seawasp | (Reply)

From:

The actual background to that piece is that we wrote two short stories, and then a third, at which point I said, "these aren't just short stories, they're chapters in a fix-up novel", and we wrote the rest of the story arc. The prologue got written last, as an introduction to the characters. So it's essentially the story of *why* someone would reach the point of throwing in his lot with a group whose philosophy he doesn't actually agree with. And it's also more of an extended BOFH joke than anything else. :-)

I've read that piece at a Broad Universe Rapidfire Read at a con. I presume from the amount of giggling at appropriate places that the audience was 100% geek.