The Dirty Part of Physics [ClockworkCadence ║ Ryees]

[Ryees]

Sherlin let them arrange themselves in silence. He watched without expression as Marina claimed her corner, as Callum stretched out on the risers like it was instinct, and as Helen colonized her patch of floor with the quiet determination of someone setting up a spellcraft emporium at a trade show.

"Well," he said, bouncing on his toes with hands loosely clasped behind his back, "you've all done an admirable job of inventing real estate from a classroom. That's harder than it looks." He wandered a few paces forward, surveying the room as if considering how to buy it at auction. "You'll be surprised how much of a person can be read by where they choose to sleep. But we'll set that aside for now, because your next task is not about sleeping."

He paused, just long enough for a few heads to lift. "It's about paperwork." With a single gesture, the chalkboard at the front of the room gave a metallic crank and flipped top-over-bottom to reveal a gold-stamped header across the top:

INTERDEPARTMENTAL DIRECTIVE 7-F: CROSS-FUNCTIONAL RESPONSE SIMULATION
Please Wear Sensible Shoes​

Sherlin turned back to them as he retook his place at the front of the room, smiling like a man preparing to auction off their sense of control. "Please direct your attention to the board."

As text began to scrabble itself down underneath the header, the professor began to explain while pacing back and forth in front of the board, occasionally obscuring view. "You will be divided into departments. Not houses, not factions, not dueling teams. Departments. As in, bureaucratic silos designed to miscommunicate with each other as elegantly as possible. Your objective is a coordinated response to a fictional threat. You will receive incomplete information, arbitrary constraints, and shifting priorities, just like real life."

He produced a scroll with a flick of his wand, letting it unroll midair with a snap. "Strategy. Communications. Logistics. Operations. Each has its own powers, responsibilities, and rules. You may not trade roles. You may not improvise outside your lane. Unless, that is, you're very clever about it—in which case, I encourage you to try." He walked away from the scroll, letting it float, scooping up the conspicuous stack from his desk. He began handing out the folders, thick, slightly sticky, and smelling faintly of burnt parchment and bureaucracy. Each bore a faux-gilded Ministry seal with "PROVISIONAL TRAINING USE ONLY" stamped diagonally across it.

"You will communicate across departments via Ministry memos: standard enchanted paper, charmed to transmit brief messages. Any attempt to bypass this system will be punished by increased paperwork." He paused for a long moment, then added, with a sense of finality. "There is no final answer. There is no perfect outcome. But there will be points, and there will be blame." Sherlin clapped his hands together once. The chalkboard shifted again, revealing this week's "incident" in faded typewritten text:

 

A Class-IV Spell Creature has breached containment in Sublevel Theta. It has consumed a Prime Archive. Containment protocols have failed. A cover story is required. Budget approvals pending. Begin.​

​

Then, as he turned toward his chair, he shot back, "Oh, and someone left cake in the records office. If you eat it, you must explain it to the press."

Each student, when they took a look at their folder, would see their department printed across its top in monotype lettering that looked antiquated even for Ministry standards. Angier's folder read Operations, while Helen and Callum's said Strategy. Ryan stared blankly at the word Logistics as if trying to decipher hieroglyphs. Olivia's folder header read Communications, leaving her and Angier as solo operators in their departments.

Communications	Logistics	Operations	Strategy
Acts as the sole relay between departments. May not speak directly to anyone outside their assigned channel. Uses enchanted memos to transmit messages. Responsible for maintaining clarity, fidelity, and morale, though failure in any of these is highly likely, and sometimes encouraged.	Manages magical resources, equipment, and "tokens" required for actions. Distributes limited supplies upon formal request. May deny requisitions at will, provided they include a reason (real or imagined). Performance depends on foresight, stinginess, and the occasional abuse of power.	Executes the mission under the direction of Strategy. May cast spells, move physical objects, and respond to on-the-ground conditions. Cannot alter objectives. Effectiveness hinges on speed, coordination, and the ability to improvise without asking too many questions.	Responsible for mission planning, objective prioritization, and general oversight. May issue orders to Operations, propose tactical shifts, or initiate contingency plans. Not authorized to perform spellwork. Success depends on clarity, delegation, and resisting the urge to micromanage everyone else's jobs.

