Not catastrophically — no alarms, no chanting, no spontaneous metaphors — but badly in the way offices learn to recognize before anything officially goes wrong.
Someone was running.
That alone was enough to put everyone on edge.
The office discouraged running. Running implied urgency. Urgency implied attention. Attention was the first step toward escalation.
A woman in a blazer skidded to a stop near the break room, coffee sloshing dangerously close to disaster.
“Why,” she said carefully, “is there an intern?”
I froze.
Across the room stood a young man near the printer, holding a stack of papers like they were sacred texts. His posture was straight, his expression alert, and his ID badge was clipped so neatly it might have been ironed.
“That’s him,” the Archivist muttered. “That’s the variable.”
Ms. A emerged from her office, calm as ever.
“Good morning,” she said.
The woman turned sharply.
“You said no new variables on Fridays.”
“I said no external variables,” Ms. A replied.
The woman closed her eyes.
“I hate this building.”
She noticed me watching.
“You,” she said, pointing. “New hire?”
“Yes.”
“Observer?”
“I think.”
She nodded briskly.
“Good. I’m Crisis.”
“That’s your—?”
“My job,” she said. “Not my name. Don’t test that boundary.”
The intern perked up.
“Oh! Hi,” he said brightly. “I’m—”
Crisis held up a hand.
“No names yet,” she said. “Tell me why you’re here.”
His face lit up.
“I wanted to help.”
The room went quiet.
“I mean,” he continued quickly, “I studied comparative religion. I did my thesis on transitional belief systems. When I saw the posting, I thought—this is it. This is where belief goes when it grows up.”
The Archivist stopped writing.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The Analyst looked up from her monitors.
Crisis stared at him.
“…You thought,” she said slowly, “that on your first day, you should reorganize the printer queue?”
“Yes!” he said. “By urgency. I cross-referenced emotional volatility with document flow. I thought it would—”
“Prevent escalation?” the Analyst finished.
“Yes!”
Crisis closed her eyes again.
“Why does it always start with good intentions?”
Ms. A gestured gently toward a chair.
“Sit,” she told the intern. “Please.”
He did. Immediately. Hands folded. Alert.
“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I just—this matters. People still believe things, even when they pretend they don’t. Someone has to care about that.”
I felt something unpleasant twist in my chest.
Crisis studied him for a long moment.
“Caring is not the problem,” she said. “Timing is.”
The rest of the morning unfolded in managed chaos.
Crisis handled three minor incidents:
- a forum rumor spike tied to an old thunder god meme
- a prayer hotline escalation caused by an automated response loop
- a translation error that turned “metaphor” into “instruction”
The intern followed her everywhere, taking notes, asking questions, stopping himself mid-sentence at least twice.
“Should I—”
“No.”
“Right.”
He learned fast.
That worried me more than if he hadn’t.
At lunch, the intern sat across from me, eyes bright.
“This place is incredible,” he whispered. “It’s like watching belief decompose in real time.”
“That’s… one way to phrase it.”
He grinned.
“I mean it respectfully.”
“Of course you do.”
Crisis leaned against the counter nearby.
“You still excited?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said immediately. “Terrified, but yes.”
She nodded.
“That’ll wear off.”
He frowned. “Is that… good?”
“It’s survivable,” she replied.
Later, as the office quieted, I watched the intern carefully refile a document under supervision.
“You’re not disappointed?” I asked him quietly.
“About what?”
“This not being… bigger.”
He thought for a moment.
“No,” he said. “This is exactly how it should be. If gods were still loud, it would mean we failed.”
That landed harder than anything Odin had said.
Crisis overheard.
She didn’t smile.
But she didn’t correct him either.
By the end of the day, the office exhaled.
Crisis slung her bag over her shoulder.
“Next week will be louder,” she said to Ms. A.
“Yes,” Ms. A replied.
The intern looked up immediately.
“Louder how?”
Crisis smiled thinly.
“Charisma,” she said. “Confidence. A lot of lightning metaphors.”
The intern swallowed.
“…Oh.”
I didn’t like that she still hadn’t said god.
That night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
The ceiling had now observed:
- gods who stepped back
- gods who refused
- and humans who cared too quickly
I thought about the intern’s excitement.
About how dangerous hope could be when it moved faster than caution.
The ceiling offered no advice.
Which was consistent.
Sleep came slowly.
And for the first time, I wondered which of us was more fragile.
The gods.
Or the people who still wanted to help them.