I hope you had a good weekend! Without any torrential rain or sharknados or ancient chthonic demons deciding to stroll around the province... :)
I'm starting something with Fabian and Admiral Dread this week, so let's see if you like it! The prompt doesn't get a very big mention, but basically the idea of cleaning up after the Assessor has left is what it inspired.
The cleaner Fabian sighed, looking around the store-room. The Assessors, whatever the hell they actually were, had left the New Imperial Museum at last and there was a mess. Boxes were open that were normally kept neatly stacked on shelves, exhibits had been moved around because the Assessors wanted to count the number of toes on a Cataplexus or the number of spines running down the Tarrask's back, and they had stirred up dust from every ancient corner and crevice that the Museum had. He supposed that some -- much, even -- of the work could be left for the curators and cleaners when they came in tomorrow, but some of the things here were a little delicate, or in some cases outright politically incorrect, and he felt it would be better to have the worst of history's indiscretions tidied away before they could generate fresh outrage. He rubbed his head, mussing up his greying hair. Before he turned forty it had been chestnut brown, springy and curly; now it was all of those things but had grey strands here and there and occasionally felt more like straw than hair. His daughter, last time he'd spoken to her, had suggested he buy a better shampoo but when he'd looked at the shampoos in the shop his soul had quailed. The men's section had one, which he used anyway, and the women's section looked as though it needed a taxonomist and three months of data collection and assessment to understand. Today his hair felt soft but slightly greasy, which was probably the stress and sweat of having the Assessors question every little detail.
He sighed again, wished he didn't sigh so much and that he didn't have an odd craving for strawberries right now, and started stacking the boxes that were scattered over the specimen bench. Each box had a number pencilled on the side and he checked each one carefully, making sure it was still legible, and then stacked them in order. These boxes were shoe-box sized and made of thin, flexible cardboard and padded inside with tissue-paper; the specimens they contained were typically smaller than a human head (there was only one human head that he was aware of and thankfully the Assessors hadn't asked about it) and no heavier so he was confident he could lift a stack of six or eight to the shelves from the bench. Five minutes later the bench was much tidier and a box was missing.
Fabian gazed around the room. The numbers were very clear; specimen box 0788AD-012 was not on the bench, and as far as he could see it wasn't in the room either. Which was definitely not possible; the Assessors had cross-checked each number and would have brought up a missing one immediately. He hadn't taken anything out of the room and cardboard boxes did not grow legs and perambulate, at least not in the New Imperial Museum. What they did in the Mages College was a matter for the mages, of course, but here things were well-behaved. He cursed softly, then wondered if his choice of curse made him sound old. Then he remembered what he was doing, and started hunting around on the floor for the missing box. He found it, crushed and crumpled, in the waste-paper bin. There was a moment of irritation -- everyone knew that cardboard and paper were recycled differently and went in different bins -- before the implications of what he was seeing struck him. The box had been emptied -- he checked -- and discarded. And since he hadn't done it himself, that meant that an Assesor, unthinkably, had stolen something from the Museum. He rocked back on his heels, still crouched by the bin. Accusing an Assessor of theft would be like announcing to the Emperor that he craved death, and the end result would be the same. And why on earth would an Assessor want to steal something anyway? Surely they could just requisition whatever it was. And come to think of it, what was it that had been taken anyway?
Fabian was not entirely surprised when the computer catalogue insisted that there was no specimen 0788AD-012 in the museum, and he barely complained to himself as he went to the accession book, wherein all artefacts in the museum were recorded as well, and looked it up in there. Sure enough, whatever else the Assessor had known, they hadn't known about the accession book, and there was the entry for 0788AD-012: Heart of an Umber Hulk.
Greg - well, not that we've discovered yet, at least...
Ooh! I am excited to see what you do with this world!
And we're off to an intriguing start! Really enjoyed all the details that brought the scene to life, and the opening mystery is one that I'm already fully interested in seeing solved.
