Trope-a-Day: MIB

MIB: The five… ah, four, directorates of Imperial State Security would be horrified to ever be this unsubtle – as would, for that matter, the Librarians of Silence – and, frankly, even when secrets need to be kept, they know perfectly well that eldrae don’t intimidate worth a damn.  Using any standard MIB tactics short of actual memory redaction is probably the surest way to get whatever knowledge you were concerned to keep secret spread absolutely everywhere on general principles.

Got to be persuasive, and disappear stuff quietly.

Reading Back

“On the one hand, yes, we do find it repugnant to restrict the freedoms of speech and information, even to this limited and circumscribed extent.”

“On the other hand, since we have an entire ward filled with babbling lunatics who thought that the Silent Library was ‘where we’re hiding the good stuff’ rather than ‘a prison for hideously dangerous brain-eating information life’, we’re still pretty sure it’s the right call, y’know?”

“No, you can’t see them. Some of that babble is also hideously dangerous brain-eating information life, and we’re not absolutely confident that the rest isn’t.”

– briefing new members of the Select Committee on Existential Threats