Chapter 5 of Camera Obscura, written by Matt Boothman after Samantha Leigh
Day 120
Just checking … is there an RA out there who can recite the Sequence Ere The Seal from memory?
Not just “I reckon”. Anyone who’s really confident. To the extent you’d stake your life on it. Or more serious – your position at the university.
Just trying to see if that’s a reasonable thing to expect a probationary RA to know, that’s all.
Sorry for vagueposting. Silence the alarms: the IRB aren’t going around spot-checking labs on this stuff or anything. I got a dressing down from my PI that I didn’t think was very fair, and I was venting. I didn’t mean to panic anyone.
You tell me if I deserved it:
So I’m doing intake, taking a possible new subject through the screening questionnaire. It’s been nearly month since the IRB last overtly tried to sabotage Curzon Labs, so I’m back to routine, not at action stations all the time. But they could still be waiting to pounce on the first little infraction they detect, so I’m being extra belt and braces about procedure (yes, even for me).
And three questions into screening I realise the subject ID at the top of the sheet has changed. I assigned this participant $GNOMÆN, and now, still in my handwriting, still in my special ink hue, it says ₭NOW78HY.
I do one more question and glance back. Now it says #K1-10∑VN.
One more question to make sure; this time it’s changed to K∑LV1$.
Annoying, but not unexpected, right? So I do what any of us would do: I ask $GNOMÆN, politely, if they’d mind telling me when they last shed.
And I’m expecting the usual, like “thrice a thousandday hence”, or “the day you burst screaming from your sire, mortal”, but $GNOMÆN says instead, “I have carried these fine antlers since before the fall of titans.”
So you see? It’s easy enough to remember we can’t enroll anyone who last shed during the Era of Starless Shores, but what research assistant can be expected to know the Sequence Ere The Seal in enough detail to calculate whether or not the fall of titans was before or after or during that era? I don’t know if any of you qualify for tutelage in the sidereal misteries, but I don’t. And the almanacs are always all checked out of the library.
I could’ve put a hold on an almanac and held off completing $GNOMÆN’s screening until I could confirm. I could’ve erred on the side of caution and screened them out, or hoped for the best and enrolled them. In any other lab I would’ve! But the IRB are out there licking their lips, waiting for us to put a foot wrong, turn an ankle in a little procedural vole-hole so they can tear us limb from limb.
So I do the only thing I can do: I escalate, like it says to in the handbook. I break the 12-character alphanumeric seal on the Machine; answer its riddles three; put on my beeswax-paper glasses to resist its howling pleas to update this, activate that and register the other; and put in a calendar request to summon the PI.
And when lo he emerges, and I explain the situation, he tells me I should know enough to handle something like this, and I can’t be summoning him for “every little thing”. I try to explain I’m being cautious in light of the IRB’s behaviour and he tells me I’m being paranoid! Of course it seems paranoid to him – he’s been out of the lab and I’ve been handling everything, sheltering him from the worst of their campaign against us. Victim of my own success.
So that’s all it was. A little vent. Nothing for any of you to worry about. Although if anyone’s got ideas of how I could have handled the situation better, I’m always open to advice.
Camera Obscura is an actual play of Outliers, a single-player journalling game by Samantha Leigh, based on The Wretched by Chris Bissette, and published by the Far Horizons Co-Op.
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