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'Well, aren-t I in bloody luck! That drives possibilities up to,' He stopped, staring ahead at nothingness. His ocular spun slowly and calmly, whirring for a few moments, before suddenly stopping. 'Oh, forty million. But because I trust you so much, He said, 'I-ll lower that to a nice thirty-eight million.'

'Finch, you know what the technicians said about that sar-plasm build-up in your coolant tubes.'

'The technicians nearly killed me!'

'Blowtorches are supposed to be hot, aren't they?' Bingle's face screwed up.

'That-s the same bloody stuff in explosions!' Finch said, pointing. He looked back to Peregrin, still pointing at Bingle. 'We-re from, essentially, nowhere.'

'Semi-fic blips, you know. Different fics.' Bingle added. 'It's quite nice, actually. I've not heard once of a Sue from UnderLondon Esoteric.'

"My partner is, though. If you want to know more about the place, you should ask him.

"I came from a universe indistinguishable from the one described in Anathem. I lived my whole life before joining the PPC in the Millenarian math at Saunt Baritone's. I think the best analogy for those is a combination of a theoretical research institute and a monastary. It doesn't quite fit, but analogies never do. And the Inquisition was established after several hundred-year maths went collectively insane. I'm almost certain there was a nuclear reactor involved in one of those events.

"And Mr. Finch, I am building a much less ambitious replica of our clock tower. I do not expect it to kill you, even indirectly.

"So, what universe-groups are you from?"

(( Peregrin has been around the shouting matches that result when people get vague about multiverse theory. ))

"Yeah, so you know how Butterbeer has almost no alcohol in it, to the point where eleven-year-olds can drink it in wizarding society? Well, Doc is apparently such a rampaging teetotaler that he flipped out when he found out he had been drinking stuff meant for preteens."

"Nuuuuuuuuu . . ." Doc began sinking slowly down in his chair.

"And he freaks so badly, he convinces himself—purely psychological, mind you—that he must be drunk now, because that's how it works, obviously. And I wake up the next morning to an RC full of plastic flamingos full of glitter, because Doc has been out remote activating under the influence all night."

"Stop ignoring my wishes," Doc whispered, head just barely over the tabletop now.

And he went to Camp Halfblood, of all places—Doc, have you even read any Percy Jackson?"

"Not as of the time of this writing," came the answer from beneath the table.

Vania grimaced at the weird answer and continued. "And then went to a Sue town—which we're at peace with, so thank goodness he didn't start some kind of incident."

"You're killing me, Vania, I'm dying now."

"And then he ends up back on World One, in the middle of some beach in winter, and nearly gives his fool of a self frostbite."

"Vania, why is your shirt full of—" Then, he made a sound akin to footwear hitting a jawline.

"So Rina and I track him down, through all this, and freeze our butts off getting him to Medical so he doesn't die. And, we had to run damage control and neuralyze a bunch of people who saw our portal. You'd best believe the Hyacinth had some words to say about that."

"That was only part of the reason for our punishment," mumbled Doc from the floor.

'You know how many ways there are for a clock to kill you?' Finch asked, leaning in. 'I-ve calculated it. It-s more than ten million. And that-s only straight fatalities!'

'Do calm down, Finch.' Bingle looked to Peregrin. 'An Inquisition? Nuclear reactors?' He rubbed his wooden nose with the back of a finger.

'I do hope you're not from World One,' He said, smiling.

Finch muttered about death machines and extra work and self-preservation in the background.

"Is this the incident that involves, what, a hundred plastic flamingos?"

Shamrock's eyebrows shot up. "Okay, now I've got to hear this for myself."

"B-B-uilding M-M-aintenance?" he asked. "I hope that - that the clock I've been building in our RC hasn't been a, uh, problem. I thought it was - it was permitted, but ..."

"Dude. Pregrin. Relax!" Tomash said reassuringly. "They're with Building Maintenance, not DIA or some sort of inquisition."

Peregrin was somewhat reassured, and the mention of inquisitions led him to reminiscing. "If they were with something like the Inquisition there would be no reason to worry. All Inquisitors ever did was look in about once a decade to make sure we hadn't build a nuclear reactor in the kitchens. Now Suur Thelenoses, her you had to worry about. She was Warden back when I was much younger and less rule-abiding. And she could spot just about anything. I remember when..."

