Work Text:
Gavin Crumble presents his card to the receptionist at L'arc de Ordinateurs.
The building arches grandly around him, bustling with activity and heavy with prestige. That's what you'd expect from an internationally renowned automated banking system. Gavin Crumble keeps his face professionally unimpressed, and his attention on his work. He has dressed in the nicest versions of his work clothes; a stiff, narrow suit, thick horn-rimmed glasses, a large amount of pencils in his breast pocket. This facility is, admittedly, somewhat more impressive than anything in his usual purview of Dorsetshire, but his veneer of process can hold up to most things. Health and Safety doesn't change just because of how grand something is.
"Didn't someone come through just a few months ago?" the receptionist– Madeline Riellard, according to her nametag– says. She's a gnome who, without the accommodations from her desk, would barely reach his waist. As it is, she still has to look up.
"I couldn't possibly say," Gavin says. Probably, though. He'd only just transferred to this branch. The Paris branch had recently lost a number of inspectors to what seemed to be mysteriously good luck, and Gavin, while specializing in water safety, had been knowledgeable enough to fill in the gaps. And it's not as though there was anything like a promising relationship tying him to Dorset, now was there, Mr. Calcifer.
Madeline turns back to her records. Gavin taps his finger on the handle of his briefcase and sucks on his teeth. He looks around the grand lobby, but only in the name of Health and Safety. It wouldn't do, for instance, for the opulent marble slabs to be misaligned so as to constitute a tripping hazard. (They are not.)
It's only a few moments before Madeline looks back up at him. "I'm sorry, sir. Francois Henri can't get away from his work just now." She taps her pen, considering. "I'd normally tell you to make an appointment, but he hasn't been booking those either, and I'm guessing that's not how your inspection process works." She's nice enough. Invested in doing her job, and respects that Gavin is equally invested in doing his. A lesser man, he thinks, might try to seduce her to get more information. Gavin doesn't have to bother. (He's also not interested, but that's beside the point.)
"That shouldn't be a problem," Gavin says bureaucratically. "This is a routine inspection. If you can find somebody to show me around, I'll send a copy of the findings to Monsieur Henri, as well as to my agency's managers."
Madeline considers this. "I'm not sure there's anyone available just now. One moment."
"I see." He turns his attention to his clipboard, and makes a small note. Unprepared for inspection. "Well then. It may be unorthodox, but if you can provide me with the appropriate level of access, and perhaps a map, I should be just fine on my own."
Madeline purses her lips and seems to come to a decision with herself. She opens a drawer to pull out a paper floor map and uses a key from her pocket to open a second drawer, from which she removes an identification badge that tingles faintly with some type of magic.
As she passes them over, she gestures for Gavin to lean down. It's still a significant distance, since he is a 6'5" human, but he does as requested.
"I've given you the highest level of access I, well, I have access to," she says, low enough that no one is likely to hear her. "I probably shouldn't be doing that, but… let's just say no one has clarified the policy on surprise inspections recently." She laughs nervously. "Things have gotten very… odd around here. Very… Look. I don't know if there's any type of health or safety issue. But if there is, I hope you find it."
"Excuse me," Gavin begins, "are you saying–?"
Madeline holds up a hand and turns to a new visitor who has just approached the desk, offering over her shoulder, "I hope that allows you to do your job, Mr. Crumble."
So. There is a potentially hidden Health and Safety issue that, if it exists, reaches all the way to the front desk.
Gavin Crumble makes a note.
His inspection is methodical and thorough. The map is a great help for ensuring that he does not miss any areas in the almost labyrinthine facility, and the badge, pinned officially to his breast, ensures that not only is he allowed in restricted areas, but that the employees give him no trouble. In the front rooms there are some curious stares and a few introductions by the more friendly of the ordinatists, who do not seem bothered that there is an inspection. Somewhat unusually, as he delves deeper into the place's inner workings he seems to be noticed less and less. Distracted eyes slide over the magical badge and then back to their work without a sliver of concern or interest. Coders, probably.
In addition to the supplies from Madeline, he makes good use of the professional tools of his trade; a gauge which detects ambient magic (Gavin himself is no wizard), a thick book of regulations and codes which he refers to often, and of course his trusty clipboard and pencil. There is a lot about ordinatist work that Gavin doesn't understand, but the trick is to simply look past the complicated machinery and maths and focus on those aspects of Health and Safety which do not change.