"Logistics!" he called out, pointing to Ryan, who looked up at him like two deer in four sets of headlights. "You will begin with three tokens, enough for each department to take an action. More tokens will be awarded as actions are performed, and you will receive more tokens for actions that are valuable or successful. If anything leaks to the muggle world, you must sacrifice one token to the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes to tie things up."

Sherlin looked down at his watch, tabbing over a screen to set a timer. "You have five minutes to discuss amongst yourselves, then your exercise will begin." He tapped the watch, and a dim, barely-audible beep was the only notice that the planning period had begun.

 

[ClockworkCadence]

A sense of tenseness began to settle into the atmosphere of the room, growing thicker with each bit of their task laid out in front of them. Eyes scanned the board, trying to make sense of the roles before curiosity turned their attention into their respective folders.

Each student was greeted with the sight of a neat stack of enchanted notecards, each embossed with the same "PROVISIONAL TRAINING USE ONLY" mark in the top right corner. A map of the building lay underneath with an array of details about each room and hallway, the people and things within, and the creature's history of movements. A formal notice of the incident sat paperclipped to the top corner, though it lacked any useful details. At the back of the folders, everyone would find a map of the city surrounding the Ministry. Clogging a good portion of the rest of the space, they would also find prior correspondences and documents detailing the necessity and formation of the "departments", complete with budget decisions, board meeting minutes, employee handbooks, and an invitation to an office pizza party.

Sandwiched between the common items, Olivia noted the items that appeared to be unique to her station. A set of darker, more richly-colored notecards appeared to be meant for communicating to all departments. An empty notebook seemed to accompany an enchanted quill. Smaller folders marked with each of the other department names looked to be a handy way to help organize incoming and outgoing messages. An extra one marked "BOARD" piqued her curiosity—within, she found vague notes on the current state of the Board's views of their "departments", namely their efficiency and necessity. The overall opinion seemed neutral at quick glance. She worried that was a factor that could change over the course of the exercise.

She glanced up as everyone pored over the overwhelm of content. Marina sighed as Ryan turned a sheet of budget approvals around in his hands. Callum sat cross-legged, brows furrowed in thought until Helen snatched what he was reading out of his hands, passing him the rest of the folder. Angier, after a quick scan, shut his folder and seemed confident that he had gleaned all of the information he needed.

Her gaze flickered to the clock on the wall. "So, what do we think?"

"Catch the damn thing." Angier grunted, leaning back in his seat as if he'd already done just that.

"A solid endgame. Ideas on how to get there?"

"I ain't the idea guy." He huffed, jerking his head at the Strategy department.

"Strategy?" She posed the question to the two.

Callum shook his head. "Working on it."

"Fuck all to go off of." Helen growled.

"So you don't know what's going on, either?" Marina asked.

"Of course not."

"Wait, are we all lacking the same bits of information?" Olivia's attention swept across the group. "What the creature is, what it ate, how it escaped, any of that? Angier?"

He reached for the small flask on his belt loop, taking a long, languid gulp before answering. "I'm just the grunt, girl. They'd never tell me shit."

She riffled through the extensive meeting records, trying to skim and see if she could spot any clues. After a few pages, her eyes began to catch on whited out fragments, small but noticeable. A couple page numbers were missing. Some parts of the meeting had been censored.

The question almost tumbled out of her lips until she noticed the stamp on the front—"CLASS C COPY". It almost looked like—

Her finger traced the lettering on the map of the building, the one that had information about the creature's movements. "CLASS B COPY".

"Clearance," she sighed, "we don't have the right level of access to that information."

"How? We're the ones responsible for it all!"

"Of carrying out the job, yes, for the people above us." Olivia held up her findings, tapping on the relevant parts. "Seems that doesn't automatically make us privy to the board's sensitive information. Maybe an oversight?"

