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Aug. 5th, 2011 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
froodleThe Radfords’ Monopoly set was, perhaps inevitably, made up from lost pieces of other Monopoly sets. Even the board appeared to be pieces of three separate Monopoly boards taped together.
“I’m the metal dog,” said the girl Radford.
“You always get to be the metal dog,” said the boy Radford. “Why can’t you be the blue plastic dog and I’ll be the metal one for once?”
She gave him a hard look. “The metal dog came from my area, so it’s mine. When someone loses a metal dog that means a lot to them, you can have that one and then you can be it as much as you want.” The boy Radford huffed and picked up a metal top hat instead.
“If you want us to play, you’ll have to untie us,” said Simon.
“If we untie you, you have to promise not to run away,” said the boy Radford.
“How do you know we won’t just promise and then run off anyway?” said Mars. Dash gave him a look that indicated Mars would have gotten a kicking if they weren’t both tied up and netted.
“We promise,” he said, with a pointed glare in Marshall’s direction.
The two Radfords made brief work of the complicated series of knots binding the boys’ hands behind their backs, coiling the ropes and stuffing them into the seemingly endless pockets of their woollen cardigans. The nets were rolled up and stacked behind the counter. Ginny, still bound and unconscious on the floor, they ignored, and even when untied, Charley continued to sit slumped and staring at the ground. They left him to it.
Stretching to get some feeling back into their cramped muscles, the three boys settled cross-legged on the floor around the board. Dash chose a green plastic racing car, Marshall took an old tin battleship and Simon picked the shoe. The boy Radford dealt out little stacks of pretend money with the ease of long practice, the dice were rolled to see who went first, and the game began.
“So,” said the boy Radford conversationally, “How did you three end up down here?”
“We followed the-” Simon began, but a hasty elbow in the ribs from Marshall silenced him. The girl Radford raised an eyebrow, reminding him of Syndi in some of her more-annoying-than-usual moments.
“Not that it matters,” she said, “It’s just that people don’t normally come looking for the Bureau of Lost.”
“Mister Lodgepoole said you had to keep it a secret,” said Mars.
“Poor Lodgepoole,” said the boy Radford. “If Head Office hadn’t screwed him over, none of this would be happening now.”
“He deserved better,” agreed the girl Radford. “But then, that’s politics, isn’t it? People sometimes get screwed who don’t have it coming.”
“I heard he was demoted,” offered Mars.
“Yeah,” said the girl Radford, but didn’t seem inclined to say any more. She rolled the dice, moved the metal dog, and purchased The Angel Islington, all in silence.
“Then Al took over,” Simon prompted.
“Ginny said… well, she said that didn’t turn out so great,” said Mars.
“She said he got ripped apart and eaten alive, you mean,” said the girl Radford, flatly.
“She wasn’t that blunt about it, but yeah,” said Mars.
The boy Radford sighed and pushed his hair back from his face with one hand. “It’s not entirely Area Five’s fault,” he said, grudgingly. “When Mister Lodgepoole got demoted to Surface Misappropriation Acquisitions, Head Office put Al temporarily in charge of the day-to-day running of the Bureau.”
“Mistake,” muttered the girl.
“Because he wasn’t a qualified, uh…”
“Certified Misappropriations Engineer,” supplied Simon. The two Radfords nodded.
“They always meant to find a replacement,” said the girl defensively. “But nobody thought things would fall apart as fast as they did.”
“The Bureau is a huge place,” said the boy. “Fourteen areas, all of them stretching hundreds, even thousands of miles, with millions upon millions of Lost items all needing to be stored and tracked and contained.”
“And thousands more pieces of inventory come in every day,” added the girl.
“All this Lost stuff in one place creates a kind of…” The boy paused, looked at the girl. “Do they still say “miasma” Topside?”
“I think they call it “bad vibes” now,” said the girl.
“Groovy,” said the boy. He looked back at Mars. “Everything down here has been misplaced, abandoned and for the most part, forgotten about,” he went on. “When the Bureau first came into operation, the bad vibes from all that Lost stuff permeated the air and began to affect the whole building.”
“People who just come here to work a normal, nine-to-five shift began to lose bits and pieces of themselves,” said the girl. “Chunks of time, enthusiasm for hobbies, fingernails - part of the daily record books for back then were also Lost, so we don’t know if there was a pattern, just that it kept happening.”
“Eventually Head Office put seals throughout the Bureau to keep the...” The boy hesitated. “‘Bad vibes’ in check.”
“But that was a long time ago,” said the girl. “The seals degraded slowly over the years, and they started leaking through again.”
“Lodgepoole started sending memo after memo to Head Office, telling them about the leaks and requesting that the seals be re-done, but they kept shining him on. They told him that seal repair and maintenance should be handled from within his existing budget.”
