Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound
1.3      Making a Splash
1.3.3    An Unrequited Love
1.3.3.36 The trustworthy saint

Alderney: "Thirdly we have my Trustworthy Saint, 誠實 聖人. Their task is to persuade the public to only wear Tiaras that are Trustworthy. That's a separate task to designing a Trustworthy Tiaras and creating valuable services that can only be accessed by using one. But it does depend heavily upon them, so at this point I'd like to hand over to Wellington to talk about the tiaras and, after that, switch over to wearing my Value hat to talk about some of the services we hope will add to their value proposition."

Wellington actually stood up, hands clasped behind his back as though he were addressing a large audience. After a moment's thought, a ghostly tiara encircled his brow, cycling though stages of completion from pencil lines sketched by a concept artist, through the mathematical exactitude of an engineer's blueprint, which morphed into an exploded parts diagram wrapped in scrolling fragments of computer language and finally materialised as a shining branded product freshly unwrapped from its packaging.

Kafana noticed the sorrowful look Alderney gave the cogs on her own engineer's top hat but Wellington's expression just remained serious. The thought that not only had he'd one-upped her, but that he'd done it effortlessly, just as an afterthought, obviously hadn't even crossed his mind. Alderney sighed briefly, then gave her hat a determined look. Competition brought out the best in her. Kafana half feared to discover what her best friend would be wearing next time.

Wellington: "Speaking for Tiaras: the department is on track to meet the required end of year supply numbers. I've asked Bulgaria to find deputies for six strands: Product, Liaison, Process, Certification, Reference and Theory. The biggest threat to the schedule I'm currently aware of would be if we can't find suitable candidates for the strands I have insufficient competence at."

Bungo: "What do they do?"

Wellington: "I mentioned the Product strand earlier. Work on that hasn't started. The same for Process. Liaison I'm also short on experience with, but I have sent out a feeler to Noaline Altshul, who Kafana met at the Balkan Mythoi Launchfest. Call it 5% if you're feeling generous."

Wellington: "My deputy leading the Certification strand needs to set up an independent international organisation that is widely recognised as the sole organisation with the authority to certify that a tiara is compliant with the published Trustworthy Tiara standard. They'll need accountants, lawyers, marketing, technical writers, test-suite creators and an absolutely impeccable reputation. Mainly their task is to keep manufacturers in line while the idea is still winning acceptance - once most people know a friend whose tiara is Trustworthy, the friend can verify that the new one is too without any need for the help of an agency. Until then, there needs to be someone who can sue con artists into bankruptcy."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Tomsk: "That's a big role even for someone doing it full time. I can see why you can't take it on personally. You have someone in mind?"

Wellington: "Gotham. At least on the technical side. He's a better hacker than I am, and if anyone can anticipate ways that people will try to fool the certification process, it's him. He's already working on the code and procedures manual the standards agency will need. Call it 20% progress?"

Bulgaria: "I'll have a look at the second-in-commands and retired heads of existing standards agencies, see if any of them look suitable and might be open to the offer of a new job. I take it salary won't be a problem?"

Wellington: "Offer them triple the highest salary they've previously earned. Plus relocation costs and performance bonuses for hitting or exceeding milestones. But make an on-Burrow interview a requirement - we need someone who'll stay bought."

The remaining halos around the table lit up when he added the last requirement, so he continued.

Wellington: "My deputy leading the Reference strand needs to take the published Trustworthiness protocol standard, and sense records of its creation and of interviews with those involved, and traceably bootstrap that into a fully compliant reference implementation, including hardware that's been certified as passing all the relevant safety test for electronic goods and normal tiaras. Version 1.0 doesn't have to be particularly cheap and easy to make or maintain; it doesn't need to be beautifully ergonomic, intuitively usable or even robust and reliable. It does need the hardware and software to be open sourced, free of legal ownership liabilities and licensable for use by commercial entities on whatever terms the standards agency picks on behalf of the virtual corporation we'll make the nominal owner of the intellectual property involved. Alderney and I have done a fair amount of work on this already, but I'd like to make Sunnydale the deputy. Call it 50% done?" He looked at Alderney who made a hand motion, then altered his estimate. "40%? 30%?"

Alderney: " 'A job's not done until the docs are. ' "

It sounded like a quote, but she couldn't place it. Balthazar appeared behind her, tall, dark and wrapped in his constellation-covered purple hat and cloak; his mellifluous voice reached her as a private message.

Balthazar: [It has become folk wisdom among the lower echelons of large companies. Variants include "paperwork is complete", "tools are clean and put away", "everyone and everything's paid for", "until QA push their auth", "until your documentation is in a state befitting your name" and "until some sucker accepts liability being handed over to them"]

Wellington: "Fair. And finally I'd like The Burrow user 221bBakerStreet to become my deputy leading the Theory strand. Their deliverable is the standard itself, published in a reputable academic journal, with a quality that receives overwhelmingly positive peer reviews. A computer parsable version of the standard, included as an attachment to the paper, must receive authentication signatures from the relevant influencers and be sufficiently widely mirrored and referenced that substituting a fake becomes insurmountably difficult on a prolonged widespread scale."

Kafana whimpered. Too much detail!

Kafana: "Thank you Wellington. Before we hear from Alderney wearing her Value hat, would you guys be okay with taking a quick break?"

Tomsk, Bungo and even Bulgaria gave identical sighs of relief, their halos flashing an agreement brighter than camera bulbs from a passel of paparazzi photographers snapping Shane smooching a starlet.