The Annihilation Score by Charles Stross

a sentence encounters a full stop.
    I can’t shake the sense that today is my very own hyper-personalized out of context problem. I talk to my violin in the privacy of my own head: fine. When my violin talks back and tries to use me as a puppet to murder my husband, that’s not so fine. When I go on to nearly kill a man in the middle of Trafalgar Square live on network TV, that’s even less fine. But then there’s
this
.
    What should I expect next, if the day continues to go downhill at this rate? An invading army of elves for after-dinner amusement?
    I’m so wrapped up in myself that I nearly walk into a familiar-looking man in a rumpled suit clutching a battered red leather file box under one arm. I flinch violently and nearly push Lecter’s quick-release button by accident: “Whoops, sorry,” I say, trying to force my heart back down into my chest where it belongs.
    â€œNot to—” He does a double take, noticing my violin case. “Ah! You must be the star of the show.” He offers me a handshake: I accept it instinctively. “Jolly good. See you later, must dash.” And with that, the Justice Minister—number five in the Cabinet—deftly sidesteps around me, body-swerves between Vik and the Senior Auditor, and barrels down the front steps.
    Oh dear God, I’ve fallen into “The Thick of It.”
    â€œWas that . . . ?” Vikram asks faintly.
    â€œStiff upper lip,” murmurs Dr. Armstrong. “Yes, it was. If you’d like to go in, Dr. O’Brien, they’ll be expecting you. We’ll be back to pick you up at six, when the meeting’s over.”
    I will
not
show fear.
I smile at him, baring my teeth like a good little girl. “Looking forward to it.” Then I enter the dragon’s den.
    *   *   *
    COBRA is Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, on the first floor of the Cabinet Office building on Whitehall. Contrary to media folklore, there is no such thing as “the COBRA committee.” That implies an implausible level of permanence. COBRA is simply the place where ministers and senior civil servants meet to be briefed on, assess, and respond to civil and military emergencies.
    It may be on the first floor rather than in a reinforced bunker, but there are no windows in COBRA’s reinforced walls, and the whole section of the building is surrounded by not one, but two Faraday cages and an airlock tunnel lined with metal detectors and other sensors. Naturally, there are discreet security checkpoints that make your typical airport boarding experience look like it’s run by Larry, Moe, and Curly, and the whole building is contained within the securitycordon that embraces Downing Street, much of Whitehall, and the Houses of Parliament.
    On my way in to COBRA they take my handbag and phone. They don’t take my earrings or necklace, but they check them over with handheld emission detectors. As for Lecter . . . he’s just going to have to get used to the hand searches. The quick-release springs in his case worry them, but in the end we reach a tense compromise: after they X-ray and manually examine him, I leave him in a security locker (along with my handbag and phone), but they let me take both the keys to the locker.
    It’s funny: I’m fully dressed but I feel naked without my violin.
    The Briefing Room itself is nearly filled by a thoroughly modern bleached pine boardroom table. One wall is a solid slab of TV screens, and there are charge points for laptops and tablets on the table—internet, too, I gather, but not for the likes of me: requests for access have to be cleared in advance by CESG. Today’s session is chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister, a last-minute substitution due to the Big Cheese himself being distracted by an opportunity to be seen rubbing snouts with his frenemy the Mayor by whatever proportion of the populace still bother watching the News