“There wasn’t enough money to replace them, and Head Office wouldn’t let him use any of the Misplaced Financial Assets from Area Seven, so instead he worked with the Radfords to plug the gaps as best we could.”
“Mister Lodgepoole was a misanthropic old sourchops,” said the boy. “But he knew how to keep the leaks manageable.”
“And Al didn’t,” Simon guessed.
“A few months after he took over, Area Five reported that a bunch of its kids had started growing again,” said the girl. “Whenever anything is Lost, it’s permanently frozen in the condition it was in when it was processed. Silver won’t tarnish, food won’t spoil, and living things won’t age.”
“At least, not when everything is working properly,” said the boy.
“Some of the Code Fives have been the same age for hundreds of years,” said the girl. “Then one morning they woke up to find themselves five or ten years older than they were when they went to sleep.”
“And then they started getting hungry,” said the boy. “They’d never needed feeding before, so we weren’t sure how to handle it. We started bringing in Claw deliveries from Area One – that’s comestibles -”
“Food,” explained the girl.
“But it turned out that you can only eat food that’s unLost.”
“That was a real problem,” the girl went on, “Because food will spoil if it isn’t processed and properly Lost almost as soon as it gets here, so Area One has one of the fastest turn-around times in the whole Bureau.”
“So there wasn’t enough unLost food to feed all the Codes Four and Five.”
Dash rolled, landed on Community Chest, and collected $100 from a maturing Life Insurance policy.
“Wait, what do you mean, you can’t eat food that’s been lost?” asked Mars.
The two Radfords gave him what might be termed an “old-fashioned look”.
“You can’t eat it,” said the girl Radford. “Because it’s been Lost. You can’t eat food once it’s Lost.” She looked at the boy. “Figured they’d know that.”
“But you can eat it when it first gets here?” Simon persevered.
“Yes,” said the boy Radford. “When it arrives, it hasn’t been processed and thoroughly Lost yet, so it’s still suitable food for Code Fours or Code Fives.”
“As long as it’s fresh,” said the girl Radford.
“Once it’s Lost, it doesn’t spoil, but for some reason it doesn’t work as sustenance anymore,” said the boy Radford.
“We tried feeding some of the Code Fives on Lost food at first,” said the girl. “They all starved to death, even though when their bodies were cut open, the food was physically present in their stomachs.”
Simon paled. Mars gagged. Dash stole the money from Free Parking, purely on reflex.
“It was weird,” continued the girl, apparently oblivious to their discomfort. “I didn’t think anything died down here in the Bureau.”
“Meanwhile, Head Office gets wind of the aging Fivers and starts harassing Al over the radio every five seconds. He starts hassling us in turn, then decides that Area Five isn’t performing the way it should and that he should come down from his mountaintop and show them how they should deal with a problem that none of us have ever encountered before, as if that’s somehow our fault.” From his tone, it was obvious that whatever hostility the two Radfords felt for their counterpart in Area Five was outweighed by solidarity in the face of non-Radford interference.
“So he comes stomping down to the border between Areas Four and Five, and he’s screaming at Radford about how incompetent he is, as if we didn’t warn him about the fucking seals a bazillion times, and all of a sudden the Fivers go nuts and they swamp him.”
“I heard he had a chicken sandwich in his overalls and the smell sent them over the edge,” said the boy Radford.
“Whatever,” said the girl Radford. “Anyway, the way I heard it is they ripped him to shreds, ate him while he was still screaming, then took off over the borders into the rest of the Bureau.”
“We’ve all been on high alert ever since,” said the boy. “We jerry-rigged the Reject alarm to go off if it detected anything other than Twos or Threes in our area, which is how we caught you three Jackalope thieves,” - he cast Dash a particularly nasty stare as he said it, which was inevitably ignored – “and the two escaped Fives you had with you.”
Mars landed on Oriental Avenue, paid his fine to a smirking Dash X, and said, “So how many people are still out there running loose?”
“A couple of dozen,” said the girl. “It sucks because we probably won’t find them before they starve to death, and they’ll end up stinking up the whole Bureau.”
Mars couldn’t help it. “What a selfish bunch of jerks,” he said.
“If they’re in danger of starving, does that mean you haven’t managed to plug all the seals?” asked Simon.
“Not yet,” said the boy.
“But you said that to be properly Lost, the inventory has to be processed, which stops it from aging or getting hungry or basically changing at all,” said Mars. “And if it’s capable of changing, it hasn’t been processed, which means it’s not Lost.”
“If you’re trying to logic-wrangle your way out of here, you can forget it,” said the girl. “This is the Bureau of the Lost, you’re in it, ergo, you are Lost.”
“Save the fancy word-play for Area Five,” agreed the boy. “Radford is the kind of picker-snickerty nit-picker who appreciates that sort of fuss-budgetry.” He landed on Pennsylvania Avenue, examined his pile of mismatched paper money, and laid it aside with a sigh.
