WAZAAAP!
Don’t freak out, don’t freak out! You can stand up if you want to, sure, and catch your breath. There’s water for you on the table. My bad, I couldn’t help myself.
Listen, hey, it’s okay. My name is Justice J. Goodwin. Homies call me JJ. I’m a Containment Cell Maintenance Apprentice appointed through SECEP, Or the Specialized Experiential Co-operative Education Program; and turns out… I’m in your mind!
But it’s alright! Because you’re also in mine. So it’s like a trade! Some new stuff we whipped up as a team, and I’d like you to give me time to say more about it without any panicking. Is that cool? Stop trying the doorknob, we locked it. A guy a couple stops before you went and took a piss, not knowing that I could see it, so yeah. I asked that they put some crosswords and stuff under the envelope if you think it might help you relax as I talk. Will you sit for me?
…
Thanks. And thank you for having me too, by the way. Since a lot of this probably isn’t going to consist of much besides some douche blabbering on in the front of your head, I appreciate the opportunity to be the guy who talks AT people this time!
It’s good to be here! In general, y’know? … No? Yeah, I know. Feels cold sometimes. But it’s at least nice to be a part of something that promises real positive change — or the preservation of positivity as an idea at least.
‘Cause see, when I joined, I was given not only training, but also literature! Publications and what have you, to assist me with learning how to do my job; by making it clear how bad it would be if I ever fucked up at said job! And yes, this did result in the absorption of many tales and many fables regarding… the breach of containment. Boooo! Here do it with me, ready? 3… 2…
Boooo!
Okay, nice! I was scared the whiplash would've stopped you from joining me there. But allow me to say… That after becoming what is essentially a human sponge for work-related disaster stories, I believe there might be a seed of a conclusion growing in my genius sage mind. I’d like you to hold onto your head, lest your brain grow one-hundred times and escape your skull upon receiving this information; and be sure to stay seated, as there is risk of falling through the floor due to the sheer weight of your new giant brain. Ready? … I’m starting to feel- Hold your head! Okay… I’m starting to feel…
That there are no true stakes, besides life.
Yes. Mahatma has spoken! Thank you for the tentative applause. Yup. I'm flexing my giant 'ceps right now.
Okay but no, seriously. Like… That’s really the only reason we’re doing all of this, right? It’s no longer for profit, as I’m sure you can code some kind of freakin’ genius conscript of some sort to mine a few quadrillion skip-coin into your wallet right now. We have wizards who’ve made it their thing to interpret financial data! Currencymancers, basically! It’s not for physical resources; as we have cloning machines, we have reality warper- We have had people write a narrative and then enter said narrative! What’s stopping us from writing “tree world” and then coming back with a bunch of logs?
It’s life. The one resource we can’t consider renewable. We hide away all the strange and dangerous thingamabobbers so the laymen can have calm nerves and intact lives. This isn’t me trying to accuse the Foundation of forgetting that entirely; don’t get me wrong; with what I’ve read, we’ve gotten better at keeping this in mind as the years go by. But… You can steal somebody’s life from them while they’re still alive… and from there, they could steal even more. Y’know what I mean?
MTF officer didn’t get enough sleep last night? Extra lives lost during an excursion. Irritable researcher prods an anomaly too far? Breach. Lives lost. Director in a bad headspace wants to sling their dick around? Lives lost.
It’s not logical for the Foundation to be inherently cold, because the business we deal with is life; and life can be frostbitten to necrosis. You’re fueling your Life-Maintainer-Inator with people's lives, and then shrugging like ‘Weeelp. That’s the name of the game, I guess.’ It’s not the name of the fuckin’ game, we’re meant to protect! It’s in the title! That’s the P in the title! Right?
So I shared my thoughts with my Site Director, the lovely Finny Merkatz; who connected me with our homies up north at Site-37. And with the help of the affable Director Trintavon, we’ve put together something we can really be proud of:
The Advocacy and Consociates Division.
I wanted to call it The Department of Smiles, but they said no.
You can open the envelope now. Yeah you can just – just turn it upside down and dump it out.
Introducing: Unestics! Our new state of the art technology creates a pseudo hivemind of those who have been administered it! I say ‘pseudo’ because it’s like… We’re only in if you let us in, sorta thing. If you have me in mind, then you can ask to connect, and I could accept or I can refuse. There’s some docs in there from Neuro that explain it better, but we're still working out the kinks. We're still not quite sure what would happen if one of us died, or if all of us accepted each other at the same time, but research continues steadily!
You can pretty much opt-out whenever you want by just not accepting, and then… you’ll slowly forget about us. No harm. But more importantly, we have stickers for the division that you can put on like your laptop and whatnot!… Phone case, whatever. Means you’re part of the in-group. They’re non-anomalous, but they’ll help you remember. That we’re still in here, and that you’re only alone if you want to be.
Consider this less of an orientation to a super serious assignment, and more of a ‘welcome to the club!’ as we feel it might be better to keep the operation generally under wraps and just go where we’re needed. A bureau grown too large makes it impossible for every person in it to keep their minds eye on every other person; and a grand opening of a flawless apotheosis like ours wouldn’t do too much under a roof like the Foundation besides raise some eyebrows and create doubt in our intention, I mean let's get real here. Especially as rumors from other departments spread through the grapevine…
Even further proof that we should be nicer to each other, by the way! We should be a family! I feel like a lot of us know that as well, I can taste little hints of it like bi-weekly. But then you watch whichever stern superior pour themselves a coffee and then immediately re-excuse themselves back to their crypt, and you’re reminded that you don’t actually matter and that you’re constantly fighting for something greater than you, against something much greater than even that. It ends up resulting in like, these bouts of uncomfortable earnestness; as if we know that we should be warm to each other, but feel as if for whatever reason we can’t. It’s weird. We’re weird.
Just because it’s dark on this side doesn’t mean it has to be cold. I mean…
People can share body heat, right?
Anywho, I’m rambling again. Welcome to the new Sub-div. Good to have you.
Yeah you can take as many of the stickers as you want, we have like a million of ‘em. There's fifty bucks on the table for the first person who sends me a pic of one of those on their grandma; preferably while she's taking a nap, because that would be funny.
Let’s bring some hopes up!
Researcher Flemming of Site-201 and his grandmother.