Petty Order [Solo] [Searing 122 PH]

[Valentin]

Searing 34, 122

The Office of Imperial Revenue

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An open question among the workers of the OIR, brought up from time-to-time over lunch meetings or in quiet conference rooms while they waited for their counterparties to arrive was this: did Valentin Valentin enjoy his job?

On one side of the debate was a simple answer- no. Valentin Valentin evinced very little joy in anything in his life, and his job was little different. He accepted each assignment with a sneer. He met with small talk with disdain, yes, but he also clearly hated official meetings. Among the Imperial Bureaucracy were the occasional fellows who seemed to care about nothing but their own power and ambitions, ready to meet each co-worker with a knife to the back if it seemed like that might further their own star’s ascent in any way, but Valentin didn’t even seem to like betraying the people he hated. It was all ambivalence at the best of days, to him.

On the other side was a more nuanced reply- no, but. Valentin didn’t seem to enjoy the finances or law, but he was plainly dedicated to them. A man who hated his job as much as Valentin could coast with a lot less effort than the OIR adjuster spent. Even Valentin’s detractors, which included virtually the whole staff of the building, wouldn’t accuse him of slacking in any way. So while Valentin clearly didn’t like his job, on some level he did like doing it. Perhaps it was the opportunity to correct others and be paid for it, or he was just the sort who felt best wallowing in misery and wanted to drag others down with him. Maybe he found some sort of perverse pleasure in the role itself.

[Valentin]

Both camps were wrong, but the second was closest to the truth. Valentin did not experience any joy from doing his job in the traditional sense of the word, but it did fulfill an emotional need, one which he’d experienced all of his life but never felt any need to communicate to others. That was a drive to anentropy, of building order amid chaos. The OIR offered him, in the form of a million sheets of paper affixed with a billion numbers, the opportunity to directly observe the disharmony in the world, reach out, and correct it.

What personal pleasure could compare to that? Money? Sex? Public approbation?

(Although this was simply the answer he would himself have given. In truth, Valentin greatly resented that his long and constant work for the Imperium’s benefit had never brought him any recognition outside of the insular world of Imperial office politics.)

So it was that Valentin stayed in his office, on the higher floors of a towering public building, and spent his days poring over papers, facts and figures, sustained mostly by the feeling that he was looking down at a vast machine, greater even than the sum of its innumerable parts, and making it better, day by day.