3 comments:
I hope you had a good weekend! Without any torrential rain or sharknados or ancient chthonic demons deciding to stroll around the province... :)
I'm starting something with Fabian and Admiral Dread this week, so let's see if you like it! The prompt doesn't get a very big mention, but basically the idea of cleaning up after the Assessor has left is what it inspired.
The cleaner
Fabian sighed, looking around the store-room. The Assessors, whatever the hell they actually were, had left the New Imperial Museum at last and there was a mess. Boxes were open that were normally kept neatly stacked on shelves, exhibits had been moved around because the Assessors wanted to count the number of toes on a Cataplexus or the number of spines running down the Tarrask's back, and they had stirred up dust from every ancient corner and crevice that the Museum had. He supposed that some -- much, even -- of the work could be left for the curators and cleaners when they came in tomorrow, but some of the things here were a little delicate, or in some cases outright politically incorrect, and he felt it would be better to have the worst of history's indiscretions tidied away before they could generate fresh outrage.
He rubbed his head, mussing up his greying hair. Before he turned forty it had been chestnut brown, springy and curly; now it was all of those things but had grey strands here and there and occasionally felt more like straw than hair. His daughter, last time he'd spoken to her, had suggested he buy a better shampoo but when he'd looked at the shampoos in the shop his soul had quailed. The men's section had one, which he used anyway, and the women's section looked as though it needed a taxonomist and three months of data collection and assessment to understand. Today his hair felt soft but slightly greasy, which was probably the stress and sweat of having the Assessors question every little detail.
He sighed again, wished he didn't sigh so much and that he didn't have an odd craving for strawberries right now, and started stacking the boxes that were scattered over the specimen bench. Each box had a number pencilled on the side and he checked each one carefully, making sure it was still legible, and then stacked them in order. These boxes were shoe-box sized and made of thin, flexible cardboard and padded inside with tissue-paper; the specimens they contained were typically smaller than a human head (there was only one human head that he was aware of and thankfully the Assessors hadn't asked about it) and no heavier so he was confident he could lift a stack of six or eight to the shelves from the bench.
Five minutes later the bench was much tidier and a box was missing.
Fabian gazed around the room. The numbers were very clear; specimen box 0788AD-012 was not on the bench, and as far as he could see it wasn't in the room either. Which was definitely not possible; the Assessors had cross-checked each number and would have brought up a missing one immediately. He hadn't taken anything out of the room and cardboard boxes did not grow legs and perambulate, at least not in the New Imperial Museum. What they did in the Mages College was a matter for the mages, of course, but here things were well-behaved. He cursed softly, then wondered if his choice of curse made him sound old. Then he remembered what he was doing, and started hunting around on the floor for the missing box.
He found it, crushed and crumpled, in the waste-paper bin. There was a moment of irritation -- everyone knew that cardboard and paper were recycled differently and went in different bins -- before the implications of what he was seeing struck him. The box had been emptied -- he checked -- and discarded. And since he hadn't done it himself, that meant that an Assesor, unthinkably, had stolen something from the Museum.
He rocked back on his heels, still crouched by the bin. Accusing an Assessor of theft would be like announcing to the Emperor that he craved death, and the end result would be the same. And why on earth would an Assessor want to steal something anyway? Surely they could just requisition whatever it was. And come to think of it, what was it that had been taken anyway?
Fabian was not entirely surprised when the computer catalogue insisted that there was no specimen 0788AD-012 in the museum, and he barely complained to himself as he went to the accession book, wherein all artefacts in the museum were recorded as well, and looked it up in there. Sure enough, whatever else the Assessor had known, they hadn't known about the accession book, and there was the entry for 0788AD-012: Heart of an Umber Hulk.
Greg - well, not that we've discovered yet, at least...
Ooh! I am excited to see what you do with this world!
And we're off to an intriguing start! Really enjoyed all the details that brought the scene to life, and the opening mystery is one that I'm already fully interested in seeing solved.
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