Workplace Orientation Package
Tilting his head curiously as her expression shifted, Feofan still stood there with a somewhat worried expression. What had made her cheerful all of a sudden?! Being trapped in a strange place hardly seemed like his idea of fun..
“No… I’m not an employee… Not of anyone here.” He shook his head, letting out a small sigh. “I’m pretty sure it’s not a Consortium… if anything it feels a bit more like a… prison from what I’ve seen.” Falling quiet as she began to speak once more, he let a small frown cross his face. “I do kind of doubt that people have heard of that form…!” Feofan let out a nervous chuckle, nodding in agreement to her statement about work.
“Oh my… I think is is?” Confusion was clear to hear in his words, a lot of what she was saying was somewhat beyond him.
Yelping as the large pile of paper was handed to him, Feofan stumbled in his step just trying to hold it all. How… how did she pull all of that out of her pocket?! Confusion clearly painting his features he took the pen, balancing the paperwork against his leg as she spoke. He’d never heard of any of the forms she was speaking of, and quite frankly they seemed rather bizarre. I mean, an Existence Confirmation Form?! He was pretty sure that he existed… right?
Still blinking confusedly, the angel looked at Sabriel with a frown.
“Um… I can’t really say I’ve actually heard of half of these… like… why do I have to confirm that I… exists?! So I… might need help with them?” Looking to the side, somewhat ashamed in himself he let out a little sigh. This really wasn’t what he was expecting when he went out searching these corridors again… But even with the volume of paperwork, he decided that he wouldn’t let this person down. If it needed to be done, it needed to be done he guessed… and it’d be too much of a fuss to object when she already said not having it done put her on edge…
At least he had some experience filling in forms…
Shaking his head he turned his attention to the business card she presented. Immediately he had to blink a few times to clear his vision. It was so incredibly odd… just shapes… patterns. Maybe he really should have had his glasses on… But just as he was going to tell her that he couldn’t read it, something strange happened.
He just… somehow knew what it said.
Her name, or what he presumed was her name. Her department, employee number… all of it just floated to mind. Perplexed he narrowed his eyes, looking a little closer at the card. It… really was beautiful… and he was sure that’s what gave him the information.
Shuffling the paperwork a little so he could extend a hand out to her, he returned the smile. “It’s… nice to meet you too, Sabriel! That’s your name right…?” It was what the business card had said, or he thought it did, after all. “And I’m Feofan. I don’t really have any title to go with that at the moment… I mean I’m employed! Sort of. It’s complicated…” Grimacing a little he quickly shut himself up, mentally reprimanding himself for not being able to be quiet.
“So… what exactly do you do then Sabriel…? I mean I’ve never heard of your department… or that many employees in one business…”
Sabriel quickly lost the cheerful smile, her expression becoming more confused and worried. A prison, well, that was no good at all. She almost certainly couldn’t get any work experience here, at least not any that mattered. Also worrying was the idea that someone was powerful enough, not only to keep her imprisoned, but to stop her Consortium from releasing her. That sounded like someone she did not want to mess with.
Slightly frustrated at his confirmation of his ignorance, she rolled her eyes. “Great, just great. I assume you can’t provide me with a Fundamental Objective Reality Handbook for this place? Like, no offence, but, amateur hour over here, dude.”
The Auditor crossed her arms as she watched him panic over the paperwork. She had no idea what he was complaining about. Her job wasn't particularly strenuous, and she consumed an infinite universe’s worth of energy every infinitely small fraction of a second in order to keep up with her paperwork.
Her eyes widened with shock when he asked about the form. How could it not be obvious to him that this was necessary paperwork? How could she even explain that to him? Thinking for a second, she recalled what the twelve billionth, five millionth, four thousandth, nine-hundredth and eighty-second volume of the handbook for processing interns told her. “Okay, right, what makes you think you exist?”
Without giving him a chance to speak, she holds up a hand to silence him. “Whatever it is, it’s some sort of proof or evidence that, as far as you’re concerned, logically proves your existence. Have you ever thought about why? Why cause necessarily, automatically leads to effect? Things aren’t just like that, you know. Someone’s got to keep it all working.”
With a melodramatic sigh, she put her hand over her forehead before grinning at him. “I can help you out with the trickier bits, if you like. A lot of people need their hands held through the first time they have to fill in the quantum uncertainty section.”
She shook his hand enthusiastically, a wide grin on her face. “The pleasure’s all mine. And yeah, you can call me Sabriel. It’s pronounced a bit more like -” What happened next, much like the business card, was not words, sound, but a stream of ideas. Two plus two equaling four, the pressure times the volume of a gas being a constant, ‘all are not’ defining something different about a set than ‘none are’, a fractal pattern, triangles within triangles endlessly repeating, images that seem to expand and expand until there is nothing else, only these thoughts, only these images.
And suddenly, it stopped, and she closed her mouth with a cheerful, if slightly embarrassed smile. “I think Sabriel’s kinda cuter, though, don’t you think?” She pressed the business card into Feofan’s hand. “Well, if you ever need a job, you know where to find me. I mean, in --another image, of time stretching on, forever and forever, infinity unfolding inside his eyes, never stopping, never ending, until suddenly it does and she once again speaks with words.-- years, I’m going to need a new coffee intern.”
Sabriel frowned briefly before returning to her default expression of an optimistic smile. “I’m a junior auditor at the Consortium. That means I’m in charge of the paperwork for just one universe. Most of the time, I sit at a desk, and I fill in forms and stuff. You know, basic stuff, molecular reactions, quantum entanglement to the more engaging stuff, like extinction events and dying stars. You’d be surprised how much paperwork there is in one of those.” Her eyes lit up. “But one day, once I’ve done all of the paperwork, I’m going to get promoted, and I’m going to be a Senior Auditor! Imagine that, little Sabriel, a Senior Auditor! Me! Oh, I just can’t wait.”
Blushing, she caught herself. “But I’m rambling, so sorry. Bet you don’t want to hear me talk about myself all day long! I mean, we all joined the company at the same time, when we were created, but when we all joined some of us had been there longer than others, so I got stuck working as a coffee intern for -the same image again, countless seconds, years, millenia, the words all become interchangeable as the time stretches on forever until stops are her words are words again-, but then I got raised to employee status, and look at me now. My manager says I’m his hardest worker!” She said this with a childlike pride, like a preschooler whose teacher had just complimented her fingerpainting.