Years ago, the drachau of the province felt that the capital city's administration was slow and expensive. As the final project he would undertake, he decided to construct the administration tower: the administrative complex to group all offices, house all personnel, pool all resources.
It was a grand plan: no longer would citizens and officials have to go all across the city to find the relevant service, because all would be in the complex; no longer would civil servants lose time traveling from and to their office, because they would live inside in the complex; no longer would some divisions have resources to spare while others were short, because all divisions shared from the same resource pool.
This was to be ultimate efficiency. This was to be his legacy.
This was to be the last thing he did before being forcibly admitted into the mental institute.
°°°
Anleth stared at the plaques arrayed on the tall wall, reaching from the very top to the very bottom. Clearly, the directions she was looking at had, at some point, been orderly and clear, but as more divisions and offices were added, so too had the amount of signs needed to grow. At some point, the signs had taken too much space, so people decided to abbreviate the office names and reduce directions to obscure glyphs. All in the interest of clarity.
She blinked, rubbed her eyes, and tried again to match the name on the letterhead to any name on the signs.
"We've got a snapper!"
Anleth looked around, caught off guard by the sudden burst of enthusiasm in this building. Seeing people work in the nerve center of the province's administration filled her with a silent reverence, and the look in the civil servant's eyes sparkled with anticipation. "A snapper?" she asked, only afterwards realising she was not being directly addressed.
"Yeah, the new one on— Wait, you've never seen a snapper?" he asked, and two of his colleagues walked up to follow him. "It's up in the ipafac."
"Ipafac?" Anleth blinked confusedly. "Is that—"
"Internal Process Auditing Form Approval Committee, yeah, in the east wing. Hurry up, or we'll miss it!"
The clerk at reception had mentioned something about the east wing while giving Anleth her visitor's badge and two forms to fill out at the Visitor Regularisation and Classification Department. Figuring that the people there would be able to give her additional directions, Anleth followed the group's hasty pace up the busy stairs, through the populated corridors, past the crammed offices.
The group finally came to a halt in a large but almost claustrophobic office floor, with desks shoved against desks, and only few but clearly marked safe passages through. All of the tourist group's attention settled on a single woman at one of these desks.
Her desk was complete chaos. She had only just returned from a meeting, and had suffered an enormous influx of papers. Frantically, her hands snatched papers from the stacks, hurriedly scanning the forms and letters and other documents for any clue or hint as to what to do with them. She no longer bothered to clear the hair from her eyes, and breathed hurriedly, almost panicky. "Enni, I need an, um... an 'A-5', please," she prodded the colleague to her right.
Someone in the observer group sniggered. "An A-5," he shared, and found agreement with his peers. "Oh boy, this is going to be awesome."
"A-5 needs a B-12 and a DX," her colleague Enni replied, laboriously copying forms from one to the others.
"I-I have a DX, I think, but what's a B-12?"
"It's the form you need to request an A-5. Administrative Acquisitions and Form Approval. Attach form 21 and get it signed by director."
"...Form 21?" Her breath picked up. "W-Why do I need a 21? What's a 21?"
"General Requisition and Standard Expediency Requirements. Didn't they tell you this in orientation?"
"Okay. Okay, how do I get a 21?"
"Get your F6 and your XF-A and attach an A-5."
"But... but, Enni, I need an A-5."
"Then fill out the B-12 and a DX, and deliver them to AAFA."
"But..." She swallowed. "But what do these things even mean? I need that A-5; why can't I just get an A-5? I'm just trying to get some work done, Enni."
"Follow the procedures and you'll get there, Polce," Enni assured her. "Bring me a UH-8 and an 87 while you're getting your XF-A?"
"What are these things?" Polce suddenly burst, her eyes wide open with panic. "Why do we have these!? What's an A-5? What's an XF-A? Why do I even need these? Enni, look, look," she tried, and held the papers up to her colleague. "It's just a building renovation, Enni. It's approved. It's signed. It just needs this stamp. It's really simple, just this one—we can do this, Enni. You and me, we can do this. We can stamp this form."
Enni looked at her colleague for the longest time. Finally, she took a deep breath and smiled understandingly while rising from her seat. "G-16. Suggestion form for procedure improvement. Don't forget to add a DX."
Polce stared at the document she was holding, and then back to the spread out forms sprawled over her desk. Her eye twitched. One of the observers silently counted down on his fingers.
Suddenly, Polce exploded into rage, her arms and legs flailing around dangerously as she tried to crop her anger. Her desk unflinchingly shrugged off beats and kicks; documents went harmlessly flying and fluttering through the air as she scraped them up and tossed them around.
Anleth made a step towards the woman, and was instantly held back by two clerks. "Oh, hey hey, what are you doing? You don't go near a snapper," one of them cautioned her incredulously. "You're going to get hurt."
A sharp, inhuman shriek pitched through the landscape room. Polce clenched her fists, tensing up all her muscles, and screamed from full lungs. Finally, she slammed her head face-first into her desk, kicking a binder up and off Enni's desk and into her seat. A deathly silence followed.
