CC: The Man Upstairs

AUDIT REPORT

Morgan O. Parks, IAD Field Auditor

Babalon Rest, Int.

JARGONYMS

• Babalon Rest, International (=BRI)
• Bear Mound Bunker (=BMB)
• Subject 18-13-11-22 (=Emily)
• Probable Aeon Host (=PAH)
• Internal Audits Division (=IAD)
• First Date Operation (=FDO)
• [REDACTED] (=[REDACTED])

SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATIONS

After my onsite evaluation, during which I noted many issues with the facility, it is my recommendation that BMB should remain in operation; its Director, Captain Watereckt, however, should be removed from his post as soon as possible.

This document does not include the unfortunate end of the FDO (which has become a widely known event both inside and out of the company) nor does it include details of my subsequent direction of Assiah Team to recover sensitive BRI equipment. Those events, and more substantial arguments for my recommendations, are covered in the attached LR-Form 79-10.

INTRODUCTION

I was sent to BMB as part of an IAD Task Force charged with determining the necessity of certain facilities following the rollout of [REDACTED] and the large impact it has had on our communications network, data collection, and the monitoring and control of PAHs.

I felt, even before traveling to Wisconsin, that BMB should remain open due to its proximity to Emily. Though the new technology has substantially improved BRI’s overall capabilities – the physical distance between Observer and Observed remains a problem. I would still, however, need to examine and evaluate the facility's day-to-day operations.

NOTE

When I arrived, I learned of an imminent FDO and decided to take a fly-on-the-wall approach for my evaluation of BMB's proficiency. The following text is my thoughts and observations in medias res [retrospective insights appear italicized between brackets, such as this here]. Further elucidations can be found in the 79-10.

REPORT

The monitoring equipment was hidden around the restaurant in plants, counters, tables, walls; all their electronic attention focused on a table in the rear corner of the middle dining area. Assiah Team was, I gathered, in position all around Capital Square and its adjoining roads and were equipped/prepared for a litany of contingencies – save for the one unfolding in the restaurant which had the BMB Team in an emotional state that I will politely describe as ‘excited’.

Captain Watereckt [first name, not rank] stood at the side of a bank of monitors, forgetting the privacy glass plating so that his side-view rendered the information in the glass opaque and instead of moving behind the interchangeable young man [Lloyd] at the terminal’s helm – he barked questions.

“Are there any changes?”

“No sir, Assiah Team has not been able to figure out how to enter the location covertly and requests orders.”

“Yeah, tell them to go back in time and tell that flannel-shirted jackass to turn on his radio so I can tell him not to say the thing I goddamn know he's going to.”

“I uh, do you really want me to?”

Watereckt ignored this. His complexion was that of a middle-aged man who should already be taking blood pressure medication and was not. His voice's tone and volume corroborated this. “I thought we put our guys on the wait staff – why the hell didn’t we?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir, I’m only—”

“Where’s my damn phone?”

“You’re holding it, sir”

There was a flurry of finger swipes, and he put the phone to his ear “Yeah, it’s Watereckt! Why don't we have any of our guys on the staff? Or at least tell me why we didn’t know about the house wine?” The room was dim and the veins distending from his forehead were hard to make out as his hue further darkened in response to the voice on the other end of his phone. “If this fails, I’m letting The Man Upstairs know it was your fault.” He didn’t so much end the call as kill it.

The ‘Flannel Shirted Jackass’, who had the misfortune of being named Justin Thyme, could be seen on the monitors from several perspectives and was very handsome in a bland sort of way – like the beige handsomeness of yuppie New Yorkers or certain internet personalities; where once out of sight, you almost immediately forget about them.

[He made it through BRI's culling process largely for this reason. Blandly Handsome being preferable to Uniquely Handsome according to the Research Team in Tulsa whose methodology for this discernment was published in a 2009 report and accessible in BRI's directory; but is long and dry – as in desert – and filled with data and anthropological jargon so dense it causes a person's eyes to go white, and body to go limp, from an almost violent boredom (see attached copy).]

Justin sat across from Emily on the monitors' feed, but despite his adherence to his training things were not going well. Emily checked her phone too often and gazed around the room while Justin was talking. The role of Chief Director here would be to mitigate the situation, but Watereckt only stared fixedly over [Lloyd]’s shoulder at the monitors.

Justin’s voice had been coming over BMB's speaker system the whole time, but I had been unprofessionally distracted and only attended his words mid-pontification.

Ꝋ

“…which are that, yeah, language always changes but how much and how fast? The problem with number two is the same with number one – is Heraclitean flux as normal or desirable as gradual change? The problem with number threes ‘spoken language is language’ is that it is an old claim – at least as old as Plato’s Phaedrus – and it’s specious. Derrida and the infamous Deconstructionists have successfully debunked the idea that speech is language's primary instantiation… are you alright?”

“Sure.”

“Ha, well, I don’t blame you for being bored. A lot of this stuff can easily go over someone’s head especially if they aren’t well versed in—"

“Oh, no, sorry I didn’t mean to imply that—"

“Oh, you don’t need to apologize for being bored. It can be boring to the average person.”

