I was unbelievably bored the day I wrote this. Disclaimers follow the story, for they spoil the ending.

NOT A FLAWLESS SYSTEM
by rueyeet

"I don't claim to know who runs this operation, but they must have been ill upon choosing you." -- Señor Diablo to Johnny C., JtHM #6

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." -- Anonymous

"Crap." Peter swore as another paper was dropped in his already overflowing inbox. The secretary smirked at him as she swished by, all sinuous implications of things Not Appropriate to the Workplace. "Don't tell me we lost another one today. Suicide?"

"Don't ask me. I just work here," she replied with a honeyed smile, venom in her voice.

"Yeah, yeah, tell it to someone who cares." She moved away, and Peter took advantage of the view even as he reached for the new interruption. He took a long pull of coffee, deepest black, from his mug as she rounded the corner, then turned his attention to the sheet of paper. If the secretary had dropped it off herself, it was a priority, red-flag job. How he was expected to get anything done with these constant fire-drills, he had no idea.

Sure enough, it was a standard terminate/replace form. Why the hell had the boss deemed this worth his immediate attention? Irritated, he scanned quickly down the page, then nearly dropped his mug. "Holy shit."

"What? Something actually interesting? Here?" drawled his co-worker Scott from the next desk.

"You wouldn't believe it. This guy was covering an ENTIRE fucking city."

"No way." More than willing to be distracted, Scott spun his chair around and scooted over, reading over Peter's shoulder. "Damn. Sucked to be him."

"Yeah, no kidding. And now we need not one, but FIVE replacements, post-haste, or things are going to be in the proverbial handbasket in no time. Can't let a whole city go, not even for a day."

There was a short bark of laughter as Scott rolled his chair back to his own desk. "Good luck with that."

"Easy for you to say. Why can't these people ever wait and die a natural death, instead of shooting themselves in the head?" The complaint gave way to muttered grumbling as Peter got himself up for the trek up the stairs to Prospects. As an afterthought, he grabbed his mug. This deserved more coffee.

Not for the first time, he wished that the People In Charge would let the place be computerized. What took rifling through countless files in thousands of overstuffed cabinets would surely take only seconds with a proper database. Just type in the city--or county, out in the boonies--and get an instant cross-reference with the profile of every Prospect in that area, sorted by qualification. Pick the top one, email the request to Assignment, and boom! done in five minutes. But no, they had to do everything the old-fashioned way. Tradition, he supposed. Or something.

Apparently Tradition precluded the use of elevators, too. By the time he reached the third landing, he was panting for breath. The middle-aged lady at the receptionist desk at Prospects looked at him disapprovingly over her reading glasses. "Can I help you?" She sounded like she severely doubted that she could, and that furthermore, she wished he would spare her the trouble.

"T & R." Peter showed her the form.

"My." She raised a penciled eyebrow. "We haven't had to worry about that area in a while. Twelfth door on the right, starting with the fifth cabinet on the left."

"Thanks. Mind if I raid your coffeepot?" He held up the empty mug.

She gave him that disapproving look again, and waved him away towards the first, open door. The telephone on her desk rang jarringly, and she snarled at it before answering, her voice instantly transformed into purest courtesy. "Prospects, how may I direct your call?"

Peter filled his mug in the small lunchroom, ignoring the whiff of someone's lunch forgotten in the fridge for too many days, and trudged down the hall to the twelfth door, musing that refrigerators didn't seem to go against Tradition. It was damned inconsistent, that's what it was.

Sighing, he set his mug down on the large worktable in the center of the room, and made for the fifth file cabinet. Not for the first time, he wished that somebody could take the time and trouble to keep these things updated. Not enough staff. Same old story. Once again, computerization would have worked wonders. Have the Scouts update from the field via hotspot or something. It'd never happen, of course. That would make things too easy.

He twitched each folder open with his fingertips, tilting his head to skim over the summary page with the part of his mind that was still paying attention. Every so often he extracted a folder and threw it to the table. Six drawers to a cabinet, and a couple cabinets later he had amassed a tall enough armful to take back downstairs. Gulping the now-cooled coffee, Peter grunted at the receptionist in passing, and hauled his laden self back down the three flights of stairs to his desk.

Thumping the files solidly down in front of him, he applied himself to the task. Verify that the Prospect was not deceased, and that the other qualifications were still accurate. Assess suitability, current and projected. Calculate throughput potential. Cross-check for conflicting interests. Check everything off, down the list. Identify the best Prospect--or in this case, Prospects--to cover the given area. The better a job he did, the longer it would be before a T & R for this particular area crossed his desk again. Then again, the better he did, the more he got stuck with these little hot projects. The irony wasn't consoling.

The day wore on towards quitting time. Around him, people were starting to wrap things up for the day and drift towards the door. With a cheery wave, Scott grabbed up his coat, shoved his chair under the desk, and joined the steady exodus.

Four Assignment Requests complete, and one to go. There was just one folder left in the pile, and Peter mentally crossed his fingers that the Prospect within would check out. He opened the folder, absentmindedly reading aloud under his breath.

"Vargas, Edgar. Personality type: Introvert. Immediate family: none. Support network: none." He couldn't help adding, "Fucking life: none." These poor suckers were so pathetic, really. It took a special sort of nobody to take the metaphysical shit of this world straight through the subconscious, and deal with it for years, sometimes decades. Most of them committed suicide, but the occasional tenacious soul stuck it out for a lifetime. For his part, he wished they'd spare him the job security afforded by the high turnover.

Quickly, Peter ran through the necessary calculations, the standard checklist, and was relieved to see that this Vargas guy was, in fact, an excellent Prospect. The file had last been updated a couple years ago. Technically, he should verify the particulars, but honestly--how much ever really changed for the kinds of people who made good Prospects? He hurried through the AR form, eager to get this interruption out of the way. Just a short trip over to Assignment, one last trek up the stairs to dump the reject pile on the file clerk in Prospects, and his day would be over.

He looked briefly at the ID photo on the file as he finished the AR. "There you go, Mr. Edgar Vargas--you poor bastard. Now don't go killing yourself on me, okay?"

Taking a last look for any coffee he might have missed, Peter grabbed his coat and the pile of file folders and forms, and headed out. Even the Damned had time off--couldn't do the Devil's work without idle hands, after all.

END

So very, very bored. Satan quote, general wastelock system concept, and poor Edgar Vargas shamelessly appropriated from Jhonen Vasquez. Office drones, process design, and all the other corporate effluvia appropriated from my day job. Tie-in to Zarla's "Vargas" just for the heck of it. And finally, thanks to Dragoness' "Voices in the Dark" for spawning this (completely unrelated!) idea.