The Institute for Surrender

 The corridors of the Institute were dark; there was a power cut going on as we were led through the rooms and hallways.  Windows from the outside, in the rooms at least, let in weak afternoon sunlight.  The sky was grey and luminous, promising snow and the noise of the traffic from the Stoichiometric Highways was muffled by a line of tall trees.  I paused at a window for a moment, my hand pressed to the cold glass -- the windows were all single glazed -- and wondered how it had come to this.  Then our tour guide, Colonel Anna Crimea (not her real name), coughed politely and suggested we move on.  I noticed at least two of our generals fishing in their pockets for their protective face masks and wondered if that was a sign of sexism, racism, or just fear in general.

"This is the call centre," said Colonel Anna as we reached another door in another dark corridor.  She opened it into an aircraft hanger of a room.  Desks stretched away as far as the eye could see in rows and rows of phone-answering stations.  "This is for phone-calls; social media and chat messages are handled in a different room."

I could practically feel Caspar vibrating next to me and knew he was about to ask a question.  He was clearly excited to think he could make efficiency improvements again.

"Can't the phone operators handle short chats between calls?" he said, barely getting his hand raised before he started speaking.  Colonel Anna didn't sigh, but it looked like she wanted to.

"Surrender is a tricky business," she said, for what was probably the fifth time.  I doubt Caspar was counting though.  "We don't want the operators distracted.  They need to be able to determine if the call is genuine, and then to arrange for the actual surrender.  We don't want them sending the wrong details to the wrong person."

"Oh," said Caspar.  He subsided a little but we all knew he was still trying to find a way to be more efficient.

"Where do the, uh, surrenderees, get taken?" asked a general.  His accent was carefully neutral but that choice of word: surrenderees, marked him down as North American.

"It depends where they are surrendering from," said Colonel Anna.  "If they are combatants in the South American warzone, for example, then there are established surrender camps where they can make their way to."  She didn't give another example, which I took to mean that she, too, had spotted that the general was North American.  The North American warzone had had one surrender camp but both sides had bombed it and at that point the Institute for Surrender had pulled out and refused to return.

"The next room on our tour," said Colonel Anna, "is the break room.  Normally, when the power is on, this would have employees in it -- yes?"  She sounded surprised, but the general who had just spoken had raised his hand again.

"Is it possible to surrender here?" he asked.