He ticks areas off his map as he works, to make sure he hasn't missed any. And it is in this methodical way that he encounters a nondescript door. Specifically, a nondescript door that does not have a counterpart on his map. Gavin checks several times.
There is no type of warning or even "authorized personnel only" on this door, and it gives off a presence of forgettable-ness. If Gavin had not been inspecting everything with a great deal of purpose, it would have been easy to walk right by. But, as it is, Gavin's single minded focus allows him to ignore things which are not pertinent to his job, and unexplained doors most certainly are.
The door is locked. The lock, mundane as it seems to be, responds somehow to the magic in Gavin's badge. Odd. Inside, cool air wafts up from a narrow staircase that, although moderately well lit, descends deeply enough and has a wide enough landing that he cannot see what is at the bottom. There are no railings.
That gets a note. Then Gavin proceeds, carefully and bureaucratically, down the stairs.
The staircase and the adjoining hallway are empty. Uncomfortably empty. Gavin's tight shoes tap too loudly in the quiet. There does not seem to be another soul breathing down here. A layer of dust has accumulated along the sides of the hallway, but the center walking path is perfectly clean. Gavin's pencil scratches on his clipboard. Ominously abandoned area of facilities, too spooky for employees.
He blinks at the paper. Why has he written that? He crosses it out with one firm line.
There are a few offices down here. Entirely empty. Covered in dust. There is a storage room that is not empty and only slightly dusty, as though the contents of these boxes– labeled mostly with the names of magitech components that are well beyond Gavin's area of expertise or salary range– were being accessed and used on occasion. By who?
Uncannily neat closets, he writes, then pauses again at his handwriting. That might actually be the opposite of a health and safety violation. He strikes through that note with another firm line.
Inefficient use of space , he writes, as he continues to see very little along his inspection of this lower floor. It's not against any code per se. It just doesn't feel right. It would have been very helpful to be given a map of this area as well, so he'd know how, as they say, "deep this rabbit hole went." He makes the best of it by neatly penciling a few lines on the back of the upstairs map to indicate where he's been.
That's how he notices that something is wrong. He has finished his inspection of the spooky yet thoroughly safe hallway and is on his way back up the stairs when he realizes his notation of the hallways just sort of scrawls into nothing. He has not finished his map. The map he was marking diligently. The map he distinctly remembers being entirely in order.
He blinks. Shakes his head. How has this happened? There is a procedure for these things, and Gavin has been following procedure, and giving up partway through is very much not in the procedure.
He takes off his glasses and cleans them, then rubs his eyes and composes himself. He turns around, checks his makeshift map again, and returns to his inspection, as a proper official should.
It happens again.
He is on the way upstairs, quite certain that there was nothing of interest at the end of the hallway, when he checks his notes again, and again finds incomplete paperwork and the firmly crossed-out note more sta– . His heart begins to pound.
"Hello!" he shouts into the silence. "If this is someone's idea of a prank, it is completely unacceptable!"
There is no answer.
"If it is an attempt to derail an entirely legitimate inspection, that is even more unacceptable!"
Gavin Crumble frowns, leaning into his blustering anger because the alternative is icy fear. He taps his pencil, but it turns out he doesn't exactly know what to write. Instead, he opens his briefcase and pulls out one of his more specialized inspector's tools: an extendable stick to which he can fasten a piece of chalk, perfect for marking potentially hazardous things at a distance.
He places the stick to the ground and watches as the chalk makes a rough, white line across the hardwood floor. Good. Eyes on the chalk, he walks forward.
When he looks up, he is back where he started. Though he is certain he successfully found nothing, a chalk line runs most of the way down the corridor before ending abruptly. His stick, apparently dropped, lies abandoned near the last doorway.
"I am going to report this!" Gavin shouts at nobody, gripping his clipboard tight to suppress the urge to bolt back up the stairs. "Don't think you can hide a code violation this way!"
It could be a gas leak, perhaps, or just as likely, a leak of some sort of magical energy that is messing with his mind. Either one of those would be a serious violation. He pulls out his Davy lamp, a device used to detect ambient magic in the area, and lights it carefully. As it burns, he conducts his mundane tests for gas. No odd smells, no hissing noises, no irregularities in the air.