And on the 34th day of Searing, into the life of this man came the Dread Mists.

~~~

The day began quietly. The man of the hour came in early, as was his practice, stepping through Slipspace to arrive at his office as soon as he’d finished dressing and grooming himself. Valentin didn’t see himself as a vain man, but he was. Nobody could be so obsessed with their own failings if they weren’t a little narcissistic.

He settled into his chair in his office and set down a cup of tea he’d brought with him. It was his belief that the trip through slipspace enhanced the flavor of beverages in some way, though nobody he’d attempted to prove this to had ever quite tasted what he insisted was there. The papers on his huge, stern desk were from yesterday- it was too early for Alfred to have come through with any of the new mail. But that was proper and expected; all of these files were those matters which Valentin had put off overnight to think about in his study at home, mind racing in the dark hours.

First, the Mallard file. This case met all of the canonical indica for tax evasion, but Valentin wanted more evidence- he’d seen cases like this one before, and thought it also looked a lot like a sloppy, but earnest, filer. It wasn’t that Valentin particularly objected to the oppression of the innocent, mind; but that was a bad use of limited government resources. Much better just to send a letter. He’d made up his mind last night that the letter made more sense here, so he jotted a note to that effect down.

Next, the monthly report about the activities of the Families. This report was written by a junior official, who, per tradition, put long hours of overtime and truly painstaking effort into crafting an absolutely objective, beautifully detailed, fundamentally complete 120 page report distilling all existing intelligence regarding the activities of organized crime within Gel’Grandal. As usual it was a phenomenal work, and was sent directly to the head of the OIR, who, also per tradition, sent it to Valentin so he could condense it to a one-page summary which wouldn’t include any of the stuff the OIR head preferred not to know about. It took him only an hour to finish that.

Finally… ah, yes, the defense spending case.

These papers were labeled ”klassifiziert” in red ink, though they weren’t top security matters. They contained summaries of the extra excises which had been implemented a few weeks prior, in response to the Palace’s veiled demand for additional money. The projects were passed off as emergency supplemental levies intended to reimburse the Navy for losses to the development budgets suffered as a result of the tragic destruction of a prototype ship. But the Navy would see none of these monies- the account to which the OIR was routing them was accessible only to someone in the Palace of Spires, the precise identity of whom Valentin did not even know.

The man studied these reports for some time, as though fascinated- or fearful. And he was, a bit of both. He wished that he understood why the Palace was bothering to sneak money in like this, and for what. He feared that if the numbers did not add up, the bureaucrat from the Palace who visited would hold him responsible.

But it seemed they did tally. Valentin let out a long breath, one he hadn’t even realized he was holding, and closed his eyes for a moment, deep in thought as he prepared for the real work of the day.

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Ti-icck

As soon as the old grandfather clock’s tick stumbled, Valentin sensed that something was awry.

He opened his eyes and regarded the clock for a while. The ticks returned to regularity; it didn’t seem damaged. There had been no shaking, no earthquake, nothing to indicate a nearby explosion from a mains break or a bombing. But he could feel through his Rune that something was phenomenally, terribly, unaccountably amiss.

Valentin stood slowly and walked to his door, opening it into the silent hallway beyond. It was still quite early, and so his own colleagues would just be filing in, sleepy, seeking the stimulants of their choo-

“DIVINES, NO!”

A scream broke the silence- not from his hallway, from the outer rooms, with access to windows. He marched quickly towards the nearest conference room with exterior light, ignoring the doors slamming open behind him, or the confused chatter of the other adjusters on this level. Acting quickly, he tore open the door and rushed to the window.

It took him a moment to spot anything amiss. The sun had just cleared the horizon, and the morning mist was lying thick on the harbor, spilling out into the city proper, but-

He realized that the mist was the wrong color just as alarms began sounding throughout the building.

-WEET WEET WEET-

There were different types of alarms, but not many. The fire alarm, of course, rang like a bell. The intruder alarm was high but infrequent, like a metronome. This one was “evacuate to the bunker”, used only in case of attack… or miststorm.

As soon as the alarm began sounding, people started rushing the stairwell. Although it was forbidden to run or use the elevators during an evacuation, both things were in evidence. But it was an emergency, and so Valentin did not stop and write down any of the people he saw doing these things.

…because those things, while forbidden, weren’t reportable. They were more like etiquette than anything else.

But as the hallways began to clear, Valentin realized that there was something reportable happening; people were fleeing their offices in bad order. Whenever any emergency occurred, each bureaucrat’s first job was to secure any classified documents, retrieve anything essential to the operation of the state in a crisis, close and lock their doors, and then head for the official bunker below the OIR building.

So Valentin made his way back to his office and carefully secured his files. He put the regular ones away in cabinets, took the classified defense spending documents and locked them in a safe, and secured a report he thought might assist if the OIR was forced to operate remotely. Then, on his way out, he grabbed a pen, a personal notebook, and locked the door behind him.

Then he started going room-to-room.

Valentin visited each of his coworkers’ offices in turn, writing their names down on his pad and marking them with either a check or “x”. If the office was in good order, he made a check. If not, he made an “x”, then listed the issue.

Gertrov: Check
Danis: Check
Sal: X (papers on desk)
Tooberry: X (classified folder on desk)
Santoff: Check

As the mists flowed through the city center outside, Valentin went from room to room at a leisurely pace, jotting down his notes on every single person. Then he stepped through the slipspace and appeared on the floor below, where he began making the same slow rounds. Inexorable as Death itself, Valentin did not let a single office escape.

He paused for a moment when the lights flickered out, the power either cut by the mists or re-routed to serve the efforts of the Imperial forces trying to contain them, but he simply summoned an electric torch to hand and continued his rounds. When he heard the sound of the elevator stopping on one floor, he teleported inside to see a terrified-looking woman from the executive level looking back at him.

"What- who-" she began, terrified. Valentin took only a moment to assess her clothes and rank, deciding immediately that while she was a subordinate, she was probably directly employed by one of the higher-ups, and therefore it might reflect poorly if he was discourteous.

"My apologies for the fright." What was her name? He couldn’t recall. He’d seen her outside of the Secretary’s office, but never bothered to learn her name. Whatever. "Do try to avoid the elevators during evacuations for this purpose. Please, let me assist you in reaching the bunker."

The woman opened her mouth to respond, but rather than permitting her to do that, Valentin opened up a rift in the Slipspace and banished her to the point he had memorized in the bunker below. Her body seemed to twist and stretch as the portal opened and closed, but it was nothing more than a trick of the light- she would arrive unharmed, though she might well throw up. Well, nothing for it.

Valentin stepped back out into the offices and continued his review. He picked up the pace as he noticed the mists outside the window, but by the time he had finished the clerical copy pool on the second floor, the mists had begun to breach the interior of the building. The bureaucrat looked at the writhing rainbow cloud with distaste, observing that it blocked every entry.

Well, that was enough for a report, anyway, even if he hadn’t gotten to the tea ladies and the janitorial staff. He’d work this up into a proper report overnight, and his boss would almost certainly have to issue written reprimands. Valentin smiled as the lethal mists closed in, closer and closer. It had been a good day’s work already, and it wasn’t yet noon. Yes, a good day indeed.

As the Dread Mists moved in to take Valentin Valentin, he closed up his booklet, capped his pen and tucked it into his breast pocket… and then vanished into slipspace.

And so Order won yet another petty victory in its eternal war with Chaos.