Lunete

She poked her head into the files room, where I had eventually retreated to safety. She was beautiful: tall, blonde, thin. Almost the exact opposite of me.

"I'm sorry," she said in a British accent. "Is this the records room?"

"Yes," I said. "Are you the liaison from the General Ministry?"

She smiled and said, "The accent gave it away, didn't it?" She stuck out her hand and said, "I'm Lunete."

"Lady Grinning Soul," I said. To her credit, she didn't chuckle at the unusual codename. To stave off the inevitable awkward silence, I said, "I like your name."

"She was the handmaiden of Laudine, the Lady of the Fountain," Lunete said, "who was the wife of Ywaine, the Knight of the Lion."

"Oh," I said. I hadn't realized it was a codename, but it made sense.

"Yeah," Lunete said. "The men get great names like Percival and Agravain, while the women are left with the names of wives and handmaidens. Not many powerful women in Arthurian myths." I liked her already. "Anyway, I'm here to help with the information exchange. They said you were in charge of the file organization?"

"Um, yeah," I said. I gestured to the file folders, which were stacked haphazardly. I could see Lunete's face fall. "It was worse before I got here."

"You don't everything backed up on a computer?" Lunete asked.

"Um," I thought back to what Liza Jane had told me when I asked her the same thing. "Too much risk from...Thoughtborn?"

"Ah," Lunete said, as if that explained everything. "Well, let me help you then. I don't think I have anything better to do. If I stay out in open any longer, I'm afraid I may get ogled to death."

So I made a new British friend. Yay.

Morning Meeting

So apparently, we have a meeting every Tuesday morning so Liza Jane can dole out assignments and see what everyone's working on and what their progress is. It was slightly nerve wracking for me, since I hadn't met everyone -- or, really, anyone other than Liza Jane and the receptionist. I had been working in the files room for the last day and nobody had really come in there.

Anyway, I walked in and sat down on a chair. Most of the others that sat down were men, although I did see some female agents.

After everyone had sat down, Liza Jane walked up to the desk in the end of the room. "As you probably heard, we had an incursion by a Nest a few days ago." There was a tension in the room. "Nobody was hurt, but there was a warning. We need to keep better track of the Convocation's territory." She looked around the room and then said, "We also have a new agent to help organize and bring everything up to date. This is Lady Grinning Soul." She pointed at me and I looked down.

Then she pointed at two other male agents - "Joe" and "Red" - and asked them about the new Timberwolves territory in South Carolina. They said that they were mapping out encounters, but it could take a while. Liza Jane pointed at two other agents, male and female - "Pablo" and "Pallas" - and asked about a Smiling Man sighting in Maryland. They responded that they didn't know if it was the Smiling Man or a run of the mill serial killer, in which case it would be turfed over to the regular FBI. She told them to go down to the site and check it out.

She went around the room like that, calling on various agents - each codename sounding strange to my ears, like "Wild-Eyed Boy" and "V-2 Schneider" and "China Girl." She heard everyone's progress and then gave them new assignments if they hadn't been making any headway into old ones.

Finally, she came to me. "Grinning Soul," she said. "I know you're new, but you still need a partner. I'm going to pair you up with Aladdin Sane." She pointed to another male agent - this one tall, with dark hair. He didn't seem to notice me, instead intent on writing notes in his notebook. The other agents seem to whisper at my assignment - one of them even patted me on the shoulder and said "Good luck."

"Finally," Liza Jane said, "the liaison to the General Ministry is arriving today, so everybody better be on their best behavior." Everyone in the room - minus Liza and Aladdin Sane, I noticed - groaned at that.

After the meeting, I asked Liza Jane what the "General Ministry" was. "Our UK counterpart," she said as she gathered up all her papers. "Except much, much more efficient. We just made a deal with them to exchange information, so we're getting a liaison to help." And with that, she went back to her office.

I turned around and looked for Aladdin Sane. If he was my partner, I should get to know him, right?

Finally, I tried asking someone where his desk was. Their nameplate said their codename was "Wood Jackson." "He has his own office," Jackson told me. He was a redheaded agent, kind of chubby. "Only one of us that does. Because he's special." He said the word 'special' like it was the punchline to a joke. When he saw that I didn't get it, he said, "He was Liza Jane's partner before she became the head agent. He hasn't had a partner since." I asked if Liza Jane was showing favoritism, but he said, "Nah, he just gets moody. Nobody really wants to be his partner, because it's like partnering with Edgar Allen Poe. And he gets his own office because he's the longest lasting agent. But we still like to tease him, you know?"

Okay, so I had a partner who was moody, yet was the 'longest lasting' of the agents? What had happened to the others?

"You're a rookie," Jackson told me. "You met, what, one Nest? Yeah, that's no biggie. Nests used to be human, they got emotions and motivations and things. You can understand Nests. Now, you meet an actual Fear, well, that's when you know if you can handle things here. Most of the time, most of the agents, they can't." And then he went back to his assignment, going through recent reports of viral outbreaks and looking for "OB or PD" involvement.

And that was my morning.

More later.

Getting To Know You

The "you" in this case being the eldritch abominations in which I am meant to keep track. I mean, the thickest file in the cabinets (and, actually, it was just the first of many such files) was for this:

Subject Tango Whiskey Delta (Thin White Duke)

More colloquially known as the 'Slender Man,' he's a tall, thin guy with no face that abducts children, stalks people when he's not eviscerating them, and interferes with electronics. Apparently, someone had the funny idea to call him the Thin White Duke and decided everyone here would be named after David Bowie songs as well. So, whoever made that decision: thanks a lot.