The lamp flares with a violent, sickly red shot through traces of green. Well.
Section 5 subsection C-5 of the Inspector's manual identifies this as thickly necromantic, partially divine, probably mind-altering, and absolutely not healthy nor safe. Right then.
He is sweating and cold, but he is prepared for lots of things including, somehow, this. He returns to his briefcase and pulls out a small metal band which fits neatly around his skull (though it snags annoyingly on his wig). His supervisor had called it the “anti-circlet of command,” and then chuckled pointedly, but Gavin doesn’t get the joke. Anyway, when activated, it can shield the wearer from some degree of mind-altering magic.
It has a small effect, twenty minutes at most, and is a single-use item. Its use will require significant paperwork after the fact, but that's hardly a deterrent for Gavin. Besides, if one can’t make use of the tools at one’s disposal while inspecting L’arc de Ordinateurs of all places , why bother to have those tools at all?
He grips his clipboard and takes a shaky breath and starts down the hallways for what must be at least the fourth time. "You should know this is going in my report," he announces to the empty hallway. "Francois Henri will be hearing about all of this." The circlet of anti-command buzzes against his forehead.
There is another staircase, this one darker and yet more quiet, somehow. Gavin sucks his teeth and adjusts his glasses. It may be ominous, yes, but he has a job to do.
This time the staircase is long. Three floors without a door out. (Hazardous.) Thankfully, the staircase does not open into a hallway of more empty offices. Instead, it is a large atrium-like area, crisscrossed by narrow passages between rows and rows of massive columns.
Knuckles white around the edges of his clipboard, Gavin steps forward to inspect.
The columns appear thick and firmly fastened to the floor. Each column is, however, made up of several large tanks of liquid stacked atop each other, with various tubing and wires connecting them. The sight is oddly reassuring. Gavin's speciality is water inspection. He's accepted the need to be something of a generalist, sure, but these are tanks of water. He can handle tanks of water.
The tanks are large, full, and sturdily connected to each other. Their purpose is not immediately clear. It almost looks like the water is being used as some type of storage? It's also definitely not clean. Or, well. On closer inspection, the liquid might not be water at all. It is cloudy and perhaps thick, and Gavin has to take a concerted look at the shadowy blob in the center to see what is inside.
The blob resolves itself.
It is a brain.
Gavin steps back quickly. A brain? He’s seen drawings of brains, and that’s undoubtedly what this is, all fleshy and squiggling, but he’s never actually seen a brain before. It's pulsing.
He swallows hard, and inspects the next column, and the next. Brains. Brains all the way down, or, up, rather. "What is this?" he asks aloud, though he can't stop his voice shaking. "Why are there brains here?"
Gavin stops in the center of the room to flip through his book of regulations. B for Brains. Body parts. O for Organs? There is, as he’d suspected, no regulation or protocol relating to the use of loose or contained brains in a scientific, computing, or business setting. If they were rotting or in a highly trafficked area– which is demonstrably not the case– that would be one thing, but sitting here in tanks….
He takes a moment, straightens his tie, and adjusts his glasses. If there is no rule about brains, then this is not a relevant discovery in his inspection. Who knows what scientists and wizards use brains for. It’s not his remit.
Hands shaking, he takes a steadying breath and recollects his clipboard, his book, his regulations. What is his remit is Health and Safety. He stands up straighter, resuming that veneer of process that has served him well so far. The question now: are these brains– is this facility of brains– healthy and safe?
This turns out to be the right tack to take. His heartbeat, still too fast, evens. He inspects. There are indeed other issues with the structure of this room. Lack of signage. Puddles. And most pressingly, other than the tanks, there seem to be no columns or supports of any kind. That wouldn’t be feasible for a room this size, with a whole building on top of it, unless…
He steps back, craning his neck upward. Sure enough, the towers of tanks are fastened to the ceiling, and appear to– e’s too far away to be sure, but he pulls out a health-and-safety-modified pair of opera glasses and presses them to his face. Yes, the towers of tanks appear to be supporting the weight of the ceiling.
He sucks his teeth derisively. Now that is a violation. Incredibly unsafe. Load bearing brains.
Gavin Crumble makes a note.