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Weird Theology is now available as an audiobook! Click here to check it out! Or here for Amazon! (It just got approved for whisper sync) And if you could leave it an honest rating or review, I’d really appreciate it.

—

Officium Mundi was exactly the sort of organized chaos Ryan remembered from his last visit. As he and Dianmu left his nanoverse, they had to step quickly to avoid being struck by a filing cabinet that ambled along on its own, chased by a curator in the brown suit they seemed to favor. Another curator, almost the mirror twin of the one that had just dashed by, stepped up to them. “Paperwork?”

Ryan and Dianmu shared a glance. Last time Ryan had been here, they had not asked for paperwork as soon as he arrived. From Dianmu’s expression, this was an entirely new concept to her as well. “We don’t have any?” Ryan said, his voice rising up on the last word, turning it into a question.

The curator nodded briskly and pulled a stack of papers out of the air. “Temporary regulations. Initial paperwork must be filled out before any mortal, immortal, demon, non-Euclidean entity, post-mortal being, or quasi-divine being can petition for questions, knowledge, or investigation. Do you need a pen?”

Ryan patted his pockets and realized, to his chagrin, he had forgotten it. Just as he was about to ask for one of those damn Temporary Pen Allocation forms, Dianmu reached into her pocket and pulled out two black pens with a small smile. The Curator nodded in approval. “You can use room 235x, instance 67 to fill out the requisite forms.” He pointed to indicate a bank of rooms. Ryan peered at them, and on instinct, activated his divine sight.

It hurt his brain to look at. The rooms were a hallway that stretched on for seventeen miles, stacked three deep, like a bank of motel rooms. However, each room was also, at the same time, two hundred rooms. Each one was slightly out of phase with the others, allowing them to occupy the same physical space while also permitting multiple people to enter without ever seeing each other.

Ryan felt warm liquid on his upper lip, and the tangy, coppery taste of blood on his lips. He turned off his divine sight and brought two fingers up to his nose. Blood. He’d given himself a damn bloody nose looking at that. The Curator gave him a sympathetic look and pulled out a tissue from his pocket. “Should have warned you. You’re still Nascent, right? Divine sight and things like that don’t mix well until after Apotheosis.”

Ryan reached for the tissue and dabbed at his lip, then twisted the tissue into a small sphere he could put in his nostril to stem the flow. As a child, Ryan had dealt with almost daily nosebleeds until getting a humidifier. They’d last for hours at times, and this trick had been his favorite to allow him to do school work or play with friend. It made him look absurd, a tail of white tissue sticking out from one nostril, but it at least would leave his hands free to fill out the damn forms. Like the one the Curator was now adding to the top of the stack. “Acceptance of Celluloid Based Self-Cleaning Product used to clean Blood, Mucus, or Other Bodily Fluid, 20-G (For Nasal Bleeding if Product Offered Prior to Form.)”

Dreading the answer, Ryan asked, “Can I borrow a few more in case I need them?”

The Curator smiled and pulled a few more out of his pocket in a clear plastic wrapper. He offered them to Ryan, along with a new form, “Acceptance of Celluloid Based Self-Cleaning Product used to clean Blood, Mucus, or Other Bodily Fluid, 20-B (For Nasal Bleeding after Initial Blood Flow Staunched.)”

Ryan did his best to accept the aid and paperwork graciously, the he and Dianmu were off to their room. They had to weave in and out of ambulatory cabinets and rushing Curators. “Can’t they do anything without a form?”

Dianmu laughed as they stopped to let a filing cabinet zip past their heads. “Not here. They have a bit more freedom to act outside of their home plane, but here everything is done with forms. Can you imagine the chaos if they didn’t have paperwork?”

“We do it just fine without that much paperwork,” Ryan protested.

“We don’t have an office the size of a planet,” Dianmu countered. “Ryan. Look at them. Really look at them.”

Ryan stopped and watched, trying to see what Dianmu was pointing out. Two curators crossed each others paths, one handing a file to the other without even looking. Another walked directly under one of the floating cabinets without ducking as it passed millimeters over his hair. Ryan compared that to Dianmu and his own path, stopping for curators that bustled by, stepping quickly to avoid being struck by a filing cabinet… “They know where everything is going to be. At all times,” he whispered in awe.

“Exactly,” Dianmu said, resuming her walk with a satisfied smile. “The forms make sure that’s possible. It’s almost beautiful in its efficiency, isn’t it?”

“I was going to say creepy,” Ryan said as he followed.

“If humans were doing it, I’d agree with you,” Dianmu said. “Or gods, for that matter. But Curators don’t operate on the same logic that we do. Free will…it’s a concept they understand, and it’s a thing that they have, but they view it the way most humans view having an anus. Something that they’d rather not think about.”

Ryan let out a shocked laugh at the analogy. They reached their room, and Dianmu pushed a button labeled I-67.

The room itself was what Ryan should have expected from a private office in Officium Mundi. Two desks, facing each other, each adorned with a single lamp and no other decorations. The desks were made of some kind of metal – Ryan considered looking at it with his divine sight to figure out what kind, but decided that opening it up inside one of the impossibly ‘stacked’ rooms would be even worse than looking at them from a distance – and the lamps were utilitarian shades of white canvas. At the back of the room was a small metal door that looked like it belonged to a dumbwaiter with a simple sign proclaiming “Insert Paperwork Here When Completed.”

Dianmu headed over to one of the desks, taking a stack of paperwork from Ryan. “Hey, question for you,” Ryan asked as he sat down. “Crystal said, back when this all started, that she couldn’t explain some things to be because it would fry my brain unless I’d undergone Apotheosis. Later on, Athena said that Crystal was probably just deflecting questions with that. But now…I mean, just looking at this gave me a bloody nose. Do you have any idea which one it is?”

The small smile that spread across Dianmu’s lips told Ryan he’d just revealed his ignorance. It had been awhile since a goddess had to explain something to him that she found to be a basic concept, however, so it didn’t sting the way it used to. “There’s nothing that can’t be explained to you that would hurt your brain, Ryan. However, until you undergo Apotheosis, some concepts – like how this room is made – are difficult to understand, let alone perceive. So in a way, they were both telling part of the truth.”

Ryan thought about it and nodded in acceptance. “Why couldn’t Crystal have just said that, then?” he groused.

“Because she was probably just deflecting questions,” Dianmu said.

Ryan chuckled in agreement and sat down at the other desk. Paperwork, Ryan thought as he looked at form “Request to Petition Curator for Information 119-C.” Why did it have to be paperwork?

With a sigh, he began to write.

—

Weird Theology is now available as an audiobook! Click here to check it out! Or here for Amazon! (It just got approved for whisper sync) And if you could leave it an honest rating or review, I’d really appreciate it.