Luckily, the other subjects aren't named after David Bowie songs. Unfortunately, they are all listed under their codenames. Which makes it hard to decipher sometimes:

Subject Alpha Romeo

Subject Bravo Mike
Subject Charlie Bravo
Subject Charlie Hotel
Subject Charlie Oscar
Subject Delta Mike
Subject Echo Alpha Tango
Subject Echo Charlie
Subject Mike November

Subject Papa Delta
Subject Romeo Alpha
Subject Sierra Mike
Subject Uniform Charlie

Subject Whiskey Golf

See what I mean?

Oh, and I know that these things are usually referred to as 'Fears.' It sounds like an easy to remember name, actually. Which why they never use it. Why use an easy name when they can make it a stupid sounding one? The name they use is BUE. It's pronounced 'bowie'. It stands for Biologically Unknown Entity. Nobody uses it except in official reports. Because it's stupid.

Oh well. Hopefully, tomorrow I can get everything more organized.

When Trees Have Faces

Oh god, that TicketOak commercial is so goddamn creepy. When I got in this morning, I actually asked Liza Jane if there was some sort of eldritch involvement to it. She said they were looking into "the Bleeding Tree influence."

I asked what the heck a Bleeding Tree was and she told me that I'd get to it.

Post-Its Are A Girl's Best Friend

So, some of you may be wondering about the background to this blog. That's my basic starting system for organization: post-it notes. They are wonderful things. I haven't gone through all the files yet, but this is what I have so far:

The full board.

Also, some of you may be wondering why I am writing this blog, considering I work for a government agency with classified things.

Um, okay, this is harder to explain, but Liza Jane told me that I might feel the urge to write a blog about the SMSC. "Don't worry," she said. "It's just the compulsion. Usually, we get our agents to fill up journals, but I think we'll allow you to have an actual blog." When I asked why, she said something about keeping an "online presence."

So yeah. I'm not only the organizer, but also the hip online youth person. Which is weird for a super-secret monster tracking organization, right?

Welcome to the Occupation

So my boss calls me into his office today. There was another round of budget cuts last week, so I think I'm going to be fired. Instead, he tells me that he's kicking me upstairs. I'm going to become a full-fledged agent. Of sorts.

He proceeds to tell me this crazy story about the physical embodiments of primal fears or something. Basically, he says that evil monsters exist and that there is a special subagency that tracks them. They don't fight them -- because, basically, they are unkillable and the only thing we can do is track and try to contain the damage. And then he tells me that they are just one of many such agencies.

Why? I ask. He tells me that the government -- for which we both work -- has tried to keep these things secret for so long, that eventually the agencies themselves become secret and then someone creates a new one even though the old one still exists and suddenly there is a clusterfuck of massive proportions. Which is why there are, like, three agencies which track these things.

I think he's pulling my leg. He's obviously joking.

Except not. He gives me a new badge that has the letters SMSC on it and tells me to report to the fourth floor. I decide to play along and go to the fourth floor.

I get on the elevator. Also on this elevator? A cute guy. He's holding some papers and I think he's an intern maybe, because he looks kind of nerdy, but still cute. He smiles at me and I smile back.

I get off on the fourth floor and so does he. I walked to the front desk and he's right behind me. I introduce myself to the receptionist -- who rolls her eyes at me and calls her superior, someone named "Liza Jane." Then she looks behind me and her eyes go wide. I turn, but the only person behind me is the cute guy.

An alarm goes off suddenly and I realize the receptionist has hit the panic button. Red lights flash and sirens blare and the cute guy just grins at me. I suddenly notice that he has scars all along his arms and neck. He opens his mouth and a bird flies out.

I'm paralyzed now. I can't fucking move. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing or what the fuck is going on. More birds are coming out of the guy's mouth. Big birds. Birds that couldn't possibly fit in there. My mind briefly considers the notion that this is a magic trick of some sort before me and the guy are surrounded by agents with guns.

Another bird flies out of the guy's mouth and then he closes it and speaks. "This is just a warning," he says. "No more coming into our territory. Or else." He smiles and my bowels churn.

I don't know why the agents aren't firing at him. Am I in the way? And then this woman comes forward, straight black hair, looking pretty grim. She says, "We understand. You know the way out."

And then the birds fly backwards and there's this...ripping sound. But it's not like a sound at all, but like it's coming from everywhere. And there's a space behind the guy that's just...gone. It's gone and it's been replaced with a rip. A tear. And beyond the tear I can see the ocean and lightning and a storm. He smiles at me again and then walks backward into the tear. And then it closes.

And my knees buckle and I fall to the ground. This is no fucking practical joke.

The woman who spoke helps me up. She says her name is Special Agent Liza Jane. I introduce myself and she says my new name is Special Agent Lady Grinning Soul. I ask why and she shrugs and says it's just tradition. A new name for a new job.

I ask what just happened and she fills me in. The guy was a "Nest" who went back to the "Bleak Shore." He came here because the SMSC had been encroaching on "Convocation" territory.

She brings me to her office and gives me a cup of water. I ask her why I'm here. "You have exceptional organizational skills," she says. "And, basically, we're a mess. It takes all our time just to keep track of these things and, as you can see, they aren't particularly happy about it sometimes. But we do need to keep track. So we need someone who can organize and file and make sure all our I's are dotted and T's are crossed. Because even though we track these things, we are still an extremely underfunded government agency. So we need you."

I think about that guy in the elevator, how he smiled at me, and it still makes me nauseous. But then I look at Agent Liza Jane and see someone who has sat where I am sitting now and made it through. And I am good at sorting and filing and organizing things. So I say yes.

"Good," she says. "Welcome to the SMSC."