Just a Minute: A tie-in to Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Official Enquiry

Originally posted on Tales of the Parodyverse by Manga Shoggoth.

Parodyverse characters copyright (c) 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works.

"You will work alongside our successful audit department, giving you an opportunity to observe and learn from a team of highly trained auditors. Our clients are well known and respected agents in their fields. High WPM and office skills a necessity."

Yeah. Right.

I started off in a Temping Agency, and saw a host of similar advertisements to this one. Never had too many postings 'though. It seems that the "office skills" that most people wanted involved long legs, short skirts, and nothing between the ears or legs. I don't know what "WPM" was a euphemism for, but it sure as hell wasn't anything to do with typing or shorthand.

The Permie Agencies were nearly as bad - the main difference being that the disbelieving looks came from the agency staff rather than the prospective employer.

However, the ad caught my eye for some reason. Oddly, none of the other secretaries I mentioned it to even noticed it. I had to point it out to them, and even then I tended to get funny looks - as if I had pointed to something in the "personal services" section.

I applied for the job.

I got it.

It really wasn't what I was expecting.

It's an unusual secretarial pool. About the only "normal" thing is that I am pretty much the only male in it - although in some cases using the concepts of "male" and "female" are stretching things a little. At least half of the staff are not even humanoid.

Mind you, they made me feel welcome right from the start. And the crack about "nothing between the ears or legs" doesn't apply here. They are a bright bunch (especially the nacluv), and there are various office cliques split across the various puzzles that they bring from their homeworlds. As a human from Earth I was immediately besieged by the Crossword faction (mostly the nacluv), and briefly canvassed by the Binary Sudoku camp. I ended up in the Torsional Holochromic Trilinear group (mostly Astrovids).

Well, you have to do something between assignments.

The work itself is usually quite enjoyable. There are, however one or two assignments...

One of these was note taking for one Noseous Org. The pool do not have a very high opinion of him. In fact Jaraa - a little, attractive green-skinned lass, by far the meekest of the pool - went as far as to describe him as "An ego the size of a gelded kerhsk, as much use as castrated snaargh, and about as intelligent as the removed bits". I think it loses something in the translation, but in human terms? He's a twat. Of course, he thinks he's so brilliant that it's a wonder his ego fits in the same building.

Today, I had three call-outs with Org.

The first was recording the preliminary investigation of a minor office holder for abuse of power during the Parody War. As a native of Earth I am a little biased in his favour, so Org made it quite clear that I was to record everything exactly as it happened. Nothing more, nothing less.

Well, it was educational, to say the least. I learned how to prepare Kippers (which I think I will try on Jarra in exchange for her typing up and duplicating the notes - which she will also enjoy - and I'm sure she will be able to accidentally leave a copy on the photocopier for the rest of the staff). I got the answer to Fourteen Down (which has been driving the crossword faction crazy all morning).

And watching Org get it in the neck from his supposed victim was priceless. Being officially neutral I recorded everything meticulously.

The second? Well... Org needed to take statements from a couple of witnesses as well.

The interview had not been going well. First of all the creature had difficult to find. Usually an auditor could just appear where the interviewee was. This was proving to be rather difficult as the interviewee either did not exist, or existed in several places at the same time. Or both. They had ended up materialising on a vast windswept plateau, followed by a long walk through a damp, dank cave system to find the creature.

Then, when Org had tried to transport it to his office the creature simply ignored the transport. Of course, somehow he could not transport himself back to his previous location, despite supposedly knowing where it was, so he had to brave the plain and caverns for a second time. The fact that his assistants had not been transported either didn't help his temper. Neither did the fact that they were being served tea when he finally made it back to the cavern.

The second attempt at transference was slightly more successful, in that instead or appearing in the office, the contents of the office appeared in the cavern. The screaming fit that this triggered went on for several minutes.

After he had calmed down somewhat, Org then spent a considerable period of time trying to explain to the creature the reason for the visit. It listened impassively.

And your point would be? asked the creature as it lurked over its sofa. The light from an array of 25 plasma screens all apparently showing the same opening theme of an animation - two girls (one of them coughing up blood) singing a cheery song in a number of different locations.

"That Sir Mumphrey consistently and deliberately used the powers granted to him as the keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity to further his own agenda and interfere in the proper flow of history!" yelled Org.

Interfering in the flow of history is what you brief mortals do. Noted the Creature. If you didn't, then there wouldn't be a history. Such a mortal conceit...

The light from the monitors changed as the 25 versions of the opening theme were revealed to be each separate episodes of the same animation, all being run simultaneously. The cavern was suddenly filled with the noise of several instances of a hyperkinetic screeching female voice. The effect was disconcerting, to say the least.

"Would you mind getting rid of that damn noise?" yelled Org.

Org vanished. A few hours later he managed to make his way back from the plain to the cavern, only to find that his assistants had just polished off a rather fine serving of ramen.

"Look, you..." He started.

The creature looked. The overall effect was very disconcerting.

I suggest, brief mortal, that you take your office and your trivial preoccupations away from here. Your existence does not amuse me, and if you stay, yours will be the fate of Odin.

Needless to say, Org left in a hurry, instructing us to move the office furniture back. The creature was quite nice about this - it offered to transport things back for us, although it warned us that there was a high risk of any articles being transported being covered in extra-dimensional slime. We told it that that was not a problem.

My third call-out is to cover Org's interview of the Destroyer of Tales. The girls tell me that I am really going to enjoy taking the minutes of that one...

Footnotes:

For the uninitiated, Odin: Photon Space Sailor Starlight is one of the few anime that I have thrown in the bin for being too useless to exist. Two overly-kind reviews of it can be found here and here.