“No, I mean I didn’t mean to imply that it went over my head.”

“Y-you’re into lexicography?”

“Not really, it’s just that I read the article you’re referencing and you’re basically just slightly rewording the bit where he voices his objections to Grove.” [Here the BMB Team’s bodies became so still that I could almost hear the hum of their subdermal vibrations. Almost like a tuning fork.]

“O-oh, so what did you um, think of it?”

“What do I think of a 20-year-old review of a usage dictionary? I guess it was strangely entertaining when I read it like 10 years ago, but I can’t say I’ve thought about it at all since then.”

Ꝋ

During the exchange on the monitors, Watereckt somehow managed to look both flush and pale, then asked in a cryptic monotone "What the hell did she just say?"

[Lloyd] took a minute, it seemed, to realize the question was not rhetorical "That she read the article he was referencing."

The flush on Watereckt's face began to reclaim territory and his voice had the quality of someone almost talking through clenched teeth "That's what I thought. Son of a—where’s my damn phone?”

“You’re holdin—”

Watereckt placed a hand over [Lloyd]’s mouth and used his other hand to call up Tulsa, who had evidently been watching the feed because they answered right away and preempted Watereckt’s question with a statement that was practically shrieked and was audible to everyone within 8 feet of Captain, which was only me and [Lloyd], “Our research did not indicate she read Wallace, oh god we had no idea! So much of our conversational training is predicated on her not knowing about— We've never seen—” the shrieking was cut off as the phone flew across the room in a spectacular parabola whose terminus was a trashcan.

On the monitor, Justin was riffing and stuttering against Emily’s raised eyebrows. [Lloyd] moved his whole body around Watereckt's hand which stayed right where it was. He then did a quick series of taps on the console and moved the biomonitoring screen so that it sat side-by-side with the live feed. He interpreted the data, “She’s embarrassed for him, sir.”

Watereckt started drumming his fingers on the back of [Lloyd]'s head, staring a thousand yards away, speaking from even further “I can feel it coming, the inevitable statement. Can see it looking at the man there from the window of the unconscious collective. Looking right into his eyes with its own. It has lifeless eyes. Like a killer’s eyes—the killer of conversation. The killer of romance. It’ll come, that thing, and it’ll be spoken…” then he shook his head as if returning from some distant mental sea, his voice again filled with impotent anger “We need to prepare Protocol 192021.”

“The Penultimate Protocol? I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir, we don’t know how that device reacts to [REDACTED] yet and don’t know—” [Lloyd] seemed to notice the apoplectic rigor of Watereckt’s face while he was speaking and stopped. I could almost see the flurry of luminescent blue calculations he was visualizing “Of course sir, you are absolutely right. It’s a fantastic idea.”

“Goddamn right, I’m right. I don’t need you to tell me that!”

Watereckt then went to his desk and pulled out a metal briefcase from somewhere. It had a fingerprint lock which opened with steamy pneumatics when he pressed his thumb against the sensor. “Just keep this here good and ready—”

“Sir! Sir!” the origin of the voice was unclear but Watereckt moved straight towards [Lloyd] whose monitor showed a scene unfolding that was very bad news, indeed.

[Though the specific situation Watereckt referred to was not directly addressed until after it occurred, it would be disingenuous not to mention that almost all BRI employees know of the Dread Scenario, which has become more of a problem post-introduction of [REDACTED]; no explanation on why has been forthcoming.]

Ꝋ

On the monitor, a waiter approached the table. Caught up in Watereckt’s odd monologue neither I nor the team was paying attention to the almost Tonberry plodding of the waiter until it was too late. Few options would have been available anyway, but the idea that some threshold of inevitability had been crossed makes a person’s mind rife with ‘what ifs.’

The waiter carried nestled in their arms a bottle of wine on which, among decorative writing, was printed clear and large the one word that none of us wanted to see: Merlot. The waiter filled both glasses on the table just shy of halfway. Then they faded away like some eschatological specter.

The two conversing forms at the table drank the wine. Emily made a noise denoting enjoyment of the drink, and then Justin Thyme - he ruined everything.

“You like merlot?”

“Oh yeah, it’s always been my favorite.”

Justin took another sip of his wine, and looked at Emily as though he had been given a command he could not refuse “You know…”

Watereckt moved, a lightning-quick about-face towards his desk and the still-steamy briefcase – inside which was a single red button. He took two large steps and flung himself at the device, landing perhaps five feet short of his goal and breaking his nose on the floor. The Dread Scenario then played out.

“I know what?” asked Emily.

“Back in, what was it, 2004? When the movie Sideways came out? Paul Giamatti’s character talked about hating merlot so much throughout the movie that worldwide merlot sales dropped”.

Ꝋ

I didn’t have enough technical training to make total sense of the biomonitoring equipment’s sudden data dump – but I could guess what the burst of activity meant: The date was ruined. Critical mission failure.

“Sir! There’s no point anymore! We don’t know what it’ll—” [Lloyd]’s shouting drew my attention back to Watereckt who had, like a blood-drenched phoenix, rose from the ground and covered the remaining distance to his desk, and the briefcase. Inside of it was a single, large, red button.