"Oh, of fucking course." Helen's flat look fell on the professor. "Bureaucracy. Really?"

"Mission's the same. Don't need more than that."

"You do if you have to plan any of it!"

"Just send me out there and let me do as I see fit."

"That would be great if things could be that simple." Callum sighed, rubbing his face as he stared down at the dense text of proper protocol.

Angier shook his head. "Way I see it, the only way we'll get anywhere is if we know what we're dealing with."

"A scouting mission, then?"

"You tell me, boss." He huffed, taking another swig.

Callum grimaced turning his attention back to the map until Helen slapped a hand over it. "We'll send him out. Staring at that thing'll do shit for you."

"Okay, so an action for Strategy to order Operations to scout, and an action for Operations to do just that." Marina gestured to Ryan as he played with the bronze tokens, each engraved with a pig. After she shot him an exasperated look, he set aside two. Satisfied, Marina turned back around. "Olivia?"

"I should send out a building-wide alert. We don't need anyone surprised or accidentally opening doors for this thing, and the more people looking out for it, the better."

Ryan slid the third token over, looking between everyone to determine what to do next. Marina shuffled through her papers. "Once we know what it is, we can send Operations some equipment to—”

A metallic clang reverberated as a square of cubicles erupted from the floor mere inches from Marina, who jumped back with a squeak. Ryan's cot clattered to the side with the force of the sudden appearance in the middle of the room. Glossy nameplates of the departments adorned the wall next to each cubicle, set with the appropriate number of cheap chairs and rickety tables.

The lights above flashed bright, then dimmed. The wide radius of the hanging lights above shrunk as the lampshades of a few of them caved in, swallowing the bulb into an eerily eye-shaped socket. A pinprick of light shone through a small hole in the pupil of the eye, creating a little spotlight.

The phenomenon hadn't been overly concerning until the eyes swiveled on the thick cords they hung from like a snake's head, a light pointing at each student.

Then came the spit balls.

Nobody had ever seen Angier move quicker as he nearly dropped his flask diving into his compartment as if dodging a spray of gunfire. The others quickly followed suit, spooked by Angier's reaction more than anything. Ryan hung back for just a moment, moving back and forth to watch the light follow him, getting pelted with a few slimy wads before he scuttled inside.

The cubicle felt starkly quiet as Helen’s disgusted screeches cut off—a similar charm as the train seemed to keep Olivia in her own secluded bubble. The lights overhead expanded to become the full pupil of the eyes, a bit too bright to see properly now. The chair squeaked as she sat down, trying not to think about how and why something wet came from a light fixture, neatly setting out her materials across the desk. Just as she finished, one of the tokens plinked onto the wood, almost bouncing off to the floor.

A sign to get to work, then. The quill responded to the arrival of the token, hovering above the desk, seeming to wait for direction. As the quill responded, the notebook flipped open. Olivia glanced at the map, dictating her short warning along with the barest of details she had. The quill dutifully scribed her words onto one of the darker papers. A copy of the words appeared in the notebook, logging her correspondence. As her note floated away, the token spun, forming into a tiny pig that trundled down her desk leg like an ant and out her little space.

 

[Ryees]

Sherlin moved quietly between the cubicles, robes barely whispering as he passed. The lights above were still tracking each student, bulb-pupil eyes casting twitchy beams like overcaffeinated searchlights. Most had retreated into their compartments, some with grim focus, others with barely-contained snorts of disbelief. That was fine. The system didn’t need belief to function, it only needed participation.

A faint hum rose as the enchanted pig-token scurried past his boot. Sherlin watched it go, then glanced toward the cubicle where it had originated. He didn't pause, but the corner of his mouth ticked upward, almost imperceptibly. He took in the departments as one might study a chessboard mid-game.

Strategy was struggling. Not floundering, but cracking under the lack of clean data.

Operations was already grumbling about authority. Predictable.

Communications—his eyes flicked toward the darker quill and the turning notebook—had begun to send orders. Also predictable.

Logistics was doing something inexplicable with the tokens. Entirely expected.