"Is she alright?" Anleth finally whispered, looking at the still body lying on her desk.
"She hit an XA-B," the nearest clerk said. "That's an eleven-pager. She's fine."
After almost a minute, Polce lifted her head off her desk and stared off at the wall. She breathed. She didn't move. She didn't speak. She just stared.
"Don't worry. She's in a better place now."
°°°
"What kind of monster does this?"
Mioralynthia looked at the poor, catatonic man being carried out on a stretcher. His eyes were wide open in shock and horror, his mind scarred by things it could never unsee. He was useless as a witness now.
"Those are A-5's," the department head continued, staring incredulously at the wall. "A-5's deserve better than this."
Ink and rolling tape held together torn letterheads and form designations, covering the wall, corner to corner, acting as grim tombstones to the actual form bodies that lied shredded to confetti and gathered in a large, mashy pulp of glue and eraser.
"We don't get another batch like this until Thursday," the man squeaked in panic. "What will we do?"
°°°
"No." Tarbo chuckled awkwardly. "No."
"The investigative committee needs two more people," Anleth explained. "It's—"
"No," Tarbo stressed, and pointed out the diner window to the large administration tower down the street. "This is as close as I get to that thing."
"It's only for a while, sir, until this is sorted out."
"Captain, there are things in there that no sane man should see, realisations that no soul should bear. I've seen people—good people—go in there. They don't come back right."
Anleth nodded slowly. This was a fight she wasn't going to win anytime soon. "Mistress Mioralynthia will be disappointed to hear."
"Lynthia?" Tarbo glanced briefly at Anleth, but returned to his coffee all the same.
"Mistress Mioralynthia will be presiding the investigation. I hadn't mentioned this?" Anleth smiled briefly at Tarbo, thinking quickly. "If you would excuse me, sir, I'm due to pick up my skirt suit for the proceedings—dress code, you see. I'll let the mistress know you won't be attending?"
"Oh, ah, let's not do anything rash here, Captain," Tarbo suddenly said. "When you say 'dress code', you mean everyone... right?"
°°°
This is one of the newer meeting rooms, fitting with the thenwhile idea of an open and transparent administration, accessible to all. The walls are light and completely transparent, marred only by a white, wooden door; the table, too, is see-through, and requires everyone to bring a mat so that they wouldn't get spots, wipes, or stains on the smooth surface.
"Then now we turn to the sixth point on our agenda," your department head announces. Notes rustle and pages turn in the otherwise quiet meeting room. Someone clears her throat quietly, while another sips from his glass of water.
You check the clock briefly. The meeting started well over two hours ago, and the end has so far eluded sight. That's not really any different from the other meetings you have with your department head, but this meeting seems to be even slower than others. You glance over at the threesome of new people sitting in on the meeting, wondering when they get to say something (and silently hoping they won't).
"Our sixth topic handles the recent act of vandalism of at least eighty-nine of our A-5 forms. It doesn't need to be said that this is a serious situation. Normally, we would use our allocated DX's to request additional A-5 forms, but the majority of our DX's is currently unaccounted for.
"This shortage also means we cannot petition the Internal Rectification and Auditing Committee of Means to investigate and mediate the situation because, as we are all aware, the production rules require six DX's and at least two A-5's for this."
You've worked in this department for a few weeks, but have yet to really get to know your colleagues. It doesn't help that your desks are scattered across the building, uncomfortably far away from each other, but that is about to change, according to bulleting number three of today's meeting. Good ol' Bullet number three, how we miss thee already.
"Fortunately, as an unbudgeted service consisting of seconded staff, we have the right to invoke discretionary means, and have petitioned for temporary external consultancy. The investigative committee headed by Mistress Mioralynthia will act as impartial observers in this process, and they will handle all external communication and procedural administration, so that our service can continue unabated.
"All it requires on our side is that we schedule an extra topic into our daily procedure and review meetings, wherein we will discuss the happenings and decide who will represent this department in our team building exercises.
"Earlier on our agenda, we already decided that this topic will be the sixth topic in our meeting, barring exceptional circumstances that may require changing the order of our agenda." Suddenly, the head of the meeting turns the attention to you—all of you. "Does anyone have any questions?"
The room is silent. Mioralynthia is looking bored and annoyed with your department head's longwindedness. Anleth has long since given up being attentive, and instead stares uncomfortably out the tall glass walls and down to the street several floors below. Tarbo is leaning back on one leg of his chair, balancing his pencil on his upper lip.
Someone finally rises from her seat and quietly excuses herself. "I thought this was the budget meeting."
____________________
- Player list
- Meteor
- Calisson
- Lordanubis
- Deroth
- Belial
- Drainial
- Telrunya
- Nelmeer
- Sleekdd
With 9 players, 5 constitute a majority.
It is now Morning. Evening will set in on the 25th (Monday), around 17h UTC. People who have not posted by then are removed from the game.
Good hunting, and good luck!