“What do you know about Area Five?” asked Dash.
The girl Radford shrugged. “Never done a tour there,” she said. “I spent some time over in Area Four, which is pretty nice.”
“They have live Jackalopes there,” said the boy Radford wistfully. “I always wanted to see one.”
“They were okay,” said the girl Radford. “The Loch Ness Monster’s the best bit, though.”
“The Loch Ness Monster isn’t lost!” Mars protested. “It’s at Loch Ness! Isn’t it?” he added weakly as the other four stared at him.
“It was at Loch Ness,” said the boy. “But they lost it, so now it’s here.”
“How can you lose the Loch Ness Monster?” Simon wanted to know. “Wouldn’t the people living there have noticed?”
The girl Radford shrugged. “Radford told me the place it lived was pretty massive. They probably think it’s having a nap or something.”
“What about Area Five?” Dash tried again.
“Sorry,” said the boy Radford. “Never been there either.”
“There must be something you can tell us about it,” said Mars.
The girl Radford shrugged. “It’s not a place the younger Radfords get to see very often,” she said. “Because you’re working with sentient inventory, only the senior Radfords get assigned there.”
“It’s kind of a final testing ground before you get to go Topside,” added the boy Radford.
“Can you at least tell us something about the Radford in charge there?” said Simon.
“Douchebag,” said the boy Radford.
“Wanker,” added the girl Radford.
“And he loves the paperwork,” said the boy.
“As you will find out,” said the girl. “Especially you,” she added to Dash. “He’s going to go spare when he finds out you got rid of your Code.”
“How did you do that, by the way?” asked the boy. “It’s supposed to be impossible to hide from the Code Scanner.”
“That’s that thing that told you our names, right?” asked Mars. The Radfords nodded.
“What did it say when you scanned me?” Dash tried, but he couldn’t completely hide the desperately eager note in his voice.
“It didn’t say anything,” said the girl. “It was like you weren’t even standing there.” She shrugged. “It’s an old piece of shit anyway, it’s always breaking down.”
“Try it again,” suggested Dash. “Maybe it just needed to… to cool down or something before you used it again.”
The Radfords looked at him, then at each other. The girl Radford shrugged again with a “what could it hurt?” expression, produced the scanner from her cardigan pocket and held it out towards the grey-haired teenager. She glanced at the display and made a wry face.
“Nothing.” She turned the object so Dash could look at the display. “Totally blank. It’s like it doesn’t recognise you exist.”
The boy Radford slapped Dash on the shoulder, seemingly incognizant of his suddenly stricken expression. “Sorry kid, looks like there’s a few thousand pointless form-filling exercises in your future after all.”
“But if we plug the leaks you’ll end up living down here forever, so you’ll have plenty of time,” said the girl Radford.
Over on the desk, the microphone spluttered into life.
“I’ll get it,” said the girl Radford. She got to her feet, then paused and picked up her small stack of property cards and monopoly money. “I know where my dog is, so don’t even bother moving it while I’m gone,” she warned the boy Radford.
“She always says that,” the boy Radford confided to the other three. He moved the metal dog along another four squares, placing it within an easy dice roll of a string of properties all owned by him, and heavily developed.
“Funny, Radford,” said the girl, flipping him off from behind the counter. “Put it back and get over here. SMA just Misplaced the luggage for an entire tour bus on the way to Disneyworld – they need us to get over to Area Eight and help Radford and Radford separate out all the Code Twos and Threes so they can get the Sixes and Tens inventoried and stacked.”
The boy Radford stood up, removing coils of rope from his pockets as he did so.
“Have to tie you up again,” he said apologetically. “We’ll be back as soon as we’re done to finish up the game and get you loaded onto the Claws for Area Five.”
“You never know,” said the girl Radford cheerfully, “we might find some unLost food in there for you. Tourists pack the weirdest stuff in their luggage sometimes. There’s duct tape on top of the card catalogue,” she added to the boy. “Tape their ankles so they can’t run off.”
Despite their protests that they wouldn’t run away, honest, the two Radfords were insistent and, more to the point, not above using brute force to get their own way. Although, thought Marshall, at least after they were bound and taped and netted, the Radfords helped him back into a sitting position so he could lean forward until his nose stopped bleeding.
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 05:26 pm (UTC)I can't wait to see what's coming next!
(also, I noticed you added me as a friend, mind if I add you back?)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 08:29 pm (UTC)(sure go ahead :D)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 09:01 pm (UTC)(:D)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 09:41 pm (UTC)SAD
I wish there really were an idea Graveyard. That you could actually visit and adopt ideas...(or would that be more like a plot bunny meadow?)
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Date: 2011-08-06 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-06 10:13 pm (UTC)