While Peregrin was taking a trip down memory lane, Tomash told Bingle "Yeah. I don't know what happened with the forest, exactly. Apparently, the guy died and 'merged' with it. I mean, I can sort of see stories where that would work, but that fic wasn't one of them. And i'll try not to ruin the hallways."

Peregrin overheard this and commented. "Yes. It's best to be careful with the hallways. Especially since all of the likely notions of 'near' for the corridors are extremely hard to work with, I've found."

"The whole idea is me using the magic of my world, as an actual training, since a form of magic needing physical samples of the target and relatively long preparations is almost useless in this job, and I'd like not restarting from scratch when I go back home someday."

"Hmm, could I have the coffee please, Marina?" Richard asked, his dish now completely empty. "I swear I can still feel the urple's taste."

"The Shax demons are fantastic trackers... and primitive enough to not try any funny business," he added, pulling out a piece of chalk from his pocket.

Desdendelle slid a plate of poutine to the Librarian and placed an orange bottle of Cointreau before the Time Lord, then took his own place.
The Time Lord glanced at him with something akin to gratefulness on his face and applied himself to his food.
Des sipped from his tea. "I'm afraid I don't know you guys' names...?" he told Chris and Ami.

"Thank you...I think." Ami sat down closer to the outside edge, so she could leave quickly if things got too uncomfortable.

Chris sat next to her and began eating one of his sandwiches. "Ami, you ever tried one of these?" he said between bites. "Grilled cheese is the second-best diner food in the multiverse."

"I don't think I have. Would I be right to assume that first place goes to your mom's burgers?"

"Eeyup. Mom's the reason I like spicy food." Chris smiled fondly and turned to their host. "So you're partnered with Desdendelle? What kinda place is he from, anyway? I heard he gives carnivorous tea to any new arrival he meets."

Sarplasm quickly followed that statement. "I didn't have the opportunity to thank them. But they're so shy, I have to use use traacking spell after tracking spell to find them. And because of that, I ended up hexing much of their gear in the locals I can find."

"Fun fact, she really want to thank them for the opportunity to train with thaumaturgy while she's tracking them," Richard said.

"You didn't need to say that."

'Makes me wonder what the hell they do in FicPsych all day.' Finch said, sarcasm circuits buzzing with overpowering energy. ''I-m S86FNC-11630, he-s Bernhard Bingard Bingle, and we-re in Building Maintenance. We-re very familiar with your department. Especially what it does to its hallways. And what those hallways then try doing to us.

'You should appreciate them more, Finch,' Bingle said, pallid face displaying nothing short of innocent sincerity. 'Almost half of our workload comes from them, you know.'

'Half of our injuries, too, Bingle.'

Bingle shrugged with the kind of nonchalance only a man without a working nervous system could shrug with.

'Now, how on earth did an entire forest get possessed? I remember the last time that sort of thing happened.'

'I remember the hallways from then, too.'

'Oh, absolutely terrible,' Bingle agreed.

She then looked at William, who just shook his head.

"Don't ask me."

"And you knew Rina? That's cool. Vania met her once—Uh—"

Doc's words were interrupted by Vania giving a goofy chuckle under her breath. "Yes, Doc, I did meet Rina, didn't I? That one time."

"Oh, jeeze."

"Specifically the time you got yourself imaginary-drunk on butterbeer."

"Vania, please."

"Because you're such a lightweight, a pixie affected by feather fall could crush you underneath herself."

"Can we not do this, please?"

Randa sighed. "Okay, maybe not. Um... okay, you know Louisville, Kentucky? Where the Kentucky Derby is? I'm from a town just across the Ohio River to the north. Rina... the Aviator and I were friends from high school."

She straightened up (which was accompanied by a clinking sound) and joined in with Shamrock's highly alliterative speech, creating a full conversation's worth of repetition.

"Oh, boy," said Doc. "At least she's not singing. So, um, Randa, where were you from, back on Earth?"

"Agents of the agency with agency! Ooh, do you think the agents have argent aegises for their agencies?"

