I guess Disdain is how you feel about my suggestions at the top of my comments :) I don't blame you ;-)
Disdain After Cass left, which took longer than he'd expected, Fabian went and checked the paperwork in the filing cabinets for the details of this 'wireless' network that she'd been talking about. It annoyed him when she seemed to know more than him, though even if pressed he couldn't have explained why. It was all present in the previous minutes of the Directors' Meeting, together with another reference number explaining their need which looked oddly familiar. It took a further twenty minutes of searching before he found it though: in the current minutes. "A forward reference," he murmured under his breath. "The sneaky bastards, they've started referring to documents we won't receive until after we've voted on the proposal." There was a smile on his face, albeit a tight one, as he tapped out another email, this time just to the Directors and not the entire Meeting, to point this fact out. He wasn't certain that Cass wouldn't find out about this somehow, but if she did then he'd have to accept that there was a very large leak in this email list and consider it compromised. When Cass hadn't reappeared an hour later and replies had started appearing, some to him personally (although there as the possibility they were bcc'd) and others to the whole group, he relaxed a little. There were probably some group aliases on the main Meeting email and it was normal for various administrative functions to attach their own group emails to avoid important information being missed or lost. He was also gratified by the outpouring of rage he was seeing; he rather thought that there was little chance now of the next meeting even getting to vote on the order of assignment of Assessors's offices in Directorates as the Minister would have to defend and explain this forward reference.
His favourite reply though was utterly disdainful of the Minister's tactics and suggested that they resolve the issue by insisting on sharing the new wireless network with the whole of the Empire as soon as possible to avoid any suggestions of favouritism or impropriety. The dryness of the email and the understated disgust hidden by the disdain was so wonderful that Fabian found himself checking the sender to see who he should congratulate next time he saw them. He was slightly startled when he found the sender was Counter Insurgency Group A -- who definitely had not been on his original list of recipients. "Does that make sense?" he asked, steepling his fingers in front of him. "Are they telling me they have at least one Director on board, or are they telling me they've hacked my email somehow?" The tap at the door stopped that train of thought before it even pulled out of its station, and he sighed, stood up, and called, "Come in!".
The next few days passed in the usual dusty clouds of paperwork, electronic paperwork, Cass's odder demands, the Maestro's extremely odd demands, and occasionally seeing Rystin around the building looking busy but smiling slightly. Fabian tried to speak to him a couple of times, but never managed to catch up with him before someone else would decide they urgently needed the Director's advice; on the occasion when this was to ask where the Ladies's toilets were located Fabian had to control his temper quite severely that he'd been interrupted for something so trivial. And didn't quite succeed, so gave the poor, quite inconvenienced-looking woman, directions to the furthest toilets in the building. Cass, who had been passing as well, gave him a disdainful look. "These things will come back to haunt you," she said. "That might be the secretary of another Director, you know, and she'll remember this." "I assumed she was a member of the public," said Fabian, "given how well-dressed she is," and walked off before Cass could work out if she'd been insulted or not.
3 comments:
I guess Disdain is how you feel about my suggestions at the top of my comments :) I don't blame you ;-)
Disdain
After Cass left, which took longer than he'd expected, Fabian went and checked the paperwork in the filing cabinets for the details of this 'wireless' network that she'd been talking about. It annoyed him when she seemed to know more than him, though even if pressed he couldn't have explained why. It was all present in the previous minutes of the Directors' Meeting, together with another reference number explaining their need which looked oddly familiar. It took a further twenty minutes of searching before he found it though: in the current minutes.
"A forward reference," he murmured under his breath. "The sneaky bastards, they've started referring to documents we won't receive until after we've voted on the proposal."
There was a smile on his face, albeit a tight one, as he tapped out another email, this time just to the Directors and not the entire Meeting, to point this fact out. He wasn't certain that Cass wouldn't find out about this somehow, but if she did then he'd have to accept that there was a very large leak in this email list and consider it compromised.
When Cass hadn't reappeared an hour later and replies had started appearing, some to him personally (although there as the possibility they were bcc'd) and others to the whole group, he relaxed a little. There were probably some group aliases on the main Meeting email and it was normal for various administrative functions to attach their own group emails to avoid important information being missed or lost. He was also gratified by the outpouring of rage he was seeing; he rather thought that there was little chance now of the next meeting even getting to vote on the order of assignment of Assessors's offices in Directorates as the Minister would have to defend and explain this forward reference.
His favourite reply though was utterly disdainful of the Minister's tactics and suggested that they resolve the issue by insisting on sharing the new wireless network with the whole of the Empire as soon as possible to avoid any suggestions of favouritism or impropriety. The dryness of the email and the understated disgust hidden by the disdain was so wonderful that Fabian found himself checking the sender to see who he should congratulate next time he saw them. He was slightly startled when he found the sender was Counter Insurgency Group A -- who definitely had not been on his original list of recipients.
"Does that make sense?" he asked, steepling his fingers in front of him. "Are they telling me they have at least one Director on board, or are they telling me they've hacked my email somehow?"
The tap at the door stopped that train of thought before it even pulled out of its station, and he sighed, stood up, and called, "Come in!".
The next few days passed in the usual dusty clouds of paperwork, electronic paperwork, Cass's odder demands, the Maestro's extremely odd demands, and occasionally seeing Rystin around the building looking busy but smiling slightly. Fabian tried to speak to him a couple of times, but never managed to catch up with him before someone else would decide they urgently needed the Director's advice; on the occasion when this was to ask where the Ladies's toilets were located Fabian had to control his temper quite severely that he'd been interrupted for something so trivial. And didn't quite succeed, so gave the poor, quite inconvenienced-looking woman, directions to the furthest toilets in the building. Cass, who had been passing as well, gave him a disdainful look.
"These things will come back to haunt you," she said. "That might be the secretary of another Director, you know, and she'll remember this."
"I assumed she was a member of the public," said Fabian, "given how well-dressed she is," and walked off before Cass could work out if she'd been insulted or not.
Greg - hah, no.
Enjoyed this entry for the way it both moved things along and touched on some interesting points. Nice to see Rystin settling in!
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