and (careful not to touch it with your bare skin) ring Michael Blair’s doorbell.
LIZ: Black Swans
You’re out of the office early (flexitime is one of the perks of the back-office inspector’s rank these days) and go home to get changed for your date with Dorothy. Not that you’re flustered or anything: If your life was a house, she’d merely be the unexploded bomb ticking away in the wreckage of your cellar, capable of blowing you all the way to Oz at any moment.
You rush home and:
• dive into the kitchen for a glass of wine, only to stare in dismay at the dirty plates in the kitchen sink,
• dive into the bathroom for a quick shower, only to stare in dismay at your haystack hair in the mirror,
• dive into the bedroom for a fresh outfit, only to stare in dismay at the contents of the wardrobe (two stale party frocks, various jeans and tees, and at least eight neatly laundered business suits and accompanying blouses).
This is your life, and there’s no rug big enough to sweep it all under—at least not in the half-hour you’ve allowed yourself for doing the Clark Kent/Superman phone-booth thing before you rush out again. So you compromise on:
• a glass of water,
• your hair savagely brushed and tied back to conceal the creeping anarchy and split ends,
• a different trouser suit,
• earrings and a necklace that’d get you sent home from the station in disgrace if you wore them on shift (just to remind you that you’re off duty).
Before you go out, you stare at the bathroom unit uncertainly, reflecting. You’ve spent twenty minutes rushing around like a schoolgirl on a first date, and to what end? It’s not like
You review Number One Client’s background yet again as you pedal along beneath the trees that line Dean Park Crescent (all the crescents here are tree-lined these days, legacy of a government scheme to roll back urban warming), giving your thighs as thorough a work-out as any stationary cycling machine.
Number One Client has been of interest to the Operation for some time. He has a number of technical aptitudes that have brought him to prominence in the employment database, and to your personal attention as a candidate for head-hunting. In particular, he’s been of use in the past for organizing medium-scale redistribution of grey-market fabber feedstock. He’s proficient in highly scalable network-mediated marketing operations with high-yield outputs, and has a proven record of organizing wholesale-supply-chain ventures that include unmonitored cross-border trade, central multi-carrier dispatch of bespoke custom products, and VAT evasion. Which, all in all, is a pretty good match for what you’re looking for in a chief operations officer.
The Gorilla didn’t see any reason to employ someone with Number One Client’s characteristics, but you’ve already established his operational shortcomings. The Gorilla’s idea of how to sell this particular product was straight out of the nineteenth-century arts and crafts movement. Whereas Number One Client’s business experience is a comfortably close approximation to the enterprise you intend to bootstrap; the only question remaining is, is Number One Client suitable management material? Especially at the level you’re planning to grow the business to.
Number One Client is not, alas, a flawless ruby in the dust. He has a criminal conviction and has served a stretch in prison—that, on its own, is sufficient to disqualify him from executive progression within the Operation. But failure to obey the eleventh commandment is no obstacle to a management post, under suitable governance, and you need somebody with Number One Client’s aptitudes and (equally importantly) local connections. A preliminary interview is indicated.
And so you turn into an avenue of big stone houses and dismount at the kerb beside Number One Client’s town house, lock the bicycle, walk up to the front door, and (careful not to touch it with your bare skin) ring Michael Blair’s doorbell.
LIZ: Black Swans
You’re out of the office early (flexitime is one of the perks of the back-office inspector’s rank these days) and go home to get changed for your date with Dorothy. Not that you’re flustered or anything: If your life was a house, she’d merely be the unexploded bomb ticking away in the wreckage of your cellar, capable of blowing you all the way to Oz at any moment.
You rush home and:
• dive into the kitchen for a glass of wine, only to stare in dismay at the dirty plates in the kitchen sink,
• dive into the bathroom for a quick shower, only to stare in dismay at your haystack hair in the mirror,
• dive into the bedroom for a fresh outfit, only to stare in dismay at the contents of the wardrobe (two stale party frocks, various jeans and tees, and at least eight neatly laundered business suits and accompanying blouses).
This is your life, and there’s no rug big enough to sweep it all under—at least not in the half-hour you’ve allowed yourself for doing the Clark Kent/Superman phone-booth thing before you rush out again. So you compromise on:
• a glass of water,
• your hair savagely brushed and tied back to conceal the creeping anarchy and split ends,
• a different trouser suit,
• earrings and a necklace that’d get you sent home from the station in disgrace if you wore them on shift (just to remind you that you’re off duty).
Before you go out, you stare at the bathroom unit uncertainly, reflecting. You’ve spent twenty minutes rushing around like a schoolgirl on a first date, and to what end? It’s not like
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