"Oh, now you guys have done it," Randa groaned as Shamrock continued on in a similar vein to herself. "I once heard her say 'Rubber baby buggy bumpers' to herself for an hour straight. I still can't hear any of those words without getting her voice stuck in my head."

"We're not being controlled by anything. We have self agency. Plus, so many agents are from World One. How would it make sense for us to be real, and then suddenly enter a word world and become characters controlled by an outside author?

Vania tilted her head. "Self agency, yes. Agents with agency." She turned to Doc. "Agency agents."

Doc closed his eyes. "Ugh."

"She's not really one for philosophical questions," Randa said, nodding at her partner. "'Course, I find that stuff interesting. I remember Rina telling me about some gossip she heard one day; something about some Swan's Egg or something. Rumors that the PPC really is written after all."

Vania rolled her eyes. "Oh, boy, here we go again."

Doc continued. "I don't know if authors actually make the word worlds do anything. Or at least, I don't like to think that. It removes some of a story's oomph if you only think of it in terms of a constructed story. I think all the worlds are real as World One. Or, if they aren't real, then World One is a word world, too. I don't see why it would be different from all the others. It could have an author, too."

"Just so long as HQ isn't a word world," Vania said tiredly. "'Cause then you're talking about authors using characters to stop other authors' characters from harming the characters of another group of authors. And that's dumb."

He tried to reassure Finch "I'm not insane. Or at least I think I'm not. You can never be entirely sure about such things. I don't remember having the Book thrown at me..." He trailed off into thought, and then realized he wasn't sure who he was talking to. So he said "I'm Agent Peregrin, and my partner over there is Tomash. We are members of the Ord­— Department of Mary Sues. Who are you? I don't believe we have met."

Meanwhile, Tomash was talking with Bingle. "Well, the trees themselves were pretty ordinary trees, maybe a bit on the gloomy side. I mean, kids' show, so you can't have anything too scary. But the Stu was sort-of controlling them, and he apparently didn't want to be exorcised, so the trees sort of started leaning in on us and trying to thwack us with their branches. Peregrin was busy putting on a really showy exorcism —"

Peregrin cut in."— My exorcism technique was not needlessly 'showy'. Such occasions call for a certain formality."

"But you don't need a whole long chant. You just wave a bell around and yell stuff about Faust. That's what everyone else did, anyway."

"I still hold that banishments require a certain weight."

"Yeah, so anyway. Peregrin was doing his thing, and there was a tree getting pretty close, so I had to put the bell down and hit the thing a few times. Then I think it realized that attacking agents wasn't a good idea."

Finch grumbled, twisting a last knob, which served to shut down the rumbling, clicking, smoking and impending explosion all at once.

'You lot had better not go insane and kill me, Finch muttered, totally prepared for hasty escape if needed. He murmured things under his breath about his plate, and how he already had heaps of things on it, and how everyone else thought they had it rough.

'Oh, it's quite regular, actually. Not as expensive as you might think. Now, attacked by trees?' Bingle said. 'What kind? What happened? I've done that before, you know.' He closed his burger and took a bite out of it.

"We were exorcising the Everfree Forest, in the My Little Pony universe. A Stu had merged with it, and was able to control it somewhat. So the Aviator and Zeb, I think, or maybe it was Zeb and Alex, asked all of us to go throughout the forest and exorcise." Peregrin explained.

"Performing an exorcism as a pony was certainly interesting." he added.

Tomash chimed in "Yeah, but then we got attacked by trees. Not so fun."

Peregrin noticed that Finch was still smoking. "Er, Mr., ah, Bingle, is your partner well? Or do parts of them often fire off into the distance?"

"Sometimes," she said. "Hopefully we'll see things change before I'm dead of old age."

"Awful cheery today, aren't you?" Shamrock said, shaking her head. "Hey, it could be worse: the events of your world could be dictated by sadistic authors who like to watch characters suffer."

Randa grimaced. "Okay, you have a point there."

He said, "My world is getting better. Just . . . really slowly. Painstakingly, insultingly slowly."

Vania piped up, "It takes time sometimes, doesn't it?"

Doc made a noise like "urm" and continued to stare at his plate.