He reached the edge of the room and turned his back to the wall, leaning against it with his arms folded. “Well,” he murmured to himself, “let’s see what you do with the truth.”

---

Far beneath the real Ministry, in a very real containment hallway marked SUBLEVEL THETA, a thin pane of magical glass flickered in and out of stability. On the other side, a row of iron-banded cages stood empty. They were supposed to be. Just down the way, a waist-high glass enclosure whose occupant had grown large enough to climb over the barrier also stood empty, and that was an error. From a low shadow near the vent shaft, something small and pale slid across the floor. Its eyes, shielded behind a mirrored lens embedded in its own skull, flicked sideways. Its tongue, split three ways at the tip, tasted the air. No alarms sounded. No staff panicked. The creature had not been detected yet.

A collective of groans let out as typewriters automatically cycled themselves, ejecting whatever paper the owners had been working on and feeding a fresh sheet for the urgent announcement. They typed on themselves for the span of a minute, and each keystroke spiked the adrenaline of the occupants of the room more and more. Being told to stay put at your desk so as to not spook the horrible nightmare creature that was undoubtedly right behind you at this very moment was not the most comforting of orders, but they were orders to follow nonetheless. As the announcement parchment ejected itself from their typewriters, there was a collective shuffle as they all went to scoop up the work that had been launched, manually feeding it into the machines and tweaking the rollers and arms to reset their alignment and pick up where they left off.

---

A sharp chime rang out above each cubicle. Not aggressive, just officious, like the sound of polite doom. Each student received a fresh note, dropped from nowhere and smelling faintly of printer ink and stress.

 

MEMORANDUM FROM THE BOARD
RE: DEPARTMENTAL EFFECTIVENESS

The Board has taken notice of interdepartmental friction, delayed outputs, and general inefficiency.

In accordance with training directive 7-F, the Board will begin assessing departmental necessity in 30 minutes.

Please demonstrate function, collaboration, and clarity of purpose.
Failure to do so may result in consolidation.
You have our full support.
​

The note folded itself in half and vanished with a puff of chalk. Sherlin, now standing again beside Deskster, made no comment, but noted the time on his watch.

A low whir began in the air, somewhere between the sound of a document feeder and a purring cat with an agenda. A slit opened at the back of Angier's cubicle wall, from which a tightly rolled scroll was ejected with alarming force. It bounced off the opposite wall, landed on the desk, and immediately unspooled itself. The parchment was crisp. Its text, embossed in purple ink, shimmered faintly.

 

FIELD REPORT: OPERATIONAL UNIT ALPHA (Angier Carmine)

TIME OF DISPATCH: 08:47
TIME OF RETURN: 09:03
UNIT STATUS: Winded, muttering, unharmed.

OBSERVATIONS:
• Movement detected in Hallway D-3, near the Archives annex.
• Presence did not respond to light or verbal identification attempts.
• Entity described as "low to the ground" and "not shaped like anything that should be in a Ministry hallway."
• Scratch marks observed along corridor baseboards. Pattern: serpentine, intermittent.
• Magical field detected near breach site: residual ambient distortion, Class 2.

ADDITIONAL NOTES (UNVERIFIED):
• Unit claims "the air felt colder than it should've."
• Described a "rattling" sound from behind HVAC grates.
• Refused to elaborate further without coffee.

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS:
Block access to Delta-3 with warded runes (Logistics).

Issue building-wide containment caution (Communications).

Prepare suppression spells targeting heat-resistant or vision-based threats (Strategy).

Send tea to Unit Alpha. (This note not officially endorsed.)

CLEARANCE LEVEL: Class B
Do not share contents with unauthorized departments.
​

As the scroll finished unrolling, a bright pink piglet token scampered across Olivia's desk, stopped precisely at the center, and exploded into a tiny banner of text:

"CONGRATULATIONS. YOU NOW KNOW SOMETHING."

The paper folded itself neatly and tucked into the "BOARD" folder on its own. Across the cubicles, the walls ballistically produced another token for each desk, four more actions added to the students' proverbial hoppers.