NAV Trigger Point: An Opco Boone Adventure: Difference between revisions

{{a|opco|}}{{smallcaps|“OK, Dee — let’s}} take it to forty thousand.”  

Instantly, Boone felt his weight shift back as the wingsuit’s ailerons trimmed, its leading edge adjusted, and power surged to the flanks. Exiting a flush of endorphin, the Eagle Squadron Commander soared, bursting through a gossamer skin of cirrus and into a vaulted dome of vivid cobalt.  

He whistled softly to himself. “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.”  

“Altitude reset confirmed: forty thousand feet level, Commander. Transferring control back to your fulcrum.”  

As the power surged back to his core, Boone swooped and dived towards cloud-base, cork-screwing in, flattening, skimming the meringue cloud-tops then arcing back up into the sun, just to feel the exhilaration. The ''freedom'', just to soar, glide and gambol, unshackled from the earthly bonds of administration. Here he was a mature legal eagle, at the height of his capabilities, set free and empowered by the unlimited, free capacity to compute, ''to do as legal eagles do''.  

The view was spectacular: the patina of atmospheric risk-haze was just thick enough to render the whole landscape in a glamour-glow, through which the sunlit uplands glinted and sparkled like rare crystals on a crown of green velvet. He could see ''everything''. He was master of it ''all''.

A [[SaaS]]-generated four-dimensional risk matrix overlaid the gently undulating topography below. Boone’s vision was lucid. He ESPERed in the resolution on his risk radar. The jewels expanded to a neat geometric grid, each sector systematically tended by hover-bots, the whole field in each square a unique pastel hue ranging from lime to rich racing green.

As ever, Denning was a master of west-country understatement. “RAG indicators in a tolerable range across the board, Commander. Exceptions queue correctives administered in line with [[playbook]] edition 5.09.6 revision 8.”  

“Certified fit for GC use 4 days ago, confirmed valid and in good standing. Holo-signed by Commander-General Carpenter herself.”

Boone ESPERed in further. He zeroed in on a gleaming white arbitration droid gliding above an agro-sector. The grid’s colour-grade oscillated between lime and burnt lemon — this indicated some hostiles, but operational threat controlled. Boone could even see the escalation cloud hovering above the grid-sector, sparking and fizzing as alive with starlight: this was how dispute resolution rendered on the electro-forensic frequency spectrum. The arb-bot trawled the sector, its exo-skeletal booms extended behind it, as delicate as dragonfly wings, methodically harvesting the glitter, plucking it out of the air with tiny sparks and flares, and on-the-fly quantifying the yield per hour on digital readouts with real-time syncs to his display. Boone still found it breath-taking: risk management in the singularity was beyond the wildest dreams of a terrestrial.  

Boone’s trusty chatbot replied instantly. “Nothing to do, Commander. I established a secure real-time uplink to the [[steerco]] [[dashboard]] this morning. It pipes data from your [[service catalog]] monitors directly into the RAG batteries.”

“Hell’s bells! Isn’t the raw data noisy?”

“''Whoa''. That is amazing, Dee. Those risk decays are a thing of beauty. How are they so ''smooth''?”

“Relax, Boone: the frequency-cancelling algorithms in the model strip all non-linear activity out of the dataset past the fourth standard deviation. We applied the technique across the value-chain and it cleaned up the data beautifully — took out all kinds of minimal delta anomalies. It has revolutionised our risk management: we have been able to implement comprehensive real-time risk monitoring across the [[Taxonomy|taxonomic]] spectrum. Any behavioural anomaly, anywhere in the grid, that crosses that minimal threshold is tagged, monitored and moderated long before it can disrupt operational integrity. That is why there hasn’t been a single GCHQ intervention in four years. There’s simply nothing to do, Commander. Enjoy the view!”

Boone flipped onto auto and looked down range. There were GC insignias out in force: dozens of Eagle Squadron pilots floated lazily below him, gliding on the thermals above their coverage sectors.  

Five klicks to the west, Boone could see [[Ziffer von Rechnung|von Rechnung]]’s giant dirigible ascending through the diaphanous smear of micro-risk. A smarm of rainbow-coloured compliance drones milled about the great hulk, like a flotilla pleasure craft welcoming a warship back from battle. Millions of tiny electrical currents arced here and there from the drones, drawing energy from the air and funnelling it into the grid. It was a brilliant, placid, beautiful perpetual motion machine.

“I don’t think I need this, anymore, Dee,” Boone said, unclipping his SME utility belt. He inspected the compartments and attachments. The hold-harmless calibrator suddenly seemed unwieldy — heavy in his hands. He ran his thumb along the rough bevel of warranty rectifier. “I mean, what use is it, really, with all this manotech?”

Boone let it go. There was a quick pinch of adrenaline as he loosened his grip, and then, as the belt fell, tumbling end on end, he felt a profound sense of joy. Of progression. of transcendence — as if he were graduating; transitioning; morphing into a higher consciousness.

“And this precedent magazine. What ''use'' is it?” Boone counted out the snub-nosed mezz-tranches. So ungainly. He scattered them into the sun. They fell through the risk stratum below, sparkling and flaming out as they succumbed to the arb-bot booms. “I mean, why?”

“I don’t even need this goddamn wingsuit, Dee.” Boone unbuckled the body clip and released the shoulder harness. The shell came away and floated in the sun. “It is all just cost. Unnecessary cost.”

“It’s just cost, Commander. And cost is the real enemy. ''There’s'' the existential risk facing the organisation. ''Cost''. It has to go.”

Imperceptibly, the taxonomy grid seemed to ''ripen''. There was a rosiness to some of the sectors he had not noticed earlier. It seemed to flush.

Boone reflected on what the Digital Voice Assistant had just said. ‘Selfless’. Wait a minute: ''selfless''? What did ''that'' mean?

Well, by re-routing your ongoing cost accruals back to the operating service line, Commander. That is a selfless contribution to the budget projection.

Boone was drifting downward now. The hoverdroids become busier over the edge sectors. some of the sectors in the grids were rendering a definite orange colour; one or two had graduating into red. Odd — the edge sectors were were the risk taxonomy assessed the ''least'' risk. This was sleepy stuff: benchmarks; market infrastructure, supply chain financing. ''Nothing happened here''. Boone recalibrated his scope — the mist across the whole grid seemed to be thickening.

“Headcount? Dee, what are you saying?”  

Drones were flaming out. They were failing. They were falling out of the sky. Up high, in their wing-suits, the Eagle Squad fliers were just helpless emasculated spectators. Then their navigation systems began malfunctioning, victims of redundancy overload. Their wing-suits caught fire. Boone watched the world come to its end as he thundered through the atmosphere, falling hundreds of metres per second now, at terminal velocity. He could scarcely breathe.  

Georgie slapped Commander Boone hard across his face. BOONE WAKE UP.

Opco Boone bolted up out of his bunk. His eyes were like saucers. Just the bare, elephant spunk grey of the Eagle Squad’s dormitory walls.

“Jesus, Boone, you were in deep!” said Georgie. Come on. Carpenter’s summoned us to an urgent briefing.